Sam approached Sarah’s room quietly, wondering if maybe Annie was asleep. But he should have known better: she barely slept, he knew that. Mac had told him so, but Sam would have figured it out on his own – her beautiful eyes had purplish-blue circles under them, and the fine lines around her mouth and eyes had seemed to deepen and double in number over the past three days.
Idly, he wondered how old Annie was. He’d seen Sarah’s medical records of course, and so he knew that she was twenty-six and that Noah was her twin. Beyond that, he had no real idea about Annie… though he knew that she was a single mother. He’d found that out when he’d gently asked if he should get a nurse to call Sarah’s Dad.
“He’s out of our lives,” Annie had responded, showing a flash of anger. “Been out since my kids were eighteen.”
“No contact then?” Sam had said. “No reason at all to have him here?”
“None.” The word had a finality to it. “Thank you for asking though, doctor.”
So… she’d taken care of two young adults, which, in itself probably wouldn’t be all that challenging, really. After all, an eighteen year old wasn’t like an eighteen month old, or a child who needed to be shuttled to and from school, or who needed to be taken care of at home when sick. Eighteen was a functional, independent, young adult.
Except when that young adult was severely autistic.
Sam had talked to Jax a bit, since the man was practically camped out next to Sarah’s bed, day in and day out. Annie had to come and go, but Jax owned his own business – which turned out to be Dangerous Curves, that horrific dive bar frequented by criminal-types that sent so many patients Sam’s way – and he seemed to have pretty much thrown it at his staff and told them to deal with whatever.
Jax had told Sam that Sarah had practically raised her brother, and that Annie had struggled hard to pay the bills on a diner waitress’ salary. Noah was often at the hospital too, and Sam’s natural protective instincts had risen as he’d watched Jax with Noah. The older man was rough and tough and exactly the kind of guy that made Sam good and nervous normally, since he’d have laid significant amounts of money that Jax Hamill was into some pretty shady shit… but he was amazing with Noah. Truly gentle and kind, and he was endlessly good to Annie too. That warmed Sam, made him look at Jax with new eyes, and made him very grateful that Annie had the man in her corner.
God knows, she needed it.
Sarah wasn’t waking up. She also wasn’t showing any signs of waking up anytime soon. Maybe never.
Sam reached the room, paused outside. Sure enough, Annie was there with Jax and Noah. Jax was sleeping for once, and that didn’t surprise Sam even a little bit – Mac had told him that Jax was beside himself with anger and worry, and hadn’t slept more than an hour since Sarah had been attacked.
Noah was absorbed in a book of some kind, and he looked like he was a million miles away. Annie, though… Annie was nowhere but where she was. She was in that small, white, private room that Jax was paying for out of his own pocket, in it body and heart and soul. She was sitting and staring at her daughter, just sitting and staring and holding Sarah’s limp hand, and Sam knew that if Sarah could be reached by the force of a fiercely loving stare, then the young woman would open her eyes right now.
Sam entered the room slowly, not wanting to startle the woman from her reverie. “Annie?”
Despite his care, she still jumped a bit, swung her whole body around in the chair. “Oh! Oh… Doctor Innis.”
“Sam.”
“Sam,” she repeated wanly, and rubbed her eyes a bit. “Hello.”
“Doctor Sam!” Noah chirped, and they both looked at him. “Will Sarah wake up today, Doctor Sam?”
Annie gazed up at Sam, almost child-like in her desperate hope. When she saw Sam’s face, she drooped: shoulders, body, eyes, face. She just sagged in defeat for a few seconds before pulling herself back to a sitting position, and Sam admired her regal position, right there on that horrible plastic chair. She was like a queen on her throne: strong and composed.
And so, so damn beautiful in that calm strength.
“Not today, Noah,” Sam said quietly, then he gestured at the book. “What’s that?”
“Puzzles,” Noah said, already turning back to the page in front of him. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Maybe Sarah will wake up in a few days. OK?”
“OK,” Noah mumbled, then his tousled head dropped back over the puzzle book. “Maybe in a few days.”
Annie smiled at Sam now, and his heart jumped in his broad chest. It wasn’t that brilliant, shining smile that she’d given Mac, but it was warm and it was welcoming, and it was more than good enough. He was happy to take anything positive that she gave him, and so he’d take this small smile.
It’s more than good enough – for now.
“Want to step outside for a minute?” he asked her. “Just for a change of scene?”
“Oh,” she began. “Oh, I don’t think that I should –”
“We’ll stay right here, Annie. Right next to the door. Alright?”
She glanced at the open door, at the bustling hallway just past it, at the huge window facing her now. It occurred to her that she hadn’t actually taken the time to look out of that window, not once in three days. Now seemed like as good a time as any, she supposed, and she’d be able to look over her shoulder and get an unimpeded view of Sarah, Noah, and Jax.
She nodded, got to her feet slowly, wincing a bit. “Alright.”
He narrowed his brown eyes behind his glasses. “What hurts?”
“What?” She gazed up at him. “Uh… nothing.”
“You showed pain on your face,” he said. “Just now, when you stood up. What’s hurting, Annie?”
“Oh.” She looked bemused. “You doctors, huh? Miss nothing much, do you?”
Not when it comes to you, he wanted to say, but he contented himself with simply repeating: “So what hurts?”
“My lower back,” she admitted at long last. “I’ve handled more than twenty years of standing on my feet for at least ten hours a day and carrying heavy trays of food and booze, but sit me in this chair for three days, and I’m almost bent over double.”
Sam glared at the offending chair, resolved to find her something better. “I’ll speak to someone.”
“Oh, no. Don’t be silly.” She stretched, and he saw how her full, lush breasts pushed up against the thin material of her uniform blouse. The blouse was cheap and a faded pink from far too many washings and it clashed with her red hair, but he didn’t give a good goddamn. She looked lovely. “People around here have more important things to worry about than a visitor’s chair, Doctor Innis.”
“Sam,” he reminded her, ushering her towards the hallway now. “Sam, please.”
“OK.” She sighed as she stepped out into the hallway, then almost immediately spun around, almost as if she expected Sarah to have woken up in the time that it had taken her to cross the room. “So… any news, Sam?”
“I’m sorry.” He leaned back against the window ledge. “Not yet.”
She nodded again, looked at her hands. They were rough hands, worn from years of dishwashing and carrying things, from being burnt and strained. Still, he wanted to reach out, take one in his own large, capable hand. He wondered if Annie was a hand-holder; decided on the whole, probably not. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who wanted her hand held through anything in life.
“Here,” he said now, handing her the coffee. “I thought you might need this.”
“Oh!” She looked startled again. “Thank you… how much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” He grinned down at her from his considerable height. Annie wasn’t a little pixie, but he still towered over her. “I saw you come in early this morning, and figured that you could use it by now.”
“
You ain’t wrong, doc,” she said wryly as she opened the lid, peered in. She paused. “Is that – is that cinnamon?”
“Yep.” Sam grinned wider. “I know you love black coffee with a scoop of brown sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon.”
She blinked up at him. “How did you – I mean… I asked Jax for a coffee once when you were in Sarah’s room, I think… how could you possibly remember how I like my coffee?”
Because I listen when you talk, baby. I hear every single thing that you say – and I hear most things that you don’t say, too.
“I’m a doctor,” he said. “And a trauma surgeon. I’m all about noticing and remembering the details, Annie. Lives depend on it. Coffee orders, too.”
She gave a tiny laugh. “Yeah. That makes sense. I bet your brain is like a steel trap.” She took a sip of her coffee, sighed. “Thank you.”
“Sure.” He looked over at Noah and Jax, lowered his voice a bit. “How are they doing?”
She glanced over at them too, lowered her gorgeous eyes. “Well… I don’t know. Jax is – well. He’s angry. No, correction: he’s furious.” She looked up at Sam. “You saw his hand?”
“From when he tried to punch a hole through the brick wall down in the ambulance bay?” Sam asked. “Yes. Sometimes people need to express things physically, though it tends to be hell on the body when they do.”
“Yeah, no argument from me.” Annie drank some more coffee, and now she looked out the massive arched window at the vibrant early-autumn colors up on the Rockies. With a shock, she realised that Christmas was a mere three-plus months away, and she had literally no idea if this was going to be the first one without her daughter. She wrenched her mind away from the gloomy thoughts, reminded herself that she needed to stay positive for her children. “But he’s not doing well at all. And Noah is… well. I know that he may look like he hasn’t got a damn clue what’s going on, but make no mistake: he knows, and I mean exactly. He and Sarah, they have this… connection. She’s always been the only person who could really reach him, understand him, help him to change and cope. And he’s always known things about her – things she’s thinking and feeling – that he shouldn’t or couldn’t possibly know. But he does. Noah might not be great at expressing emotion… but he does feel it, and he does understand it. On some level.”
“I can tell,” Sam said. “And you? How are you, Annie?”
“Me?” She continued to stare up at the trees and mountains. “I’m fine. You know.”
“…Annie.” His deep voice was gentle.
“Yes?” Her eyes were still fixed far, far above her. “Yes, Sam?”
“Look at me.”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because.” Her voice trembled. “Because if I see the pity on your face, it’ll finish me, and I can’t fall apart. I just can’t, because if I do, I might not be able to put myself together again.”
“No pity, I promise. Look at me. Please.”
Annie turned her head to face Sam; her eyes met his, then locked. And all she saw was kindness and something else…
Caring?
“Yes, Sam?” she asked again, more calmly.
“How are you?”
“I’m…” Suddenly those amazing blue eyes were filled with tears. “I’m a mess.”
“I know,” he said, wishing hard that he could hold her now, but every professional pore in his body held him tightly in check, held him closely to protocol. Though just barely. “I’m so sorry, Annie. If I could do more, if I could do anything, I’d do it. In a heartbeat.”
“I know,” she whispered. “You’ve done so much, and you keep coming around and checking in even though you’re based in the E.R., and you know… I haven’t really thanked you for that, have I?” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you, Sam. Thank you for fighting for my daughter when she first arrived here, and thank you for going above and beyond. I know you don’t have to.” Her brow furrowed suddenly, as a thought occurred to her. “So… why do you?”
“Why do I what?”
“Why do you keep coming here? Even though Sarah isn’t really your patient any more?”
And there it was. There was the moment for Sam to tell her the truth. To tell her that as much as he cared about Sarah – and he did, just as he cared about every single person who got rolled through those E.R. doors to him – he cared about Annie too. And not as a badly-injured patient’s frightened mother, or as an employee struggling to hang onto her job through a horrific ordeal, or as a strong, scrappy, hurting woman determined to see this thing through to its bitter end, no matter what it cost her in terms of her emotion and her sanity.
Yes, he cared about her all those ways, of course… but he also cared about her as a beautiful, curvy, sexy, amazing female. As a sweet, soft body that he wanted to curl up to in bed, as a stunning woman with a killer smile that he wanted to see every morning, as a person with hard life experiences behind her which he wanted to celebrate her surviving.
He didn’t give a good goddamn about her age, about her having two grown children not that much younger than he was, about her job, about the crap neighborhood that he knew she lived in, based on the address in Sarah’s file. He didn’t care about anything except seeing her smile at him… preferably while he drove deep into her lush body, those eyes hot with want and need for him.
But there was no way to tell her, not without crossing every single professional line in his life. Oh, sure, Annie wasn’t his patient (nor was Sarah, if he was being pedantically correct), but she was vulnerable and Sam had nothing but disdain and disgust for people who kicked others when they were down for the count. Doctors who preyed on distressed and desperate people were the lowest of the low, in his opinion, and even though there was no specific protocol which demanded that he stay away from every random patient’s mother who wandered the hospital hallways, Sam would never do it. He’d never be able to live with himself if he took advantage of someone while they were so worried and afraid, when they were just looking for comfort and a bit of hope for their loved ones… the day that Sam did that was the day that he’d hand in his doctor’s license personally.
So he said nothing to Annie about the real reason that he went several floors out of his way to bring her a coffee, and check Sarah’s chart, and talk to Mac. Not one damn word.
“I keep coming here because I have a patient a few doors down,” he said, hating to lie, but come on… the truth was impossible. “I drop in when I’m here, though I think he’ll be discharged soon enough.”
“Ah.” Annie nodded, drank some more coffee, the auburn of her hair warm and lovely in the morning sunlight. “That’s really good of you to check in.”
“OK, well.” Sam pushed himself up and off the window ledge, already feeling that familiar ache in his chest at the thought of leaving her all alone here with her fear. “I need to get back to the E.R.”
“Sure. Thanks, Sam.”
“No problem, Annie.” He glanced over at Sarah. “Take care.”
“We will.” She sighed. “We’ll try, anyway.”
Sam walked away then, resolving to stay the hell away from the woman from that point on. It wasn’t fair what he was thinking, even if she didn’t have a clue, and he was sure that if he kept coming around, sooner or later she’d notice, and then she’d have one more thing to deal with in her life. No way he was doing that to Annie.
So that’s what Sam did: he forced himself away. He kept track of Sarah’s status, of course, but he did so only through Mac. And a few weeks later, when she woke up out of her coma, when she woke up talking but with a huge gap in her recent memory and weakness in her right side, Sam both rejoiced and worried, right along with Annie, though she never knew it.
She never knew that he longed to come back and meet Sarah properly; that he seriously thought about driving past Annie’s house ‘acci
dentally’, just to see if the lights were on. She never knew that the odd glimpse that he caught of her entering and leaving the hospital stopped his heart dead in his chest; that when he saw her in those brief seconds, he was fiercely happy to see how much better-rested and relaxed Annie looked after Sarah woke up.
She never knew that after Sarah was discharged, Sam toyed with the idea of getting Sarah’s filed-away chart and calling Annie’s cell from the family contact information listed there. Just to say hi, just to see how they were all doing.
Also, just to ask her for coffee. Or lunch. Or dinner.
But he never did. Sam never crossed that line.
What he did was, he let her go.
And he thought about her and Sarah and Noah every single goddamn day, from that point on.
What Sam was doing was, he was waiting… though he had no idea that’s what he was doing.
Chapter One
Present day
Sam heard the shouting and heavy objects crashing to the floor long before he saw the source of the anger and rage. He picked up the pace a bit, hurried towards the E.R., even as people scurried past him in the opposite direction. It wasn’t uncommon for fights and arguments to break out in the E.R., of course, especially at the weekends, and most especially in the middle of the night. But things could get tense and go south anytime – as shown right at this moment, at just before nine o’clock on a rainy, foggy Tuesday morning in late-winter.
He entered the large E.R. open space, set down his awful cafeteria coffee on the first available surface, took in the scene at a glance. There was medical equipment scattered all over the floor, patients were cowering on gurneys and visitors in chairs, the doctors and nurses were mostly hugging the walls, though Sam did see Doctor Harold Tillman trying to talk to a large man with reddish hair.
Lush Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 8) Page 2
