Instant Family (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 4)

by Aiden Bates

  "Of course. That's exactly what I expect when I go to the State Fair. Human trafficking, shootings, and police involvement." Alex rolled his eyes and pulled on a gown.

  "I'd believe you if I thought you'd ever set foot in someplace as agricultural as the State Fair, buddy." Wade patted Alex' back. "I'll give you a choice. Most of the trafficking victims don't need emergency surgery. They'll be taken to a different ward. We've got a male GSW with additional trauma to the face and chest. We've got a male GSW to the hand. And we've got a female with trauma to the throat as well as sexual trauma."

  Alex shuddered. "I'll take the GSW with additional trauma. The female probably won't want a male taking care of her." He frowned. "Does she actually need a surgeon?"

  "Probably not. Her feet are badly blistered, but we'll get Holmes to take a look at her. She's pretty good, for a burn guy. All right. Here we go. It's show time."

  Alex stood up straighter. He wouldn't have minded going home after the mess with the semi accident. He'd already been on site for a good, long time and his bed was calling his name, but he had a job to do and he was going to do it.

  The guy they brought him was more or less unrecognizable. The assailant had beaten him to a pulp, and he'd bled all over his face and his long, tangled purple hair. Alex could see the guy had a ring in his nose, and in his septum. And in his lip, and rings in his ears — seriously, where did people like this work? He turned to the EMT to get an update.

  "Male, twenty-six years old. No allergies, blood type unknown. Gunshot wound to the left shoulder. Seems to have nicked an artery. He's lost a lot of blood. We've given him fluids to replace, but his vitals have been all over the place. Respiration is labored and shallow. He was initially conscious and verbal, but lost consciousness at the scene and has not regained."

  EMTs had already cut off the patient's clothes. His chest was a patchwork of bruises, and Alex didn't need x-rays to diagnose broken ribs. He ordered them anyway, to confirm the bullet had been a through-and-through and to assess the damage he'd have to repair. Then, he prepared himself to operate.

  The OR was ready for him by the time he finished scrubbing in. The films had confirmed what he'd already suspected. The patient had several broken ribs, which had resulted in fluid in the pleural space. That, in turn, required a chest tube. What had happened to him to cause that? Other than that, there wasn't much Alex could do for the ribs. They needed time and management to heal, and that was all.

  He could do something about the wound to the shoulder. They'd gotten an orthopedist to come down to the room to take care of the damage to the joint itself, but Alex had to deal with the bullet. It had not been a through and through, like Alex had hoped. It was lodged in the scapular bone, and Alex had to get it out without further damaging any of the veins or muscles.

  He fished it out, delicately avoiding any of the minuscule structures that had survived the initial impact. Then he stood back and watched as the orthopedist did his job. Ted was fantastic at his job, one of the best shoulder specialists around. Whoever this guy was, he would most likely regain full use of that limb.

  Alex didn't get very curious about his patients while they were on the table. He had to maintain a certain level of detachment. He had some concerns about the man's weight, in that he seemed to be too thin for his height, but that wasn't his concern. He would send a note to the patient's primary care doctor when he kicked the case back to him. He had some concerns about the piercings, but those weren't his problem either. They didn't seem to be causing him any problems at the moment, although they'd stood out on the x-ray.

  How exactly had he gotten into this condition? Alex wasn't supposed to judge his patients, and for the most part he didn't. Sometimes he couldn't help it. Most of the time, people didn't get battered and shot because they'd been innocently walking down the street. Was the patient into drugs? Had he crossed the wrong guy? Flirted with the wrong woman?

  He backed away from those questions. People got beaten and shot every day. Maybe he had just been innocently enjoying a corn dog. Maybe the problem was with the shooter.

  Ted finished his repair of the shoulder. They closed the patient up together, and they left the nurses to get the poor man cleaned up and into recovery. Alex and Ted could go and scrub out, and then Alex' shift was over. He could go home and put his feet up.

  He said goodbye to Rick, who'd just finished up with his patient. Rick wasn't as inclined to work all night now that his husband was home from Texas. Good for him. Alex wouldn't be willing to work all night either, not if he had Dylan Parker to go home to.

  Alex just had his apartment, out in Baldwinsville. If he weren't so tired, he'd be more than happy not to go home at all.

  Tonight, the complex was quiet. A lot of people were at the Fair, he guessed. He didn't see the appeal, personally. Too crowded. Too flashy. Too lowbrow, not that Alex considered himself to be exactly a paragon of the upper crust. He just hated the general aura of grime that went along with the Fair. He hated the patina of sleaze that came with the midway. He hated the vaguely agricultural smell that clung to the farm buildings, and the oily smell that clung to everything else.

  So he stayed away. There were plenty of other things for him to do, like get paid to help other people recover from the things they did at the Fair.

  His next door neighbor's apartment was dark. Great. The guy would probably come tromping up the stairs with those great big boots of his at three in the morning, and then he'd wake everyone up.

  Alex knew he should probably think about moving out. He'd bought the place back when he was starting out. It was cheap, and he'd needed that at the time. The loans he had to pay off made "cheap" a priority. He could afford to find somewhere a little more private, someplace where his neighbors didn't drive him up a wall.

  At the same time, why spend the money?

  He fixed himself a martini when he got home. Today had been bloody, and his feet hurt. He just wanted to relax a little bit and go to bed. He flipped on the news, just to see if there was any information about the human trafficking ring that had supposedly been brought in to the hospital.

  He wasn't disappointed. The anchorwoman leaned into the camera with huge, serious blue eyes. "Good evening. Welcome to the eleven o'clock news. I'm Wanda Kislyak. We begin this evening with a horrifying scene from the State Fair. Authorities are hailing a local disc jockey as a hero this evening after his quick thinking saved a young girl's life and led to the disruption of a human trafficking ring at the New York State Fair."

  The camera cut to an interview at the Fair with a uniformed State Trooper, a pretty woman with a blonde ponytail. "The man in question noticed a girl running through the crowd. He picked up on the fact that something seemed not quite right about the situation, and he used the tools available to him in the booth to stop the men pursuing her. The girl was then able to reach troopers and get help."

  The camera switched to what looked like cell phone footage of a standoff. "The suspects became irate with the DJ in question and attacked him before troopers could intervene. The Good Samaritan in question is in critical condition at a local hospital tonight. The suspect was treated and released into the custody of State Troopers, who arrested him and booked him on charges of human trafficking and attempted murder. He's expected to be arraigned in the morning.

  "In other Fair news, we hit record attendance for the third day in a row!" Kislyak switched tones and gears without any effort, and Alex turned the television off in disgust.

  At least now he knew how the patient had gotten into the condition he had. Huh. He couldn't have said he'd have done exactly the same thing. Surely there must have been some other way to help the girl without getting himself killed in the process? Then again, there probably hadn't been a lot of time to react.

  Ah well. Flashy heroics hadn't ever been Alex' style anyway. He could rest in the comfort of knowing he'd done what he needed to do to make sure this heroic DJ would live to clutter up the airwaves another day.
<
br />   He finished his martini and went to bed. His neighbor, for once, didn't come home at three in the morning. He should probably be more worried about that than he was.

  He got up in the morning and headed to Silver Oak. His route had an extra half hour tacked on because of the damn State Fair, which pissed him off, but he tried to keep calm about it. At least satellite radio didn't have commercials or interruptions to talk about Fair traffic, or Fair attractions. He could just listen to calming classical music and get to work in one piece.

  Once he got to work, he checked his messages and looked for Rick. "I guess we've got a hero in our midst," Rick told him. "Who knew, huh?"

  Alex pulled a face. "That's what he gets for going to the Fair."

  Rick wagged a finger at him. "Now now, you know as well as I do that he was getting paid to be there." He shook his head. "I hope they gave him hazard pay, right? Anyway, go do your rounds. They've got him up on the ICU because of the blood and the lung."

  Alex sighed. Yeah, they'd have had him on the ICU, and that made sense. He hated the ICU, personally, but it was where most of his surgical patients wound up. At least, they wound up there for a little while.

  He checked on his patients from the previous day. Two had already been moved to regular wards. A man with a gunshot wound to the leg would be released later that day, if nothing went wrong, and a woman with appendicitis showed such improvement he wouldn't have believed she'd been sick if he hadn't taken the burst organ out for himself. The trucker who'd lost an arm in the semi accident yesterday, he wasn't in such good shape. He'd crashed, during the night. The trauma team had revived him, but his prognosis wasn't good.

  And then there was DJ guy. He wasn't alone when Alex got there. A tall, slim, young Black man in a black tee shirt was by his side. The patient was awake, eyes glazed with pain, and he was grinning.

  Alex frowned. "Family only in the ICU, I'm afraid."

  The visitor stood up, lips pressed into a thin line. Had Alex made a mistake? Were they a couple?

  The patient waved a hand. "Amadi's my next of kin. He's been helpfully chasing the good nurses away until I could talk to my doctor about the pain meds they keep trying to give me."

  Alex stepped further into the room. "Okay. My apologies." He checked the patient's chart. "Look, Mr. Brown, you must be in a world of hurt."

  "I'm not going to pretend I'm not." Brown grimaced. "I feel like someone put me through a meat grinder and left me out in the sun for too long."

  "So maybe the pain pills aren't a bad thing. They're there to help." Alex looked down at the chart again. "I mean the whole point is to feel better, right?"

  Brown looked up at his friend. Amadi stood between Brown and Alex. "Look, Doc, I'm sorry, but Derek doesn't take opiates. For any reason, okay? No judging people who do, he's just got a bad family history with substances and he doesn't want any part of them. He'll take NSAIDs and stuff like that, but no narcotics, no booze. Nothing that messes with your mind."

  Alex huffed out a little laugh. "You got all that from a glance?"

  "We're foster brothers." Amadi narrowed his eyes.

  "I see." Alex had really put his foot in it this time. "Okay. So I'll make a note in my file, and—wait. Derek Brown?"

  The brothers glanced between themselves. "That's me." Derek croaked and tried to shift his position.

  "Let the bed do the work for you, idiot." Amadi shook his head and moved Derek's hand to the controls that lifted and lowered the bed.

  "As in, lives in Van Buren, Derek Brown?" Alex looked back down at the chart in his hand. "Oh, come on."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I live in Van Buren. So what?" Derek narrowed his eyes at Alex.

  "You're the jerk neighbor who keeps coming home at three in the morning and waking everyone up!" Alex stepped back. "I can't believe this!"

  Derek tried to laugh, but it came out more like a wheeze. "Jesus. Who would have thought my doctor would be the jackass that slips notes under people's door about tracking snow in the wintertime?" He shook his head. "Honestly, are you going to complain about people tracking blood into the ER, too?"

  "Tracking snow is a serious problem! It leads to mold in the carpets." Alex crossed his arms over his chest. "Anyway, I need to look at your incisions."

  Amadi helped move Derek so he could check the wound and the chest tube. "I think the chest tube can probably come out today. I don't see any signs of infection. You should make a good recovery." Alex backed toward the door and fled as fast as he could.

  What were the odds that his wretched neighbor would be the supposed hero DJ?

  <<<<>>>>

  Preview (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 3): Family Law

  Reunited and it feels better than good...

  It was a long time ago, but Luke will never forget Jason Delancey and their first kiss under the bleachers of football practice. Now, twenty years later, he has a lot more to focus on than the one man who got away. Divorced with a seven-year-old son and a vicious lawsuit against the Silver Oak Medical Center to deal with, Luke has no time for reminiscent feelings of the past.

  When Jason walks back into his life as the attorney on the case, all of those old emotions and desires come tumbling forth. But when Luke's overprotective brothers try to get in the way of a reunion between the long-lost lovers, it's up to Jason and Luke to fight for what they couldn't have so long ago. And the fight is harder than they ever imagined as they go up against Luke's family and a lawsuit that's determined to destroy them. With their future family on the line, can these two finally overcome family law and retrieve the love they were destined to find?

  In this 100,000-word gay, second-chance romance novel, Family Law, lovers from the past are reunited by fate. With steamy scenes and sexy scenarios, you'll be ready to reignite their passion as these two men rekindle what was once lost. And after one man discovers he's pregnant, they know they have everything to fight for.

  Click Here to check out Family Law!

  Get Your FREE Aiden Bates’ Book

  A musician's tune can cure any bookworm's broken heart....

  With his nose in a book and his heart on his sleeve, Mel has no interest in any more drama in his life. After all, he's just discovered he's pregnant with his ex's baby. And when, a popular and sexy rockstar moves into his building, Mel keeps his distance. But after a chance encounter in an elevator, he can't resist the musician's charm.

  Connor is comfortable in the spotlight. Everyone likes him--except for his mysterious and reserved neighbor. Connor would like nothing more than to get the attention of studious librarian. But when they finally succumb to their desires, Mel's pregnancy isn't all that jeopardizes everything they've worked for. Suddenly, the omega and the alpha have more to overcome. Will music bring them together or tear them apart?

  In this 25,000-word gay romance novel, Love in Stereo, two men create beautiful music together while one man carries his ex's baby. With explicit scenes and strong sexual content, this ballad will have you singing for more.

  Click Here

  Instant Family

  Aiden Bates

  © 2017

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).

 

 

  ooks on Archive.