by Scott, Laura
This trip was meant to be a way to introduce a little fun into Ethan’s life, but instead she’d been conked on the head, nearly drowned, and had bared her darkest secret.
And now she feared the line of friendship between them was already blurring beyond recognition. Worse, she didn’t care. For once, she wanted to do something for herself regardless of the consequences.
Even if those consequences meant that letting go of Ethan after he and Carly didn’t need her anymore would be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
ETHAN FIGURED if anyone deserved the Ironman award for maintaining control, it was him. Swimming, biking, and running was easy compared to surviving the day without touching Kate, like really touching her, or more, giving in to his desire to pull her close and kiss her until they both couldn’t breathe.
Yeah, he was quite the gentleman, all right. If not the Ironman award, then maybe the Boy Scout Badge of Honor? Surely, he deserved something for getting through the entire day without completely losing his mind.
Darkness had fallen, cloaking the car in a veil of intimacy as he drove along the non-crowded interstate highway toward home. The kids had fallen quietly asleep in the backseat, exhausted from hours of swimming and food. He figured the dent in his checkbook had been paid back double by the sound of Carly’s laughter and her rapt expression of enjoyment.
He glanced at Kate, seated beside him. It hadn’t taken long for her to tip her head back, resting against the seat, and fall asleep. She was quite the woman, bouncing back from her near-death experience with hardly a whimper. Those moments when he performed rescue breathing for her had seemed endless, but she’d brushed off his concern. Her head was no doubt throbbing, not to mention her shoulder, which she hadn’t murmured a single complaint about either. No, instead, she’d spent the afternoon trying to make him laugh with her goofy jokes.
A smile tugged at his mouth. He couldn’t think of anything except seeing her again, without Carly as a chaperone. But how to broach the subject? How long since he’d been out on a date? Years. Many years. He and Susan had been married for five years, getting married while he was in his second year of medical school, and they’d dated for two years prior to that. And she’d been gone for about a year now.
His gut twisted, and he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Nine long years. All right, so maybe he was out of practice. Things couldn’t have changed that much. All he needed to do was simply ask Kate out. For dinner. Or a movie. He frowned. There must be nice restaurants around here someplace, even if he couldn’t name one that didn’t include a children’s menu. What movies were playing? Were any of them any good? He had no clue. He’d need to ask around for advice.
Far too soon, he pulled into the Lifeline parking lot, where Kate’s car was waiting.
He gently shook her arm, waking her. Blinking, she lifted her head and quickly glanced in the backseat.
“Don’t worry, they’ve been out for quite a while,” he assured her.
“I guess I was, too. But thanks to my nap, my head already feels better.” She smiled. “Thanks for a great day, Ethan. I’d better get Tyler home. Shelly is going to wonder if we kidnapped him.”
When she moved as if to get out of the car, he put a hand on her arm. “Kate, I’d—that is . . . Would you like to go to dinner sometime?”
He could have kicked himself for being vague, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her schedule or, for that matter, his. He held his breath, waiting with insecure agony for her reply.
“Sure, I’d love to.”
“Great.” Relief washed over him. “I need to find a babysitter for Carly, so I’ll need time to work something out.”
“I understand. No rush. Whatever works for you.”
No rush? In his opinion, tomorrow was too long to wait. And her seemingly cavalier attitude made him frown. Still, they were both scheduled to work in the morning, so finding a sitter by tomorrow evening was out of the question anyway, especially at the last minute for a Saturday night. He hoped they wouldn’t have to wait another whole week for their date.
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned forward and brushed his mouth against hers. He’d been dying to kiss her all day, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation didn’t count.
His intention had been to keep things light, but she met him more than halfway. His pulse skipped when she kissed him back. His ego was soothed by her fevered response.
Just as quickly, she pulled away, slightly breathless. “See you in the morning.”
Kate darted out of his car and unlocked hers. While she started her car to warm up the engine, he pulled the sleepy Tyler out of the back seat and held him while Kate unlatched the booster seat so she could place it into her own vehicle.
The rest of the supplies were moved without fuss, and soon she drove off with a little wave.
Ethan stared after her for a long moment and resigned himself to the truth. Carly wanted Kate to be her best friend, but he wanted something far more. Desire zipped along his nerve endings like a wildfire feeding off dry grass.
Man. The idea of a real relationship tempted and scared him more than seeing Kate lying pale and lifeless in his arms.
He could only hope he didn’t get burned.
9
Ethan entered the debriefing room a few minutes before the start of his shift.
“There’s an ICU transfer waiting for a flight to Trinity Medical Center,” Reese informed him as he headed straight for the counter where the coffee was located. With a sinking heart, Ethan realized the coffee maker was empty. Belatedly, he remembered Reese wasn’t a coffee drinker, but considering the four hours or less of sleep he’d gotten last night, Ethan would have paid fifty bucks for one full pot.
“Is Kate here yet?” He tried not to gaze longingly at the empty carafe. If only he had five more minutes to make even a half a pot . . .
“I’m here.” Kate’s cheerful presence arriving at that moment dashed his hopes of making coffee while they waited for her. “Good morning. I hear there’s a flight waiting. Why didn’t the night shift crew go?”
“The call came in a half hour ago, but there was some glitch on the part of the accepting physician,” Reese explained. “Everything is fine now, though.”
“Okay.” Kate nodded. “Anything going on with the weather we need to know about?”
“Clear and cold, very little wind and no fog.” Reese summed up their flight status concisely. “If you guys are ready, let’s roll.”
“We are,” Kate answered for both of them, although when Ethan grimaced, she sent him a questioning look. As they followed Reese out to the hangar, she fell into step beside him. “Are you all right? You look awful.”
“Gee, thanks. I needed to hear that.” He spoke dryly. “Don’t worry about me, I’m only suffering from caffeine withdrawal. What do we know about our patient?”
“Not much.” They reached the chopper and climbed aboard. “I’ll fill you in after takeoff.”
Ethan settled into his seat and pulled his helmet over his head. He watched as Kate strapped herself in as well. Despite his fatigue, he was thrilled to be flying with her today. He could honestly admit he didn’t regret having walked away from his surgical residency a little over a year ago. Every shift on the Lifeline chopper brought a new challenge. Emergency medicine suited him far more than he’d ever realized.
He cued his microphone, listening as Reese communicated with the paramedic base. Apparently, they were heading to Plainville Hospital, located just south of Green Bay, so he knew at least that much. He grinned when Reese smoothly lifted the helicopter into the air. Planes were fine, but the real flying was like this, in a chopper, rising perpendicularly from the earth and turning on a dime.
He loved it.
“Our patient is a sixty-five-year-old woman who was hospitalized with severe pneumonia, which quickly turned into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.” Kate’s voice in his headset caught his atten
tion.
He nodded, all too familiar with the syndrome. ARDS was an unfortunate yet relatively common complication of pneumonia. The problem was that once ARDS set in, weaning a patient was often extremely difficult, requiring a lengthy ICU stay.
And often resulted in death.
“So why the request for a transfer?” he asked.
Kate reviewed the sketchy notes left from the night shift. “Apparently, our patient lives here in Milwaukee, and her granddaughter is a nurse at Trinity. Per the granddaughter, Plainville Hospital cannot meet her grandmother’s complex medical needs.”
“Ah, I see. The granddaughter pulled strings.” Not that Ethan blamed her. If his grandmother was still alive, he’d pull strings to get her transferred to Trinity, too. He stifled a yawn. Man, what he wouldn’t give for some coffee.
“What’s wrong? You look frazzled.” Through the shield of her helmet, Kate’s eyes were deeply green and luminous with concern.
“Carly woke up around two in the morning from a bad nightmare,” he admitted. “I didn’t get back to sleep until four thirty, and the alarm went off at five fifteen. So yeah, I guess I didn’t get much sleep. Nothing new.”
“A nightmare? About what?”
Rats. Ethan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. If his brain had been firing on all cylinders, he wouldn’t have mentioned the nightmare. Now he couldn’t think of a way to avoid the truth. “She, ah, dreamed about you. At the pool.”
“Oh, Ethan.” Kate audibly gasped. “She had a nightmare about me? Almost dying?”
Grimly, he nodded. Carly had awoken, screaming for Kate, repeating over and over again, Don’t die, Kate, please don’t die! Until he managed to wake her up and assured her that Kate was fine.
“How awful. The poor thing. Ethan, you need to get her a dream catcher.”
A frown wrinkled his brow. “A what?”
“A dream catcher. The Native Americans believed that hanging a dream catcher above your bed draws all the bad dreams out of your head.” At his incredulous expression, she sadly shook her head. “I know, you don’t believe in such fairy tales. Why am I not surprised? Can’t you just put logic aside for a while and go with the flow?”
“A dream catcher has nothing to do with logic or going with the flow.”
Kate let out a snort. “Did you ever once think that Carly’s mischievous behavior could be related to her need to believe in fairy tales? A need for her to believe her hopes and dreams have a chance to actually come true?”
“I don’t know.” How did they get from Carly’s nightmare to psychoanalyzing his life? Defensive now, he frowned. “I read her stories. Cinderella is a fairy tale.”
“But you don’t believe in having a happily ever after.” Kate’s voice was confident. “I bet you barely hide your cynicism.”
“I’m not cynical, for Pete’s sake.” He sighed. This was far too intense a conversation after a night of broken sleep and no morning coffee. “I’ll look for a dream catcher, all right?”
Kate settled back in her seat with a satisfied expression on her face. “Great idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Ethan inwardly groaned. Thankfully, Reese interrupted them. “ETA ten minutes.”
“So soon?” Kate’s voice held surprise. “They didn’t call us with report.”
“Forgot to mention, the doctor was called to another emergency. He asked if he could give you an update when you arrive,” Reese informed them.
“We don’t seem to have a choice. I hope the patient is stable enough for a transfer,” Kate said in a wry tone.
Ethan silently echoed her sentiment. There was nothing worse than being told one thing, then arriving at the hospital to find a completely different picture—usually for the worse. He understood that smaller hospitals didn’t have as many resources as large, academic medical centers did. But transport companies like Lifeline didn’t appreciate losing patients en route.
It tended to be bad for business.
Reese landed the helicopter, and Ethan made sure he was the first one off so he could pull the gurney out of the back without Kate’s help. She hadn’t mentioned her shoulder injury, but he suspected she was still bothered by it. Although, she hadn’t let it stop her from enjoying the waterpark yesterday. She also hadn’t allowed her near drowning and head bruise to interfere with her determination to have fun either.
He followed Kate’s lead, having never been to this hospital before. She knew where the ICU was located, and they were quickly escorted to their patient’s bedside.
“Oh no.” Kate’s eyes widened in shock when she reached the bedside. “What’s her name?”
“The patient?” Ethan glanced at the armband around the woman’s wrist. “Lucille Johnson. Why?”
“Not Miranda? Are you sure?” She bent forward to review the name on the wristband for herself as if she didn’t believe him. “Good. Her name is Lucille, not Miranda. That’s good.”
“Are you all right?” It was Ethan’s turn to be concerned. Maybe the bonk on her head had been more serious than he’d thought. “I take it she looks like someone you know?”
“Yes, but I’m fine. Sorry. My mistake. I’ll get her transferred onto our equipment.” Kate busied herself with the various cables and tubing.
Ethan turned his attention to a harried physician who approached. “Dr. Lane? I’m Dr. Weber. Can you fill me in on Lucille’s care?”
“Certainly.” The young doctor looked familiar, and Ethan wondered if the guy had graduated in the class ahead of him. He listened intently as Dr. Lane gave him details about the woman’s medical course including the various antibiotics she’d received. Lane also showed Ethan the most recent set of blood gases, along with her vent settings. After a few minutes, Ethan concluded the patient, while still too hypoxic for his peace of mind, was probably stable enough to fly.
“I wish her oxygenation was better,” Ethan murmured to Kate, showing her the most recent lab results. “But we should be all right to transport.”
“Yeah, her blood gases could be higher, too,” Kate agreed. She programmed the last IV pump, then turned toward him. “I’m ready when you are.”
“All right, let’s go.”
Ethan took the brunt of pushing the patient—luckily, she wasn’t very heavy—as they made their way to where Reese waited in the helicopter. Kate stepped forward as if to help lift the gurney through the hatch, but Reese met them outside the chopper, grasping her arm and shaking his head. She backed off, and Reese took over the job of helping Ethan lift her into the back hatch.
When they were finally airborne, Kate cued her mic. “My shoulder is much better. There’s no reason for you to keep babying me.”
“Have you gone to see the orthopod yet?” Ethan asked.
“No.” Kate narrowed her gaze as if daring him to argue.
“I’m not going to let you lift until you’re cleared by the orthopedic surgeon.” Why was it that doctors and nurses made the worst patients? Talk about not complying with her doctor’s recommendations. He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. When she opened her mouth, he held up his hand. “No. You know Jared will back me on this, Kate.”
“Fine. I’ll make the appointment.”
She was clearly irritated with him, so he busied himself with their patient. Probably not a good time to ask about her schedule to see when they could go out on a real date. He was off tomorrow, Sunday, but Carly had school on Monday morning. His spirits sank. There were all sorts of preparations to make before a school day, which made him think he might not be able to finagle a date until the following weekend.
Kate’s normally cheerful expression was still pulled into a frown as she worked. It didn’t bode well for him. Even once he managed to figure out a day he could get a babysitter and ask Kate out, he could only hope she hadn’t changed her mind.
KATE KNEW she was acting like a child, but she couldn’t help being annoyed with Ethan. Wasn’t she a flight nurse with medical knowledge? Shouldn’t she be the
judge of her shoulder pain? What would a doctor, especially an orthopedic surgeon, tell her anyway? Nothing except to rest and to try not to strain the joint until the pain was gone. You didn’t need an MD behind your name to figure that out.
Much of medicine was good old-fashioned common sense.
Her irritation with Ethan helped her to ignore the eerie physical resemblance between Miranda, Granddad’s new girlfriend, and the woman stretched out on the gurney before her. True, she’d only met Miranda the one time, but she wondered if Miranda had a sister named Lucille.
She made a mental note to ask her granddad the next time she spoke to him. It troubled her that Granddad had been acting odd lately, and she was pretty sure Miranda was partially the reason. First of all, the first few times she spoke to him, he hadn’t had any jokes to share with her, which in itself was abnormal. Then, on two separate occasions, she’d made plans to get together with Granddad, only to have him cancel at the last minute with some vague excuse she didn’t for one minute believe. She understood he had his own life and deserved to be happy, but since when had these transient women kept him from spending time with his family?
Since never.
Until now. Until Miranda. She mentally scowled. Maybe she needed to have a heart-to-heart with her granddad. This strange behavior was concerning. She wanted to get to the bottom of it before it was too late.
Too late for what, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the idea of her granddad falling deeply in love with someone he’d barely known for a few weeks bothered her.
“Kate?” Belatedly, she realized Ethan was speaking to her. “Did you hear me? I said her pulse ox is dropping, and I increased the oxygen on her ventilator to seventy percent.”
“Got it.” She made a notation on the flight record. “Seventy percent is pretty high.”
“Yeah. I know.” Ethan’s voice was husky through the headset, and she noticed his hand rested protectively on the patient’s frail shoulder. “I hope her sixty-five-year-old heart can take it.”
