Dante's Shock Proposal

by Amalie Berlin

  Letting things drag out until she felt comfortable was selfish and unkind. After surgery, she should tell him, give him a chance to cancel her transfer if he wanted. Maybe she should even encourage it. They’d have the whole rest of the week to find some way to be around one another normally.

  Shame that he wouldn’t want to get to know her further after she made her “no” official. It was nice to be with him, even when they were arguing.

  Within half an hour, their patient was under general anesthesia and Dante had begun, his attention entirely on what he was doing, and Lise worked on smoothness of delivery and anticipation of his needs while others observed the patient’s vitals, kept him under and in no pain.

  Lise shook her head minutely and took the scalpel back from Dante, who’d moved on to a bone saw that would allow him to begin the small craniotomy behind the patient’s right temple, above the ear, to gain access to the blood vessel he needed to track into the brain so he could stop the bleeding.

  Don’t think about the talk they were going to have.

  * * *

  Another day and she still hadn’t told him.

  It seemed to Lise that her life changed dramatically in between all her Dante surgery days anyway. If that pace kept up after she’d been transferred and had consecutive Dante days in a row, she might lose her mind.

  Not that her hold on sanity was especially strong after this weekend anyway, without even considering the prospect that every day could be Monday and she might end up dithering outside the doors leading into the surgical suite, trying to steel her resolve to see him and discover how her body would react that day.

  In the beginning, she’d thought it was just a sexual reaction to him, an entirely physical pull, but the more she saw him, the more it became something else. She could feel him in the air before he appeared. Their everyday interaction had begun to change too—sometimes he looked at her with that devastating look of desire, and other looks felt different, but she couldn’t quite name them.

  His badly-planned proposal had changed things between them because of how angry she’d gotten. She knew him better now, she thought. She hoped... But she knew that he knew her better also. Was this the kind of time that people put in to get to know one another so they could become close? She’d always started with common interests in the past.

  Maybe both of them wanting a family and children was their common interest.

  Or maybe he kept coming around because he could understand that part of her past she usually did her best not to think about. No one else in Miami knew about her father.

  Someone would find them out before long if they didn’t figure out a way to make their work relationship function. If that was even possible now. Dante could pull it off better than she could. He was so used to keeping secrets that there was no way he’d be the one to crack and say the wrong thing in front of the others.

  It was her. She was the problem. She was the one who’d spent the weekend alternating between giving herself hell and giving herself pep talks—both for allowing herself to become the woman she was, and for her certainty that her self-protective measures had done precisely what she’d needed: kept her safe by keeping dangers at a distance.

  What she couldn’t accept was that by her current practices everyone was a danger to her. The loneliness had to end.

  Time for another pep talk.

  Transferring to his team would blow up in both their faces. She had to put a stop to it now, before the week ended—just as she’d kept telling herself for the last week. Yes, neurosurgery was her favorite, but there was something to be said for not specializing—her usual nursing skills wouldn’t get rusty or abandon her if she didn’t stop using them entirely by specializing.

  He was nearby. She knew it like she knew the way her body always reacted to his proximity, like something touched her.

  A quick tuck to make certain all flyaway strands of her hair had been contained under her cap, and Lise opened the door.

  “I was wondering if you were going to go in,” Dante said from directly behind her. She paused and looked back at him, that alone probably confirming all the conflicting thoughts zooming through her mind.

  She may’ve been a little too absorbed to have immediately noticed today, and she’d blame him for keeping her too wound up to function properly.

  He reached past her and grabbed the door to take over holding it open, his proximity letting her momentarily banish the hospital’s usual stringent odors and flood her sinuses with his special brand of spicy, distracting warmth.

  “Go on,” he said, his voice whisper-soft, certain not to carry, even down the empty halls where all sounds found echoes. “The OR is sacrosanct.”

  Something she knew but had momentarily forgotten: Dante didn’t take chances with his patients. Or his family, by the sound of things.

  But that one statement made clear to her that outside the OR he wasn’t done with her.

  Needing space, she made herself nod and then hurried to the furthest scrub sink, fully expecting him to follow despite his declaration.

  He didn’t. And that was a good thing.

  She’d be glued to his side for the next few hours anyway—but these little scrub-sink chats weren’t helping her think clearly. The only reason—aside from her feckless attraction to him—she couldn’t keep temptation at bay was how much she looked forward to seeing him, talking to him. So far, all conversation with others failed to move her to feel anything.

  The vigor with which he protected his family added to his draw. If it were true... But that was impossible to determine without tracking down a sibling and spilling his secrets.

  She had to work this out on her own.

  Especially if she was to have any hope of continuing to ignore how much she wanted to throw caution to the wind and at least have one night with him, like a consolation prize to the proposal she could not accept.

  * * *

  “Surgery’s cancelled,” Sandy said as soon as Lise entered the surgical suite early Thursday morning, the last day that she’d be assigned to the unit.

  “Why?” she asked, stepping up to help Sandy strip down the prep work she’d already done to get the OR ready for their early morning patient.

  Marisol came in, and Sandy repeated herself, then answered Lise with a teasing grin, “No one told me that. You could ask Dr. Valentino.”

  “Why would I ask him?” Lise asked, and only realized after it came out that her tone sounded guilty. People had been picking up on the tension between them after all, it seemed. And she’d thought they’d done such a good job of keeping under the radar.

  Sandy looked at her oddly over the table. “Because you’re transferring to his team Monday?”

  “Oh...” She breathed the word, looking between the two women who were now both openly staring at her. The weight of their stares made it clear to Lise just how badly she’d just given them away.

  People with nothing to hide didn’t get defensive over unimportant things.

  “You sure you don’t want me to stay and help you get this back in order first?”

  It wasn’t a delaying tactic. Though she really could use some lessons in how to use those.

  “Pretty sure. If we don’t have surgery this morning, I’ve got some errands to catch up on,” Sandy said.

  “And I have continuing education courses to finish before tomorrow.”

  Both of them wanted to leave. He was her new boss starting Monday. This was what came from dragging one’s feet on decision-making—prior decisions got to roll out.

  She just hadn’t been able to commit to stopping the transfer—it had felt like shutting down all their business, and she couldn’t bring herself to do that no matter how many pep talks she gave herself.

  Employing her fastest nurse walk, Lise made it to Dante’s off
ice before she’d even let herself consider much beyond the realization that she’d not spent any time alone with him since that night on the beach.

  She’d just reached for the doorknob when the door blew open and Dante slammed right into her.

  Dante jerked back into focus on his path to Emergency, specifically onto Lise stumbling back from him, tilted off her axis.

  He grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and even with the buzz of an emergency in the air, his body reacted to merely touching her. Nothing overt, but his pulse bumped up another notch, and his hands tingled.

  “What’s wrong?” she blurted out, her hands wrapping around his wrists as she steadied herself.

  “Emergency just called. We’ve got a bad head trauma coming in. Call the others, tell them to prep the OR as soon as possible.” He let go of her and stepped back, the motion causing her to let go of his arms too. “And then come down with me. West ambulance bay.”

  She fumbled for the in-hospital com system all medical personnel carried.

  “Come on, Bradshaw. Walk and talk at the same time,” he shouted over his shoulder as he reached the stairwell.

  The ambulance had been three minutes out when they’d called in to the ED, and he’d been called immediately after. He might still be able to meet the ambulance if he hurried.

  He jogged through the west receiving bay just as the ambulance pulled in, the only physician there to meet them.

  When it stopped rolling, he rounded to the back and wrenched the doors open. The sound of a wailing baby was the first thing that reached him. Scanning the dim interior of the ambulance, he made out the stretcher with an immobilized and unconscious patient, a paramedic, and a red-faced, harried police officer holding a baby just short of a year, and soaked in blood.

  “Is he injured?” Dante asked the paramedic, but moved back so they could remove the stretcher.

  “We didn’t find any injuries on him, but he was unconscious at the scene. Doubt he fell asleep in his car seat, most likely knocked out, but was still strapped in. He woke when they began cutting into the car to get to him and his mother.” The paramedic gestured to the unconscious mother, whose head was covered in bloody bandages. Even with the bulk from the makeshift dressing, Dante could tell that along the crown of her forehead, her skull dented in a devastating fashion.

  Dante took the child, who wasn’t affixed to the stretcher and didn’t have any first-aid apparatuses attached to him. His one-piece, blue-and-white-striped romper had far too much dark-red blood saturating it. The cheerful-faced puppy on the front seemed to have absorbed the most blood, and stuck the material to his tiny chest.

  One look back confirmed that Lise had caught up with him. She looked so stricken that his wheels started spinning. Opportunity... He immediately held the baby out to her.

  “Take him inside. You’re off this surgery—I want you to stay with him. I’m sure the ED nurses can handle things, but he lost consciousness, and I’d prefer a nurse from Neuro keeping a sharp eye on him,” he said, as she wrapped the baby in her arms, clutching him protectively to her chest, and Dante knew his instinct had been right. It’d do her good to have a living reminder of how helpless babies and small children were, especially when something happened to a parent and they were beholden to the kindness of strangers until family could retrieve them.

  They’d wheeled the mother into the hospital, so he put a hand on Lise’s shoulder and steered her inside. The baby continued to scream, so he spoke loudly over him. “What are you looking for? Symptoms.”

  Lise cuddled the baby close and added a little extra bounce to her step as they hurried down the hallway. What symptoms? It took a moment for her to summon them. “Ah, loss of consciousness, confusion, vomiting, irregular pupil reaction...”

  “Right. Stay with him until they either transfer him to Children’s Hospital or he’s given to family. And send someone into my OR to alert me if anything changes.”

  “What about your surgery?”

  The look he gave her said everything. The mother wasn’t going to survive, and he knew it already, but he was still going in. He had to try...but the baby was still his top priority.

  “Okay,” she said, and met a nurse hurrying toward them.

  His little body stayed stiff in her arms, his breathing ragged and uneven as he continued to scream himself out of breath.

  The room she was led to had a crib and specialist equipment. This was why she couldn’t work in Emergency full time. She could handle it when things happened to adults—accidents, violence, and illness—but she’d never cared for an injured or ill child without crying, though never in front of them, but after her shift it could wipe her out.

  “I’ll get him something else to wear, a fresh diaper, and a wash pan. We need to get that blood off him. That might calm him down some,” the other nurse said, unflappable with the whole situation—or at least able to keep from showing it.

  The instructions made sense but would require her putting him down, and something primitive and horrified screamed inside Lise. Don’t put him down. Don’t let him go.

  But holding him wasn’t helping right now. Cleaning him up might.

  She laid him carefully in the crib and quickly stripped the sodden clothing off his tiny body.

  For being so small, he kicked and tried to roll, frantic and fighting in the mindless way of an angry, traumatized baby.

  “It’s okay,” she said on autopilot, not that he was likely to understand in his current state. His name. She didn’t know his name.

  Talking didn’t work, but she caught him and got him on his back long enough to unfasten the diaper before he tried to roll again. Still. Screaming.

  Every cry bit into her. Her stomach rolled and she clenched her jaw, trying to control the visceral reaction she had to the pain she heard wringing out of him, while also trying to do whatever he needed.

  The nurse came back with supplies and Lise asked her, “Do you know his name?”

  “No one knows it yet.”

  Lise focused on the other nurse’s badge and said, “Ginny, can you bring the water here? I don’t want to take him to the sink. He’s surprisingly strong, and when wet...”

  “Right.” A moment later, a tray had been rolled to the crib and Lise held him while Ginny spread an absorbent pad on the mattress and began washing away the blood, first from his face and matted hair, and then down over his chest.

  His mother had lost so much blood. How could she still be alive?

  They switched off when he got slippery and started gaining ground on them. Ginny lifted him by the armpits until he dangled; it was the only way to keep his feet out of play at times.

  In short order, his dark skin had been washed completely clean, but once he was on a fresh towel and Lise was drying him, she noticed marks. “He’s got a matching set of bruises forming on top of his shoulders.” Then described the position better, so Ginny could chart it.

  “You know, I appreciate your help with him—that was definitely a two-person job—but if you want to return to Neurology, I can take him.” Everything they said had to be projected from the diaphragm to be heard over his angry, still terrified cries.

  “Dr. Valentino ordered me to stay with him,” Lise said, even though she felt a little strange saying it. “He wants a nurse from Neuro doing constant checks for signs of head trauma—concussion, bleeding, things that can happen from sudden violent movements.”

  Shaken-baby-syndrome-style bleeding could be caused by an accident as well as by a monstrous person.

  Lise finished drying him and began the process of wrestling him into a fresh diaper and a tiny hospital gown.

  “Give me your ID,” Ginny said, “or give him to me and run to get yourself another scrub top from the machine.”

  Lise looked down and saw it then: the mom’s blood had soa
ked into her top from the baby’s saturated romper. She had to change, but even if Dante hadn’t told her to stay, her whole body reacted to the idea of leaving him.

  Pulling her ID off, she handed it to Ginny, rattled off her sizes—yes, an XL top—and added her sincere thanks before tying the towel over her so she could pick him up in the meantime. At least that way, he couldn’t kick himself out of the crib, and it made her feel like she was at least giving him some comfort, though no one could tell it from the way he cried.

  A few minutes later, Ginny returned with the new top, and held the baby while Lise changed into the familiar tent-like scrub tops she used to wear, and then she had him held against her again, and rocked and shushed him softly as she walked around the cubicle.

  When there was a screaming, inconsolable baby in the department, the doctors came fast. “His name is Elijah,” a woman in turquoise scrubs and a white lab jacket announced as she stepped into the room. “I’m Dr. Arushi Dhawan—haven’t you been able to calm him?”

  “No,” Lise admitted. “I don’t know if he understands that his mommy is hurt, or if he’s still reacting to the terror that no doubt came over him from the accident, or just being surrounded by strangers now...”

  Dr. Dhawan ordered a mild sedative, and Lise couldn’t argue against it. Examining him would be all but impossible with him in this state.

  Ten minutes later, the screaming stopped and the doctor could listen to the baby’s breathing and heart, palpate for any actual physical pains or hardness in his abdomen, and check pupillary reaction.

  “I think he’s been badly jostled, but he seems physically okay. I’d rather not expose him to imaging without a good reason. You’re staying with him, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are with Dr. Valentino’s team?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so you know how to check his pupillary reactions, yes?”

  Lise confirmed this as well.

  “Check every ten minutes. He’ll probably start to come out of the sedation in half an hour or so, but if you’re lucky he may stay asleep longer. Get Ginny to order some food, bottle, whatever you need, and try to keep him calm. If you note anything concerning, you can call me directly: Arushi Dhawan. Okay?”