by Amity Cross
New York? Shit, I’d never been outside of Australia. The more she talked about Sparks and how wonderful she was, the smaller I felt. The big-time doctor would never fall for the small-time underground fighter.
“This joint seems like a bit of a step down if you ask me,” I drawled. “No offence.”
Dr. Gunner grinned. “None taken.”
Why the hell would she do that? There were probably better jobs in bigger, shinier hospitals than this hunk of junk. Was she running from something she wanted to forget? I was reading too much into it.
“What does your girlfriend think about you asking all these questions about another woman?”
I almost choked on my own spit, and I lowered my gaze. “There is no one,” I replied, the words spilling out before I could stop them.
“A guy like you with no girlfriend?” Dr. Gunner slow whistled. “I’ll have to tell Walsh.”
I narrowed my eyes but didn’t bite any further.
“So when can I get out of here?” Sparks had said a couple of days, and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t fibbing. Why she would was beyond me. If she wanted to get together, all she had to do was ask, and I’d come running. I was into danger like that.
Shit, if Sparks were interested, it was just to slum it. I should just keep to my own kind because a woman like her would ruin me if she chucked me back after her fling. I was already too interested for my own good.
“They’ll do a final assessment tomorrow and put you through your paces,” Dr. Gunner replied. “Then they’ll probably keep you in overnight to make sure your body can take it.”
“So another two nights in the hotel?” Same as Sparks’s timeline. Dammit.
She laughed and batted her eyelashes. “At least.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yay.”
She put her hands on her hips and said, “Well, you’re all good here, Mr. Caplin. I’ll leave you to it for now.”
“The cross-examination’s over, huh?”
Her lips curled into a smile, and she started to giggle. “Caught red handed.”
“Dr. Walsh is great and all,” I began, but she held up her hand to stop me.
“She’s top shelf.”
I didn’t know what I was going to say to convince her to stop meddling, but I clamped my mouth shut because some stupid fucking part of me wanted to drag this stupid flirtation out for another two days.
She smiled, letting me know she understood that I was interested. “I’ll see you around, Mr. Caplin.”
As soon as Dr. Gunner left me to my own devices, I began thinking about Sparks’s tits. So what if she just wanted to fuck a couple of times? Was that a bad thing?
Then I thought about her tight, little ass and how smooth her legs would feel wrapped around my waist as I fucked her against the wall. Dammit, as I fucked her on this hospital bed. I thought about how she would taste, how her lips would feel on mine, the sounds she’d make, and how slick she’d be when I slip my fingers inside her.
Shit. Her pussy. My cock in her. If I weren’t sitting on a hospital bed with an entire building of people outside my door, I would’ve given myself a hand job.
Who was thinking about conquests now? It’d been a couple of weeks since I’d had my dick in something. That was all.
As my cock calmed down, I thought about all the things Dr. Gunner had revealed. Asking questions about Sparks behind her back when I wouldn’t answer any of hers to her face?
I was such a hypocrite.
9
Holly
“He’s not responding.”
I let my head fall into my hands and sighed, tension tight across my shoulders. Fuck it all to hell.
Sammy, the kid with the impossible tumor, had been undergoing an aggressive regime of treatment over the past week, and by now, something should have been happening. I wasn’t expecting a miracle, just a little shrinkage around the spinal cord so we could slice that fucker out without causing permanent damage to the little boy’s body.
“We might have to bite the bullet and operate,” Archer said from the seat next to mine. “It’s not ideal. I’d have liked to have shrunk the tumor a little more before attempting it.”
“It was never going to be ideal,” I retorted, staring back up at the new lot of scans that had just been rendered. “A millimeter or two at best. Any advantage…”
I hated cases like these. Ones that seemed to have no good outcome no matter what cutting-edge technology or treatment was available. You just couldn’t fix everyone, and when it was a kid with their whole life ahead of them…it just broke my heart. Shattered it.
“I’m scheduling the surgery for tomorrow,” Archer said. “I’d like you to assist.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked, my mouth dropping open. “So soon?”
“His parents want it, and there’s no point putting it off. It’s now or never, Hol.”
He knew the score better than anyone else. How he could work in neuro, I’d never know. Bones were clean-cut. They broke and I set them back in place or reconstructed them. The human brain was another beast entirely. There was so much we didn’t understand about the organ that drove our whole bodies, the same organ that made us who we were. Without the mind, the body couldn’t live.
I nodded. “I’ve come this far. Let’s give this kid the best shot we can.”
Archer smiled despite the dire straits we were in. “That’s what I like to hear.”
I shrugged. “Fight till the end or not at all.”
“Is that some kind of New York Yankee motto?” he asked with a lopsided grin.
“It’s a Dr. Walsh motto,” I retorted, rising to my feet. “Let me know when you schedule the surgery, and I’ll make sure my patients are looked after.”
“No worries.”
Leaving Archer to pine over his scans, I ventured back upstairs to continue my rounds. I was in a daze, flipping through patient charts when the report from Josh’s physical appeared. Shit. That was this morning, and I’d forgotten, what with all the chaos around Sammy.
Scanning the report, everything looked fine. Better than fine. Josh Caplin was the image of health…apart from the broken arm, busted jaw and ribs, and the cuts and bruises still healing on his face and torso. Heart rate was fine, blood pressure was A-OK, physical strength was excellent. He was walking well and could run without pain in his back. He was ready to go home.
An unexpected flash of disappointment ran through my body. Once he left the hospital, he would be gone, but there was no real reason to keep him here anymore. Tomorrow morning, he’d go home and wouldn’t be back until he needed his cast off. I probably wouldn’t see him then considering it was an outpatient thing. X-ray and a saw. Any intern or ER resident could do that.
Sighing, I signed his discharge forms on the tablet screen and flicked them off to administration.
I was still in a daze when I heard my name being called.
“Oh, Holly!” Nurse Judy exclaimed as I passed the nurses’ station.
“What’s up?” I asked, doubling back, wondering if it had something to do with Josh.
“We’re getting ready to discharge Mr. Simons tomorrow,” she replied. “We just need your signature.”
“Oh, his home visit went well?” I asked, a little disappointed it wasn’t about the hot-tempered man across the hall.
“Very. His daughter and her husband have done the place up for him, and they’ve got a nurse to come and give him a hand.”
“Good. I’m glad. I’ll go pay him a visit now and get those forms signed for you.” Mr. Simons would be pleased about going home to his farm. Taking him away from it would do him more harm than good considering he still had enough strength to get around himself. He just needed a little help slowing down, was all. He’d need assessment as he went, but it was to be expected.
I let Judy go and wandered down to his room to see how he was faring with the news. Truthfully, I had a soft spot for the old guy. But then again, so did most of the nursing staff he’d sweet-tal
ked since he’d gotten here.
When I walked into Mr. Simons’s room, he straightened up, his eyes sparkling.
“How is your handsome patient, lass?” he asked when he saw it was me.
“I’m more interested in how you’re doing,” I replied, standing beside the bed. “Judy tells me your home visit went well.”
“Or so they tell me,” he said. “They put up all those bars for them old codgers.”
“Whatever will help you stay at home.” I gave him a wink. “I better sign that paperwork then, huh?”
“I’m not leaving until you give me an update,” he declared with a pout. “It’s better than Days of Our Lives in this place.”
Laughing, I pulled up a chair beside his bed and got comfortable. I had some time to spend with him before I had to go and plan for Sammy’s surgery.
“I haven’t been to see him since the other day,” I said. Since he snapped my head off for prying. I couldn’t blame him, but it still hurt the edges of my heart. Stupid crush.
“If he gets you going, then you should ask him on a date. I hear the young ones do that these days.”
I shook my head, smiling at the notion. I wondered if things would’ve been easier in those days without phones or social media. People actually had to talk to one another, which seemed to be an art the human race was forgetting as technology advanced. Chatting to a screen was definitely not the same thing in my book.
“I don’t think he’s the dating type, Mr. Simons.”
“More fool him,” he declared stubbornly. “You find a good woman, you keep her. You’re a big-time doctor, lass. You’re a keeper.”
I flushed and said, “Thanks.”
“Talking is the best thing,” he went on. “When I first met my Elizabeth, I was exactly the same, but she fell for me all the same. I was a stubborn old bastard, but I got a ring on her finger quick smart,” he said. “I didn’t want to talk to her, but that’s what makes a great marriage—talking. It took me a long time to figure it out.”
I sighed, thinking about the mess I’d left behind in New York. “Seems simple in hindsight, doesn’t it?”
Mr. Simons smiled sadly at me. “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t miss my Elizabeth,” he said. “But I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. It happened the way it was supposed to. Warts and all.”
“How did you two meet if you don’t mind me asking.”
“It was nineteen fifty-five,” he said, a wistful look in his old eyes. “I was a tough guy back then. Eighteen and thought I was all that and then some. I rode a motorcycle, worked on it with my own two hands out back on the farm where my father couldn’t find it.”
An image of a younger version of the old man came to mind—slicked back hair, leather jacket, and an old Triumph motorcycle—with a pretty girl on his arm. “Mr. Simons, were you a greaser?”
He laughed and winked. Totally was.
“Tough guys didn’t talk about their feelings,” he continued. “Elizabeth had lost her father in the war, and her family had fallen on hard times. Our farm was doing well, so I suppose that’s why she thought going steady with me was a good idea. Lucky for me, I knew a good thing when I saw it even though I was too young and stupid to know how to keep her happy.”
“But she stuck around, regardless?” I asked, hooked on every word.
“My future was in my family’s dairy farm, not on the back of a motorcycle, and she knew it. Her mother wanted stability and for her to marry a man who could provide for her. On first glance, she forbade her to see me. Elizabeth and I were already madly in love, so it only made us want each other more.”
“You think my life is juicy?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “I feel like I’m in a Nicholas Sparks movie.”
“That Notebook film?” Mr. Simons asked. “That rubbish? We were the real deal, lass. I gave up the motorcycle when my father caught me riding home one night. Clipped me around the ears real good. Then I settled down and married Elizabeth. We were married fifty-three years. Would’ve been a lot more if I’d sat down and told her about my feelings. I was too keen on being a tough guy.”
“They don’t make them like they used to,” I mused, glossing over the fact that in a roundabout way he was trying to tell me to take a chance on Josh.
“My word, they don’t.”
“So, your farm?”
“Has been in my family for three generations,” he said. “Looks like I’ll be the last. What with all the big companies and their machines, it just ain’t the same. Hard to compete with that when you’re an old man and your kids want to learn computers. Good for them, I suppose. We do what we need to take care of our families at the end of the day.”
“You’ve got an amazing outlook on life, Mr. Simons. I’m envious.”
“No need to be envious, lass. Go out and grab the bull by the balls and give them a yank.”
I burst out laughing, my mood lightening significantly. “I’m going to miss your insights,” I declared. “But don’t take that as an invitation to come back.”
“As much as I like you, lass, I don’t want to come back here, either. In that, we agree.”
I thought over what Mr. Simons had said—that tough guys didn’t talk about their feelings. Was that why Josh clammed up any time I asked him something personal?
“What a conundrum,” he declared, pulling my attention back to him. “You have to open your heart to allow yourself to love, but the bad always wants to muscle in. It wouldn’t be worth it if it weren’t risky. It doesn’t just happen, lass. You have to make it.”
“You make it sound so cut and dried.”
“Just take the advice from an old man,” he said with a chuckle. “It’ll make me happy.”
“Okay,” I said, rising to my feet. “I’ll think about it.”
Bidding him good luck and farewell, I left Mr. Simons’s room, ready to get stuck back into my work on Sammy’s surgical plan. If Archer and I were going to operate tomorrow, then we were in for a mammoth day.
Wandering down the hall toward the nurses’ station, my mind went to the hurt I’d left behind in New York. I knew I was using it as an excuse not to push things with Josh, more so than my need to be professional as his doctor. What was the harm in talking to him? It might be just an innocent flirtation, or it might be the thing I was trying to find with every other guy who’d crossed my path in a romantic way.
Ever since I walked in on my boyfriend, or fiancé or whatever we’d been, screwing a nurse in the on-call room, I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone. At all. But now? The only person I wanted to talk to was Josh. Something inside of me wanted to edge closer, to let the wall I’d slammed around my heart crumble just the tiniest amount so I could see outside…
I wanted to talk to him, not because he didn’t have a choice in the matter, but because he seemed to genuinely want to know. Everyone in my life up to this point had been too embroiled in their own drama to listen to mine. I mean, who wanted to talk about that patient who died, right? That’s stuff only other doctors would get, and most of the time, they were stuck in their own little bubbles dealing with their own inflated sense of fear to listen to someone else’s.
Hesitating in the middle of the hallway, people wove around my prone form as I weighed up my options. There was only one when it got down to the nitty-gritty.
I should’ve gone to the on-call room and snatched a few hours’ sleep before tackling Sammy’s surgical plan again, but I shuffled down the hall, through the ward…right into Josh Caplin’s room.
I must’ve had a death wish.
10
Holly
I felt Josh’s gaze on me long before I found the courage to look up.
It seemed silly that he made me nervous with a single look, yet I could wrench a broken bone back into place in the middle of a chaotic ER.
Raising my gaze as I stood at the edge of the curtain, I met his emerald eyes with as much confidence as I could muster. There it was again. The zinging that let me know
my body was totally hot for him.
“Sparks,” he said, smiling at me like he hadn’t been an asshole the last time we’d seen each other. He’d shaved too but left a dusting of stubble behind. The scruff suited him down to the ground, and I couldn’t imagine him clean-cut at all.
“You’re certainly happy tonight,” I drawled, edging further into the room.
“Much better now that you’re here.”
“Still a flirt, I see.”
He winked. “You like it.”
I did, but I didn’t tell him that. He could work it out on his own well enough.
“Something need checking?” he asked when I hesitated.
“You don’t get any visitors,” I declared. “So I’m visiting.”
His lips curled into a grin, and he shook his head. “You’re a cheeky little thing.”
“I can go someplace else if you want me to.” I edged backward, and he straightened up.
“Pull up a seat,” he said a little too quickly. “I ain’t going anywhere.”
Sliding into the chair, I placed my tablet that held all my patient details in my lap and flicked the screen off. “So,” I began, not knowing where to start. “Are you going to tell me anything about yourself? Or is that still off limits?”
“There isn’t much to know, believe me,” he said wryly. “Not much that bears repeating.”
“I don’t believe that,” I replied, sinking back into the chair. “Everyone has a story.”
“What about you, Sparks? What’s your story?”
I dropped my gaze, the intensity of his making me uncomfortable.
“Well, aren’t we a right pair,” he drawled. “All physical.”
My cheeks turned red yet again. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I turned to mush around the guy, and for what? Because he was handsome? I’d had a lot of handsome patients over the years, but I was never too shy to look them in the eye. They’d never been quite so flirty, either.
“Are you always this shy?” Josh asked, breaking the awkward silence.
