by Caro Carson
“Level one,” she hollered. “Transport to trauma center.” She glanced around to see if any police or paramedics had arrived to take her orders yet. None. There was no one here—except Braden.
Braden, and a growing cluster of shocked, bewildered people.
He stepped away from her, onto a sidewalk that was not covered in shattered glass. “If you need assistance, come here, to the mailbox.” He repeated his order, cupping his hands around his mouth as a makeshift megaphone.
It was the most efficient way to approach triage at a large accident site like this. Victims who could follow an order, did. By being able to physically seek help, they weeded themselves out of the pile of more seriously wounded, letting the emergency responders—in this case, that meant her—immediately know they must be lower priority. Those patients needed to be seen, but they wouldn’t be dead if they didn’t make it to the hospital in the first minutes after the event.
Resources were finite. There was only so much space in a medevac helicopter, only so many ambulances on call tonight. Lana’s job was to start deciding who needed the transportation the most. Braden was making her job easier.
The next victim was a conscious male, bleeding profusely through his jeans. Fully aware that she had no gloves to protect her from any blood-borne diseases, she grabbed the patient’s own baseball cap out of his jacket pocket and used that as a poor barrier while she palpated his leg and found the laceration.
“Pressure bandage,” she ordered, although no one was around to respond. But she’d keep giving verbal orders, because paramedics would be arriving any minute. Braden had made the call.
She glanced around her immediate area, futilely looking for any kind of cloth that wasn’t covered in shattered glass, anything she might use to staunch this life-threatening flow of blood.
“Lana.”
She looked up to see Braden folding a sweatshirt into a square before passing it to her. She carefully covered the greatest portion of the laceration, then pressed down, hard, with both hands.
“I need to move on,” she said.
“Go.” Braden’s hands replaced hers. As she was moving to the next patient, she heard Braden instructing someone else to take his place. “Push hard, harder than you think you should, and don’t let up for any reason until a medic tells you to.”
Then he was beside her again, folding a jacket he must have acquired from an onlooker, taking over for Lana and applying the makeshift pressure bandage himself to yet another unconscious male.
“Level one, transport to trauma center,” she said automatically, and he nodded as she moved on.
Sirens sounded in the distance, rapidly growing in volume as she made her way to the people in the truck’s cab. The one wearing a seat belt looked awful, but the facial lacerations from the flying glass weren’t near any major blood vessels, and the woman had no broken bones, thanks to the dashboard airbag.
“Level three,” she said, and this time a young man in a blue uniform jogged up next to her and answered “check” as he snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
“I’m Dr. Donnoli from West Central. You have a level one there, the female in the red shirt.”
“Check.”
“Male with the ball cap on his chest, also level one, but any hospital can handle the laceration.”
“Check.”
She pointed at the last man that Braden still crouched over. “Level one, unilateral nonreactive pupil, as best as I could tell in this light, and both pupils were trending toward an oval shape. Do you have a medevac?”
“On its way.”
“That patient should go by air.” Lana looked at the shattered building. “Those were the outside casualties. I’m going inside.”
“We’ve got it. There’s already a crew inside.”
She glanced at his uniform. Thank God he was a fireman. She could only do so much here as a doctor; firemen were better trained to remove the injured from a wrecked building.
Lana stood by in case she was needed to assist in CPR if one of the suspected head-trauma patients should arrest. The scene quickly became overrun with more than enough emergency personnel as what seemed to be every fire truck and ambulance in the Austin area arrived. Each patient on the pavement had two medics and a stretcher within minutes.
Braden stayed with his patient. She watched him as he kept applying pressure through the folded jacket, never letting up while the paramedics slid a long backboard under the patient, strapping it in place and using it to lift the patient to the stretcher. Braden worked with the team as though he’d done it all his life, jogging alongside the rolling stretcher, keeping the pressure on the injury as they readied a more sterile bandage to take its place. The transfer of applied pressure from Braden’s hands to the paramedic’s was textbook perfect.
He would have been a great doctor.
As his patient’s ambulance pulled away, Braden scanned the area. Lana knew, absolutely, that he was looking for her. Their eyes met, and she gave him the thumbs-up sign.
He nodded and headed over to a policeman. Lana walked toward them, waiting as Braden informed the police that the cluster of people on the sidewalk were the walking wounded, injured but self-ambulatory, able to wait for the second wave of hospital transportation.
Then Braden turned to her. They stood apart—achingly apart—until he said, “Good work, Lana.”
“You, too.”
As they turned to walk back to their cars, Braden rested his hand on her lower back. She wished she could lean into him as her adrenaline rush subsided and fatigue took its place.
Fatigue and sadness. He should have been a doctor. They should have married, chosen a suburb of Austin and set up a practice. They would have spent a couple of lean years getting established, paying down those monstrous student loans, and then they would have started their family. It would have been an ideal life. It was what she’d envisioned when he’d dropped to one knee in the chapel.
But it hadn’t happened, because he hadn’t wanted it to. Although he’d taken care of accident victims tonight, she needed to remember that yesterday, he’d stopped the development of a drug that had been working for children. She and Braden had worked well together, once upon a time, and tonight had proven they still could. But she also knew, as she’d known then, that what he wanted to achieve in his life and what she valued in her life were two different things.
Hadn’t he reached that conclusion himself? Hadn’t he said he was prepared to move on? He’d bought someone else a diamond ring. Braden was ready to propose to another woman—after he talked to Lana tonight.
He was going to marry someone else, and she was going to have to accept that, sooner or later.
She wished it could be later.
* * *
“Come here.”
Lana let Braden tug her by the hand to stand in the brightest light at the entry to the restaurant. He picked up her other hand, too, and started looking them over like an efficient clinician.
“You didn’t have any cuts on your hands before the accident? You didn’t get any new cuts from the glass tonight?” His questions were brisk. “We had minimal protection against blood-borne infections.”
“You still think like a doctor, you know.”
“My career is in medicine. Don’t be so surprised.”
“Intact skin is still a good defense. I’ve got no open cuts. Do you?” She switched positions, holding his hands up to the light. “No breaks in the skin that I can see. But we should go inside and wash up.”
He held the door open for her and muttered, “This will be fun.”
She stopped on the threshold. “We made something of a scene when we walked out. Now look at us. If they didn’t hear the crash, they’ll think we got into a catfight after we left.”
Braden managed to look offended. “Men don’t do catfights.”
“Then they’ll assume we had a boxing match.”
“I don’t box with women.”
Lana burst out la
ughing at his indignation, and Braden realized she was pulling his leg and started laughing with her. “We’re giving everyone something to talk about, at any rate.”
The shared laughter was as intimate as any kiss. It wasn’t appropriate, really, not when he was seeing another woman, so Lana turned and walked back into the restaurant she’d stormed out of.
In the sanctity of the ladies’ room, Lana took her time scrubbing up thoroughly, then lightly reapplied some powder and brushed out her hair. They were going to have the big, final talk tonight and close the book on their history together. She didn’t want his last memory of her to be as a tired, wrung-out mess, even if that was how she felt inside.
When her hospital pager vibrated in her purse, she felt as if she’d gotten a stay of execution. She found Braden waiting for her by the bar.
“I need to get to the E.R.,” she said. “My pager went off.”
“I figured you’d be called in.” He nodded toward the bar’s TV. “There’s a factory fire somewhere on the north side of Austin. I’m guessing West Central is the closest E.R.”
She half laughed. “True enough. It isn’t west and it isn’t central, but it is north. They really got that name wrong, didn’t they?”
Her smile faded as she watched his smile fade, too. He remembered.
“You can’t be both,” he said, completing their old joke.
She was embarrassed to have brought up that memory. “I’ve got to call for a taxi. I think my car battery is dead. The doors wouldn’t unlock and the headlights didn’t flash.”
“I guessed that, too.” He jingled his car keys in one hand. “I was already fixing to drive you to the hospital.”
“‘Fixing to’? That’s the first thing I’ve heard you say like a Texan all night. You’ve really lost your accent.”
“You think?” His intentional drawl was thicker than his real accent had ever been. “City folk didn’t seem to like it.”
The bartender came out from a kitchen door and set a white paper bag in front of them. Braden gave him a few bills and told him to keep the change. “Let’s go,” he said in his normal accent. “My car is cleaner than a taxi.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
He took her elbow and steered her to the door. “You’ll get to those patients a lot quicker.”
That was true. People needed her. As much as she didn’t want to be alone with Braden, the needs of the patients were more important. Braden could get her to the hospital. She followed him to a black sports car parked only a few spaces away from hers.
He opened the passenger-side door. “Have a seat. I’ll get our stuff.”
She’d completely forgotten about her portfolio and his suit jacket, the symbols of their business involvement. Both had been left on the roof of her car while they’d had that intense conversation. The one that had ended with Please, Lana. I’m the one who needs someone to talk to.
She had no chance to dwell on that. He was back already and sliding behind the wheel.
He set the paper bag on her lap. “Your dinner.”
“I didn’t order anything before we...you know. Before I left the restaurant.”
“I ordered it while you were cleaning up. You’re in for a long night. You push yourself too hard without food and sleep, as I recall.”
“Oh.” The familiar guilt washed over her. She’d pushed herself that way when she was pregnant. No food, no sleep, just hospital work, long hours, weeks without time off...
“That was very thoughtful of you,” she said. If he only knew how little she deserved his concern.
There was no point in getting nostalgic about how he’d once forced her to take breaks and eat in the hospital cafeteria with him. They were through, and they’d been through for a long time. Another woman was getting a ring.
Lana was getting a sandwich.
That kind of put it all back into perspective.
* * *
Braden drove them swiftly north, toward West Central. The irony didn’t escape him. If you couldn’t have things both ways, you certainly couldn’t have them three ways.
Hell, he wasn’t having anything his way right now. The clock was ticking. Claudia was going to arrive in Austin for Valentine’s weekend.
She’d undoubtedly guessed—correctly—that he intended to propose. He’d gone to the most current jewelry designer in Manhattan. When none of the symbolic circles of precious metals and unbreakable stones had seemed like something he ought to give Claudia, he’d known it was time to go to Austin. He’d find the right ring after he faced his memories in West Central’s chapel.
So much for that plan. Life never happened the way one expected. His “memory” was sitting beside him now, eating her sandwich in silence.
Braden was supposed to be in New York, but instead, he was making sure a woman got something to eat before she spent the next few hours quite possibly saving lives. They’d already worked together tonight, doing just that, partners like they’d once been. Now he was back in his old role as protector, making sure she had food, making sure she had a safe way to get to work. It felt familiar.
It felt right.
The memory that was bothering him, he realized, was not the promise he’d made in a chapel. Neither was it opening his mail and finding a ring. The memory that was keeping him here in Austin, he finally admitted to himself as he stared through the windshield, waiting for a light to turn green, was a much more recent one.
Yesterday morning, as he’d stood in an elevator in his father’s hospital, Lana had spoken a single sentence he couldn’t forget. If you don’t want what I have to offer, someone else will.
A primal sense of ownership and a vicious sense of jealousy had roared through him. Of course, she hadn’t been talking about herself. Still, his first thought had been that someday, some other man would have her.
He needed to know why he couldn’t stand the thought of another man marrying Lana Donnoli. He had twenty-four more hours to find out why Claudia no longer seemed right for him, or he’d be putting himself, his family and Claudia—an innocent bystander—through a very awkward Valentine’s weekend.
I’m thinking of Claudia as an innocent bystander?
Last week, he’d been resolved that she would be his life partner, the mother of his future children. Now he was thinking of Claudia as someone who’d accidentally stepped in between Lana and himself and might get hurt.
He needed to talk to Lana, damn it, but they were already pulling into the portico in front of the emergency room.
West Central’s emergency department needed Lana. Braden needed her, too. At the moment, Lana couldn’t help them both.
He would wait.
Chapter Nine
“I’ll wait for you.”
Braden’s voice made Lana pause with her hand on the car door, one foot already out of the car and on the pavement. “That’s not necessary. I could be here for hours.”
“I know. I’ll wait.”
“There’s absolutely no need. I can get a ride home. I could be here for eight or ten hours.” She’d already said goodbye to him once, choking on her tears on a phone connection to Boston. She didn’t need to confirm with him that their relationship had been broken. She didn’t want to say goodbye to him ever again. “I don’t want you to wait for me.”
“If I don’t, I may never get a chance to talk to you. Isn’t that the truth? This is very important to me.”
She heard the subtle note of pleading under his gruff words and hardened herself against it. “I almost forgot. I owe you, right? You need to talk to me before you go marry someone else.” She welcomed the fresh rush of anger. “I don’t find that a real compelling reason to hang around right now. There are people right through those doors who really need me, Braden. That’s where I’m going.”
The expression on his face hardened quickly. “I know. I’ll wait.”
With a disbelieving shake of her head, she quickly stepped the rest of the way out of the car and shut the
door. She did not take a breath until she’d passed safely through the sliding glass doors of the ambulance entrance, back to her world.
The emergency room wasn’t as swamped as she’d expected. Most of the injuries from the factory fire were minor, so she and the other doctors who’d been called in to supplement the regular E.R. staff were able to turn the beds quickly, working their way steadily through the waiting-room crowd.
Still, by the third hour, her feet were killing her. Sensible pumps had allowed her to jog across a highway, perform triage in a parking lot and stand for hours as she stitched lacerations and explored wounds for debris. But low heeled and well made or not, pumps were pumps. Her toes objected to being squashed into a triangle shape after midnight.
One of the victims from the evening’s pickup-truck accident passed her on a gurney, being rolled back into the E.R. from the radiology department and parked in a curtained-off treatment area. Radiology had taken X-rays that showed there was still a shard of glass lodged deep in the patient’s arm. While the nurse got the surgical tray ready, Lana stood outside the curtains and surreptitiously stepped out of one pump.
The tile felt cool on the sole of her foot as she wiggled her toes.
“These might go better with that white lab coat.”
Braden’s voice startled her. She whipped her head around to find him just a few feet away, dangling her pair of white Keds from his hand.
“Where’d you find them?” she asked, too surprised to make a grab for them.
“From your car, of course.”
“But—”
“If you want them, come here and get them.”
Lana shoved her foot back in her painful pump and followed Braden behind the nurses’ station. Without further ado, she stepped out of her pumps and balanced on one foot while pulling the flat canvas shoe on the other.
Braden steadied her with a hand on her elbow. “I went back to see if I could jump-start your dead battery.”
“I left my keys in your car?”
“And your portfolio. Your battery was a goner, though, so I had to get you a new one.”
She stopped with the second shoe in her hand. “You got me a new car battery? In the middle of the night?”
