Читать книгу Born A Hero - Paula Riggs Detmer - Страница 11

King Augustus Hospital, Montebello’s only full-service medical center, was located near a pretty man-made lake in the newer section of the sun-washed capital city. Constructed of pink granite quarried on the western end of the island, the imposing structure was shaped like a three-story X. Each of the four “legs” angled out from a central core that, in every sense, acted as the heart of the satisfyingly modern complex.

In the twenty-four hours since walking through the front doors for the first time, Kate had become quite familiar with the layout of the hospital.

After the initial rush of victims, the injured arrived singly now or in groups of two or three, as the rescuers removed the debris piece by piece in order to prevent a cataclysmic shifting. Although the top floor of the building had pancaked down, they believed there were pockets in the rubble where people could survive for more than a few hours, possibly even days.

This afternoon’s victims had included two children—a ten-year-old girl with internal injuries, and her four-year-old brother, who had a collapsed lung and multiple fractures. While other teams had tended to their parents, Kate finished one procedure, then rescrubbed and regowned to assist with the other. Both children were now in recovery. Until she felt confident they were in no immediate danger, she intended to stay close.

The two local teams she’d worked with so far had been enormously efficient and skilled—as well as welcoming and supportive. Many of them hadn’t left the hospital since the first batch of victims had been brought in the previous day. So far Kate hadn’t detected an erosion in performance or efficiency, but tempers were beginning to fray as stress and fatigue gradually nibbled away their aplomb.

It was going on 9:00 p.m. Initial uncertainty and adrenaline had kept jet lag at bay, but now her body clock seemed set to a time halfway between San Francisco and San Sebastian. On those few occasions when she’d been able to carve out time to nap, her body remained obstinately wide-awake. At other times, when she desperately needed to be alert, she found herself fighting drowsiness.

This morning she had been wide-awake at 4:00 a.m. Arturo hadn’t complained when she’d gotten him out of bed to drive her to the med center, but during the twenty-minute journey he’d shot her several long-suffering looks.

A young female aide wheeling an elderly woman toward the elevator smiled shyly as Kate approached. “Are you on your way home at last, Doctor?” she asked with a charming diffidence Kate had never noticed in the States.

“Soon,” she replied, returning the smile. Provided she could find the energy to summon Arturo from wherever it was he went while she worked, then make it to the car.

When she’d been a resident, she’d become accustomed to thirty-hour shifts. The last four years of semiregular hours had spoiled her, she decided, as she pushed open the door to the lounge.

Expecting to find the stress-relieving, often ribald bantering and chatter that seemed to be a universal characteristic of medical types everywhere, she was surprised to find the lounge all but empty.

Its only occupant was a trim, freckled-faced woman in pale blue scrubs, who glanced up from fixing herself a cup of tea when Kate entered. Petra McGee had sparkling sky-blue eyes, short crinkly curls the color of sun-splashed copper and, despite her tiny five-feet-nothing frame, energy enough for two people.

According to the bios they’d exchanged during a shared—and hasty—lunch earlier, the elfin registered nurse had joined Medics Without Limits three years ago after a painful divorce. She’d been working with Elliot for half that time. Kate had been tortured by curiosity about the depth of their relationship, then furious that she’d spent even a moment wondering about that part of his life.

As far as anyone knew, she and Elliot had met for the first time on the night she arrived. Whenever they chanced to meet—at a hasty orientation meeting held by Dr. Andretti early this morning, in the intensive care unit later and in the corridor outside the OR suites—he’d simply nodded without speaking. Since that was exactly what she had demanded of him, she failed to understand why it irritated her no end when he ignored her.

“Mind some company?” Kate asked when Petra hailed her with a grin.

“Lordy, no,” the nurse replied in the rapid-fire, clipped accent of a Brooklyn, New York, native. “Actually, I was terrified I was going to be stuck with my own company.”

“I didn’t realize your team was working tonight,” Kate commented as she filled a paper cup with black coffee.

“Our shift officially ended an hour ago, but triage got a heads up from the field that there’s a strong possibility of another victim or two. The four of us voted to stay so the local people could get home to see their families.”

“Any idea how many are still trapped?” Kate asked, resting the cup on the sofa’s arm.

Petra offered her a somber glance. “No one seems to know. The last report I saw on the tube said there might have been upwards of thirty people already at work on the floors above the restaurant. The way those floors pancaked down…” Her voice trailed off. Both knew how grim the odds were against surviving crushing injuries.

Terrorism was an obscenity, Kate thought with a rush of pure cold anger. Those who practiced it were no better than the most heinous murderer, no matter how tightly they wrapped themselves in the mantle of patriotism.

“Any leads on who planted the device?” she asked. King Marcus had addressed his subjects—and the international community—at noon today, but she’d been in surgery and hadn’t been able to listen in.

“Not that I’ve heard, but I haven’t had much time to check the news, either.”

“Arturo, my chauffeur, told me this morning the king had ordered increased security at the airport and the cruise line terminal.”

“I heard the same thing. It helps some, but every time I walk into the hotel, I can’t help thinking how easy it would be to put a bomb in a suitcase and just leave it by one of the pillars.”

A cold shiver ran down Kate’s spine. Don’t think about that, she told herself sternly as she shifted her gaze to the TV screen. Though the sound was muted, the images spoke for themselves. Not since Oklahoma City had so many media types gathered in one small space. Like a swarm of hungry termites, Kate thought, taking tiny sips of the still-steaming coffee.

Immediately after the explosion, city police had cordoned off a two-block radius, allowing only emergency personnel, government officials and a pool of media types beyond ropes of yellow tape very much like the kind used in the States.

The high-profile buzzards had arrived, she thought with a grimace as she watched a glossy blond female reporter in trendy safari togs speaking earnestly into the camera. In the distance the mound of rubble that used to be a modern, four-story office building provided an obscene contrast to the journalist’s bright-eyed freshness.

Cold-hearted bloodsuckers, Kate thought, averting her gaze.

After kicking off her surgical clogs, she carefully set her cup on the table in front of her, then bent forward to massage one cramped instep with fingers so tired they were nearly numb.

“I read someplace that the world always looks bleaker when you have sore feet,” she muttered as she dug her fingers into the painful knots.

“You should get some of these Wellies,” Petra suggested, dropping her gaze to the calf-length, green rubber boots she and the rest of the Medics Without Limits favored. “They have nice thick soles and good arch support.”

“Aha, and here I thought you Without Limits types were going for the rugged, outdoorsy look.”

Petra laughed, but there was a hint of somberness in her eyes. “Actually, Elliot started wearing them in Kosovo because he got sick and tired of cleaning the blood off his leather boots after a surgical marathon.”

Kate grimaced. “When were you in Kosovo?”

“During the worst of it, in fact. The working conditions were abysmal, to say the least. One wing of the hospital where we set up shop took a direct hit the day before we arrived. They’d rigged up a gas-powered generator that kept running out of fuel, usually at the worst possible times. Late one night Elliot had to shanghai a couple of ambulatory patients to hold flashlights so we could finish.”

Petra turned to fill a cup with hot water from one of the urns. “On our last day there, our X-ray tech was killed only a few feet away from me.” Her face tightened as she dunked the teabag in the cup. “His name was Eugene, but we called him Bubba because he had this grits-and-molasses Alabama accent. His wife had just had twins, and he’d been scheduled to leave for home the next day.”

Kate’s stomach clenched. She’d seen the horrific images of war and carnage on TV and felt sympathy for the victims. What she hadn’t done—what she knew she could never do—was face that kind of horror herself.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured truthfully. “Was he a close friend?”

Petra nodded sadly. “We’d been together for nearly three years. The kind of work we do tends to bond a team together very much like a family.” Her lips curved. “Sometimes I think I’m closer to Hans and Elliot than I am to my own brothers.”

Kate was lifting the cup to her mouth when the door opened and Elliot walked in, wearing rumpled scrubs and a grumpy expression. His hair was a tousled thatch of silver and wheat, and his jaw was shadowed with a day’s growth of beard. He looked tough and bitter and unapproachable.

Kate had almost gotten used to the way her heart leaped whenever she happened to run into him. The rush of heat to her cheeks was annoying.

The tired smile he offered Petra disappeared the instant he caught sight of Kate. Instead of greeting him, she mimicked the curt nods he’d given her earlier. His jaw clenched briefly.

After they exchanged greetings, Elliot turned his back and concentrated on the soft-drinks machine. Though she wanted to look away, Kate found herself riveted by the ripple of muscles beneath the cotton scrubs.

Elliot had always been superbly fit. A natural athlete, he’d played football in high school and rugby at Stanford. His body had always been strong, his legs long and powerful, his chest heavily muscled. But now her practiced eye noted substantially more hard-packed muscle and steely sinew on that frame of long bones and the wide, deep chest.

According to Sarah he’d worked for three months on a shrimp boat in Alaska during the year he’d spent traveling after Candy’s funeral. It had been hard, dangerous work under miserably cold conditions. Just what he’d needed to take his mind off his loss. Kate hadn’t seen much of him after he’d returned to finish medical school.

In fact, she’d seen him only once before in the last ten years—and that was because she’d dropped in one Sunday morning on her way to the hospital to leave a birthday present for Helena, only to find him sitting at the breakfast table. He hadn’t seemed any happier to see her than she’d been to see him—which was not at all.

Not then. Not now.

She gave some thought to excusing herself, before she remembered that she was in control of the choices she made in this lifetime, not Elliot Hunter—or anyone else. So…she would finish her coffee, then check on her patients. Just as she’d planned, she reminded herself as she took a sip of the black-as-pitch coffee.

“Heard any more from triage?” Petra asked as Elliot took a bottle of juice from the machine.

“Last I heard we’re still on alert.” He twisted the top off the bottle and tossed it away before taking a drink. “Almost forgot—Hans was looking for you.”

Petra brightened. “He was? Why?”

Elliot shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. He was in the cafeteria last I saw him.”

“Guess I’d better see if I can save him from another bout of acute pasta overload.” After downing the remainder of her tea in two quick swallows, she uncoiled and got to her feet. After tossing her cup in the trash, she headed for the door. “I have my pager if you get the word,” she told Elliot before saying good-night to Kate.

“Night, Petra,” Kate replied with a smile. “See you tomorrow.”

The door was no sooner closed behind her than Kate dropped her feet and sat up. Careful to keep from looking at him, she slipped her feet into her clogs, then stood up.

Elliot leaned back against the counter and crossed his ankles. He’d heard she’d graduated top of her class at the University of Southern California, and then three years later from med school. His dad had let him know how much he admired her decision to do her internship and residency at San Francisco General instead of the half-dozen other prestigious med centers that had actively recruited her. Last he’d heard she’d started a low-cost clinic for kids.

Even as a girl there’d been nothing mean or selfish or ugly about Kate. Nothing cruel or vindictive.

He told himself it was lack of sleep that made him want to wrap his arms around her and hold her close until some of her goodness dulled the pain.

Shaken, he took a fast mental step backward. He’d been without a woman for a long time. Months? Years? He didn’t care enough to be more precise. Katie had been the only one who had meant anything to him beyond a mild affection.

“If it makes you feel better, I gave Dad hell for blindsiding you,” he told her as she passed him on her way to toss her cup. “He asked me to apologize on his behalf.”

She turned to glare at him with hot eyes. “You had no right to do that, Elliot,” she said in a heated rush that had her breasts rising and falling in irate breaths beneath the loose-fitting shirt. “If I have a problem with your father, I’ll handle it myself.”

Elliot had a sudden impulse to lean on her a little, just to see those fiery sparks shooting out of her eyes again. “He was wrong to put you in such an awkward position.”

“Don’t be silly. He had other things to think about.” She took another agitated breath. “Besides, he has no idea that you…that we…” Her voice trailed off.

“Made love?” he prompted, moving closer until only a deep breath separated those sassy little breasts from his chest.

“Had a brief sexual encounter,” she returned coolly, holding her ground.

He frowned. Was that how she viewed those frenzied moments when he’d lost himself inside her? His ego stinging, he touched her face, maybe to prove that he could handle physical contact without emotion getting in the way. She stiffened, but still stood her ground. Her skin was warm and resilient and soft. Needs he’d denied for years struggled to break free.

“Brief, maybe, but definitely memorable,” he said before dropping his hand to his side again.

“Brief and definitely regrettable,” she countered before turning away, her back straight. Too big for her slender frame, the scrubs she wore only served to stimulate the memory of the cute little butt beneath the loose-fitting pants.

Halfway to the door, she stopped and turned around. “I got the receipt for the donation to the victim’s fund. Our agreement was for five thousand, not ten.”

“Call it an act of contrition,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, I can afford it.”

Her brow furrowed. “It was a stupid bet,” she said in a tight little tone. “We acted like a couple of bickering children.”

There was sunshine trapped in her hair, he realized. Shiny strands of gold mixed with a half-dozen shades of reddish-blond. It had been soft against his throat. He tried to swallow past a lump as sharp as a chunk of granite. “If I apologize for hurting you that night, will you slam me again?” he said gruffly.

“Probably,” she returned, looking up at him. “Although I’m thinking of holding out for some serious groveling.”

It had been a long time since he’d actually felt like laughing. “I really wish you wouldn’t,” he told her in a solemn tone instead.

Her gaze flickered, but he was pretty sure he saw a smile lurking in those fascinating golden eyes. “I’ll let you know when I decide,” she said before turning to walk out.

Restless now, he went to the window and looked out at the lighted courtyard below. Though he hadn’t allowed himself to watch any of the news reports, he understood all too well the terrible agonies those waiting for word were suffering. While Candy had been in surgery, he’d prowled the waiting room like a wild animal suddenly shoved into a too-small cage.