Cedar Bluff's Most Eligible Bachelor (Cedar Bluff Hospital)

by Laura Iding

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concern in his voice. He took a step forward, instinctively wanting to offer comfort. What in the world had happened in there? Did she know the young man?

  “Yes. Sorry for running off,” she muttered, avoiding his gaze and moving to brush past him.

  He caught her arm to prevent her from leaving. Immediately, a sizzle of electricity zinged up to his shoulder.

  Quickly, he let go and took a step back. What in the world was that? “Hailey, there’s no rush, if you need a few minutes yet,” he began.

  “I’m fine.” Her tense tone was not at all reassuring. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I need to get back to work. And we have to make sure his family gets notified of what happened.”

  He stared at her for several long seconds. Logically, he knew it would be best to leave her alone. Maybe Hailey always reacted like this after losing a patient. Especially a young man who’d had his whole life ahead of him.

  And even if there was something more going on with her, it had nothing to do with him. So why was he so reluctant to leave well enough alone?

  “All right,” he agreed, stepping away from the door. She hesitated only a moment, before walking past him to return to the trauma bay.

  Letting her go was harder than he’d anticipated. With a resigned shake of his head, he followed her back to the trauma bay.

  The rest of their shift flew by quickly, but while they had several trauma calls, none of them were as serious as the young man who’d died.

  Simon kept a close eye on Hailey, but she seemed fine as they cared for a seemingly endless line of patients. He sought her out at the end of their shift, intending to talk to her again, but she’d apparently left without saying goodbye.

  He headed home, uncharacteristically frustrated that he hadn’t been able to spend a few minutes alone with her.

  The next day he locked his front door before heading outside to his car for his shift, ducking his head in the rain. A crack of thunder made him jump as he climbed into the front seat. He pulled slowly out of his driveway, the rain coming down in sheets making it difficult to see the road in front of him.

  Lightning flashed and more thunder rolled as he made his way to work. He slowed his speed, peering through the deluge of rain hammering against his windshield as he headed to Cedar Bluff hospital.

  Maybe they did need the rain after nearly a month of drought, unusual for April. But with the force of the rain coming down, flooding was a definite concern. Water pooled on the roads and he carefully rolled through the deep puddles to avoid stalling his car.

  As he approached an intersection with a four-way stop, a cyclist came out of nowhere, not stopping or slowing down at the junction, instead racing across the street directly in front of Simon. Startled, and a bit freaked out by the fact that someone was crazy enough to be riding a bike in this downpour, Simon slammed on his brakes.

  Too hard!

  He wasn’t going very fast at all, but his car started to hydroplane on the slick street, heading diagonally in a path straight for the cyclist. Simon’s heart hammered in his chest as he gripped the steering-wheel tightly, keeping his foot firmly planted on the brake as the antilock brake system bucked the car, praying he’d miss the slim figure on the bike.

  No such luck. He grimaced as his car bumped the cyclist with a soft thud, just loud enough to hear over the pelting rain.

  His tires finally gripped the road, stopping the car abruptly. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911 even as he jumped out, heading for the cyclist who was sprawled on the pavement not far from the bike, which lay crumpled beneath Simon’s front bumper.

  He could barely hear the operator asking about the nature of his emergency over the sound of the storm. “Injured cyclist, hit by my car. Send a paramedic unit. We’re at the intersection of Grover and Howard. Hurry!”

  Snapping his phone shut, he tucked it in his pocket as he knelt beside the crumpled heap of aluminous yellow cycling gear. His breath caught in his throat nearly strangling him when he realized it was Hailey.

  Thankfully, a helmet covered her chin-length blonde hair, but her eyes were closed and her face deathly pale, despite the rain coming down.

  “Hailey? Can you hear me?” He sheltered her from the rain with his body as much as he could as he felt for a pulse. Relieved when he found one, he turned his attention to the rest of her potential injuries. Her body was lying at an awkward angle halfway on her side, and he was loath to move her without a neck brace at the very least.

  “Hailey? Open your eyes,” he said, running his hands along the arm and leg that he could easily reach, trying to ascertain if she’d broken anything. “Hailey, please open your eyes. I need to know if you can hear me.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open and she groaned as she tried to turn over onto her back. She still had a backpack looped over her shoulders.

  “Easy,” he cautioned, halting her movement with his hands. He unhooked the backpack from the one arm and twisted it up and out of the way. “First, tell me what hurts.”

  “Everything,” she whispered. Her blue eyes were wide and frightened as she gazed up at him. “But mostly my arm and the leg beneath me.”

  The naked pleading in her eyes did him in. He quickly unlatched the strap of her helmet and supported her head with his hand. “Okay, you can roll onto your back very slowly but don’t twist your spine or your neck.”

  She let out a whimper as she log-rolled onto her back, his hands cradling her neck and head for stability. He slid off the backpack, tossing it aside.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he told her reassuringly. “A paramedic unit will be here any minute.”

  “Andrew?” Hailey whispered, looking at him oddly. A chill snaked down his back. Had she managed to sustain a head injury despite the protection of her helmet? “Andrew, is that you?”

  “No, I’m Simon, not Andrew.” He took her hand in his and she grasped it like a lifeline, her fingers cold in the rain. Her apparent confusion scared the hell out of him. “Hailey, do you know where you are?”

  For a moment she looked confused. “On the road. We had a car accident.”

  Somehow he didn’t get the impression she was talking about this most recent accident but a different one. Suddenly her reaction the day before with the young trauma victim made sense. The sounds of sirens split the air. He was glad, very glad, to know help was on the way.

  “Yes, I was in the car, but you were on your bike.” He held her gaze with his, willing her to remember.

  She seemed to accept that, or else she couldn’t hear him clearly as the sounds of the sirens were growing louder. The rain lightened up a bit, although they were both soaked through to the skin.

  The ambulance pulled up and he loosened his grip, intending to let go of Hailey’s hand, but she tightened her hold on him. “No! Don’t leave me,” she pleaded.

  He couldn’t ignore the panic in her eyes. “I won’t,” he promised, feeling a little sick at the thought of how he’d made the same promise to Erica.

  Different situation entirely, he told himself harshly. Hailey needed his support right now. Considering how he’d caused her injury, it was the least he could do.

  Kylie Taylor was the first paramedic to reach them. He was surprised she was still working at nearly six months pregnant. “Simon! What happened?”

  “I skidded on the road and hit her.” The reality of what had happened made his throat swell with guilt. The roads were slick, but he knew he should have had control of his vehicle. Maybe if he hadn’t stomped on his brakes quite so hard…

  Kylie’s gaze flashed with sympathy but she turned her attention to Hailey. “Oh, my gosh, she’s the nurse who took care of Ben.”

  “Yes.” Simon hadn’t told Kylie or Seth of Hailey’s suspicions about child abuse. “We need to get her out of the rain.”

  “We will, don’t worry. She needs a neck brace, but first I want to check her vitals.”

  A second paramedic joined them,
a muscular guy by the name of Mike, and soon they’d checked Hailey’s vitals, fitted her with a neck brace and then slid a long board beneath her.

  Simon wanted to help lift her up and onto the stretcher, but Hailey clung to his hand as if he were the only stable thing in her universe. The way she kept murmuring Don’t leave me, don’t leave me ripped his heart. He couldn’t bring himself to let her go.

  “I’m riding in the ambulance with you,” he told Kylie in a tone that warned her not to argue.

  Kylie looked like she wanted to protest, but she’d noticed Hailey’s death-like grip on his hand and gave a brief nod. “You’d better get your car and her bike out of traffic first,” she told him.

  He fished his keys out of his pocket, knowing Kylie was right but hating to upset Hailey by letting go, even for a few minutes.

  “I’ll get it,” Mike said, grabbing the keys. Mike yanked the bike out from beneath the car, tossed Hailey’s backpack and helmet into the backseat and then slid behind the wheel of Simon’s car. He parked the vehicle on the furthest edge of the road and put the hazard lights on. He’d arrange for a tow truck to bring them both back to the hospital as soon as he could.

  The bike wasn’t mangled as badly as he’d thought, and he hoped that meant that Hailey’s injuries weren’t as bad either.

  Soon they had Hailey loaded into the back of the ambulance. Simon stayed out of Mike and Kylie’s way as much as possible, while continuing to hold Hailey’s hand. Her vitals were relatively stable, a little shocky but not bad. Being drenched in the cold rain hadn’t helped.

  Hailey didn’t have any obvious signs of injury, but she easily could have several broken bones. They’d need a slew of X-rays to know for sure. She was dressed head to toe in some sort of biking gear that had protected her skin fairly well, although there were several holes in the fabric through which small, bloody abrasions could be seen.

  He momentarily closed his eyes as his adrenaline rush began to fade. Dear God, the outcome of this accident could have been worse. So much worse.

  Hailey would be fine. He’d make sure of it. And he planned on doing whatever was necessary to help her get through this.

  Hailey stared into Simon’s dark eyes, trying to keep herself focused on the present. There were lots of other healthcare professionals around her now that they’d reached the Cedar Bluff trauma room, and they kept asking her questions that she answered easily enough, but truly she could only see one man.

  Her brain knew he was Simon Carter. Simon. Not Andrew.

  But when she closed her eyes, she saw her fiancé’s face. The open cut on his forehead starkly red against his pale skin, his eyes wide and unfocused.

  Dead.

  Her fault. It was all her fault.

  “Hailey?” Simon’s face hovered closer. She knew she was being totally irrational but she couldn’t let go of his hand. If she did, she’d get lost in the nightmares of the past again. And what if she couldn’t find her way back? “Are you sure your head doesn’t hurt?” he asked for what seemed like the tenth time. Had she been confused? Lost consciousness? She couldn’t remember.

  “I’m sure,” she responded. “I was wearing my helmet.”

  “All right, Jadon has ordered several X-rays for you. They’re going to take you to Radiology now, okay?”

  Radiology? Alone? “No, don’t leave me. Please?” She hated the way she sounded, like a pathetically scared rabbit afraid of its own shadow, but just the thought of being alone made her shake uncontrollably. “I’m s-sorry,” she whispered, her teeth chattering as the sudden coldness overwhelmed her. “B-but if you could just s-stay with me for a while longer…”

  “She’s cold,” Simon said, a harsh edge to his voice. “Someone get her a warm blanket.” Then his face appeared in her line of vision, and he was gazing down at her with a relaxed smile. “I’ll stay right beside you the entire time,” he vowed. “I promise I won’t leave you alone, Hailey, not for a minute.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. The warm blanket that Bonnie threw over her felt wonderful, but she was more grateful for Simon’s unwavering acceptance of her irrational fear than anything else.

  She should have felt embarrassed, knowing these people she worked with had seen her nearly naked, having cut off her biking gear before covering her with a hospital gown. But she couldn’t seem to care. Simon had kept his gaze locked on hers the entire time.

  It seemed they were in Radiology for ever, getting X-rays of her entire body. She couldn’t suppress a twinge of guilt at how Simon had remained true to his word, staying right beside her and holding her hand, wearing a lead apron to help protect himself against being overly exposed to the various X-rays.

  She needed to get a grip here and stop clinging to the poor man. With the rain in her eyes, fogging up her goggles, she hadn’t even seen his car. Normally she was a defensive cyclist. But today she’d been preoccupied.

  She needed to let him know the accident wasn’t his fault.

  As soon as she could find the strength to relinquish her hold on his hand.

  “Tibia fracture?” she overheard Simon say as the radiologist came out to talk to him. “Nothing else? Are you absolutely positive?”

  “Yep. She’ll have plenty of bruises, I’m sure, but overall she’s incredibly lucky,” the radiologist allowed. “I’ve sent them to Jadon to see, but you can read them for yourself, if you like. Everything is clean, including her spine.”

  “Thank God,” Simon murmured. He gave the radiologist a nod and then swung his gaze down to hers. “Hailey, I need to tell you that you have a non-displaced right tibia fracture. No other broken bones, thankfully, but we’ll need to get your right leg in a cast. After that, all we need to do is watch you for a while to rule out any internal bleeding.”

  Considering her minor injury, she felt even worse at how she’d been acting. For heaven’s sake, she was an ED nurse—a measly broken leg was nothing. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. My muscles ache a bit, but I don’t have any other sharp pains. Mostly bruises, like he said.”

  “I’ll feel better once we get a CT scan of your head and abdomen,” Simon said, his expression grim. “There was another trauma who was already in the CT scanner so we decided to go with regular X-rays first.”

  For a moment the panic at being alone hovered, but she thrust it away with steely determination. Enough already. She was not going to expose Simon to any more radiation. Somehow she’d deal with the CT scan, and whatever other tests and treatments she needed, alone.

  Or she could ask Simon to find Rachel. Surely Rachel wouldn’t mind coming down to sit with her for a while. Although she’d no doubt give Hailey a piece of her mind for riding her bike to work in a thunderstorm.

  Her bike. Heavens, how was she going to ride her bike with a broken leg? For that matter, how was she going to work with a broken leg?

  She took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. There was no point in worrying over things she couldn’t change. She needed to pull herself together, starting right now.

  Two transporters arrived to push her gurney back to the ED, while Simon walked alongside.

  “Thank you,” she said finally, prising her fingers from his hand. She forced a smile she was far from feeling. “I’ll be fine. I’m sorry I got so worked up over nothing.” She wondered if her face was as red as it felt. She couldn’t imagine what he thought of her. First the awkwardness last night and now this. Talk about adding insult to injury. “Honestly, I’m usually not so pathetic in a crisis.”

  “Don’t,” Simon said in a low, rough tone. She’d let go of his hand but he’d kept his fingers lightly wrapped around hers, refusing to relinquish the skin-to-skin contact. “You have nothing to apologise for, Hailey. I’m the one who needs to apologise to you.”

  For a moment she was confused. “For what?”

  “Don’t you remember?” His face wore an incredulous expression. “I’m the driver of the car that hit you. I could have killed you, Hailey.”

  CHA
PTER FIVE

  “NO!” HAILEY stared up at Simon earnestly, hating the shadow of self-loathing in his eyes. She needed to make him understand. “It was my fault, not yours. I couldn’t see anything in the rain. I never saw your car.”

  “Don’t bother trying to let me off the hook,” Simon said grimly, in a low tone. “It’s always the driver’s fault when losing control of the vehicle.” He shook his head impatiently. “Why am I arguing with a concussed woman?”

  She scowled. “I don’t have a concussion. I was wearing my helmet.”

  “You were confused at the scene,” he said firmly. “I’m reserving judgement until we see the results of your scans.”

  She didn’t remember being confused at the scene, except for the flashback. Had she said something weird to Simon? She didn’t have time to ask because the transporters wheeled her into the CT scan.

  “Hi, there,” the tech greeted her cheerfully. “We’re going to move you onto this table here, okay?” The radiology assistant paused and then asked, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No, I’m not pregnant.” She could feel her face flushing again with embarrassment. It was a legitimate question, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. There was an odd expression on Simon’s face when she tugged on her hand, the one he still held captive. “You can let go now. I’m fine.”

  The enigmatic look in his eyes was a bit confusing, but eventually something in her gaze must have reassured him because he released her hand slowly, before stepping back. She looked over at the radiology tech. “I’m ready.”

  “Be careful of her right leg,” Simon warned as the radiology tech and the two transporters began to slide her from the gurney over to the CT table. They managed to get the task accomplished without jostling her leg too much, although she couldn’t help wincing a bit as the throbbing in her right leg made itself known.

  How she’d ignored the pain up until now was a miracle. Must have been the effect of holding onto Simon’s hand.