by Amy Ruttan
“Pop the question?” Zac asked.
“Yeah, you hang out a lot with her.”
“She’s going to medical school. We have that in common,” Zac said dryly.
“Come on, Davenport, it must be more than that!”
Zac laughed. “I have no interest in ever marrying a pampered society princess.”
Ella shook that internal dialogue out of her head. It was dialogue that had always eaten away at her. For years and years. It was her own personal demon she had to fight. Zac had utterly humiliated her in that moment.
After that stolen kiss she’d wanted more from him, but he’d broken her heart. Still, his dismissal of her had caused an awakening.
That night she’d discarded the clothing her mother had picked for her and had done her hair and makeup to her liking and not her mother’s. She mostly preferred to go without makeup and forgo the hideous designer dresses. For the first time in her life she’d felt like the person she’d always been hiding.
The person she’d been afraid to show.
His dismissal of her had given her the drive to excel. To prove to him and the rest of the world she was more than a pampered society princess.
To be more than the world her parents moved in, expected of her. She hadn’t wanted to be a society wife and mother.
She was going to be the best surgeon she could be. She was going to be respected. Opening yourself up to people just put your emotions, your heart at risk. So she kept herself safe by putting others at a distance.
Under the blonde, curvy, short stature she was a force to be reckoned with when it came to her residents.
When Ella Lockwood told you to move out of the way, you moved out of the way.
Still, another part she’d buried long ago wanted to be a wife and a mother. To have a family, friends. She was lonely, even if she didn’t want to admit it. The problem was she just didn’t see that happening any time soon.
Now, with Zac’s return, there was a shift in her confidence and she didn’t like it much. She’d promised herself that she would keep him at a distance. Give him the cold shoulder and let him know that she didn’t give a damn about him.
Of course, that was rather hard to do when she’d seen him in an instant so vulnerable and broken.
When she’d seen that weaker side to him. When she’d seen the side of him she’d thought existed all those years ago, until he’d cruelly dismissed her.
They didn’t say anything, but she could see the exhaustion etched on his face. And as they sat there in the darkness, with only one dim emergency light in the room, Zac fell asleep. Then he shifted and laid his head in her lap.
Wake him up.
Only she couldn’t make herself do it. There had been so many times that summer when they’d connected where they’d been studying and he’d drifted off like this. Where they’d passed out together.
When they had been children, they had been nap buddies. Ella’s nanny would place them in the nursery, her in her bed and him on the floor in a trundle bed. In the darkness, while their parents had had parties downstairs, when the raucous laughter of the adults would wake her up and frighten her, Zac would always wake up and climb into her bed.
Suddenly, she was tired.
Her shift had started at five in the evening yesterday and now it was seven in the morning. She should be at home, sleeping, before she was forced to go to her mother’s that night.
Of course, the storm had stopped all that.
Since they were stuck, she shifted slightly and curled up beside Zac. Just like they had done so many times years ago.
It was comforting. She’d forgotten how comforting it was.
This is dangerous.
And that was her last logical thought before she drifted off into her own fitful slumber.
CHAPTER THREE
“GET OUT OF HERE, JERK!”
Zac woke with a start, disoriented, but he was painfully aware there was a soft body pressed against his. And as his eyes adjusted to the light he could see that it was Ella, curled up against him. She was lying half on her side and half on her back. Her wavy blonde hair was spread out on the pillow. Long eyelashes brushed against her pink, round cheeks and those pink lips moved as she murmured utter nonsense in her sleep.
And he couldn’t help but smile. He’d forgotten that she tended to be very vocal when she slept.
She’d talked in her sleep a lot. There had been one time, after studying for anatomy, when they had both fallen asleep on the couch and she’d shouted out something about dissecting elves with pizza. He’d cared about her so much back then.
What about now?
“Zac,” she whispered, his hands still on her face, their lips mere inches from each other’s. Her breathing was heavy, just as his was.
“Shh,” he whispered. “Just breathe.”
And he brought her lips to his again. It felt so right. It burned his soul and he wanted more.
His blood heated, because he remembered what it was like to kiss her.
Her body shifted and she tossed a leg over him and moaned sweetly in her sleep.
Oh, God.
He closed his eyes and tried to get control.
“You idiot,” she murmured.
He laughed quietly to himself and then gently shook her. “Ella, you’re dreaming. Wake up.”
She curled up closer to him.
He took a deep breath, because her curling up closer to him made his blood heat even more. He had to extract himself from this situation.
“Ella,” he whispered, leaning over her.
Her eyes opened. “Zac?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled at him dreamily.
Then before he could stop himself he reached out to touch her cheek, her silky cheek. And he kissed her, his lips locking with hers as he pulled her to him, and any kind of control that he had on resisting her crumbled away as he tasted those plump, pink lips again.
It had been so long. He ran his hand down her body, over her curves, recalling how it felt when he took her in his arms and how much he burned for her. How much he wanted her.
Even after all this time, he still wanted her. Any other women he’d known had failed to compare to Ella.
She was in his blood.
Suddenly she pushed him away and her blue eyes were wide. “I don’t think this is very smart, do you?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, I... Yeah, there was no excuse for that.”
“I’ll say! Still, I didn’t exactly discourage it. So I’m sorry too.”
“No, nothing to be sorry about.” He sat up and tried to hide evidence of his arousal by getting off the bed and grabbing his lab coat. “I don’t know what I was thinking but that’s no excuse. I’m sorry that happened. Exhaustion.”
“Or your post-traumatic stress disorder,” she said, trying to straighten her hair.
“What?” he snapped, taken off guard. “I don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Oh, come on, Zac. You’re not sleeping, you’re jumpy...”
“I’m trying to get back into routine.” He sighed. “I was cleared by the Annapolis psychiatrists. I disclosed that I’d had PTSD to Charles in my interview, had being the operative word.”
“Okay,” she said, but didn’t sound very sure.
“I’m clear, Ella.”
Just as she opened her mouth to say something further, the door rattled and then opened. A maintenance man poked his head into the room.
“Sorry, Dr. Lockwood. We got here as fast as we could. We had to get the generators up and running to the essential parts of the hospital.”
“It’s okay. How long have we been in here?” she asked groggily, not looking at him.
“Only an hour
.”
“Good.” Ella got up and then ran her hands over her scrubs. “I’d better check the trauma floor.”
Zac wanted to call after her as she hurried away, but he had to get control of himself.
The maintenance man was ignoring him as he picked up the broken doorknob and scratched his head. “Don’t know if I can fix this. It’s Christmas Eve and storming—might be hard to get a part in, Dr. Davenport.”
“Close down this room, then, Miles,” Zac said, reading the man’s name tag. “We can’t have any more staff locked in here. We’re running with a skeleton crew as it is.”
“I can take the door off, Dr. Davenport—that way staff can still rest,” Miles offered, clearly wanting to hash this out with Zac as he was the only Davenport on shift tonight. “And sorry about the brownout. This new system is having some hiccups tonight, what with the storm and issues with the city’s power grid.”
“It’s okay and the door idea sounds good,” Zac said quickly, trying to end the conversation he didn’t want to get sucked into. He wasn’t Charles or even his father.
He didn’t want to make these decisions for the hospital. All he wanted to do was save lives. He would leave the administration stuff to Charles or his father.
Of course, he was the only Davenport on duty and he’d left his brother and father in the lurch for a long time while he’d been on tours of duty. He hadn’t come home for many years.
He owed it to them.
Especially to Charles, who’d shouldered so much on his own.
Zac needed to step it up now. He couldn’t be so selfish.
“Okay, Dr. Davenport, and about the generators...”
“You do what you think is best, Miles, and I’ll approve it, but I have to get back to the trauma floor.”
Miles nodded. “Will do, Dr. Davenport.”
Zac left the on-call room and searched for any sign of Ella, but she’d vanished.
He wanted to talk to her about what had happened. To apologize again for kissing her. He didn’t want to lead her on. He didn’t want her to think that there was something there when there couldn’t be.
His pager went off.
Incoming trauma.
Right now he didn’t really have time to think about Ella or what had happened between them. The storm was starting to take its toll and while the storm raged, they would have a long day ahead of them.
He ran toward the emergency room.
Ella was in the fray, pulling on her disposable yellow trauma gown and gloves. Her blonde hair, which had been loose in the on-call room, was now drawn back in a tight bun. In the emergency room confidence radiated from Ella. In the thick of chaos she commanded respect. Though she was short and might be swallowed whole, she was a giant when it came to her patients.
Dr. Lockwood commanded her trauma team and brooked no fear.
And no one questioned her right to be there.
She barely glanced at him as she tossed him a gown before heading outside to wait in the snow, where a couple of interns were helping the maintenance man clear a path from the freshly plowed drive to the ER doors of the ambulance bay.
In the ambulance bay, it was slightly protected from the elements, but the wind was biting. The snow wasn’t as dense, but it still blew in blasts under the protective cement covering.
Ella stood beside him, her teeth chattering as they waited in silence with a couple of residents Then over the howl of the storm and wind they heard the faint siren of the ambulance as it approached.
His pulse began to thunder and even though it was bitterly cold, he could feel the sweat on his brow. The howl of the wind and the screech of the siren melted away and he could hear the sound of missiles. Screams.
He shook those thoughts away. Once he was back in the grind of trauma triaging he’d be okay.
“Zac!” Ella shouted, shaking him. “Look alive!”
“Right.”
Ella looked unsure. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I said I was fine. I’m tired, but I’ve got this. I can handle this,” Zac snapped as the ambulance pulled up, stopping in front of them. He jumped forward and tried to put Ella out of his mind.
Which was easier said than done.
* * *
Ella glanced at Zac across the turmoil of the emergency room. He was working on the passenger of the motor vehicle accident, while she was working on the driver. The car had spun out and the car had gone into a cement median, ejecting the passenger through the windshield.
It was a mess.
She’d been worried when Zac, once again, had seemed to zone out when the ambulance had been approaching. Like the noise of the storm, the cold and the ambulance itself had been too much of a sensory overload.
She’d studied post-traumatic stress disorder in medical school. Zac was a textbook case, but he stated he had been cleared.
He’d said he had control of his post-traumatic stress disorder.
She needed to know whether she had to pull him or not. Even though he was a Davenport and his brother Charles was in charge of the emergency room, she was still the most senior attending on duty at the moment.
Right here and now, this was her ER and she couldn’t jeopardize her patients or her staff.
Her patient moaned as she palpated his abdomen. He’d said that he was fine and that it was just his arm that was banged up, but the reaction to her palpation had her nervous about something more sinister beneath the surface.
“Mr. Jones, I’m going to just look at your abdomen.”
“It’s fine,” he said through pants and there was something about him, his movements that threw her off. It reminded her of a person going through drug withdrawal and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was an addict. Then she saw his arms. His veins and also his teeth were a mess.
Definitely a user. The labs would confirm it, but she had her suspicions.
I seriously doubt that you’re fine.
“I’m going to have a look all the same.”
She lifted his shirt and could see the dark discoloration of a bruise across his abdomen. As she palpated again, the belly was not tender but hard. There were no broken bones or bruises on his chest, so she had to assume that the steering wheel had not struck him.
Still, given the fact she suspected that he was a crystal meth user, she had to check to make sure that there was no tear in the aorta, which could result in an aortic dissection. Since he hadn’t died at the scene, she had to assume that the aorta was stable, but she was going to check it anyway.
“We need to get him a CT scan, stat, as well as an arteriogram,” Ella said to her resident. “Draw the standard labs and get the images done. Page me when you have the images and the lab findings.”
“Yes, Dr. Lockwood,” Dr. Lynne said, nodding quickly.
Ella headed over to the exam room where the passenger who had been ejected was not doing so well.
Zac had inserted a breathing tube and there was already another tube in her chest to drain away the fluids from a pneumothorax.
Ella stood back to watch. Zac wasn’t aware of her presence, but she really had nothing to fear about his momentary blip outside. He was completely in control of his exam room as he worked on the patient.
She moved from the exam room and went to check on some other patients while she waited for the images of the driver.
Those who were still in the emergency room were not many and weren’t as urgent as blunt force trauma, but they still needed to be seen. And she seriously doubted that they would be leaving any time soon with this storm.
First she dealt with a patient who was having a severe gall bladder attack. She had the labs drawn to check the liver panels and see if the gall bladder attack warranted emergency surgery or if they could wait.
/> Then there was a bad sprain and a bump on the head to check out.
Dr. Lynne returned and handed over the tablet with the images. “Here you are, Dr. Lockwood.”
The images showed internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen and the lab work revealed that the patient was indeed a crystal meth user. “We need to get him into the OR. I believe that OR One was prepped and ready to go.”
Dr. Lynne shook her head. “Dr. Davenport is in there with the passenger. The pneumothorax was extensive and there are no cardiothoracic surgeons at the hospital because of the storm.”
Dammit.
“Okay, well, prep OR Two, then. We need to get Mr. Jones in there before he bleeds out. Hang some blood to compensate for the loss while we prep.”
“Yes, Dr. Lockwood.” Dr. Lynne took back the tablet and left.
Ella felt exhaustion setting in as she glanced around the chaotic ER floor.
Dr. Lynne was her most capable resident and though she’d like to have her in the OR with her, Ella needed her on the ER floor while both the trauma surgeons who were still at Manhattan Mercy worked on patients.
Dr. Lynne would be able to run her ER while she went into surgery.
It was going to be a long day. And the longer this storm went on, the worse the casualties were going to get. There would be more accidents, more emergencies.
And she was going to be stuck here with Zac, working with him, but all she could think about was the kiss in the on-call room and that was a dangerous path to tread. One she’d promised herself she’d never walk again.
She had to get it together.
She needed more coffee.
A lot more coffee.
CHAPTER FOUR
BY THE TIME Ella finished the splenectomy it felt like she’d run a marathon. Her whole body ached. She was tired, but she had no time to stop as she leaned over the scrub-room sink and rubbed her neck, trying to stretch herself.
Her feet were aching.
She had to stand on a stool to operate. Operating Room Two’s table didn’t go down low enough for her and Mr. Jones was a tall man. Taller than her. Her feet and her were not friends at the moment. They were screaming at her in protest for still working. When she went off she planned to get a good massage.
