Dexter shook his head and sent her a look, which probably would’ve intimidated a lot of people, but didn’t bother her at all. The guy was big and looked like he was carved out of brick, but with patients he had a natural calm that seemed to relax even the most frightened person. “I’ve watched him dance, you could do worse.”
Steve punched Dexter on his shoulder lightly. “Thanks for talking me up. You’re a real friend.”
Dexter raised his beer bottle in a silent salute. “Just dance with him, Nadia, you’ll have fun. Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“No you haven’t.” If anything Dex had always steered her in the right direction at work when she’d needed it. Decision made she stood and placed her hand in Steve’s. “All right, Steve, show this New England girl how to Texas two-step.”
The group laughed and Nadia dropped her hat on the table quickly before Steve dragged her to the dance floor. He pulled her close, but not uncomfortably so, and secured his arm around her back.
“Relax and let me lead.” He said just before he started skipping them along the dance floor with the other couples.
Nadia had no idea how she did it, but she kept up with Steve and maybe only stepped on his feet three or four times. After the second dance she pulled away, her breathing ragged. “I need to a drink and to take a breather.”
Steve laughed. “It may have been your first two step but you did a mighty fine job. Can I escort you to the bar?” He hooked his elbow.
“Sure,” she slipped her arm in and together they headed toward the drinks area.
“What can I get you?” Steve asked once they’d reached the counter, his eyes sparkled with interest. A feeling of apprehension filled her. The last thing on her agenda was getting involved with anyone. She’d only been in Kerrville for three months. Nadia didn’t know how long she was planning on staying in Texas. She hadn’t been able to get her dream job in a big hospital in Boston so she’d taken this position on the off chance it could lead to more in the future.
The ER in Hill Country Texas was nowhere near as busy as a major city hospital. The only good thing about being a smaller, regional facility was, she had the opportunity to treat more patients than she might’ve had she got the job she’d coveted.
“Nadia? What would you like to drink?”
Damn, she hadn’t answered him. “Umm, I’ll just have a Diet Coke thanks.”
“You got it.”
When he spoke to the man behind the bar, Nadia took the time to think about what she was going to say to Steve to let him know that her plan was to stay single for a long time. She looked out over the crowd and found Buff standing on the edge of the dance floor, a blank look on his face, his sunglasses were off so they no longer hid his eyes from everyone.
Before she could even consciously think it, her feet were moving and she was closing the distance between her and Buff. The closer she got to him the more she could see that he was lost deep in his mind. His fingers were clenching the neck of his beer bottle, the whites of his knuckles were showing and she wondered if he wouldn’t break it. Sweat beaded on his brow and his lips were pulled into a firm line. Everyone around him continued on dancing, laughing and chatting, oblivious to the internal struggle that Buff was going through.
Nadia was no psychologist but it was clear that Buff was having some sort of panic attack or traumatic episode. She didn’t know the man’s past but the close cropped cut of his hair and the way he carried himself would suggest that he had some military training in his background.
A slow careful approach was the best course of action. She stood by his side. “Hey Buff, everything okay?”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Steve coming up to them, drinks in hand. Catching his attention she shook her head and canted it to the right to suggest that he should go back to the table. His eyes narrowed briefly as he looked between her and Buff, before widening as realization struck that something was very wrong with the man she stood beside. He nodded and hurried out of her line of vision.
Buff hadn’t responded to her, so she tried again, a little louder. “Buff, you doing okay?”
This time he turned but looked right through her. “We’re losing the patient.”
Okay, it wasn’t unusual that a volunteer fire fighter was also a medic on the team, Dexter was, but he’d never mentioned what Buff did. In fact Dexter never really talked about the man standing next to her.
Deciding that going along with whatever was happening in Buff’s mind, instead of yanking him out of it was the best way to continue to deal with the situation. “What do you need me to do, I’m here to help.”
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s too late, can’t you see his injuries? They’re too extensive.” The hand not holding his beer scraped down his face. “God, he’s barely old enough to shave. What the hell is he doing in this shithole? What the hell am I doing here?” He turned abruptly and strode away from her.
Nadia stood frozen to the spot for half a heartbeat watching him walk away from the crowd and head toward the far corner of the open space. Away from carnival rides. Away from everyone. The beer bottle hung from his fingers and she couldn’t help but think that he was unaware he still had a hold of it.
Should she follow or stay where she was?
Should she follow or get someone else to help him?
Should she follow and see if she could be the one to pull him from the nightmare he was in the middle of?
Follow him, that’s what she should do. Nadia hurried after his retreating figure, glad that she wore cowboy boots and she didn’t have to worry that she’d wreck her shoes traipsing over the grass.
“Buff,” she called out. “Buff, what about the other patients.” She was taking a huge risk by saying something like that, it could trigger him even more.
But it had the desired effect. He stopped, but he didn’t face her. His head and shoulders dropped. “There’s no point, I can’t do anything to help them anymore. It’s never ending.”
Why wasn’t anyone aware of the pain this man was going through?
Again she took her time approaching him, making sure that she didn’t make any sudden moves. She still didn’t have any idea if he would get violent or not. Somehow she didn’t think he would.
Carefully she laid her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. You’ve done a wonderful job. You’ve saved so many lives.”
“And lost a ton more. I can’t do this anymore.” He whispered again, the beer bottle slipped from his fingers and hit the ground with a soft thump.
Her heart broke for the man. The pain and despair was in every action. In his every word.
How the hell was she going to break him out of it?
Chapter 2
Buff looked down at the blood on his hands. No matter how many times he scrubbed them the blood always stained. Always remained. Suddenly another set of hands grabbed his, stopping him from his constant wiping.
“Buff, it’s okay. You did everything you could.” The voice was soft, feminine. Caring even. He didn’t think it belonged to any of the nurses he worked with. They were as cynical as he was.
“But it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. Why the hell are we even fighting here? We’re creating more issues than we’re solving.” He looked around, seeing nothing but the heat haze and the tents of the compound where he was stationed. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
He went to tug his hands away but the stranger tightened her grip. “No stay here with me. You’re safe here. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The strangest sensation washed over Buff. Was he dreaming? Was it possible he wasn’t standing in the middle of butt-hot Afghanistan, where the stench of blood and death filled the air? That he didn’t have life giving liquid all over his hands. And there wasn’t a tent full of people injured or dying twenty feet away from him. He breathed deep and swore he could smell grilling meat. Swore he could hear the music of a country band.
Impossible, his mind was playing tricks. He w
as longing for home and the family ranch. Where life consisted of cow musters, branding, insemination and calves being born. The home he grew up in, in Tarpley, Texas was as far away from him right now as it had always been.
He looked where the voice was coming from, but he couldn’t make her out clearly. She didn’t look like anyone he knew.
What the hell was happening to him?
This time he tugged his hands harder and she instantly let go. “I need to get back to the surgical tent. I’m sure there are others that need attending to.”
“No, it’s okay. Someone else has taken over for you. You can relax now.”
Why was this person insisting that he didn’t go back to do his job? He couldn’t let them do that to him. As much as he hated it now, he had a job to do. A job that was sucking the life out of him.
“I don’t know who you are. Or what you’re doing, but I don’t like you keeping me from where I need to be.” His already frayed nerves unraveled even more, like the end of his surgical mask cord. He clasped his hands before starting to wring them again. He couldn’t stop the way he swayed from side to side. Something was terribly wrong with him. He knew it but he didn’t know how to fix it. “I have to go now. I can’t stay and talk when peo—”
He’d turned his head and collided with warm lips pressed against his, stopping the flow of words. They were soft and supple and he’d never felt anything like them before. He could taste the faint traces of barbeque sauce.
As if being sucked through a vortex, clarity set into Buff’s mind. His eyes focused and his surroundings began to take shape. The face inches from his was beautiful, but one he didn’t fully recognize.
He wrenched his lips away from her sweetness and took two steps back. His chest rising and falling as he tried to make sense of why a stranger was kissing him. Looking around he could see that they were both a fair distance away from the mass of people attending the community event.
How did he get here? Buff didn’t even remember walking away. The more he studied the woman standing three feet away from him, the more he recognized her. She’d been at the other end of the table where he’d sat to eat. Her pink hat had caught his eye along with the hint of uneasiness that seemed to float around her. He’d also caught her looking at him every now and then. She was lovely to look at and her smile had touched him deep in his belly, unlike any of the smiles from the other women who sat at the table.
“You work with Dirty-D, don’t you?”
Her teeth worried her bottom lip but she nodded. He expected her to elaborate more but when she kept quiet, he pushed for a couple more answers.
“Why are we standing way out here? And why were we kissing?”
She ran her fingers through her long dark curls, getting stuck every now and then when she hit a snag. “You don’t remember, do you?”
Five little words and his stomach sank to the bottom of his cowboy boots. “Fuck,” he muttered. He’d had another attack, right in the middle of the fucking town event. Right in front of everyone.
Buff looked around again and at the edge of where the dance floor was, stood Pops, his hands on his hips, watching him intently. Maybe his attack hadn’t been unobserved after all.
“It’s okay Buff, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
God, how many times had he heard that? Too many to count. Women he’d tried to date since his return from overseas had told him it was okay when he’d spaced out on them. But when he’d tried to arrange for another date, there always seemed to be some reason they couldn’t meet him. Eventually he came to the conclusion that his attacks scared them and they didn’t want to be around him.
Why would this woman be any different? It hit him then, she worked with Dirty-D at the medical center. Was she a psychologist? If so, he didn’t think he liked the idea that she would go around kissing patients all the time. It went against every part of the Hippocratic Oath they took to be a doctor.
Suddenly he didn’t want to know why they’d been kissing. At least he’d gotten an answer to the reason why they were standing away from everyone. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m not interested. And I especially don’t want to become someone’s pet project.” He took a breath trying to calm his rapidly beating heart. “You can go back to the party. I don’t need you.”
His words were harsh and at the flash of hurt in her eyes, he experienced a momentary stab of remorse. Buff shoved it aside. All he wanted was to be alone. He needed time to deal with his attack. Why it had happened? From memory there hadn’t been any loud bangs, which sometimes had the ability to set him off, but not often.
“I’m not sure if leaving you alone is a good idea. Can I get somebody for you?”
“No.” He slashed the air with his hand. “Just go. As I said I don’t need you to try any of your psycho-babble on me. Any psychologist that kisses a patient isn’t one I want to be around.”
If he thought his words were going to cut her or hurt her like his earlier comments did, he was very wrong. Her brown eyes flashed fire at him and she stuck her hands on her hips.
“I’ll have you know I’m not a psychologist, but I am a doctor. And I recognize the signs of a PTSD attack when I see them. I also recognize a fool when I see one and that’s you, Buff. You need help but like most men, you don’t want to accept you have problems that you can’t solve on your own. So regardless of you thinking you don’t need anybody, I’m going to send one of the guys from your team over here and then you’ll never have to see me again.”
She marched past him and he caught a hint of coconut in the air. If he wasn’t a shell of the person he used to be he may have pursued her. But he was never going to be the man he was before and any hope of a relationship and happy ever after was over.
It would be better if he spent his life alone.
Chapter 3
June
“Oh my God, I can’t take this heat and humidity any longer,” Nadia complained as she and Cerise headed toward her car. For once they were on the same shift rotation so they could carpool to work. Usually if she was on morning shift, Cerise was on afternoon. Or if she was on nights, Cerise was on mornings. For the next two weeks they were both on the afternoon shift.
“This is nothing, just wait until July and August, then you’ll really know it. Although I thought I heard a weather forecast, as I was in the break room, that we could be in for some wicked thunderstorms later on. There’s a flash flood warning too.”
Nadia looked up. Grey clouds rolled along the sky in a hurry. She couldn’t scent rain on the air, but it was oppressive and already she’d felt a trickle of sweat down her back and they’d only been out of the air conditioned medical center for something like two minutes. “Well I suppose rain will be a welcome change. It’ll cool things down for sure.”
Cerise laughed loudly beside her. “Girl, if anything the humidity is going to triple after the rainstorm. We’re talking summer storms here, there’s no cooling anything down when it rains in Texas. We won’t see cool weather again until October, if we’re lucky.”
Nadia sighed and for the first time since she’d moved to Kerrville she was pining for a Boston snowstorm and freezing temperatures. “Well at least the house is air conditioned. I don’t plan on moving from under a cooling vent after I’ve had my shower. You can bring me dinner, can’t you?”
Cerise laughed and shook her head. “Dream on, Nadia, we’re going to Tarpley tonight. It’s trivia night and you promised, when we found out we were working the same shifts, you’d come with me.”
Shit. She’d forgotten about that promise. With the way their schedules had panned out over the five months they’d been living together, Nadia hadn’t thought it would ever happen and she’d be dragged to one of those nights. If it was one thing she hated most in life, it was trivia contests.
Her parents had brought a trivia game for all the kids to share one Christmas. What her parents hadn’t known was that they’d unleashed a battleground in the Fletcher
family. As the youngest, her older siblings always seemed to gang up on her and no matter what color she landed on, the question never seemed to be related to the category it was supposed to be. Whenever she’d asked to see the card, they would hold it up out of her reach, or put it back in the box before she even had a chance to look at it. Their actions confirmed what she’d always thought—they were cheating. Sometimes she managed to get the right answer anyway.
So no, trivia wasn’t her favorite pastime but she’d made a promise and she always kept her promises.
“Fine, I’ll go, but don’t expect me to answer anything. I’m just there for the diet Coke and air conditioning.”
They reached her car and she unlocked the doors. Once they were both in, Cerise spoke. “Go on, live a little, have a G&T tonight. Or maybe a mojito.”
Nadia sighed, this was another reason why she didn’t want to socialize much. She’d never been a huge drinker, and didn’t appreciate the people she was out with trying to force her to drink. After that one time in college where she’d drunk so much she spent the next three days throwing up, she’d sworn then she would never touch the stuff again. “You know why I don’t drink, Cerise. I’m happy to go out, but don’t force me to do something I don’t want to. The least you could do is respect that.”
“Oh, geez, Nadia, I’m sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m in awe that you can seem to have a good time without the need to have a couple of drinks to relax. How do you do it?”
Nadia concentrated on pulling out onto the street before answering her friend. “I don’t know. I just do.”
“Well I’m envious. I wonder if we’ll see any of the guys we saw from that community event we went to a couple months ago.”
God, she hoped not. Even now, two months after the event she couldn’t believe she’d kissed Buff. Not only was he a total stranger but he was in the middle of a PTSD attack. She could get her medical license revoked because of that action. While technically he wasn’t her patient, the methods she’d used to pull him out of his attack were less than ethical.
Fighting For Nadia (Police and Fire: Operation Alpha) (Tarpley VFD Book 6) Page 2
