Coming In Hot Box Set

by Gina Kincade

  “Hot one!” someone yells into the staff room, “coming in. Heart attack. ETA one minute.”

  I’d like to kick the lockers because I will probably never find out what Ryder was going to say. More than likely he was going to ask if I wanted to stop stalking him, since I sounded stalker-y. So it might be a good thing that we race out of the staff room and into the emergency department.

  But for a moment, before we left the privacy of our lockers, I swear I thought I felt him touch my hip. Not like a nudge, as if he was trying to get my ass moving. But more like the way a man would skim his hand along a woman’s hip to claim ownership. Only, it was so slight, and I was already running away, making me wonder if it was all in head.

  I should stop reading my romances. Surely, they’re to blame for my over-active imagination.

  Ryder

  ETA one minute, my ass. More like already here.

  Firefighters with their blue t-shirts and tan bunker pants held with red suspenders race into the ER with a man on a gurney. There’s so many firefighters I can’t see shit about what’s going on. But they’re yelling stats, nurses flying around as adorable Dr. Asha gives them orders. She’s calm and taking in everything. She’s so smart. So fucking smart.

  And I’m a fucking moron to have almost asked her to eat with me if we get a break tonight. Yeah, I’d been the schmuck, standing there with my heart on my sleeve, about to ask if she’d sit with me, get to know me. Like she’d say yes.

  The minute the gurney stops I’m in action. I’m a big guy and it’s up to me and the firemen to heft the man onto the hospital gurney. We all know the signals, what to say. We move in unison. We’re a team.

  This is why I chose to work for the emergency department. It’s like the Army, where I learned what it meant to be a team, to be part of a family who watches my back, and me for them. Learning what it’s like to have someone to lean on. I’d been raised by my strict grandmother who was about as reliable as a tornado. Between her failing health and religious zealousness and lack of money, my sister and I would either get belt whippings or were starved. So, yeah, that means I was dirt poor. White trash. I stole to fill my sister’s and my belly. When I got good at it, I figured out how to steal other things I wanted. I’m not proud of that time, but it is what it is.

  The man we’ve moved is in his sixties, silver hair mixed with black. He’s a big guy too, about six-foot-two, muscular at one time, but now a little on, what Asha might call, the jolly side. I like her terms. And it fits for this guy. His belly is big and round, and she says men like this remind her of Santa Claus.

  Yeah, I overhear her as much as I can because I’m fucking pathetic about this crush I have on her.

  Asha—er, Dr. Whitetail—is bagging the man, sliding an endotracheal tube home, a nurse taking over immediately to pump air into his lungs.

  I glance at the firefighter who’s pumping the man’s chest. Chris Peters. I actually know him and like him. He’s one of those people, a little like Asha, who exudes warmth and welcome. He gives me a flicker of a grin while he works. Stats are repeated.

  Sixty-seven. Heart attack while driving. His wife is admitted too for stitches but seems fine, otherwise. This is his fourth heart attack.

  As we cut apart and tear off his clothes, the scar running down his chest speaks of the cardiologist’s fight to save him. It’s an angry scar, still red. He’s had a heart attack not that long ago.

  Come on, man, fight this. You can survive this one too.

  There are lines around the man’s face. The kind of wrinkles only obtained from laughing, not from a bad life. This man has laughed. A lot. And I picture him surrounded by friends and family, chuckling so hard he has to hold his round belly.

  Come on, brother. Fight this. You got so much live for.

  Asha’s talking about paddles when I take over pumping for Chris. He says something. My brain takes a second to whirl the information into something comprehensible. He’s been doing CPR for almost ten minutes. Thready pulse on scene. And now…fuck.

  The machines are beeping. When there’s a heartbeat, the machine makes a happy ding, meaning someone is alive. Right now the machines are beeping in a panicked tone. I don’t know who manufactures these fucking machines, but the beeping is incredibly annoying with its incessant ring of “He’s got no pulse. He’s got no pulse. He’s got no pulse.”

  I push down and lift up, feeling that Chris might have already broken a rib. I might have broken a second. Fuck. But it’s what happens. I keep pumping, hearing Asha call out for calcium chloride and other IVs. She’s got this. She’ll get him back.

  I keep pumping, taking a second to look at her. A nurse is getting the paddles ready while Asha glances at her patient. Her kind dark eyes flood with concern. The cards are stacked against us. This man has had four previous myocardial infarctions, making his heart weaker and weaker. He’s already had CPR for ten minutes, and now he doesn’t have a pulse. No breath. But this is why I admire Asha. Her face steels. She’s digging in her heels. I can almost hear her internal thoughts, like she’d say, “Oh no. Not fucking today.” She’s a fighter. She’s going to give everything she has to save this jolly Santa Claus. And I pump with a little more energy.

  Come on, man. Come back for Asha. She’s a good girl. You’d like her. She could make you smile when you worried you never would again. That’s what she did for me.

  Paddles are applied and we all hold our breath as we watch the monitor after the electric shock. The machine beeps its panicked tone. Shit.

  I jump back on the man’s chest, pumping up and down. The nurse who’s pushing air into his bag catches my eye. I see doubt. She doesn’t think the man can make it. Fuck her. Asha’s got this. Asha should win a gold medal every day for what she does, how somehow she’s still sweet and optimistic. Most doctors, especially when they had a residency where she had hers at the LA County Hospital, come out of the experience cynical and jaded. Not Asha. She’s not here for a paycheck. She’s here because she cares. She cares so fucking much.

  I’ve seen her cry once after losing a patient. I would rip off my arms, my own heart, anything to have made her feel better. Instead, like a coward, I pretended I hadn’t seen her. I know she was crying in privacy and wouldn’t have wanted anyone to notice. But I did.

  Paddles again.

  Nothing.

  Paddles again.

  The panicked tone.

  Come on, please, I internally beg the man as I resume pushing on his big chest. Come back. You have a family. Someone who makes you smile and laugh. Come on.

  “It’s been fifteen minutes,” Tanya says, squeezing an IV bag while checking her watch.

  Twenty-five minutes of CPR with no pulse.

  Fuck, this isn’t good.

  While pushing on the man’s chest, feeling my arms tremble but telling myself to override how strained my muscles are and keep doing what I am, I glance at Asha. She’s biting her lip, her focus laser-like, angry. She’s a warrior. She keeps fighting.

  She makes the decision to cut him, the defibrillation paddles will touch his heart. Where the fuck is the cardiologist? I know he was called when the firefighters were on their way. Standard protocol. Why is she making this decision alone? She shouldn’t be alone right now. Not that she can’t handle it, but the cardiologist—if it’s Dr. Murphy who would rather try to feel up his new secretary than do his fucking job, I’ll kill him—should be here to help. Fuck, this really isn’t good.

  “Maybe talk to his wife first, Doc,” Tanya says while jutting her chin in the direction of the exit. “She’s on the opposite side of the ER. Tell her what’s going on.”

  Fuck.

  I know this tactic, and Tanya’s right to advise it. Asha needs to tell the man’s wife, to prepare her for what’s happening. Her husband is leaving this planet, but we’ll keep fighting until Asha calls it.

  Asha leaves in a flurry of her green scrubs. Tanya takes over because the physician assistant, Mary Trainer, who’s supposed
to be supervising, is a weenie. Mary does, though, try to swab sweat from my forehead. I should appreciate it because I’m sweating all over Mr. Goodall. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to register the patient’s name. Goodall. What a great name. Reminds me of a gallant knight, a man who made everyone laugh and was brave and decent.

  Come on, Mr. Goodall. I can tell you’re one of the good ones left in this world. We need people like you. Work with me, man. You gotta fight this. Come back for your wife. Come back.

  Asha returns, biting her lip. Not like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She bites down on her full bottom lip because she’s working so fucking hard. She has the scalpel. I move aside as iodine is splashed around. The man’s blood spills to the sides of him as Asha works feverishly. The sternum saw’s zzzuzing-noise frustrates me even more. She splits his breastbone without any one to help her. That’s my girl. That’s my strong girl.

  Paddles are there.

  Fucking nothing.

  Asha glances at me. I might have read her mind or maybe she asked me out loud to take the man’s heart in my hands and palpitate. I do.

  God, this man is a warrior too because there are marks where his heart has wanted to give out on him, but he’s pushed through. His heart is pink-red. Angry red-black where it’s tried to die on him. Carefully, I hold his heart and pump from the top, undulating to the bottom.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  Well, if it isn’t the tardy Dr. Murphy. Finally showing up. Yeah, I’d like to rearrange his face.

  Asha fills in the cardiologist on what’s been done while I keep pumping Mr. Goodall’s heart.

  Dr. Murphy shakes his head, looking at Asha like she’s a mental patient. “Just fucking call it. It’s been almost thirty-five minutes? Call it.”

  Asha purses her lips. “One more paddle.”

  Dr. Murphy folds his arms across his crisp white coat. “Fine. One more. But it won’t do anything.”

  Asha’s eyes get glassy. Extra moisture pools, but she’s so tough. She makes the order. We paddle Mr. Goodall’s heart. I watch as the amazing organ contracts and does nothing after the electrical shock. Goddamned nothing.

  My stomach bottoms.

  “I’m fucking calling it, Dr. Whitetail,” Dr. Murphy says like she’s an idiot who should have known a hopeless case when faced with it. He glances at the clock on the wall, the one checked every shift, multiple times, for cases like this. “Time of death is eight forty-two. God, this will be a shitload of paperwork to do.” And the fucker leaves on that sour note.

  Asha, head held high, touches Mr. Goodall’s shin, looking around at her staff. “You fought so hard. I’m sorry.”

  Tanya, a woman who smiles more infrequently than I do, shakes her head, fighting her own tears. I doubt the tears are for Mr. Goodall, but for Asha. She, with her golden light and warmth to everyone, makes us all want to fight for her, save every single last person for her.

  “No.” Tanya shakes her head. “We’re sorry we couldn’t get him back for you.”

  The nurses nod. Even Mary Trainer does as she’s standing in the corner.

  Asha smiles. “All of you did a great job. Thank you. Thank you.” She sniffs and pushes her delicate chin forward. “Now, I suppose we have to do the paperwork Dr. Murphy was kind enough to remind us of.”

  Tanya touches Mr. Goodall’s forearm. “We’ll clean him up. We’ll take good care of him so you can show him to his wife.”

  Asha nods once. “Thank you. I’ll go talk to her now.”

  She makes her way to the glass-door exit, but stops, turning and looking at me. “Thank you…Ryder. You must be exhausted. More than twenty minutes of…thank you.”

  I nod and have to look away. She’s too beautiful. Too heroic. Too good for a man like me.

  But I want her. Even more now.

  I want to hold her in my arms and tell her what an amazing job she did. I want to tell her how I admire her, respect her. How I can’t stop thinking about her.

  In the Army we say we’d go to hell and back for our brothers in arms. And we do. I’ve marched into known terrorist locations, gunfire spraying the walls into dust around me, to retrieve a soldier, care for him. I did that over and over again. However, once I was done with the Army, I was done walking through hell.

  But for Asha, I’d walk through multiple levels of hell. I’d do it all fucking day with a smile on my face to boot. I’d do anything she asked of me.

  Too bad she’ll never ask.

  Ryder

  Asha hasn’t stopped for hours. She hasn’t eaten either. And her face, that’s usually full of smiles and warmth, is pinched, looking panicked and a little sad.

  Fuck, that kills me, seeing her like this.

  Dr. Murphy really did a number on her. After he was done with Mr. Goodall’s paperwork, he found Asha to lecture how she shouldn’t have ever cut into Mr. Goodall, how she should have waited for him. Then the ass had the gall to tell her how good she looks in scrubs.

  Okay, I’m a guy. I’m the kind of guy who would probably be called a man’s man, whatever the hell that means. I like guy stuff. Guns? Hell, yes. Trucks? Have one I use in the winter when it’s too icy for my bike. I’m kind of a stereotypical guy in a lot of ways—former veteran, likes to watch football, loves beer, and eats anything with meat. And I know I look like a guy. Lucked out with my frame and I happen to like lifting weights which makes me on the big side. So I’m probably not the best voice for feminism, but what the fuck does Dr. Fucking Murphy think after he’s shamed Asha then tells her he likes the way her scrubs emphasize her feminine figure?

  What man in his right mind thinks something like that would work? And what almost had me thinking of ripping his throat out was how Murphy touched her shoulder as he asked her for a date, seconds after he’d berated her.

  When Asha said she was busy, he scoffed off the remark as if he hadn’t really been asking her out. Then he insulted her again, saying something asinine about how, next time, she needed to wait longer for him.

  But, god, I could have kissed her for standing up for herself by saying, “You bet. The next time someone’s dying on my table I’ll be sure to tell him or her to wait until you can come down. I presume from your high horse?”

  He left, rolling his eyes.

  So, yeah, I met him in the hallway. I kind of bumped into him.

  The man can take my job away, a job I really like. But I wasn’t about to let the dick just walk off. So I “accidentally” ran into him and totally apologized while I stared him down, holding him pinned against the wall with my forearm on his chest, gently reminding him that on-call physicians, who are already in the hospital, need to be in the emergency department within so many minutes after the initial request. It’s procedure. And no one wants to break procedure.

  I smoothed the lapels of his white coat as I chiseled a smile into place, telling him, again, how sorry I was to trip into him. He might have peed himself a little, which, honestly, made my fucking day. I do have a good half foot of height on him. Plus, I’m sure, the man hasn’t worked out since he was a resident, so I knew I could physically intimidate him. I just hope he doesn’t call one of my supervisors about the little incident. Then again, if I explained myself to Tina or Tanya, my two supervisors, they would probably give me a medal since they also love Dr. Whitetail.

  Whoa. Who said anything about love?

  I guess, I did. In my head. But that just slipped out. I mean, this is only a crush. A crush where I worry over Asha and how it’s hours into her shift and she hasn’t stopped since Mr. Goodall died. How she’s too tense. How she needs to just sit down and eat. With me.

  I only have a couple hours left of my shift. It’s been a busy night with Mr. Goodall right away and then two of the town’s drunks crashing into each other. What are the odds? And then a new single-mom with a little girl who had croup. A woman who needed to be taken to surgery for her gallbladder and so on. Come to think of it, I haven’t stopped much either. I
did grab a bite a couple hours ago because Tanya warned me that if I didn’t, she’d cut off my balls. Sexual harassment in the hospital is just plain weird. But kind of sweet too.

  The single-mom got to me. My sister’s also a mom without a man. Well, except me. My sister, Zoe, during our childhood, was the only thing I cared about. My grandmother wasn’t exactly a nice woman, so it made caring about her not that easy. I enlisted in the Army to clean up—and I wasn’t exactly given a choice about it. But the main reason I signed up was because I knew Zoe wanted me to stop stealing. And I knew it was a good way to save money for her. I paid for her first couple years of college, but then she got pregnant, never telling me who the father was, and deciding to drop out to take care of Neil, her son, who happens to be the best seven-year-old in the world. Not that I’m a biased uncle or anything.

  So I hung out with the single-mom and her three-year-old daughter longer than I should have, but that kid, with her huge brown eyes and gorgeous messy hair, was hard to resist. Mia was the kid’s name. Can’t remember the mother’s. Anyway, Mia loved it when I flew her around in my arms as she pretended to be an airplane. We made a lot of big noises for our jet engines, which, hopefully, cleared out her lungs. Croup is scary as hell. But once you know what’s happening and how to get your kiddo to breathe again, it’s cake.

  Mia’s mom might have gotten the wrong idea. She gave me her phone number. And I know she doesn’t want me to call her for babysitting. When Mia was turned away, her mom slipped her number into my pants pocket, as well as slipped her fingers over my cock. Classy move that a few years ago I would have eaten up. I would have been fine to have slept with Mia’s mom and never think about her again. Until not that long ago, I wasn’t exactly a nice guy when it came to the ladies. Well, let’s be frank. I was always nice. For at least one night.

  But something changed within me as I watched Neil grow up. Having casual sex started to be stale. And since that’s the only kind of sex I had, you can imagine how depressed I was. And am. Then I saw Asha. I haven’t been with one woman since. I can’t think of other women. I haven’t had sex in months and I don’t care. Which is bad because it’s not like she’d ever think of me…