by Radclyffe
“Hand me the suction.” Ali held out a hand and Manny passed the thin catheter to her. She cleared the fluid from the back of Bobby’s throat. It didn’t help. “Can’t see a thing.”
“Sats are falling,” Manny reported. “Eighty-five. Eighty-three. Seventy-eight.”
The cardiac monitor went off, signaling a decline in the heart rate.
“Open the trach tray.” Ali looked across the table into Beau’s distress-filled eyes. “You might want to wait outside.”
“No,” Beau said hoarsely, gripping Bobby’s shoulder harder to hide the shaking. Torveau must have nerves of steel, and balls of the same. But if Torveau could tough it out, so could she. She wasn’t leaving Bobby, no matter what. “I’m staying.”
The heart rate dipped.
“Last chance,” Ali whispered, but Beau didn’t think she was talking to her any longer. “Give him the Pavulon.”
The nurse pushed the drug and a few seconds later, Bobby stopped breathing. Ali’s eyes were hot, boring down on the tube still sticking out of Bobby’s mouth. With the gentlest of grips, she grasped the tube and slowly finessed it deeper into Bobby’s throat.
Beau held her breath. Her heart pounded so loudly in her ears she could barely hear the scream of the pulse ox warning of dangerously low levels.
“Go, baby.” Ali’s voice was soft, coaxing, tender. “Just a little more. Come on now.”
Beau’s stomach did a back flip and she tasted bile in the back of her throat. Please.
“BP is sixty,” Manny said in a calm, steady voice.
“Almost there,” Ali murmured.
Beau couldn’t look at the monitors, all of which were going off in a cacophony of warning beeps and tones. She couldn’t look at Bobby. The sight of him so gray and lifeless tore her heart out. The only safe place she found was Ali’s face. She focused on her intense dark eyes, the strong line of her nose, the utter stillness in her expression. Immovable, unshakable. She knew the moment it happened. Ali’s eyes widened just a little bit and heat sparked in her midnight irises. She glanced up for a fraction of a second, fixing Beau with a triumphant expression that showed in her eyes even though the mask covered her mouth.
“We’re in,” Ali said, reaching for the connection to the respirator. “Listen to his chest.”
Manny quickly moved his stethoscope over Bobby’s torso. “Breath sounds are good on both sides. BP and O2 are coming up.”
Ali straightened and pulled her mask down. “Start him on a nitrite drip and add an amp of bicarb to his IV. Tell respiratory to make sure they use a bronchodilator.”
“Thanks,” Beau said, knowing the word was inadequate but not knowing what else to say. What she was thinking she definitely couldn’t say. You’re amazing. You’re incredible. You’re beautiful.
Ali smiled fleetingly and inclined her head toward the hall. “You’re welcome. Would you mind letting your people know he’ll be in here a few days, but his prognosis is good.”
Now Beau registered the barrage of voices that she’d been too caught up to hear earlier. A blur of blue and yellow surged outside the doors to the trauma admitting area. Firefighters and paramedics crowding around, needing to know the fate of one of their own.
“I’ll tell them.” She tentatively brushed her fingertips over Bobby’s hair. “Sorry, partner.”
Ali frowned. “Problem?”
“It’s my fault he’s in here,” Beau said flatly, remembering now that the crisis had passed exactly what had led up to this moment. “I would have been with him, except the captain took me off the line this morning. But I guess you already knew that.”
Ali gave her a confused look. “I’ve got patients waiting. I should go.”
“Right.” Beau backed up a step. “Like I said. Thanks.”
Chapter Seven
“Hi,” Jilly whispered, slipping around the curtain that enclosed Bobby’s bed in one corner of the trauma intensive care unit. She smoothed her hands over Beau’s shoulders and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.
“Hey!” Beau started to rise, planning on giving Jilly the metal folding chair she’d been perched on for the last two hours.
“Stay there.” Jilly pressed both hands onto Beau’s shoulders and gently kneaded the tense muscles. “You look exhausted.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“I worked my connections. One of my partners is married to a doctor here. I dropped a few names. It wasn’t that hard.”
“What are you doing here?”
“The fire has been all over the news for the last four hours. My sister is a firefighter. Reports are that firefighters were injured.” Jilly shook her head, her smile both fond and frustrated. “Then you call and leave a message that you don’t know when you’ll be home because your partner is in the intensive care unit and I shouldn’t worry.”
“I’m sorry,” Beau muttered. “I figured you’d know I was okay if I called.”
“There are all kinds of okay, honey.” Jilly ruffled Beau’s hair. “How’s he doing?”
“Not much change. They said he might not wake up for a while.” Beau leaned her head back against Jilly’s middle. She’d been staring at the array of monitors over Bobby’s bed, at the tube connecting him to the ventilator, at the IV bags, and at his still, frighteningly fragile profile for so long her eyes ached. Her chest burned. Every breath hurt. She hated this place. Hated the smells, the hushed voices, the dim lights and flickering dials. Everything about it was alien and threatening. In here, names were replaced by diagnoses, lives were distilled into numbers on a chart, and the future was reduced to a prognosis. She knew how quickly humanity fled in the face of relentless tragedy and death, and she wasn’t going to let Bobby become a faceless statistic.
“You all right being here, baby?” Jilly asked.
“I’m okay. I’m good.” Beau tilted her head farther back so she could see her sister’s face, knowing the real reason Jilly had come. Not to allay her own fears, but Beau’s. Jilly, always taking care of her. She’d never be able to repay her. “I want to be here when he wakes up. You should go home.”
“I can stay a while.”
“No, really. I’m okay. I’ll feel better if I know one of us is getting some sleep.” Beau grasped Jilly’s hand and brushed her lips over Jilly’s knuckles. “Thanks. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
*
Ali skimmed the curtain aside and stopped abruptly, caught off guard by the intimate scene. A striking redhead in a stylish suit and what looked like a cashmere coat whispered endearments to Beau Cross, who held the woman’s hand against her cheek. Ali had seen all kinds of displays of affection during highly emotional moments, including a few overzealous physical ones accomplished in precarious positions on narrow hospital beds, but the mixture of vulnerability and tenderness in Beau’s face as she looked up at the woman beside her made Ali both envious and inexplicably jealous.
“I’m sorry,” Ali said, noting Beau’s fingers automatically entwine with the redhead’s. Her temper spiked, something completely unlike her.
“Hi.” Beau stood quickly.
“We generally try to restrict visitors, especially this late,” Ali said, more abruptly than she intended.
“I was just leaving,” Jilly said. “I apologize for bending the rules.”
“The nurses said I could stay,” Beau said. She hadn’t expected to see Ali again so soon, and the surge of relief at just having her near, the immediate sense of rightness, was unexpected. She’d spent most of the day pissed off that Ali had compromised her at work, but tonight when everything in her world seemed to be tilting out of control, all she had to do was catch a glimpse of her and she felt better. The uncharacteristic reaction made her edgy and defensive.
Jilly skimmed her fingers down Beau’s arm. “Call me in the morning?”
“First thing.”
Ali stepped aside, allowing Beau’s companion to pass. She hadn’t considered that Beau might have a girlfr
iend. Beau’s invitations to get together hadn’t been the least bit subtle, so she’d mistakenly inferred that the offers meant Beau had no attachments. Foolish of her to assume that other women were serial daters, like her. Why wouldn’t a good-looking young woman like Beau have multiple women in her life? Beau undoubtedly approached relationships the same way she appeared to approach everything else, aggressively and without much in the way of boundaries. She needed to remember that.
“You ought to go home too.” Ali focused on the flowcharts spread out on the narrow table at the foot of the bed. She didn’t look at Beau as she spoke. “There’s nothing you can do here tonight.”
“I don’t want him to be alone.”
Beau’s voice was hoarse, and the undercurrent of pain pulled Ali’s attention to her. Beau’s eyes held the same haunted look Ali remembered seeing in the trauma bay during those few seconds when Bobby’s life had hung precariously in the balance. Beau was exhausted and worried about her partner, and Ali was embarrassed at her own irrational reaction. Beau didn’t deserve her censure or her anger, no matter how many women might be in her life. That was Ali’s problem, not Beau’s. Taking a breath, Ali gestured to the paperwork.
“His vital signs are stable. His blood gases are improving. All his lab work is normal. He’s doing well. Go home. Get some sleep.”
Beau’s jaw set. “Are you throwing me out?”
Ali wasn’t sure how it was possible, but even with dark circles under her defiant eyes and sweat-streaked smudges on her neck, Beau was still more attractive than anyone in recent memory. And Ali had no reason to take her frustration at being unable to ignore just how attractive she was out on her. She looked at her watch. “It’s almost midnight. Have you eaten?”
“What?”
“Dinner. Have you had any?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Yes, you are. Let’s go get something to eat.” When Beau started to protest, Ali gripped her arm and spun her toward the curtain. She put her hand in the center of Beau’s back and gave her a tiny nudge. “I’ll tell the nurses to call me if he shows any signs of waking up. You’ll be here, I promise. Don’t make me get tough with you.”
Ali registered Beau’s back vibrating beneath her hand. Beau was laughing silently. Ali let her hand linger longer than she should, enjoying the heat and the unexpected pleasure of muscles rippling beneath her fingertips.
*
“What do you recommend?” Beau asked as she got into line behind Ali in the staff cafeteria. No one was in attendance at the steam tables—apparently the last meal of the night was a help-yourself-to-the-day’s-leftovers situation. Most everything was identifiable.
Ali scanned the offerings. “Stick to plain and simple. The meat loaf, lasagna, fried chicken—they’re all good.” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder we all don’t have coronary artery disease by the time we’re forty.”
“You look like you’re in pretty good shape.” When Ali stiffened, a faint blush coloring her neck, Beau said, “Sorry, I can’t seem to say anything to you that doesn’t sound like a pickup line.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to resist.”
“You seem to be doing pretty well so far,” Beau muttered, scooping mashed potatoes, meat loaf, and a token spoonful of very bright green broccoli onto her plate. She gestured at the florets with the spoon. “Is that real?”
Ali laughed. “I don’t know how they get them to be that color. There may actually be some nutrients in there but I can pretty much guarantee it will be tasteless.”
“How many times a week do you eat dinner here?” Beau asked.
“Four or five.” Ali led the way to a small table away from the clumps of residents talking loudly to stave off stress and weariness.
Beau sat down and realized she was hungry. She tried the meat loaf, which tasted safe enough. “Thanks. You’re right. I needed this.”
“You need a little more than food,” Ali said quietly. “You had a rough morning, and tonight has been hard in another way. I can find you an on-call room where you can get some sleep if you insist on staying here all night.”
Beau studied the woman across the table. She didn’t understand her. One minute she was distant, cool, apparently completely uninterested. The next, she was concerned and caring. Beau never got involved with complicated women. She didn’t do intimacy and attachment, she did easy and detached. She didn’t want the burden of someone caring for her, and she didn’t want to worry about hurting anyone. She very carefully sought out women who really meant it when they said they weren’t interested in anything serious. Ali Torveau didn’t fit that profile, but even if she had, there was the little matter of her disregard for Beau’s judgment.
“You don’t need to worry about me. What you did for Bobby today was enough,” Beau said, meaning it. Whatever problems existed between them personally, she owed Torveau. “I…thanks for taking care of him.”
“You don’t have to thank me. That’s what I’m here for.” Ali put down her silverware and tried to decipher what she saw in Beau’s face. She wasn’t easy to read, her carved features taking on a sharp edge that might have been anger or simply exhaustion. “Something on your mind?”
“You broke our deal,” Beau said after a minute, inexplicably more hurt than angry.
“What deal was that?” Ali asked quietly.
“I stuck around this morning. I let you poke and prod me.” Beau’s eyes grew hot. She couldn’t believe she’d allowed anyone to do that to her again. “I even took a goddamn shower because you wanted me to. You said if I did that, you wouldn’t file a report.”
“What happened?”
“Jeffries—my captain—he pulled me off duty so I could recover from the water rescue.” Beau clenched her fist on the table. “Bobby is lying up there half dead because I wasn’t with him. I should’ve been there. I should’ve been the one to go in first. Not him.”
“You’d be happier if you were the one in the ICU connected to the ventilator right now, wouldn’t you.”
“Damn right,” Beau said immediately.
“Then you’re a fool as well as wrong.” Ali knew she sounded cold and unfeeling, because she felt cold and numb inside. The episode resulting in hypothermia that morning had been a red flag, a warning that Beau was reckless when it came to her own safety, but now Ali grasped just how little Beau cared what happened to her. The thought that she might have considered for even a moment getting involved with Beau, even superficially, was terrifying.
“I know you think I’m a fool. Why else would you…” Beau blinked. “What do you mean, wrong? You didn’t call the station house?”
“No. That’s not how I handle patients.” Ali leaned back in her chair, needing distance between them. What she really wanted was to get up and leave the room, but the urge to flee wasn’t about Beau. She wanted to obliterate the memories Beau stirred up. But as much as she wanted to keep Beau at arm’s length, she also wanted her to know the truth. “Do you think I would have let you return to duty and endanger yourself, just because you don’t give a good goddamn what happens to you? If I had thought you were in any physical danger, I would have insisted you be admitted.”
“So I leave the hospital, walk into the station house, and my captain instantly sidelines me—and that’s all a coincidence?”
“Apparently so,” Ali said dryly. “You weren’t officially a patient. Even if you had been, I wouldn’t have informed your employer of your status. If you’d been stupid enough to sign out AMA, which—by the way—is the only way you would have left my trauma unit if I thought you needed hospital care, I still wouldn’t have called the station house.”
“You said if I didn’t let you examine me…What was that? A bluff?”
Ali lifted a shoulder. “It worked, didn’t it?”
Beau closed her eyes, took a long slow breath, and met Ali’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions. I was wrong.”
“You were under a lot of physical stress. I can se
e where you might have thought I called.”
“I should have just asked you.”
“Well,” Ali said, finding it impossible to hold on to her annoyance when Beau looked so contrite, “that’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it?”
“That’s a generous way of putting it. I feel like an idiot.”
“I’m not arguing.”
Beau’s brows rose and then she laughed. “You’re hell on my ego.”
“I doubt that.”
“You should let me take you out to dinner so I can apologize right.” Beau indicated their unfinished meals. “Save you from whatever damage this diet is doing to you.”
“You don’t quit, do you?”
“Back before I decided you’d ambushed me, I told you I wasn’t going to.” Beau grinned.
“Why?” Ali regarded Beau curiously.
“Why what?” Beau sipped her coffee, which even cold, turned out to be pretty good.
“Why be so persistent? You can’t be lacking for dates.”
Beau carefully set down her coffee cup, rested her hands on the sides of her tray, and leaned forward, making sure Ali was looking at her. She wanted Ali to see what was in her eyes. “I asked you out because I want to go out with you. Specifically. Not just anyone with breasts.”
Ali’s expression remained completely unchanged for so long, Beau began to worry she was going to walk. Then the corner of her mouth flickered. Jesus, even with her lips pressed into a tight line, she had a beautiful mouth. Then her lips parted and she laughed. Beau’s breath caught in her chest. Not just a beautiful mouth, a gorgeous mouth. A gorgeous laugh.
“You can’t possibly know anything more about me than the fact that I do have breasts.”
“Not true,” Beau said without taking time to think about what she was saying. “I happen to know you’re really good at what you do—not just because you’re smart and capable, but because you take it personally. It’s not about beating death, it’s about saving lives. You fight for something, not against something. I know you’re stubborn and tough.” Beau swallowed, watching Ali’s eyes darken with surprise and then slowly become impenetrable, as if a heavy curtain had been pulled across a window to block the sunlight. She’d gone too far and she wasn’t sure why, but she figured she might as well go all the way. “I know you’re beautiful. Really beautiful.”
