Flirting with the Society Doctor / When One Night Isn't Enough (26 page)

“I’m going to have to cut you free,” he said, walking over to Lyle’s desk to look for something sharp.

He’d thought of her nonstop since leaving Madrin Falls. The dichotomy of the Ali he knew from work, the tough yet sweet, sarcastic yet caring nurse. And the Ali he’d seen his last night in town, the woman tormented by her past who’d begged him to not leave her, to love her, to make her forget.

So he’d spent the night with her, listened as she’d spoken of her mother and father, her lonely childhood. He’d mumbled comforting words and dried her eyes as she’d cried. He’d given her his body when she’d needed it, until they had both been too exhausted to move. It had been then, lying in Ali’s bed in the dark with her cuddled next to him, that he’d realized she’d caused a huge crack to form in the concrete barrier he’d erected around his heart, seeped inside and settled there. Her sorrow, her pain and desperation, caused an uncomfortable ache in the once numb muscle. An ache that hadn’t gone away.

Her hospital offering him another temporary assignment had been serendipity. It gave him a reason to return to Madrin Falls, to check on her, be close to her, with an end date four weeks away. Twenty-eight days and nights to have his fill, to get her out of his system, so he could return to his nomadic life unencumbered by feelings for her. And this time when he left, he would not come back.

Finding the scissors, he held them up and walked back toward her.

“You can’t show up and expect to pick up where we left off,” she said.

“I didn’t come back just for sex.” He told the truth. Their connection was so much more than physical. He knew firsthand the burden of being tormented by your past. “Although I won’t turn it down if you offer.”

“Us together …” she moved her hand back and forth between them “.was a one-time thing.”

“A three-time thing,” he reminded her, remembering every sweet detail. “We were good together, Ali.” So very good. “It’s a shame you can’t remember.”

“I remember enough.”

“Do you dream about us like I do?” He moved in close, inhaled her alluring scent, purposely brushing the soft skin of her bare hip with his hand as he reached for the bottom edge of her dress. “Do you wonder if our night together was an anomaly, if it will be as spectacular the next time?” He stared down at her.

She turned her head away, avoiding eye contact.

With two snips, Jared sliced through the fabric of her dress with mixed emotions. While glad she was free, now he’d have to move away from her, when what he really wanted to do was pull her into his arms and hold her, like he’d dreamed, night after night.

“Thank you.”

He watched Ali try to hold the sides of her ruined dress together, while she glanced nervously at the door. The urge to help her, care for her and protect her surged within him.

He shrugged out of his tux jacket and placed it over her shoulders. “Here. Wear this.”

She looked up, her eyes so big and blue he wanted to dive in and swim around. “Thank you, Dr. P.”

“Dr. P.? After everything we’ve been through together, you won’t call me by my name?”

Her lips curved into a hint of a grin. “Nope.”

It amazed him how many people “just happened” to be standing in the hallway leading from Lyle Crenshaw’s office back to the lobby. Men, some colleagues he recognized from the hospital, others Jared had never seen before, smiled and nodded in approval at what they thought he’d done. Some had the nerve to give him a thumbs-up.

Allison walked with her head high, looking straight ahead as if no one else existed. To an observer it would have seemed like she was unaffected by the incident. Only he could feel the slight trembling in the ice-cold hand she had clamped around his upper arm with a grip he would have expected from a person twice her size.

They were almost to the doors at the main entrance when the countdown began. Allison stopped short. “Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Happy New Year!” The crowd cheered in the distance. Paper horns sounded and noisemakers buzzed. The DJ played “Auld Lang Syne.” The two of them stood alone in the lobby, away from the celebration. Allison looked up at him; vulnerable, her spirit depleted. A tear trickled down her left cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb.

“My new year is off to a terrible start,” she said sadly.

“That’s funny,” he replied, lifting her chin with his bent knuckle, lowering his lips to meet hers. “I was just thinking my new year is off to a great start.”

She tried to say something. He silenced her with a kiss.

Monday morning was business as usual in the E.R., as long as Ali ignored the speculation generated by her and Jared’s New Year’s Eve encounter.

“You and Dr. Padget, huh?”

“Does he taste as yummy as he looks?”

“Boxers or briefs?”

And the nausea.

Psychosomatic gastrointestinal distress. That’s all. Her mind freaking out her digestive tract. She was not pregnant. Absolutely refused to be pregnant. Sometimes her period came late. Especially after working rotating shifts, and she’d recently finished three weeks of them. Occasionally—well, maybe not occasionally, but at least once before—she’d skipped a period. No big deal.

No need to panic. If she missed her next period, then she’d panic, but not before.

She took a sip from the bottle of ginger ale she’d stashed behind the high counter of the nursing station.

A child’s scream sliced through the drone of daily activity.

Since she had only one patient under the age of twenty, she ran to Exam Room Three, Bed One. Four-year-old Tina Patel. High fever. Lethargy. Bilateral ear pain.

The curtain drawn around the stretcher, she heard Dr. Padget’s frustrated voice, which was unusual. He loved kids, and they loved him. “Come on, Tina. One quick look and we’re done.”

“Knock, knock,” Ali said, before pushing the curtain aside to see the little black-haired girl on her side facing away from Jared, pressed up against the side rail, trying to get as far away from him as possible. Her hands covered both ears, tears streamed down her cheeks. “Pick her up, Mom,” Ali said to Tina’s mom, who, with a look of relief, scooped up her daughter and cuddled her close.

“We have two ambulances on the way,” Jared said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m trying to move out a few non-urgents before they get here.”

Ali motioned to the visitor’s chair by the stretcher. “Sit down, Mom.” She wiped the crying girl’s eyes with a tissue and reached into the pocket of her scrub jacket for one of the special lollipops she’d put there when her shift began.

“Sit her across your lap like this.” Ali helped position Tina so she sat sideways on her mother’s lap, her shoulder to her mom’s belly, one ear to Mom’s chest. Ali squatted down in front of the child and held up the hard candy cartoon character, willing to stoop to bribery to expedite the exam. “Do you know who this is?”

Tina gave a small smile and nodded.

Ali handed her the pop. “I need you to hold real still while Dr. P. looks into your ears.” The girl stiffened. “If you want him to stop, all you have to do is lift up the stick and he will. Let’s give it a try, okay?”

The girl nodded.

“Get to work, Dr. P.” They shared a smile.

Jared kneeled on the floor at mom’s feet, tugged on the girl’s ear and lifted the otoscope.

Tina raised the pop, as Ali and Jared knew she would. He stopped.

“Excellent. Now, hold one hand on her head like this,” Ali told Mom. “And one around her shoulders, like this.” She positioned the woman’s hands where she needed them to hold Tina still. “Let’s try again.”

The second time Tina let him touch the otoscope to the opening of her ear canal before raising the pop. He stopped.

“Third time’s the charm,” Ali said, the signal for make this one count. “If you let Dr. P. look inside your ear, you can keep the pop,” Ali said. “And no giggling if it tickles.”

“Hold her tight,” Ali mouthed to the mother as Jared
pulled the helix up and back to straighten the ear canal, inserted the scope and finished the exam. With Ali’s help Mom shifted Tina on her lap and he quickly performed the same routine on the other ear.

“Just as we thought,” he said. “Bilateral ear infections. Does she have any allergies?”

“No,” the mom said.

“I’ll give you a prescription for antibiotics.” He wrote it out and handed it to Ali. “Give her acetaminophen according to package instructions, for pain or fever. Follow up with your primary-care physician or come back to the hospital after she takes
all
the antibiotics.”

An ambulance siren rang out.

“Ali will give you your discharge instructions,” Jared went on. “Feel better, sweetie,” he said to Tina, who shied away from him. “Thank you,” he said to Ali, his heartfelt words echoing in his eyes, a look of sincere appreciation on his face.

Her heart fluttered.

He started to say something else.

She watched his lips, remembering their New Year’s Eve kiss. Yearning for another one. Stop! She looked away.

He turned and left to meet the EMTs.

Ali shook off the warm, gooey feeling he caused. “Do you have children’s medication for pain or fever at home?” Ali asked, because she never assumed all parents did.

Tina’s mom looked down at her feet.

“I’ll get you some samples.”

In the hallway Ali watched Dr. Padget talking to an older couple, probably family members of the patient brought in by ambulance. He remained calm in a crisis, treated family members with respect and took the time to break down his explanations into easily understandable form. He gave them
the truth, in a professional, tactful way, providing options, never giving false hope.

She respected that, admired him for it.

His confidence, the way he carried himself, combined with his good looks and caring attitude at work, made him innately sensual, and appealed to her like no man had before.

The queasy feeling that had started on Ali’s drive into work that morning did not subside. And just before lunch, after she gave up the fight to keep down the half a bagel and cream cheese she’d eaten to settle her stomach, she exited the staff restroom into the lounge to find Jared waiting for her, arms crossed, one shoulder resting against the wall, a suspicious look on his face.

Feeling grungy from kneeling on the bathroom floor and her scrub top stained with Betadine solution from a suture tray mishap, he was the last person she wanted to see. “If you’re here to bug me, turn right around and skedaddle. I’m not in the mood.”

Her stomach sore, her throat raw and her mouth tasting foul, the last thing she wanted to see was Dr. Padget, all clean and neatly pressed. The last thing she wanted to smell was the noxious aroma wafting from the coffee cup in his hand.

“You feel okay?” Jared asked.

Did she look like she was feeling okay? “Mrs. Freer’s abscess got to me, that’s all.” Ali pulled down a cup from the dispenser on the side of the watercooler, filled it and took a sip. Two face masks and a dab of mentholated ointment on the skin above her upper lip weren’t enough to protect her from that putrid mess. What she’d needed was a scuba mask suctioned over her eyes and nose, and some
type of self-contained breathing apparatus. “How could she wait so long before coming in for treatment?” “It was a bad one.”

Ali visualized the one-inch, circular, oozing sore on the patient’s upper leg … and grabbed for a tissue, covered her mouth and retched.

“Sit,” Jared said, taking the lid off the garbage pail and sliding it next to her.

Ali pulled out a chair and sat.

He placed her half-f bottle of ginger ale on the table in front of her. “Tani said you’ve been sipping this all morning and looked about to vomit several times before you ran into the lounge.”

Traitor.

He handed her a few packs of saltine crackers from the closet above the sink.

“And you came to check on me. Aren’t you the sweetest thing?” she mocked him. But it was sweet. Really. She took a sip of soda.

“She said you looked sick to your stomach a couple of times last week, too.”

“Obviously Tani doesn’t have enough to do if she’s spending her days watching me.” And being a tattletale. A quick reminder that Ali had covered for her so she could duck out of work fifteen minutes early last week should put that to a stop.

“When did the nausea start?” Jared asked, using his professional voice, not the teasing one he reserved for whenever they were alone together. A scowl marred his handsome face.

“What’s wrong with you? You look sicker than I feel.”

“Please tell me you’re not pregnant.”

His words—no, the way he’d said them, on a par with
please tell me the lump isn’t cancerous
—hit her
like an elbow strike to the chest. “I’m not pregnant,” she responded, feeling close to tears, hoping what she’d said was true. “The rancid smell of infected flesh made me nauseous. It’s no big deal.” No. Big. Deal.

“You’re on the Pill, right? I saw them in your medicine cabinet.”

She had been on the Pill until Michael had tossed her aside for another woman. “What were you doing, poking around my medicine cabinet?”

“Looking for condoms. Jesus, Ali. You really don’t remember?”

She shook her head. Bits and pieces here and there, nothing substantial after the bench by the river. “Why were you looking for condoms in my medicine cabinet?”

He looked ready to vomit himself. “Because I didn’t have any, remember?”

Right. And she’d begged him for more sex. “What did you do when you didn’t find any?” She didn’t keep condoms at her condo, didn’t need them. When she and Michael had begun dating seriously she’d started on birth control. They hadn’t slept together until both had had blood tests declaring them free from STDs. Before that, no man under the age of sixty had ever been in her home.

“Since you’re on the Pill, it didn’t matter. Down by the river, when we first … I didn’t wear one. You said you didn’t care.”

At the time she didn’t. Now she most certainly did. “So you …”

He let out a breath and rubbed his hand over his regretful face. “Went ahead without one.”

Good thing she was already sitting.