Wild Ones (13 page)

"Decreased air
entry right," he told me in a breathless voice, as if he was the
one with the life threatening injuries.

"Chest tube
tray," I spoke to the room in general again, as one of the nurses
dragged it out from the counter that ran the perimeter of the room.
I glanced at the propofol infusion and the unconscious patient with
the multiple rib fractures and bulging abdomen, and I swore.

"Where
the
fuck
is the surgeon?" I
demanded of nobody in particular. "Has the O neg arrived yet?" I
didn't wait for an answer, but instead jammed the earpieces of my
stethoscope in my ears, and placed the other end on the patient's
chest, confirming a decreased air entry on the right. Bugger. It
had been there before, and I was pretty bloody sure my tube hadn't
gone in too far, but this did complicate things.

"I need to
check tube placement," I sighed, as I undid my strapping and
flicked open the laryngoscope again.

"Good
idea," a new voice spoke from the other end of the patient. I
looked up briefly and saw blue eyes, dark hair, and a
suit
, for God's sake. I ignored him,
and went looking for the vocal chords again. There they were, with
the balloon of the tube just beyond them. I gave it a small tug to
confirm what I saw, and lifted my head again.

"Tube's fine,"
I said. Mr Suit had removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of
his shirt, and was having a plastic apron tied around his waist by
a tittering student nurse while he washed his hands. He must be the
surgeon, I thought sourly as I took in the scene. About bloody
time. I noted with satisfaction that he worked quickly, placing the
tube between the patients ribs with deft fingers. I noted with even
more satisfaction the blood splatters that covered his shirt
sleeves when he was done. I can be a bitch like that sometimes, and
this guy was getting up my nose with more than the usual speed that
surgeons the world over seemed capable of. It probably had a lot to
do with how he looked and how he carried himself. Gorgeous and
arrogant. An infuriating combination, and made so much worse
because he was a goddamn surgeon. I was not a fan of surgeons -
they were a bunch of educated psychopaths in my opinion. Seriously,
who else cuts people open day in and day out and gets such a kick
out of it?

Having said all
of that, I was really pleased to have one of them here now. I was
an ED doc, jack of all trades, master of none. I could deal with
almost anything that came through those doors and I could stabilise
patients like this one, but with any trauma patient it was
essential to go to the source of the problem and fix it. There was
no point pouring blood into someone if it was just hosing out the
other end. He needed the bright lights and cold steel of an
operating theatre. The ruptured spleen needed removing, the
transected vessels needed repairing, the blood around the heart
needed draining. The massive haemothorax needed a thoracotomy, I
thought glumly as I watched the blood pouring from the tube between
the man's ribs and into the drain. Too fast.

I looked at the
blood pressure on the monitor, at the heart rate. My eyes took in
the distended abdomen and the blood in the chest drain and the
bloody scalp swelling that had crunched slightly when I touched it,
and I knew he was going to die. No surgeon alive could fix this
guy. His chest and belly maybe, but he was going to have a massive
brain injury, and who knew how much of him would wake up if he came
through this.

It was as if
the patient sensed my thoughts then, because the blood pressure
suddenly became unrecordable. I felt his neck. Nothing.

"No pulse," I
said. "Start chest compressions." The junior doc had been standing
at the surgeon's shoulder, watching the blood pour into the drain,
but he leapt forward at this, and started vigorous chest
compressions. I shut my eyes briefly, feeling sick, as the
crunching sound of his broken ribs filled the room. Even though I
knew that CPR in a trauma patient with cardiac arrest almost never
worked, I knew we had to try, if only for the family of the man
lying dying here, so they could know we had done everything we
could. But it was excruciating to have to hear that sound, and know
that it came from the broken body of a human being.

We did a few
cycles of CPR, but nothing worked, so we declared him deceased,
noted the time, and I went to find his family and tell them that
their son wasn't coming back. I was stripping off the blood smeared
protective gear and wondering how to deliver news like this, when I
sensed someone standing behind me. I turned around to see Mr Suit
reaching past me to discard his gloves in the same waste bin I was
using. He leaned in close and our bodies almost touched. I was
about to suggest to him that he step back when his eyes suddenly
darkened and his nostrils flared. I tried to step back, alarmed by
the intensity of his expression and the hunger in his eyes, but my
butt was jammed up against a washbasin, and all I could do was
stand there and stare at him, biting my lip nervously. His eyes
followed the movement, darting downwards like the eyes of a
predator tracking its prey. He inhaled deeply through his nose.

"A wild one,"
he grinned delightedly as he reached out and tugged a strand of my
hair that had escaped the untidy bun I'd pulled it into when the
trauma call had come in. "I'll be back for you, sweetheart." It
sounded like a promise and a threat all rolled into one. I glared
at him, more angry than afraid.

"Back off," I
told him firmly. "You're in my space."

"You have no
idea, do you?" he chuckled and leaned closer, inhaling deeply.

"Back off!" I
hissed, noting a couple of curious glances from the nurses. "You
are being unprofessional, dammit."

"Oh no," he
laughed softly. "Unprofessional would be me bending you over the
counter right here and fucking you. We are merely having a
conversation." His eyes moved to my mouth again, which had fallen
open in horrified amazement. He groaned softly. I shut it again,
fast.

"Jesus, even
for a surgeon you are unbelievably arrogant," I told him crossly.
"Now back the hell off before I scream."

"Later, then,"
he said slowly with a wicked grin, and then he suddenly moved away
as if we had just had a normal conversation and it was now over. I
watched him go, shaking my head in disgust. Like I say,
psychopaths, the lot of them. I wondered if I should be worried
about this one, then dismissed the thought. I had had to deal with
more than my fair share of creeps in this job. Some guys loved the
idea of a doctor in scrubs looking after their own particular
needs, don't ask me why. But they had invariably backed down when
they realised how unwelcome their attentions were. This one was
sure to do the same.

I had a couple
of days off after that disastrous shift, and spent them hanging out
with my family, and trying to be a normal person again. I played
Scrabble with my dad and twelve year old brother, and helped my mom
make supper and research a paper on the effects of cannabis on
multiple sclerosis. My mom was a doctor too, but her ideas had
always been a little off centre, but she seemed to be making
headway with this one. I was reluctantly impressed.

I was back at
work too soon for my taste, and ran into the new surgeon almost
within minutes of me walking through that front door.

"You're late,"
he said shortly, as he fell into step next to me. I ignored him,
but he stayed next to me the whole way through the ED and to the
back where the change rooms and lockers were. I stopped outside the
door to the women's locker room and turned to my shadow.

"Go away," I
told him, staring straight ahead at his tie.

"Look at me,
Liv," he said, lifting my chin with his hand. I looked up at him
sullenly, not appreciating the fact that he knew my name and wasn't
afraid to use it.

"I'll pick you
up after your shift tonight," he grinned as he took in my outraged
expression.

"What
is
wrong
with you?" I blurted
out, throwing professionalism to the winds. "Understand this. I
will
not
go out with you.
Ever. And if you continue to harass me I will report you to the
Medical Board. Asshole!" I added as I turned and stormed into the
change rooms.

This guy was
deluded, and he was seriously starting to freak me out. I should
have paid attention to the door, however, because next thing I
heard a click and I turned to see that Mr Suit had followed me into
the change room and had locked the door behind him. He was standing
in front of the locked door, looking big and smug and frightening.
I looked around wildly for something to fend him off with but there
was nothing. Of course.

He chuckled,
his eyes following my own. And then he moved, and I was jammed
against a wall of lockers with my wrists gripped in his left hand
and held above my head, while his right found its way under my
t-shirt. I started to scream, but his mouth descended on mine,
cutting off any sound. His hand moved over the skin of my belly,
stroking and tickling while his tongue moved over my lips, and then
between them. I struggled against him for a few seconds, but his
grip on my wrists tightened, and he pressed his body more firmly
against mine.

And then,
completely against my will and any kind of better judgement, a
flaming hot desire erupted in my belly, and I gasped at its
ferocity. Mr Suit used the opportunity to plunge his tongue inside
my mouth, as his hand moved up over my ribs to rest just beneath my
breast. I felt hot liquid pooling between my legs and I half
leaned, half collapsed against him as he moved his lips along my
jaw line, nipping and licking until he reached my earlobe, which he
sucked into his hot mouth. I groaned out loud, and there was a
knock on the door.

"You almost
done in there?" I recognised the voice of one of the ED nurses. She
must have also arrived late for work, and wanted to change into
scrubs before going out on the floor. I blinked at the face gazing
down at me and tried to speak.

"In a minute,"
I croaked, almost inaudibly.

"Give us a
minute," Mr Suit called out. He released my wrists and caught my
shoulders as I stumbled forward.

"I'll see you
tonight," he promised, smiling gently now, as his eyes glinted
beneath thick black lashes. I said nothing, trying as I was to
breathe properly and put one foot in front of the other in a
vaguely coordinated way. I heard the door latch click as he
unlocked it, and I looked up to see Melissa gazing at me in awe. Mr
Suit had left.

"
Nice
," she breathed. "I
don't need to ask what's been going on in here," she continued,
grinning at me. "About time someone ruffled his feathers. And
yours, by the looks of things. You OK?"

"Yeah, I
guess." I wasn't so sure though. It felt as if my whole foundation
had been rocked, and now that the headiness of the moment had
dissipated, I was starting to feel very nervous about the whole
situation. I didn't even know his name, for God's sake. And now I
couldn't ask Melissa either, because she would think I was a
complete slut. So I just smiled and asked her to not say anything
to anyone about anything. She grinned at me and shook her head.

"Forget it,
Liv. Dr Hugo Grantham caught smooching in a change room? Can't keep
that to myself," Melissa said with brutal honesty. "I've known him
for a couple of years, and he's never so much as looked at a woman,
and believe me, many have tried very hard to catch his
attention."

"Keep me out of
it?" I suggested hopefully, relieved that I finally knew his
name.

"Hmmm," she
said, as if considering this. "No can do." She grinned at me.
"Sorry," she lied.

I guess it was
too much to hope for. The rest of that shift was a complete
nightmare as a result of Melissa and her blabbing mouth. She was a
great nurse, and easy to get on with, but by the end of eight
hour's worth of stares and sniggers I was getting really pissed at
her. I had decided I didn't want anything to do with any of it, and
was planning to head out the back way after I'd showered and
changed back into my jeans and t-shirt. I figured I'd be able to
avoid him that way, even though a part of me really objected to the
idea. He was seriously hot, and I'd never responded to anyone like
I had this morning to him. And now just the thought of him made me
melt into a puddle of anticipation and lust. Plus he wasn't a
player. Made a big difference, that did.

Turns out he
was waiting for me as I came out of the shower, my hair still wet
and hanging in untidy straggles over my shoulders. He stood leaning
against the wall, immaculately dressed and devastatingly
good-looking. I couldn't help it.

"Hey, Slick," I
grinned at him as his eyes crinkled at the edges with silent
laughter.

"I thought you
might make a run for it, so I decided I'd better meet you here," he
said as he held out his hand. I looked at it for a second and then
I thought, the hell with it, and put my hand in his. I'd had
another in a long line of shitty days, and there was every chance
that this gorgeous man could help me forget it, at least for a
couple of hours. I had developed a learned detachment when it came
to relationships, and even though I wasn't into one night stands, I
wasn't completely against them. I looked at Dr Hugo Grantham and
resolved to make an exception tonight. He was a surgeon, and he had
been a complete dick the first time we had met, so I didn't foresee
any attachment issues. Plus I'd be moving on in a couple of weeks
to my new rotation at a different hospital. Sorted.