Читать книгу Total Exposure - Tori Carrington, Tori Carrington - Страница 8

IN DR. NATALIE GIROUX’S experience, there were days that were great, others that were so-so and a handful of additional ones she’d prefer to erase from the record books altogether. Unfortunately, this cold, rainy Friday in November fell solidly into the last category. Not so much because of the threatening storm system that had been parked over Courage Bay, California, for the past couple of days. It was, after all, the rainy season, and, well, rain was to be expected. Her sluggishness didn’t stem from the long, hard week she’d just gone through as Courage Bay Hospital’s burn specialist, treating a wide variety of injuries she somehow never got quite used to seeing. Nor could her mood be blamed on nothing going according to plan, or the fact she’d been misplacing things all day.

No. The source of her melancholy was far more personal and went much deeper than such simple matters. And as a result, the dark monster was much more difficult to battle.

Natalie blinked her examining room back into focus, then gently tousled the head of a four-year-old burn patient in for a follow-up appointment.

“That’s it,” she said, helping the girl down from the table. “We’re all done. Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

She trailed the girl and her mother into the reception area. Little Jenny Barnard was recovering nicely. Natalie wished she could say that about all of her patients. She held up three different flavored suckers. Jenny took the yellow, lemon-flavored one.

“Now, do you remember everything I told you?” Natalie asked the four-year-old. “You’ve got to drink lots of juice and let your mom change your bandages when she says it’s time.” The superficial dermal burn on the right side of Jenny’s face was the result of an unfortunate accident involving a pot of boiling spaghetti, a cat and the young girl a week ago. But the injury was not what Natalie focused on now that the examination was over. All she saw was Jenny’s vibrant spirit.

“I will, Dr. Natalie.”

Natalie smiled and crossed her arms over the girl’s chart, hugging it to her, as she watched mother and daughter walk down the hall of the hospital. When they were out of sight, she glanced at her watch, trying to ignore the large numbers of the date at the left. She made a few notes on the chart, then slid it into the slot outside the examining room door for her assistant to pick up.

Today would have been her first wedding anniversary.

The thought snagged her attention, nearly causing the next chart she drew out to drop from her numb fingers.

She swallowed hard, seeking the solace she usually found in her work.

It wasn’t so much the fact that she and Charles would have celebrated their first year of marriage today. She’d been mentally preparing herself for that milestone over the past month. What made her heart ache was that the week before their wedding day, she’d lost Charles. Not to another woman. Not to a case of cold feet. No, the loss was even more decisive. Natalie had lost him to heart disease. Permanently.

She cleared her throat and flipped open the chart in her hands, grateful to be so busy. During the past year, the hospital and her patients were all that had stood between her and emotional collapse.

But nothing seemed capable of helping her through today.

Her gaze fell on the name at the top of the chart and she sighed, glancing around the waiting area without much hope of finding who she was looking for.

“He didn’t show,” her assistant, Manuela, said from her desk on the other side of the reception area. “Again.”

“What appointment is this?” Natalie asked. “His fourth?”

“Fifth.”

Natalie skimmed the contents of the chart. Fire Chief Dan Egan might be everything and more than his stellar reputation suggested when it came to his work, but keeping his appointments with her seemed to rank low on his list of priorities.

She leaned against the doorjamb, then turned the page of the file, although she really didn’t need to. She already knew what it would tell her. Namely that the fire chief had suffered a contact burn to his side in the warehouse explosion three months ago. The severe blistering and her inability to judge the depth of the wound had required a follow-up appointment for her to better evaluate the injury and make assessments for additional treatment. Only the handsome fire chief had canceled that appointment. And the next one he’d made for a week after that. Until she stood right where she was now—essentially without the information she needed in order to close the file.

“Should I call and reschedule?” Manuela asked, interrupting her thoughts.

“Hmm? Oh.” She flipped the chart closed. “No.”

“Are you going to leave the file open?”

Natalie stared over the young woman’s shoulder to the wall and the seascapes hanging there. But she didn’t see the warm pastel colors depicting what was visible through any window looking over Courage Bay. Instead her mind conjured up an image of Charles right before his death. A staff psychologist with the hospital, Charles had refused to follow up on symptoms that in retrospect had foreshadowed the fatal heart attack that took his life.

“Are you all right, Natalie?” Manuela asked quietly.

Natalie’s chest felt cramped and congested. Only she wasn’t coming down with a virus. At least not one that could be treated. Rather, it was raw emotion that choked off her breath and made her feel sick to her stomach.

Nothing she had said had made a difference with Charles. And there was no reason to believe that she’d have any more pull when it came to Dan Egan.

She shook her head. “It’s been three months since the warehouse incident. I’m going to close the file.”

The phone on Manuela’s desk rang as Natalie glanced at her watch again. Three-thirty. Since her last appointment for the day was a no-show, she had some unexpected time on her hands.

The last thing she wanted.

“Natalie?”

She looked at Manuela.

“It’s Debra Egan for you. Shall I take a message?”

Debra Egan. Dan Egan’s daughter. Natalie often forgot that little detail because her connection to them took different forms. While Dan was her no-show patient, Debra led an exercise class at a local gym. A class Natalie took whenever she could fit it into her busy schedule.

Maybe she could go over there now. Work off some of the energy burning her from the inside out.

She motioned down the corridor. “I’ll take the call in my office. Thanks, Manuela.”

Leaving her door open, she put Dan’s chart on her narrow desk, sat down and plucked up the telephone receiver.

She’d barely said hello before Debra asked, “Is he there?”

Natalie reached for the pile of folders in her in box. “If you’re referring to your father, no. Unless he’s running late, he stood me up again.” She shuffled through the files until she located the one she was looking for, on a grease-fire patient.

“So Nate lied to me…again.” Debra sighed. “I just called the station and he told me Dad was at the hospital.”

“Maybe he is here somewhere, just not with me.”

Silence reigned as Natalie reviewed the details on a patient who needed her help much more than the city’s stubborn fire chief. After a few moments, she realized Debra had still not replied. “Is everything all right, Deb?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to zone out on you, Natalie. It’s just that…well, I’ve been taking on double classes here. And when I’m not working—heck, even when I am—I’m worrying about Dad. Just the other day I caught him wincing when he reached to pick up something. That burn is bothering him, but he won’t own up to it.”

“I can’t do anything about it if he won’t let me,” Natalie said quietly.

“I know. I was just thinking, you know, if you wouldn’t mind too much, you could go over to the station yourself to check him out.”

Natalie briefly closed her eyes. While she didn’t mind making the occasional house call, the thought of chasing Dan Egan around, trying to get a look at him without his shirt on, struck her as ridiculous.

“I mean, you were scheduled to see him right now, anyway, weren’t you? The fire station is only a couple blocks away from the hospital….”

Natalie propped her elbow on her desk. “Deb, I…”

“Please, Natalie. I’m really worried. I mean, after what happened with Mom…”

There was a plaintive tone in the nineteen-year-old’s voice. Sometimes Natalie found it hard to remember that Debra was almost twenty years younger than she was. But at times like these, when she was reminded that Dan Egan’s wife had died of breast cancer only two short years ago, she realized how young and still hurt Debra was.

“I’ll throw in a couple free exercise sessions,” the young woman said, her voice overly bright.

Natalie took a deep breath and told herself if she did this, she wouldn’t be doing it for Dan Egan, but as a favor to his daughter.

“Okay,” she said, smiling at the enormous sigh of relief filling her ear. “I’ll go to the station. But I can’t promise anything, Deb. I mean, if he doesn’t want me to examine him, I can’t exactly cut his shirt off him.”

The idea of peeling away Dan Egan’s shirt to reveal his muscular torso sent a mild shiver running through her—one unfamiliar and ultimately unwelcome.

“Oh, thank you, Natalie! You don’t know how much this means to me.”

“I think I do, Deb,” she said softly. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

“I’m going to call the station right now and tell him you’re coming.”

Natalie opened her mouth to object, but the line was already disconnected.

She slowly hung up. Odds were that if Dan Egan knew she was coming, he’d run full tilt in the opposite direction.

FIRE CHIEF DAN EGAN loved his job, but like most professions, there were aspects he hated with a passion. And paperwork ranked right up near the top.

He pulled together the rotation schedules scattered across his desk and started putting them in order by week. Too bad Courage Bay’s budget didn’t allow for a full-time office manager. He could really use one. Especially now, so close to the holidays. It wasn’t hard to understand why everyone wanted Thanksgiving off. But it was up to him and his two captains to decide who would actually get their request. While seniority played a role, Dan also had to consider who had worked the last holiday, and other variables.

This was all stuff he’d prefer not to have to think about. He’d much rather be out on a run somewhere instead of stuck in his office trying to make heads or tails out of Captain Joe Ripani’s indecipherable chicken scratches. Dan turned a page one way, then another, trying to make out a notation. At last he gave up and tossed the paper aside. The white sheet drifted on the air and started sailing over the side of his desk toward the wastebasket. He made a move to catch it, pulling the three-month-old burn on his side and causing pain to shoot up his back and down his arm.

“Damn.”

Spike, a twelve-year-old Dalmatian and his constant companion nowadays, lay sprawled in front of the door. At the sound of Dan’s voice, he lifted his head and gave a quiet bark.

Dan grimaced at him. “I bet you know exactly how I feel, don’t you, boy?” He gingerly leaned back in his chair. “Too old to do any of the fun stuff, too young not to want to do it.”

While Spike hadn’t been the official fire dog for some years now due to age, his role at the station had been called into question by the new firehouse mascot, Salvage, a black Lab that truckie Shannon O’Shea had rescued from a warehouse fire. A second fire at the same warehouse was responsible for Dan’s burn.

Yes, Dan had found out exactly how it felt to be phased out—or rather, “promoted”—when he made fire chief a year ago, leaving his days of hands-on action well behind him.

The small, recessed speaker in the ceiling broadcast an incoming phone call to the station’s general line. Dan purposely ignored it, because for all intents and purposes he wasn’t there. He was supposed to be at the hospital getting a checkup from that frustratingly beautiful Dr. Natalie Giroux. An appointment he had no intention of keeping.

He caught himself lightly rubbing the wound in question, then put both hands firmly on his desk as Spike laid his head back down on top of his paws.

“Chief? Call’s for you.” Nate Kellison’s voice sounded over the speaker. Nate was a paramedic on Squad Two.

Cursing under his breath, Dan leaned back in his chair to yell out the open door. “I’m not here.”

“She’s not buying it,” came the answer.

Dan snatched the receiver from its cradle on his desk. “Egan.”

“I knew I’d get you if I threatened Nate with the rotation from hell.” His daughter’s voice filtered into his ear. “But my question is, why are you there instead of at the hospital like you’re supposed to be?”

“Something came up.”

“Right. Just like something’s come up the past four times you were scheduled to meet with Natalie.”

The mention of the lady doc’s name made Dan’s stomach tighten.

He told himself the thought of her poking and prodding at him was behind the physical response. If the memory of her mocha-colored eyes above her surgical mask when he’d finally come to in the hospital three months ago had anything to do with his reaction, well, he wasn’t about to own up to it.

Mocha? Where in the hell had that description come from? He rubbed his forehead with his finger and thumb. Must be Tim and all that fancy cappuccino stuff he made whenever he was on duty. Dr. Natalie Giroux’s eyes were brown. Nothing more, nothing less.

And Dan hated hospitals. Nothing more, nothing less.

There weren’t very many things capable of putting the fear of God into Dan Egan. He’d joined the Courage Bay Fire Department after completing six years of active military service as a helicopter pilot flying emergency missions in war-torn areas of the world. He’d done it all—firefighter, haz-mat specialist, smoke jumper, helicopter pilot, captain. When Patrick O’Shea became mayor last year, freeing up the top position in the fire department, Dan had moved up to chief. Yes, he’d pretty much faced every intimidating situation that there was to face.

But hospitals…

He cursed under his breath.

“I told you,” he said to his daughter, “and I’m going to keep telling you until you get it through that thick head of yours—I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the doctor for a checkup.”

“And I told you,” Debra countered without missing a beat, “and I’m going to keep telling you until you get it through that thick head of yours, it’s just a follow-up. If it’s true you’re fine, then what better way to shut me up than by letting Natalie take a look?”

There went that stomach-tightening thing again.

Next to hospitals, Burn Specialist Natalie Giroux was second on his most-hated list. Well, maybe not most-hated. But definitely a woman to avoid. While her eyes were soft and intriguing, her take-charge manner rubbed him the wrong way. Although he didn’t consider himself sexist—he was the first to admit the two female firefighters at the station more than pulled their own weight—Natalie…well, Natalie seemed to go that one inch too far.

Pushy. That’s what he’d like to think his late wife would have called her. A pushy woman.

“Are you done?” he asked his nineteen-going-on-forty-year-old daughter. “Because if you are, there are some important things I could be doing.”

“If you’re not on a run, then it’s not important,” she countered. “Anyway, I just called to make sure you’re there. I convinced Natalie to stop by and conduct her examination.”

“Here?” he repeated. “Here, as in the station?”

“Yes. And you’d better be nice to her.”

Nice to her, hell. He wasn’t going to be there.

“Deb, I’ve got to go.”

“Call me—”

Dan didn’t hear the rest because he was in the process of hanging up.

If Dr. Natalie Giroux was on her way to the station, that meant he had to be on his way out.

He pushed to his feet, wincing again as the scar tissue pulled tight. He grabbed his jacket, then headed for the door. Spike lumbered to his feet, the chain collar around his neck clinking as he wagged his tail and followed.

Dan hurried down the hall toward the bays at the front of the station, calling out as he went. “Nate? I’m out of here. If you need anything, I’ll be—”

The words stopped dead in his throat as he literally bumped into the woman he was trying to avoid, along with her unsettling mocha-brown eyes.

Dr. Natalie Giroux blocked his path, looking none too happy as rain ran in rivulets from the umbrella she held.

“You’ll be where?” she asked.