Truly Madly Montana

by Fiona Lowe

  When she thought about what he’d done for her and the amount of work he was putting into the family fun day on top of his regular job, she tallied up that he gave a lot. He really cared for this town.

  “I also teach an adult class at the gym,” he said, starting to walk again.

  “Bear Paw has a gym?” She hadn’t noticed it on her numerous patrols.

  He laughed. “Don’t get too excited. It’s really more of a shed out back of Bear Paw Motors. There’s kickboxing gear, some weights, an indoor rowing machine, and that’s about it.”

  “I used to do kickboxing,” she said with a rush of enthusiasm as she remembered how much she’d enjoyed it. How she’d kicked and boxed out her stress until she was a sweating, quivering mess. It had been better than sex.

  “Cool.” He gave her an encouraging smile, and the warmth was back in his eyes.

  An errant tingle ran down her spine and finished between her legs.

  Sex can be great with the right person.

  How would I know?

  Ethan continued, “You should come along sometime and use the equipment.”

  She felt the familiar walls rising up inside her. “Oh, I really don’t—”

  “Relax, Tara,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not hitting on you. It’s just you sounded like you missed kickboxing and I thought you might enjoy getting back into it.”

  They’d reached her patrol car and he stopped. “Besides, sitting at home every night must be starting to get mighty lonely.”

  She instantly bristled. “I don’t sit at home every night.”

  “That’s true,” he said, a hint of irony in his voice, “you did come to Leroy’s once.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go or I’ll be late, but if you want some advice—”

  Her chin shot up. “I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he said, giving her a kind and wise smile like the one an elderly man would give to a kid. “You took this job, so I’m figuring you wanted to come live here. It’s time to find a way to get involved in the town.”

  She opened the vehicle’s door. “I am involved in the town. I’m the deputy sheriff, and I bet you never told the sheriff he had to get involved.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t, because I didn’t have to. Mitch Hagen plays golf and coaches Little League, and the deputy before you ran the model train club. By doing something outside of the job, you’ll meet people.”

  “I meet plenty of people through work.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes at her defensiveness. “Yes, but they’re not necessarily people you want to spend time with as Tara Ralston, private citizen.”

  Her mouth dried. Tara Ralston, private citizen.

  She didn’t even know who that was.

  “I’m pretty stretched, and the women would love having a woman teach a kickboxing class, aerobics, hell, anything you can offer they’d happily accept. You’d meet people and it would help you settle in.”

  And that was the problem. She’d never settled anywhere in her life, and she wasn’t certain she could do it here.

  WILL walked into the ER whistling. “G’day, Loretta.”

  “Hello, Doctor Bartlett. You happy today,” the cleaner said in her accented English as she swiped the squeegee over the automatic glass doors.

  “It’s a perfect summer’s day,” he said with a grin that hadn’t faded in days. And I got laid again last night.

  Discovering Millie was as attracted to him as he was to her had been the best Friday night he’d had in months. It had been a pretty awesome Saturday morning, too. The sunlight had roused him early, and he’d woken Millie the best way he knew how. If he’d thought Millie was sexy when she was alert and stalking around a pool table, it had nothing on the sleep-rumpled doe-eyed woman with the erotic and blissful sighs.

  Just as he’d felt the pull of sleep again, she’d whipped back the sheets and jumped out of bed. “Sorry, but you have to go before my parents see your car’s still out front.”

  Laughing at her joke, he’d reached for her, intending to pull her back to bed, but she’d dodged him and suddenly his clothes had been dumped on his chest. “I’m serious, Will.”

  “Your parents know you’re not a virgin, right?” he’d asked, suddenly worried as he pulled on his shirt. “Your dad wasn’t super friendly toward me when I arrived.”

  “They’re fine with me having sex,” she said almost irritably. “This is about me. I don’t want my mother turning up for breakfast with that knowing smile on her face and demanding to hear all about it.”

  He grinned as he shoved one leg into his work pants. “Just tell her I’m fabulous.”

  She’d snorted and given him a shove. He’d fallen back on the bed, taking her with him. “You’re dreamin’,” she quoted back at him in a fair imitation of his accent, but her dancing eyes belied her words.

  “We still good for a swim at the water hole?”

  A small frown creased her creamy forehead, and he’d found himself holding his breath. “I guess because you’re on call, that’s our only option?”

  He’d stroked her cheek, remembering his necessary lie. “It will be fun. I promise.”

  And it had been.

  And so had Tuesday night and then again last night when he’d taken groceries over to Millie’s place and cooked her dinner. It had been hard to leave her bed at midnight and return to the soulless motel, but he knew he needed to do that. He didn’t want to jeopardize Millie’s clinical rotation, and he had a feeling that if Floyd found out they were sleeping together, Millie would be kicked back to the clinic. He could hear her protests already, so things were easier this way.

  “Anything happening on this fine Friday afternoon, Helen?” he asked the nurse unit manager as he rounded the nurses’ station.

  “We’re still waiting on the surgical consult for Mr. D’Alba. It’s lucky his appendix decided to give him grief on one of Doctor Meissner’s visiting days or he’d be on the road to Great Falls right now.”

  “Let me know when Doctor Meissner arrives because we haven’t met.” He glanced around. “Is Millie still in the resuscitation room?”

  “I think so. She’s been practicing intubation on the mannequin.”

  He walked to the resus room. As her TRUST supervisor, he’d given her a medical emergency scenario and asked her to set up the resuscitation room with the equipment required to treat the patient. Pausing in the doorway, he took a brief moment to enjoy watching her before he had to separate from being her lover to being her boss. He loved that he knew the secret treasure that lay hidden beneath those baggy and utilitarian scrubs—smooth, silky, soft skin and a lush, fecund and responsive body.

  His own body tightened, and he immediately moved his mind away from sex and concentrated on her face. Her curls were half tamed today—held off her cheeks with a hair band—and she was muttering intently to herself as she checked and rechecked a list.

  “How’s it going?” he asked from the doorway.

  She looked up and immediately smiled, dimples spinning into her cheeks and lighting up her face. “Good.”

  “You had lunch?”

  Her smile dimmed slightly. “Are you inviting me?”

  “No,” he said, confused by the snark in her voice. “We’re at work and I thought we’d agreed—”

  “Exactly,” she said briskly. “We’re at work and I have a fictitious patient arriving any minute. I think I’ve got everything I need.”

  He looked at the cluttered space. “You’ve got way more than everything.”

  She wriggled her nose. “But we always have this setup for a trauma.”

  “I’m not saying all this won’t be needed at some point, but right now, I want to teach you about the feng shui of emergency medicine.”

  She laughed at the Chinese reference to flow, but when he didn’t laugh with her, she sobered. “You’re serious?”

  “I’m very serious.” He pushed off the doorway and walked into the room, loving that he had the opportunity to
teach. “The difference between a well-run ER emergency and a total shambles is preparation and setup. Tell me about the patient.”

  She consulted her card again. “Nineteen-year-old male, agitated with a stab wound to the chest. Pulse 128, BP 80 over 60, respirations 36.”

  “What’s crucial in that information?”

  “He’s bleeding and hemodynamically unstable.”

  “Sure, but your first problem is that he’s hypoxic and a lack of oxygen to the brain is making him agitated. He’s gonna fight you. He’ll be lashing out, and this trolley—ah, cart,” he translated as he moved it aside, “will be the first thing knocked over by him or by a team member trying to get to him to restrain him. You need three hundred and sixty degrees access to the patient and a buffer zone between the equipment so staff aren’t falling over it.”

  “Okay.” She stood for a moment surveying the room and then started moving equipment to create a space and at the same time creating order. “Clearly I need the blood warmer, the IV cannulation equipment, the video laryngoscope, the thoracotomy tray and . . .”

  He loved the way her mind worked. “And in the second tier you need the ultrasound and, ideally, pre-gel it so you’re ready.”

  She wrote on the back of the card. “You should run an in-service for all the staff.”

  “Good idea. I’ve also spoken to Floyd about clear color-coded signage for the emergency carts. Red for the crash cart, green for the difficult intubation cart, so that no matter who is in the department, they can find the correct equipment easily. And we’re going to have labels for gowns in fluoro colors that say airway, circulation, et cetera, so I know which staff member is doing what.”

  “Doctor Bartlett?” A female voice sounded behind them and he turned.

  A woman wearing bright blue scrubs and a tropically patterned OR pony hat walked into the room with her hand extended. “I’m Kelli Meissner. General surgeon.”

  “G’day.” He returned her very firm handshake. “Good to meet you, and”—he moved his arm to indicate Millie—“this is Millie Switkowski, RN and medical student.”

  “Hi.” Millie swapped the laryngoscope she was holding to her left hand so she could offer her right.

  Kelli gave it a perfunctory shake, as if Millie was just another person in a long line of people she didn’t really need to remember, before turning her attention back to Will. “I’ve added the appendix to my list for later this afternoon.”

  “Mr. D’Alba.”

  “Ah yes, I think that was his name, unless you have two patients with a rumbling appendix?”

  “No, thankfully Mr. D’Alba’s the only one,” he said, stifling a sigh that she appeared to be a surgeon who saw everyone in terms of body parts. “How often do you operate in Bear Paw?”

  “I come in for two days a month and operate on day one and consult on day two in preparation for the following month. One night at the Glacier Park Inn’s more than enough,” she said with a shiver. “Helen tells me you’re living there at the moment. Tough gig.”

  “It’s not so bad if you eat elsewhere,” he said conversationally. “Leroy’s has a pretty good menu.”

  “Oh, I haven’t been there yet.” She threw him a smile that said I’m interested in going with you. “Seeing as we’re both visiting physicians, perhaps we could have dinner together tonight?”

  The laryngoscope Millie was holding clattered to the floor.

  Kelli frowned. “That’s an expensive piece of equipment, Switkowski.”

  “Ah, yes. Sorry.”

  Will was about to suggest Millie check that the light bulb hadn’t broken when the MontMedAir pager and his phone beeped simultaneously. The buzz of adrenaline he always got when the pager went off kicked up his heart rate and cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts and noise. “Will Bartlett,” he said crisply as he took the call.

  A minute later, he hung up and met Millie’s and Kelli’s questioning gazes. “There’s been a multi-vehicle accident with up to eight people requiring medical assistance.”

  Millie raced for the door, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll get the emergency packs.”

  “What can I do?” Kelli asked.

  “Get your team marshaled, get blood, and get ready. I need you on standby for possible trauma surgery.”

  Helen appeared at the door. “How bad?”

  “Bad bad. We’ll be doing hot turnarounds between here and Great Falls. Copy Millie’s setup in the second trauma bay.”

  Helen nodded. “I’m on it.”

  “Hey, guys.”

  Everyone turned in stunned surprise toward the new voices. Josh and Katrina strolled toward them, tan arm in tan arm, with wide honeymoon smiles on their faces.

  “We just got back and thought we’d stop by and make you all jealous by telling you about fabulous Tahiti.” Josh stopped walking, astonishment clear on his face. “Will? Good to see you. What brings you here?”

  Will pulled him into a hard and fast bear hug, unable to believe the perfect timing.

  “Hey, buddy, I missed you, too,” Josh said, laughing and giving him a slap on the back.

  “Tahiti stories will have to wait,” he said, pulling gowns off the linen cart and throwing them at Josh and Katrina. “There’s a multi-trauma car-versus-motorcycle on the Blackfeet Reservation, and I need you both in the ER.”

  The whoop-whoop-whoop of the chopper sounded overhead.

  “Will.” Millie stood in the hall dressed in her MontMedAir suit, emergency packs over her shoulder and helmet in her hand. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 13

  Millie gasped as the chopper prepared to land. Below her in what was normally a serene, grassy plain, bodies lay scattered with limbs jutting at odd angles. A car rested on its roof, and a few feet away she could make out the crumpled wreckage of a motorcycle, likely T-boned by the car. It was as close to a war zone as she ever wanted to get. Farther over she could see two ambulances, a fire truck and a police vehicle parked in a half circle around the carnage.

  “It’s a shit-storm out there,” Will said through the headset.

  Surprised by the edge in his voice, she turned to look at him and took in his tense jaw and unexpectedly tight face. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” The clipped word had so much bass in it that it almost caused feedback. “You?”

  “Fine.” Her blood sugar was perfect—it was the unknown of what faced her out there that was making her feel a bit wobbly.

  “The EMS have declared three patients as life threatening and two as critical,” Will said, sounding more like himself. “Billings is sending a chopper, too, so we can clear the scene as fast as possible. Just follow my lead.”

  “Will do.”

  As the chopper landed, she undid her seat belt, opened the door and, bending low, got the gurney and equipment. Together, they ran toward the female EMT who was waving wildly.

  The midafternoon light burned Millie’s eyes, and the heat of her protective clothing combined with her adrenaline caused rivulets of sweat to collide and pool at her bra. The moment she got away from the noise of the helicopter, the gut-churning sound of low moaning and the bloodcurdling screaming hit her. It tore through her as the stench of blood and body fluids with a hint of gasoline drenched her nostrils. All of it combined into a firestorm that pummeled every corner of her senses.

  This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.

  She saw Will stop for a second and shake his head before running again.

  “Thank God you’re here,” the EMT said to them, her relief palpable. “I’ve put on a neck collar and applied a tourniquet to his leg but . . .”

  “We’re on it,” Will said in a reassuring tone, but as he dropped to his knees on the opposite side of the patient, Millie was struck by a look of resigned horror that flared in his eyes. It was as if he’d seen this before and it hadn’t been good then and it wasn’t now.

  She looked at the face of their patient—smooth cheeks contorted in pain. He barely looked
seventeen, and his ripped and torn jeans were soaked in blood. The EMT had cut the denim to expose his left leg or what was left of it. It was pulp.

  She forced her stomach contents back down her throat. “Hey, buddy, I’m Millie and this is Doctor Will. What’s your name?” she asked as she quickly attached him to the monitor so she could see his vitals.

  “Ed.” His fingers gripped her arm so tight it hurt. “Is my girlfriend okay?”

  “Was she with you before the accident?” she asked in case Ed was suffering from concussion and talking about a different time.

  “She was . . . sitting next . . . to me,” he said slowly, obviously in a great deal of pain. “Why isn’t she here now?”

  “Because none of you were wearing seat belts,” Will said savagely before sucking in a deep breath as if that would help him pull it all together. “Almost everyone was thrown clear of the car. We’ll get you sorted and then we’ll find your girlfriend.” He wrapped a tourniquet around Ed’s arm in preparation for an IV.

  Ed tried to pull himself up using Will as a lever. “No!”

  Millie glanced at the monitor reading the low BP, the rapid respirations and the pulse-ox of eighty-two, and she remembered Will saying only half an hour ago, He’s hypoxic and agitated, and he’s gonna fight you.

  “I have . . . to see her,” Ed said, tugging at the tourniquet.

  “Millie, oxygen now,” Will said, his voice low and urgent.

  “On it.” She turned on the oxygen tank and pulled the elastic of the mask out wide. “Ed, I’m just going to put this mask—”

  “Jade.” Ed’s hands pushed at hers as she tried to strap on the mask.

  “Mate,” Will said soothingly as he looked up at the EMT with a nod. “I’m sending someone to find her, but my priority’s saving you so that you can see her again. I need you to lie back so I can examine you.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” the EMT said, breaking into a run.

  The chop-chop-chop of the rotor blades of the Billings chopper deafened them as it flew over, hammering home exactly how serious the situation was and reinforcing the importance of the golden hour.