by Caro Carson
Rude.
But no more rude than young Justin’s father. Alex had pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “That seems to be a popular question this afternoon. We’re a little busier than usual during South by Southwest. What’s brought you in today?”
“Where the hell is my phone?”
And shallow.
Nothing during the exam was changing his first impression of her. While he examined her ankle, she complained about the facility. She’d been placed in the overflow area, an older part of the emergency department where the beds were separated by curtains rather than walls. This was, according to the not-so-noble woman who’d provided the noble face of Princess Eva Picasso, utterly unacceptable.
“It’s also unavoidable,” Alex said. “By definition, overflow area implies that all the other rooms are full.”
“When my personal assistant gets back with my phone, she’ll have me moved.”
Alex raised an eyebrow on that one. Not many patients brought along a personal assistant, at least not this far from Hollywood. Still, a movie star’s personal assistant had exactly zero influence on how the emergency department of West Central Texas Hospital ran. Alex took the stethoscope from around his neck and inserted the ear pieces.
“Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t get to slip your hand inside this dress. It’s my ankle that hurts. Do you think I don’t know that you’re dying to tell everyone that you felt me up?” Her indignation dissolved into yet another coughing fit.
Sarcastic comments flashed through his mind. You’re right. The stethoscope works just fine if I stand three feet away and aim it at you. We doctors have been lying about that for centuries, but you’re the one who figured it out.
But he was here to provide medical care for a twenty-nine-year-old female patient, not to teach a lesson in sarcasm to a movie star. “I’ll be able to hear your lungs through the material. Would you like for me to call in a nurse anyway?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, but leaned forward a few inches, granting him limited access. “You can listen to my back. Then go see if my assistant has found my phone yet. Your Texas Rescue people are probably hiding it from her.”
Just provide medical care. Alex put the chest piece on her back, which felt like the back of any other human, whether male or female, attractive or ugly, famous or obscure. Provide care, then get her out of here.
He heard the crackles he’d expected to hear. He flipped the stethoscope to hang around the back of his neck again, then slid the curtains back on their metal rings. “We need to get some X-rays, but you won’t have to move to a wheelchair. An orderly will roll your gurney down to radiology. There’s a bit of a wait right now, but the nurse will be in to check on you periodically.”
“You’re planning on wheeling me around the hospital in this bed? No, no, no. You need to bring an X-ray machine up here, right after you put me in my own room.”
“That’s not the way it works here.”
“My privacy needs to be guaranteed. Be sure you send my assistant back as soon as you see her. She’ll handle everything.”
Alex left without another word, snapping the curtains shut behind him. If Sophia Jackson had that much faith in her assistant’s ability to make a hospital bow to her whims, then that assistant must be even more of a harridan than Sophia herself. Dr. Gregory planned to steer clear of her. As the only doctor on duty, he didn’t have time to spend deflating some puffed-up bit of Hollywood hot air.
His most senior nurse, Loretta, was coming on duty. He’d let Loretta handle Sophia Jackson’s personal assistant.
Alex wanted nothing to do with her.
Chapter Three
“Dr. Gregory, we have a problem.”
Alex kept writing his notes on the patient in room three, but he nodded to his nurse to continue. Loretta had worked in the ER for so long that nothing shook her up. If Loretta was concerned, then Alex was concerned.
“Go ahead,” he said, as he signed his name for the twentieth time today and tossed the paper into the in-box on the nurse’s station.
“They just roomed another patient in the overflow area.”
“That makes two. The overflow area holds eight.”
“I know, but the beds are only separated by curtains in overflow.” Loretta lowered her voice as if she were about to tell a secret. “Sophia Jackson is in one of those beds. We’d better do some rearranging. Her assistant is asking about HIPAA.”
HIPAA, or hippah, as everyone called it, governed medical privacy. The harridan of a personal assistant had arrived, and now she wanted to threaten his ER with privacy regulations, did she?
“You know that the curtained area is considered HIPAA compliant.”
“Yes, but Sophia Jackson is famous.”
Surely his best nurse didn’t expect him to move a patient just to pander to someone famous. For the second time this shift, he felt as he had when he’d first come to America. The culture shock had been extreme. To survive the jungle that was the American high school, he’d quickly dumped his cycling stars and learned who the heroes of American football were. He’d killed all trace of his Russian accent. He’d worn blue jeans and Dallas Cowboy T-shirts, but all of that had been camouflage. Surface-level changes.
Deep down, he’d never quite caught that American mindset. To this day, he didn’t understand the fascination with the famous. Of all the traits a person might have, fame was one of the most useless. In his old life, rank in the political hierarchy mattered. Wealth mattered, for money bought power, and both could assure safety. Smarts mattered—a smart man could be valuable to those who held rank. But fame? Fame didn’t put bread in your belly when you were hiding from corrupt government officials. Fame didn’t pay for passage on a rickety ship to a country that didn’t want you.
“You know people will overhear you,” Loretta said.
“Then I’ll try not to call out her full name too loudly as I ask for her autograph.”
“Be serious, Dr. Gregory.”
He was always serious, even when the sarcasm slipped out. Sophia Jackson was famous and frivolous and nothing more. She’d be in no danger if her name slipped out, but she didn’t need to worry: Alex was not a man who let names slip. He could remember a time when his mother’s life had depended on his ability to keep her name a secret.
He paused, mentally closing the door on unwelcome memories. “Every room is full because you’ve got only one doctor on duty, so let me get back to work. Sophia Jackson will survive with curtains instead of walls. I’ve already examined her, so there’s nothing medical for anyone to overhear, anyway. If she doesn’t want anyone to overhear her other types of complaints, then she can stop complaining.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Loretta, one more thing. When the soccer kid in room three goes for his X-ray, make sure he doesn’t cross paths with Sophia Jackson. He’s a big fan of one of her movies, and I don’t—”
“You wouldn’t want him to bother Miss Jackson.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t want Miss Jackson to ruin his image of her.”
“Understood. By the way, her personal assistant is going to want to know how we’ll keep her identity a secret while we roll her gurney down to radiology.”
“If Miss Jackson doesn’t want to be seen, then perhaps her personal assistant would care to throw a blanket over her head.”
“I don’t get paid enough to deliver that message.”
Alex sighed. “I’ll talk to her assistant myself.”
* * *
Grace was very aware that a new patient had been placed on the other side of the curtain, a woman who’d barely answered the nurse’s questions with more than a syllable. There was a man with her, too, who’d loudly done most of the talking. Now that the nurse had left them alone, he was keeping his voice to a vicious wh
isper, but Grace could still hear him.
She wished she couldn’t.
“You already know what I’ll do to you, bitch. You want to see what I’ll do to your kids?”
Grace looked at Sophia in a panic, but she was lying on her bed, twisted away from her, typing madly away on the precious phone Grace had retrieved.
The unseen man on the other side of the curtain was obviously trying to be quiet, but he wasn’t quiet enough for Grace’s ears. “You tell the doctor you fell down the stairs. Say it. Now.”
“I f-fell down the stairs,” the woman said. “But we don’t have stairs.”
“The effing doctor doesn’t know that, you dumb-ass.”
Grace was paralyzed in her vinyl chair. She’d be horrified if this were a movie scene, but this was even worse. This was real life, and she was no Sophia Jackson heroine. Grace didn’t know what to do.
“Say it again, like you mean it.”
“I fell down the stairs.”
“Smile when you say it. You get me in trouble, I will hunt your kids. You send me to jail, and they’re dead when I get out.”
Grace couldn’t move. Couldn’t make a noise. The man clearly didn’t know someone was sitting inches behind him on the other side of a cloth curtain. If she made a sound, he would.
What would he do? Would he hurt those children that were apparently waiting somewhere in a one-story house?
Frantically, she reached forward to tap the mattress of her sister’s gurney, but her sister only hunched her shoulders and kept tapping away on her screen.
“Don’t worry,” the woman said, sounding so pitiful as she tried to soothe the man who had hurt her, who was threatening her still. “Everything will be okay. You can trust me, you know you can. I would never want you to get in trouble. I’ll fix everything.”
On her gurney, Sophia coughed.
Grace froze.
There was utter silence on the other side of the curtain, and then the curtain was pushed aside. “Who the hell are you?”
She had to do something. Her sister’s back was to the angry man, so before Sophia could roll over and reveal her famous face, Grace jumped to her feet and faced him. “We’d like some privacy.” She dared to grab the curtain and whisk it shut, right in the man’s face.
The silence on the other side of the curtain was more frightening than the angry whispers had been. Her heart was already pounding out of her chest when she heard more curtains being pushed aside on their metal rings. Not hers—the ones next door.
“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Gregory. What brings you in today?”
“I fell down the stairs.”
Her sister chose that moment to emerge from her absorption in the phone. “How slow is this place? Didn’t you tell them to bring the X-ray machine up here?”
Frantically, Grace put her finger against her lips to silence Sophia. Shh, shh, shh...
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Grace leaned in close to her sister’s ear, so she could whisper. “I want to hear what they’re saying next door.”
“What for?”
She cringed. Every normally spoken word sounded like a trumpet blast to Grace. She could hear the man doing most of the talking next door. The woman’s voice sounded so timid. The third person, the one who’d said he was Dr. Gregory, had a better voice. Calm and confident. He spoke with the good cheer of someone who didn’t know his patient was in danger.
“We’ll need a few X-rays because you might have one or more fractures. There’s a bit of a wait for radiology right now.”
Sophia spoke loudly. “This X-ray is taking forever.”
Grace whirled around and pleaded for silence with her finger on her lips. It figured that Sophia had just now started paying attention.
Dr. Gregory kept talking. “While you’re waiting, Mr. Burns, you can get the paperwork taken care of. You’ll be able to leave sooner that way.”
The curtain rings made their sliding sound again.
“Loretta, perfect timing. Could you show Mr. Burns to admin while we’re waiting to take Mrs. Burns to X-ray? He needs to fill out the spousal consent forms.”
“The spousal consent forms? If you’ll just follow me, Mr. Burns.”
After another swish of curtain rings, the violent Mr. Burns was gone with the nurse.
“We’ll take care of you,” Dr. Gregory said to the woman. “It might have sounded like I was rushing you out of here, but you can stay as long as you need to.”
Grace held her breath, willing the woman to tell the doctor the truth while her attacker was gone. She heard only silence.
“I’ll be back shortly.” The doctor was leaving.
Grace needed to be brave. She should do something. Say something.
But she didn’t. She was no superhero. Maybe she could write a note and pass it to a nurse or something...
Behind her, Sophia called out. “Dr. Gregory.”
There was an audible sigh in the aisle. Then it was their curtain that was being pushed aside, and a man far younger than Grace had expected stepped into their little space. He was around thirty, bespectacled and bearded. Not the trendy kind of full beard that men in Hollywood were wearing this year, but the dark shadow of a man who’d perhaps worked a twenty-four-hour shift.
“Yes, Miss Jackson?” He sounded as tired as he looked.
Sophia began complaining. The doctor listened to her sister’s demands without a flicker of emotion on his face, without so much as a blink of his eyes behind his brown plastic eyeglass frames. His white overcoat looked too big on him. He didn’t look like a man, frankly, who could handle the vicious Mr. Burns, but—
But, actually, he did.
There was something very Clark Kent about him. Tall, dark and handsome could have described him if he were in Superman mode, but as Clark Kent, he was too unassuming to be eye-catching, not the way he stood with his hands stuffed in the square pockets of his lab coat. Still, although he might not have bothered to shave, his jawline was defined, and the blue of his eyes was only dimmed a little bit by the glare of the fluorescent lighting on his eyeglasses.
It was the look in those blue eyes that gave Grace hope. He saw right through her sister. He wasn’t flustered by her beauty and he didn’t look awed to have a movie star in his presence. In fact, he was looking at her with quiet disapproval. If he could see through the celebrity aura that surrounded Sophia Jackson, maybe he could see through Mr. Burns. Grace just needed to be brave enough to tell him what she’d heard.
“So, um, you’re her doctor?” she began, forcing herself to smile when it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do at the moment.
He turned that blue gaze directly on her. A small eternity of silence followed.
“Of course he is,” Sophia said, exasperated. “I told him you’d fix everything when you got here. I need a private room. These curtains are so ghetto.”
He didn’t take his eyes off Grace, but he raised one dark brow behind the brown frames. “You’re the personal assistant?”
Clearly, he wasn’t impressed with her. She felt badly about that, another little dagger of hurt to push through. “Dr. Gregory, could I speak to you somewhere else? Somewhere private?”
“No.”
Grace blinked. “I really need to speak to you alone.”
“There are no other rooms available, and there is nothing you can say that will make radiology move more quickly. As soon as her X-rays are complete, you’ll be discharged with treatment instructions, and you can seek out all the privacy you desire somewhere else.”
He left.
Sophia’s outrage drowned out Grace’s disappointment. She yelled “Doctor” once more, but the doctor wasn’t coming back.
Grace sank back into her chair, a failure.
“What do you think you’re doing, Grace? Go after him.” Sophia was loud for someone who prized her privacy. She gestured toward the ice packs on her leg. “I can’t get up and walk out of here. You have to.”
“He already said no.”
“This whole trip was your idea. Go fix it. What’s a personal assistant for, right?”
Chapter Four
Alex headed straight for the staff’s kitchenette. There were patients to be seen, lab results to read, decisions to be made, but he was only one man. He needed a break—and coffee. Just three minutes, that was all he’d give himself. Three minutes for a little caffeine and a chance to regain his emotional equilibrium after dealing with Mr. Burns, the scum who’d beaten his wife.
Gut churning, Alex walked past the coffee to the cramped locker room that was attached to the kitchen. The room barely had enough space for a few metal lockers and a single cot, but the door had a small sign which euphemistically declared it to be the physician’s lounge. He pushed a gym bag out of the way with his foot on his way to the sink. The water ran hot almost instantly.
The patient had not fallen down a flight of stairs, that much was obvious from her bruising. Alex had needed to pretend he believed her story, though. Abusers wouldn’t stick around after an accusation, and they often convinced their victims to leave before they could be treated. Alex had started the hospital’s official process, and he hoped the victim was ready to take advantage of the assistance the hospital could provide.
The system worked. He’d seen it work. But to use an American phrase, that first step was a doozy. The first step required Alex to smile and be cordial and shake hands with a man he was certain had beaten his own wife.
Alex scrubbed his hands in the sink. He was no actor, but he deserved an Academy Award for keeping up that facade of friendliness. To test his patience further, a real actor, Sophia Jackson, had decided to waste his time by chewing him out for problems that weren’t even problems.
Alex scrubbed harder. Hot water, soap and vigorous friction could kill almost anything.
The woman on one side of the curtain had been a victim of a crime. Sophia Jackson, on the other side of the curtain, had been a victim of nothing more than her own stupidity and stubbornness. According to the Texas Rescue volunteers who’d brought her in, she’d decided to cut short a tour of the rebuilt clinic by storming off the path, stomping over the orange netting that marked off the rubble left behind by last year’s floods. They’d called after her and warned her to stop, but the paramedic said she’d ignored everyone.
