Love on the Night Shift

by Radclyffe

  Grady nodded. “That’s the place.”

  “Huh.” Brody hitched a hip against the edge of the round table that sat in the middle of the break room.

  Grady’s stomach tightened at Brody’s speculative expression. Here it comes. The question she’d been waiting for—the one she always got before anyone took a good look at her. “What?”

  “Maryland Shock Trauma is a big-league center. Now, we’re pretty well-positioned here to see a lot of action—rural, sure, but plenty of highways nearby with north-south traffic between Canada and the capital to keep the trauma unit full. Plus, we’re the biggest thing for a few hundred miles, which means lots of tertiary transfers. But still, we don’t exactly have a national profile. Yet. How’d you end up here?”

  “Easy,” Grady said, giving the answer that was part truth and part dissemblance. Not the question she’d been expecting. The reprieve was like a chain wrapped tight around her chest suddenly snapping loose. “Flann was a surgery resident when I was a student, and we got to be friends. When I was ready to start looking for a job, I asked her for advice, and she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “I’ll bet she did.” Brody laughed.

  “What about you?” Grady pointed to the wings on Brody’s sleeve. “How’d you end up here?”

  “The wings I earned in the Army, but would you believe me if I said I grew up here?”

  “You know,” Grady said, “I would. I bet fifty percent of the people working in this place grew up here.”

  “You’d be wrong.”

  “Really? Because—”

  “Ninety percent, more like it.”

  “Now that I believe.” Grady cocked her head. “But you left and came back, sounds like.”

  “Not what I was planning.” Brody looked pensive. “Well, I came back—I guess you could say unexpectedly—when Abigail Remy and Presley Worth, the new CEO, decided to turn this place into a level one trauma center and wanted air evac available.”

  “To tell you the truth,” Grady said, “I mostly came for the view.”

  Brody laughed. “You’ll have plenty of that around here.”

  “I’ll be happy if I’m too busy to notice,” Grady said.

  Brody gave her a look. “I hope you play softball.”

  “Huh?”

  The break room door opened, interrupting Grady’s attempt to decipher the non sequitur. Blaise Richelieu hurried in, her smooth, tanned forehead creased.

  Grady straightened. “What?”

  “I think you’d better come look at Wilbur Hopkins.”

  Grady dumped her coffee in the sink, strode to the door, and held it open for Blaise. “He didn’t sneak outside for a smoke, did he?”

  “No, but now he’s complaining of pain in the opposite leg, and I think his toes are dusky.”

  “Crap.” Grady broke into a jog. Blaise kept pace. “When did it start?”

  “I checked his vitals right after you left, and he looked fine. I checked on him as soon as he called. It couldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

  “Good thing patients around here get a lot of attention,” Grady muttered. Good thing Blaise knew what she was about too. If what she thought was happening was happening, Wilbur was in trouble and even the shortest delay could kill him.

  “He’s lucky that we’re not busy,” Blaise said. “But it’s Friday night, and we’re likely to get hit almost anytime.”

  “Where’s the radiologist?”

  “I called her, and she’s bitching, but she’s on her way.”

  Grady raised a brow. “Why didn’t you have me call? Then she could have bitched at me.”

  Blaise gave her a long look. “Because it didn’t occur to me that you’d want to bother with something as simple as notifying a consult. Do you?”

  Grady let out a breath and rounded the corner to the nurses’ station. “How long have you been a charge nurse down here?”

  “I’ve worked in the ER since I finished nursing school twelve years ago,” Blaise said. “I’ve been charge on the night shift for seven.”

  “Well, in that case,” Grady said, heading for Wilbur’s cubicle, “I don’t need you to call me for anything unless you think there’s something I should see.”

  Blaise hesitated, working through her surprise and struggling with equal amounts of begrudging respect and reserve. Grady McClure seemed a lot more confident than most brand-new attendings, who pretty much all wanted to prove themselves the minute they landed. A lot of times, that translated into being authoritarian and control freaks. If anything, Grady seemed uncharacteristically laid-back. Maybe that was because she didn’t know what she didn’t know—or did and was covering it up with overconfidence. Something to bear watching. It wouldn’t be the first time Blaise had run up against new personnel of all kinds who’d been in over their heads and too proud to admit it.

  “Believe me, Dr. McClure, you’ll be the first one to know if there’s any kind of problem. Otherwise, I’m happy to do whatever is necessary to keep things moving along efficiently.”

  “Sounds like we’re on the same page.” Grady quirked a brow. “Finally.”

  Blaise didn’t agree but had no reason to say so.

  Grady pulled the curtain back and Blaise followed her to the bedside.

  “What’s going on, Mr. Hopkins?” Grady lifted the sheets up from the bottom of the bed to expose both lower extremities. The right foot was a deep purple from the ankle down. The left foot, which had been pale but warm a half hour ago, was mottled with patches of light blue and white.

  “You’re supposed to call me Wilbur, remember,” Wilbur said, his voice strained and tight.

  Grady rested her hand on his toes. Cold.

  “Okay, Wilbur, here’s the story. You’ve got something going on in your arteries that’s blocking the blood flow to your legs. It started on the right, but now it’s getting to be a problem on the left. You’re going to need surgery pretty quick, and chances are we’re going to need to go in your belly and replace part of the damaged artery.”

  “That sounds like a chore,” Wilbur rasped.

  “It’s not simple,” Grady said, “but we do it all the time. And Wilbur? It has to be done. Okay?”

  “I guess you better call my wife.”

  “I’ll take care of that, Wilbur,” Blaise said. “You don’t need to worry about her. We’ll look after her while you’re in surgery.”

  “It’s the smoking, isn’t it.” He looked from Grady to Blaise. “That caused it?”

  “Maybe,” Grady said, “but right now that’s not important. What’s important is taking care of things and getting you back on your feet. Blaise will bring you some consent forms to sign. As soon as we get the X-rays, I’ll go over the surgery plan with you.”

  “Remember, Doc,” Wilbur said, “I need both my feet.”

  “I know that.”

  Grady stepped out into the hall and Blaise followed. “You’re thinking abdominal aortic occlusion?”

  Grady nodded. “Could be an embolus. Could be dissection—although I’d expect more pain with that. But it’s progressing fast and if we don’t move, he’s going to have a kidney at risk next.”

  Blaise tensed. “I’ll let the OR know.”

  “Is there a full team in-house for the OR, or do we need to get people in?”

  “We’re level one now,” Blaise said. “An OR team’s in-house.”

  “Good.” Grady grimaced. “Where the hell are the surgery residents?”

  “They should’ve been called when you were.”

  Grady lifted a shoulder. “When I got down here, nobody showed up.”

  “Let me check with the OR. In the meantime, I’ll get an ER resident to help you.” Blaise grabbed the wall phone and dialed the extension to the OR. After a second, one of the OR nurses answered.

  “OR. Reilly.”

  “Patty,” Blaise said, “it’s Blaise Richelieu down in the ER. Are you guys running a room up there right now?”

&nbs
p; “Yes,” Patty said. “An ICU patient developed acute cholecystitis, and Flann brought her down about forty-five minutes ago. Why?”

  “We’ve got an acute abdominal aortic occlusion down here who needs to come up as soon as we get images.”

  “I don’t think Flann’s going to be done for another hour. There’s a lot of inflammation, and the bile duct looks like tissue paper. We’ll need to get another team in.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No,” Patty said briskly. “We’ll take care of it. Just keep us up-to-date on the timing. I’ll let anesthesia know now, so they can get somebody down there to see him.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Blaise hung up and glanced at Grady. “The OR’s running a room right now. Another team has to come in, but by the time you’re ready, they’ll be here.”

  “Advantages of not having any traffic, I guess,” Grady said. “Okay—I need whoever’s on call for vascular tonight, and where the hell is radiology?”

  “Radiology is right here.” The click of heels rapidly approaching down the hall announced the arrival of a short, middle-aged brunette in a designer sweater, pants, and low heels who looked like she’d been called away from a dinner party.

  “Thought you said she’d be sleeping,” Grady said out of the corner of her mouth.

  Blaise smothered a laugh. She did not want to find Grady McClure amusing. Or anything else. “Hi, Dr. Okonsky. Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

  “Well?” Okonsky said sharply. “Where’s the patient?”

  “Right this way.” Grady turned and headed down the hall.

  “Who is that?” Okonsky glared at Blaise. “Tell me you called me in on the say-so of an ER resident.”

  Blaise smiled and herded the radiologist down the hall after Grady. “Grady McClure, one of the new surgeons.”

  “Hmpf.” Okonsky gave Grady a passing glance as she drew even with her. “Do you really have something?”

  “Oh, we have something,” Grady said with a slow smile, clearly not perturbed by Okonsky’s attitude. “Let me introduce you to Mr. Hopkins, and then you can tell me just what.”

  “Hmpf.”

  Blaise watched Grady escort Mary Anne Okonsky to the cubicle, pull back the curtain, and murmur something that made Okonsky laugh. That in and of itself was worthy of a bulletin in the local news. McClure was a bona fide charmer, all right.

  Sighing, Blaise grabbed Wilbur Hopkins’s chart and did what she always did when there were things she couldn’t change and didn’t want to think about. She worked. Working and raising Taylor were not only her greatest pleasures, they were her salvation. That at least was something she could count on.

  Chapter Three

  “This is the radiologist, Mr. Hopkins,” Grady said as she showed Okonsky into cubicle eleven. “She’s going to—”

  Okonsky swept past her and morphed into a smiling vision of warmth and compassion as she held out her hand and grasped Wilbur’s. “I’m Dr. Mary Anne Okonsky. I hear you’ve got a bit of problem in your arteries, Mr. Hopkins. Let me tell you what we’re going to do to help you get that fixed.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I believe you will.”

  Clearly unneeded, Grady backed out of the cubicle and let the curtain fall closed. Maybe it was Okonsky’s no-doubt expensive perfume—a mixture of dark plum and spice—that had the guy so spellbound, although she favored the light whiff of lemon and vanilla she caught whenever she was close to Blaise Richelieu. But then, she’d never gone for women with designer tastes. Too many of them reminded her of her mother. Although to be fair, Veronica McClure was only living the life to which she’d been raised.

  Hell, if she hadn’t grown up in Gavin’s shadow with a mad passion to be as good as he was at everything, she’d probably have been sucked into the same self-centered vortex as most of her friends. She owed a lot of her drive and stubbornness to her lifelong campaign to best her brother—just once.

  As she walked down to the nurses’ station to make sure Wilbur was squared away for the OR, she registered the sounds of business in the ER picking up. Somewhere a baby cried. Monitors beeped, an aide trundled by pushing a rattling gurney at top speed, and a phone rang at the nurses’ station.

  Behind the waist-high counter, Blaise juggled her cell in one hand and grabbed the ringing phone with the other.

  “Hold on, honey,” Blaise said into her cell, and a second later into the other, “ER. Richelieu.”

  Grady frowned. Honey?

  “Hi, Peggy. Yes. He’s still here…Mary Anne just showed up…right.” Blaise looked up, her gaze meeting Grady’s. “She’s right here. I’ll tell her. Thanks.”

  Honey? Grady wanted to ask and couldn’t figure out how. Husband, wife, lover? Damn. She should have checked things out with Brody when she’d had the chance, instead of discussing the damn coffee and where she’d trained. Man, she was slipping.

  “Just a second,” Blaise murmured to Grady, rubbing her eyes as if chasing away a brewing headache, and went back to her cell. To Honey. “Does Abby know?…Fine. All right. You’re in for the night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She sighed, set her cell aside, and glanced at Grady again. “Sorry. That was the OR. They’ll be ready for you when you come up. Where are we with Wilbur?”

  “Mary Anne is with him. You didn’t mention she was going to turn into a siren.”

  Blaise gaped and then burst out laughing. “Oh my God, you are so right. Patients love her.”

  “I can see why.” Grady grinned. She really liked Blaise’s laugh—nothing self-conscious about it. Blaise didn’t try to hide her pleasure, and Grady suddenly very much wanted to know if she responded that way to other kinds of pleasure. She cleared her throat and dragged her mind away from images of Blaise in a very different situation, looking up at her and laughing or…other things. “So, did you find me a resident to get Wilbur pre-oped?”

  “I just paged the ER resident on call. The surgery residents are probably with Flann or in the ICU. I can get a PA for you too, but right now we’re trying to clear out the other rooms.” She nodded at the board and Grady turned to look, blinking away the last visions of Blaise Richelieu in her bed, flushed and breathless and gazing at her through pleasure-drenched eyes. She really, really wanted to be the one to put that look in Blaise’s eyes. And that was a big WTF. She enjoyed sex, sure, but she didn’t obsess about women. Or a woman.

  Right. Check the board and forget the fantasies. Three more names had been added while she’d been back with Wilbur.

  Grady cleared her throat. “Things are picking up. Anything surgical?”

  “I don’t think so,” Blaise said. “It looks like something for ortho, probably a gastroenteritis that will end up going home, and a dog bite the ER resident should be able to handle.”

  Grady nodded, still mulling over who might have been on the phone with Blaise.

  “Is there something else I can do for you?” Blaise asked as the silence stretched.

  “Oh”—Grady turned back with a slow smile—“probably, but I’m good for right now.”

  Blaise gave Grady that thousand-yard stare that she was starting to get used to. She’d figure out a way to get through that steely barrier, sooner or later, especially with the added incentive of Blaise’s sexy laugh as a reward. Getting Blaise to smile back at her was starting to feel like a personal challenge. At least, finding out why Blaise seemed determined not to was a worthy endeavor.

  “Here’s your help,” Blaise said coolly.

  A harried looking guy with a short high fade, a few extra pounds around the middle, and a stethoscope hanging from his neck careened around the corner. “Sorry, sorry,” he said in a rush. “I just finished putting that cast on the kid with the greenstick fracture.” He looked from Blaise to Grady. “You paged me, right?”

  “Akeem,” Blaise said, “this is Grady McClure, the surgeon on call. We’ve got an emergency case going down for angiography. Grab the chart on Hopkins and mak
e sure all the labs are in order, see what we need for consents, and give transport a hand taking him down.”

  “Right, on it.” He started down the hall, then spun on his heel. “Where?”

  Blaise smiled. “Room eleven. Wilbur Hopkins.”

  “Right, on it.” He zoomed off, the Merck Manual peeking out of the back pocket of his scrub pants.

  “First year?” Grady asked, watching the ER resident hustle away.

  “Mm-hmm. One of the best I’ve seen too.”

  “So,” Grady said, “you run everything down here?”

  She shook her head. “Hardly. But right about now, Abby and Mari—she’s the PA on shift tonight—are doing sign-out. There’s no point bothering them so that they can tell him exactly what I just did.”

  “You know, this place is an interesting combination of modern and old-school.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The ER is brand-new, and from what Flann told me, your new training programs are also. And then you’ve got a lot of veteran people like yourself, who are probably used to doing things without the benefit of all these trainees.”

  Blaise pursed her lips. “And your point?”

  “Some places, and a lot of staff, might have a hard time adjusting, but that doesn’t seem like what’s happening here. You’re making the best use of the experienced people while integrating all the new ones. It’s impressive.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but you’re right.” Blaise was taken aback once again. Just when she thought Grady McClure was another typical full-of-herself charmer who might be a great doctor but was too blinded by her own image, she was surprised at how observant she was. Not many doctors—not many people, period—would have noticed so much in so short a time. “I really hope it stays that way.”

  “That’ll probably have a lot to do with who’s in charge, and from what little I’ve seen so far, Abby Remy doesn’t seem to be the type who’s going to squeeze people into rigid little boxes,” Grady said.

  “Thanks,” Abby said, walking up behind Grady. “And if you mean I plan to use everyone to their best abilities, you’ve got that right.” She smiled at Blaise. “Off topic for a minute—did you get the same call I did a while ago?”