The Beat and The Pulse Box Set 1

by Amity Cross

  Doctor? I felt like a dick for assuming she was a nurse even though she couldn’t read my mind. I just blinked at her, waiting for the spiel.

  She stood at the end of the bed and smiled at me, her pretty brown eyes—no, they weren’t quite brown, maybe honey—ran over my body as she fumbled for the silver pen in her coat pocket.

  Rolling up the end of the blanket, she exposed my bare feet and said, “Tell me if you can feel this.”

  She moved the pen, but there was nothing. Frowning, I shook my head. I didn’t like where this was going.

  Moving to the other foot, she said, “How about this?”

  I shook my head again, and she moved up each leg with the same result. It wasn’t until she hit my waist that I felt the silver pen poking into my skin.

  Dr. Walsh lowered her gaze, covering me with the blanket again, and for a split second, I saw the concern in her features. Fuck concern, there was nothing from the waist down. Nothing. Considering I was a fighter and a man who loved using his cock, this was bad news. The baddest fucking news on the airwaves.

  “You’re pretty battered and bruised, Mr. Caplin,” she said, not even mentioning the fact that I was paralyzed. “You’ve got multiple breaks in your ribs and arm, your jaw has a hairline fracture, and your spine… Well, there is significant swelling that is placing pressure on your spinal cord. We won’t know much until it’s had a chance to settle.” She shook her head, her eyes brimming with sadness. “They just left you out on the footpath.”

  “What?” I blinked hard at her. As if not being able to feel my cock wasn’t bad enough, those assholes had left me on the street? I blinked again until all I could see was the doctor’s pretty red hair.

  “Some friends you have,” she said, shaking her head. “At least they put you on a spinal board. That saved your life.” She flipped open the chart that had been hooked onto the end of the bed and scanned the mumbo jumbo inside.

  “I can’t feel my legs,” I said, something inside of me wanting to have her full attention again.

  “I know,” she replied, glancing back at me. “Right now, it’s a waiting game. Until that swelling subsides, we just don’t know…”

  “Don’t know if I’m permanently paralyzed or not?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  She looked away. Hooking the chart back onto the railing at the foot of the bed, she slipped her pen back into her breast pocket. She took a few steps until she was standing beside me, her hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I felt that.

  “What were you doing, Mr. Caplin? Do you remember what happened to you?”

  I’d gotten the shit beat out of me at an illegal underground fight, but I wasn’t a total idiot. Telling her would land me right in the path of the cops and even bigger trouble with The Underground. The least of my problems was being fucking paralyzed if that happened. Dr. Walsh was trying to empathize with me, bring herself down to my level so I trusted her. Problem was, I never trusted anyone in my entire life.

  I turned my head and stared out the window at the blue sky beyond. There were no clouds, just endless color.

  The doctor’s hand fell away, and her white coat rustled as she moved away from the bed.

  “We’ll be doing some tests later today to further determine the best treatment plan for you,” she said. “Now that you’ve had some time to rest, we’ll take you down for an additional CT scan on your spine to make sure nothing else is happening.”

  Fuck this. Fuck my life. “How long have I been here?” Wasting away in a hospital bed like a fucking failure.

  “A couple of days.”

  “Days?” I asked, turning my gaze back to her with a scowl.

  “You’re very lucky to be talking to me right now,” she said, reacting to my pissed-off aura. “Most patients who come into the ER with your type of injuries aren’t as lucky. We need to intubate most of them and cut open their skulls. Just remember that. Most people don’t have all expenses paid private rooms, either.”

  She straightened up, smoothing down her coat and her frosty exterior.

  All expenses paid? I frowned, my head starting to ache.

  “Does your head ache?” she asked, moving closer. She smelled nice, and up close where I could see her better, she wasn’t pretty…she was beautiful. If I could feel my legs, I’d be chasing her but not in this life.

  I narrowed my eyes, fully intending to take the headache and just deal with it.

  “Now is not the time to depend on your pride, Mr. Caplin,” she said curtly. “Does your head hurt?”

  “Yeah,” I said through a sigh. The doctor with fire for hair had bite in her. Sparks would suit her if I were cocky enough to call her that to her face. “A bit.”

  “I’ll have a nurse come in and give you something to help.” I was almost disappointed she wouldn’t be around to stick me with a needle, even if she was a little on the bitchy side. ”Rest up, Mr. Caplin. We’ll be back to see you later.”

  I watched her move away and disappear behind the curtain, the scent of her perfume lingering in her wake—citrus.

  Closing my eyes, it felt like only a second had passed when I felt someone leaning over me. Glancing up, I couldn’t help sighing when I saw an older nurse brandishing a syringe standing beside the bed. She wasn’t exactly in my age range, and she wasn’t exactly Dr. Walsh.

  “What?” the nurse asked, shoving the needle into one of the tubes that were sticking out of me. “Expecting someone prettier?”

  3

  Holly

  Being a doctor isn’t the greatest career when you want to make friends.

  Maybe because we stare into the face of death every single day and it’s a constant reminder of our mortality. Every person we end up caring about is just another who will be lost somewhere down the line.

  Car accident. Cancer. Heart attack. Old age.

  So, when I decided to pack up my life in New York and move to Melbourne, it didn’t bother me that much. People got sick wherever you went, and they needed help just as much as they did anywhere. I didn’t want to publish papers or do groundbreaking research. I was always the shy kid who went about things quietly and shrugged off achievements. When I became a surgeon, I just wanted to fix broken bones. That was it. No grand plan to rule the world.

  I grew up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane and moved to the US when I was a teenager. My dad was a big-time surgeon, and like it was the family business, I was destined for medical school at Colombia University and then an internship at the biggest hospital in Manhattan. Not that I minded. I wanted to be a surgeon.

  My life had been squashed within the confines of one tiny island that was far too full of the one thing I was trying to escape. Melbourne seemed like a nice place. They offered me a great job, and the weather and people seemed great, so I went there. In a way, it was a homecoming.

  Then there was the selfish reason I’d left. The one I’d never thought would ever happen to me in a million years. I wanted to get away from my selfish, cheating a-hole of an ex-boyfriend. I’d forgotten why I sacrificed my happiness for a jerk who fucked nurses in the on-call room while I was in twelve-hour surgeries. I forgot the reason I went into medicine in the first place. I forgot who I was meant to be.

  All the great upheavals in life had a trigger. This was mine.

  Dumping my tablet on the nurses’ station, I sighed.

  Running my hands through my red hair, I fixed my ponytail back into place. Freckles, brown eyes, and hair, lots of hair, was pretty much it when it came to Holly Walsh, orthopedic surgeon with a chip on her shoulder…and high levels of the reddish pigment pheomelanin and relatively low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. That was bio-garble that meant I was just another ginger chick.

  “What’s up, Blue?”

  I glanced up as Doctor Lisa Gunner appeared next to me like a poltergeist. Next to me, she was my total opposite, in looks and temperament. She was this tall, olive-skinned, chestnut-haired, beauty with a happy-go-lucky attitude. If she weren’t a trauma
surgery resident, she’d be in the Miss Universe pageant. The only thing that made my pride feel a little better was the fact we had to wear the same shapeless blue scrubs and white lab coats.

  Ever since I’d arrived at the hospital, she’d taken it upon herself to declare that she was going to be my best friend. I didn’t mind considering this job was lonely on a good day. Having an ally inside the hospital corridors was a very good thing, especially when you lost a patient or made a costly mistake…and they did happen. Surgeons thought they were gods, but at the end of the day, we were only human.

  Gunner had started calling me Blue, Aussie slang for a red headed stunner like me, from day one, and despite trying to convince her to call me Holly, she still insisted on using her own nickname. I just lived with it now.

  “Just a patient,” I replied. “I should know better, it isn’t personal, but sometimes they just get to me with their jerky behavior.”

  “Who?” she asked. “The hottie? He’s fully awake now? I just saw you come out of there.”

  I scowled. “How can you tell? His face is all cut and bruised.”

  “I witnessed the abs in the ER if you’re forgetting already,” she declared. “Cut from marble.”

  “Like that’s an indicator,” I muttered.

  “Why so blue, Blue?”

  “I don’t know.” Turning, I leaned my back against the bench. “I can’t stop thinking about how I found him out there. He didn’t seem surprised at all when I spoke to him just now.”

  Before Gunner could reply, one of the interns assigned to ortho appeared. Harper was his name. Tall, lanky, fresh out of med school and still wearing diapers. Good kid, a little too eager to please for my taste, but he seemed to get stuff done when I needed it.

  “They can squeeze you into CT at three,” he said, glancing at Gunner and instantly flushing red. Pretty much every man in the place turned scarlet when they stood before her, a fact I tried not to be jealous of. I didn’t need another douche manwhore in my life, thank you very much.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll get you to assist, so make sure you’re back here with plenty of time to wheel the patient down.”

  Harper’s eyes widened with unmasked pleasure. “Sure thing.”

  Interns were so wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. Everything got their juices flowing, and a part of me missed the thrill of discovery that came with the gig. Now this whole medicine thing was just routine. I loved it, but I’d pretty much seen it all. It was totally inappropriate, but I longed for a rare bone tumor or an impossible to fix break to be wheeled into the ER so I could get my hands really dirty.

  I didn’t mind being on Mr. Caplin’s case. I’d been clocking up some ER hours when I found him out on the street, so I’d claimed him when he was a John Doe. He looked like he’d been beaten by a group of men. His injuries were extensive and pointed to a group bashing, but the thing that no one understood was why he was secured to a spinal board. There was way more to his story than met the eye. He’d have to open up eventually, either to the police, who were waiting for him to stabilize enough for a round of questions, or to me.

  We wouldn’t have even known his name if it weren’t for the man who’d come in the morning after and left Mr. Caplin’s belongings…and a sizeable check to cover any expenses.

  “You’re daydreaming,” Gunner said, waving her hand in front of my face.

  I blinked, shook my head, and snatched up my tablet.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I’m just thinking about that guy.” I glanced over my shoulder toward Mr. Caplin’s room.

  “I knew it,” she chortled.

  “No, nothing like that,” I murmured. “Just the whole situation. The way I found him, the guy who mysteriously paid for his treatment…all of it. I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “It’s not our job to go poking around in their business,” Gunner said, leaning against the bench. “We patch ‘em up and ship ‘em out. Let the cops handle it.”

  Sighing, I picked up my tablet, brought the screen to life, and began flicking through the list of patients I had to see for the day.

  “Take it easy, okay?” Gunner said, knocking her shoulder against mine. “Don’t get too wrapped up in Caplin. He’s got that bad boy look.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Last thing I need is one of those.” Pushing off the bench, I wandered away. “Catch you later, Gunner. I’ve got a patient to check up on.”

  “Don’t we all,” she replied with a wave.

  Striding down the hall, I pushed Mr. Caplin and his case to the back of my mind. Walking into my patient’s room, I stifled a laugh as I caught sight of him inhaling a pot of green jelly like it was hard drugs.

  “Mr. Simons,” I said, smiling at the elderly man who was sitting up in bed brandishing a plastic spoon.

  “Red,” he said, waving his spoon at me. “How is my favorite Doctor?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I am. I’m here to see you.” I picked up his chart and flipped through the pages, making sure that the nurses had been marking down his meds.

  “I’m fine, lass,” he said. “They’ve got me up moving or should I say shuffling.” He laughed. “I may be slow on my feet, but I’m quick up here.” He tapped the spoon against his temple.

  At seventy-nine, Mr. Simons just had a double hip replacement, and at first glance, you wouldn’t know it. He was sharp as a tack and doubly cheeky. There were always grumpy patients, and then there were the ones who lapped up the attention like it was going out of fashion. They meant well, they were just a little lonely, and they brightened my day a little with their cheeky one-liners. That was Mr. Simons.

  “Well, if you’re done with your jelly, I’ll check your lungs and heart.”

  “My ticker is fine,” he said, waving me off.

  “It’s standard procedure, Mr. Simons. You know the drill.”

  Placing the cup on the table, he sat up straight and pulled down the front of his hospital gown. “Do your worst, Sarge,” he said. “I can take it.”

  Chuckling, I took the stethoscope from around my neck and placed the earpieces into my ears. Warming up the chest piece against my sleeve, I placed it on the right side of his chest.

  Laying my hand on his shoulder, I said, “Take a deep breath for me.” He breathed in. I listened to the air filling his lungs and then whooshing out. Moving to the left side, I asked him to do the same again.

  “You’re fitter than a twenty-year-old,” I declared.

  “Never smoked in my life. Worked the farm since I could walk,” he said proudly.

  “Which is how you got here,” I said, smiling.

  “I’m on my own, lass, and it makes me happy. Leave an old man to milk his cows in peace.”

  I smiled kindly at him as I moved the chest piece over his heart and counted the rhythm. Strong as an ox.

  “What about you? You’re a pretty young thing,” Mr. Simons said, glancing up at me as I helped him settle back into his pillows. “Is there a husband? A boyfriend?”

  Instantly, my mind went to Mr. Caplin. It seemed silly to call him that when he was younger than I was. Only three years, Holly. Twenty-seven to my thirty. I didn’t know if it was a doctor thing, but I could see that underneath all of the bruises and breaks he was handsome. I also didn’t know anything about him other than the fact he was a grumpy asshole who was butt-sore because he was in hospital.

  “There’s a sparkle in your eye, lass,” Mr. Simons declared. “I knew a pretty young thing like you wouldn’t be single. You never are.”

  I sighed. Poor Mr. Simons had it the wrong way around. I was nothing but an idiot when it came to relationships. Falling for the wrong guy and running to the other side of the world to get away from him. That was really well adjusted.

  “You just keep your cheek to yourself,” I said with a laugh.

  My thoughts turned back to Mr. Caplin, and I began to wish that time would go faster. Three p.m. was too far away.

  Bidding Mr. Simons a half-hear
ted ‘bye for now’, I wandered down the hall to visit my next patient. I was just drawn to the chiseled bad boy because of the mystery. Yeah, it was the mystery.

  I stood outside of Mr. Caplin’s room and took a deep breath.

  Stepping inside, I wondered if his mood had calmed down some. I shouldn’t hold it against the guy. He had just woken up and found out he might be paralyzed from the waist down. Benefit of the doubt and all.

  Rounding the curtain, I found he was awake, and his eyes were bright considering his injuries. He obviously took care of himself to have sprung back so quickly.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” he said, watching me. “I thought you’d get one of your minions to wheel me around.”

  “Feeling a little brighter this afternoon, Mr. Caplin?” I asked.

  He let his gaze roam up and down my body. I wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find considering I was wearing a pair of unflattering blue scrubs.

  “This is Dr. Harper,” I declared, gesturing to the young intern as he rounded the curtain and began readying Mr. Caplin for transport. “He’s got the lovely job of wheeling you down for your CT scan.” He glanced at the intern and scowled. What was that all about? “We’re going to check the swelling around your spine and get your arm checked out so we can change that splint for a cast.”

  Caplin grunted, seeming a little blasé about the whole thing.

  “How’s your head?” I went on, drawing his gaze back to mine. When I was flashing a light in his eyes to check his pupil response in the ER, I noticed his eyes were green, but now that he was awake and very much alert, they were really green…like emeralds. Against his battered face, they stood out even more, and I couldn’t look away.

  “Better,” he said in his deep rasp, his lip curling into a slight smile.

  Shit, he thought I was checking him out. I was checking him out.