Love on Call

by Shirley Hailstock

  “I’m not in shock, Doctor.”

  Brad pulled the light out, anyway. He didn’t have to give her instructions; she immediately looked straight ahead and he checked her pupils. He suddenly smelled coconut, but before he could determine where it came from, she spoke.

  “Satisfied, Dr. Clayton? I’m truly not in shock.” She turned to go.

  He took her arm and turned her back. “You may not be in shock, Dr. Russell, but you are bleeding.”

  Her hand went to her neck and came away wet. She saw her own blood on her fingers and the color drained from her face. Suddenly it hit her: the man really could have killed her.

  Reaction set in. Her muscles seemed to relax all at once.

  “Come on. I’ll dress it,” Brad murmured.

  When she looked up at him she was in shock.

  Mallory couldn’t believe she’d nearly passed out. Her legs turned to rubber, and Brad Clayton had to help her to the examination room and onto a gurney. She was never so embarrassed in her life. All because of a little blood. Of all the people in the hospital, why was he here? The E.R. wasn’t his usual department. At least not when she was on duty.

  “Just relax,” Brad said. “You only need a little rest.”

  “I’m fine. Really,” she told him, but she was glad she was lying down. She closed her eyes and allowed the strange feeling of dizziness to subside. She no longer felt afraid. Wayne Mason had scared her more than anything ever had, yet she felt no aftermath of the ordeal. She could return to her duties. Except Dr. Bradley Clayton wasn’t having it.

  “Open your eyes,” he said.

  She opened them. “I’m not in shock,” she said again.

  “I just want to make sure.” He took a cotton swab and dabbed at the blood on her neck. Mallory jumped at his touch.

  “Did that hurt?” She heard the concern in his voice.

  “No,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting…I mean I forgot…” She stopped, unsure how to finish the sentence. His fingers touched her and she was unaware of her injury, only that they sent a charge through her. Again she questioned why he was in Emergency. If she had to have another doctor take care of her, why not Mark Peterson or Jason Abrams? Why did Brad Clayton have to show up tonight?

  “Open your eyes,” he said again. Mallory did as instructed. “You’re not acting as I expect you to.”

  How was she supposed to act? She was a doctor. She should know this. Where was her training? All those years of schooling seemed to vanish when she looked into his deep brown eyes.

  “Tell me how you feel,” Brad said.

  How she felt? She’d been at the hospital for nearly a year, and he’d never even looked at her. Yet her first day as a resident, she’d passed him in the parking lot and wondered who he was. He was moody, quiet, sometimes cynical, and he looked right through her, the same way he would look through a ghost.

  “I feel fine. I’m just tired. I’ve been on duty for fourteen hours.”

  “So you need some sleep?”

  “Dr. Clayton, I can go back to work.”

  Brad took another swab and cleaned away the blood that had trickled down her neck.

  “It’s only a scratch, right?” Mallory questioned.

  “With your skin type there won’t even be a scar.” His hand brushed her neck. It felt like a caress. Mallory forced her eyes to stay open. She couldn’t stop the tingling sensation that streaked through her at warp speed.

  She took a deep breath when his hands moved past her collarbone and continued to the bloodstain in the white blouse she wore under her lab coat. Again Mallory’s lids swept downward. The sensations that rushed through her at his touch made her want to keep her eyes closed and give in to the fantasies that she often imagined in the quiet of her bedroom.

  “I’m sending you home,” he said.

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Why?”

  “Other than you’re too tired to keep your eyes open, you’ve had a really bad shock.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted.

  “And you’re no use to the patients in this state.” He continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “You can’t send me home.”

  Holding a bandage, he moved around to face her. “Do you think anyone is going to question my decision?”

  She thought about the long hours she’d been on duty, the episode with Wayne Mason, the cut on her neck and Brad’s authority at the hospital. He was liked, well-respected, a brilliant surgeon, even though he was moody and unpredictable at times. She knew no one would object to his decision.

  “Do you live alone?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “I want to know if there’ll be someone to check on you.”

  “There isn’t. I do live alone.”

  “Can you call a friend? I don’t think you should be on your own tonight.”

  Mallory hesitated, then said, “I’ll call my sister.”

  Brad gave her an inquisitive look, but said, “Good.”

  Her sister lived in Atlantic City, an hour from Philadelphia. She was a kindergarten teacher and couldn’t come up on the spur of the moment and spend the night with her. There was nothing wrong with Mallory. She didn’t need a baby-sitter. Yet if she told him that he would never believe it.

  The truth was she had very few friends. She’d only been back in Philly a year, and most of that time she’d spent at the hospital. She’d lost touch with her old friends, and her work at the hospital kept her too busy to make new ones. She’d gotten close to one of the nurses, Dana Baldwin, but Dana was on duty tonight. So she would go home alone. She would be fine. Exactly as she had told the good doctor.

  “I’ll have someone call you a taxi.”

  Mallory sat up and swung her legs to the side of the gurney. She felt no dizziness until her eyes met his. They were a deep brown, narrow and piercing. She held his gaze but felt as if he were looking into her mind. “Dr. Clayton, I’m not ill. I can drive myself home.”

  Brad stared at her for a long time. Mallory wanted to look away, remove herself from those piercing eyes, but she resisted the urge. Finally he hunched a shoulder and took a step back.

  “I don’t want to see you here for at least twelve hours.” His voice was level, yet the command in it was unmistakable.

  “If it’s any of your business,” she said, slipping off the gurney, “I’m off tomorrow. But it’s not your call when or how often I work.”

  Mallory couldn’t believe she was saying these things. For a year she’d thought about having a conversation with him, and now she was arguing. It was as if he pushed some long-dormant buttons she hadn’t realized she had.

  As she headed for the opening in the curtain, Brad Clayton stepped aside. She stopped. “Dr. Clayton.” Her throat went dry when she raised her eyes to look at him. He was taller than she was by a head. And he had a powerful presence—the kind of thing they said about people who go on the stage or work as models. There was something about them that caused everyone else to pause and take notice. And he had it. “I apologize,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I will go home and do as you say.”

  He smiled. She knew that was rare. She’d stared at him from across the E.R., across treatment rooms, in the operating room and from the back of a crowd of interns on rounds during the last year. He rarely smiled except at his patients. Mallory would have sworn he didn’t even know she existed, but she was technically his patient. That could be the reason for his smile, but what it did to her insides had nothing to do with a doctor-patient relationship. The man was sexy as hell, and she wasn’t feeling like a doctor.

  She was feeling like a woman.

  As promised, Mallory drove straight home. She didn’t call her sister, but instead ran a hot bath, eased into the silky, scented water and promptly fell asleep. She woke up when the water cooled, got out of the tub and dried herself, but had no energy to find a nightgown. She crawled naked into bed.

  Brad’s keys clinked in the glass bowl where he always dropped
them upon entering his house. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he couldn’t remember ever being this tired. Still wearing his bomber jacket, he went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The light made his eyes smart. He really needed to sleep.

  Grabbing a bottle of water, he twisted the cap off and drank it in one long gulp. Throwing the plastic container in the recycling bin, he closed the fridge, plunging the room into darkness. Mallory Russell’s face suddenly entered his mind. He had barely noticed her before but her actions tonight meant everyone would remember her.

  She was no beauty queen. On days he did notice her, her hair was often unkempt, knotted on top of her head, with tendrils falling down her neck and ears. She often pushed them back, only to have them work free again. She wore little if any makeup, except some lip color. Her best feature was her eyes. They were large, as deep as an ocean, a dark brown-sugar color and fringed with lashes that were standard issue on girls under ten. By the time they started to curve upward puberty set in and the lashes were left behind in childhood. Mallory Russell had kept hers. Or maybe she just hadn’t reached puberty yet.

  The phone rang, jarring Brad out of his musings. He realized he was still standing in the dark. Bypassing the phone in the kitchen, he went into the family room and switched on a lamp. The caller ID showed him it was Rosa, his sister, who lived in New York City.

  “Rosa, what are you doing up at this hour?” he said without the traditional hello. “Don’t cover girls need their beauty rest?”

  “You need to work on your lines, Brad. That cliché must be as old as you are,” she told him.

  “What should I have said?” He took the portable phone to the sofa and stretched his six-foot length out on the deep maroon fabric.

  “Never mind what you should have said, was it you?”

  Rosa was a news junkie. No doubt one, if not all, of the local stations, which she got on her Direct TV connection, had run the story of the “…near killing at Philadelphia General. Details as they become available.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “It wasn’t? It certainly sounded like you. Trying to save the children. I’m surprised the guy was in his twenties.”

  “Rosa…” Brad said sardonically. She was the youngest in the family, but when she got on a soap-box there was no stopping her. At 2:00 a.m., after a knifing and Mallory Russell, he was in no mood to listen to one of Rosa’s rants.

  “Okay, okay,” she answered.

  He could almost see her lifting her hands. Rosa was a model. When she wasn’t on a runway, she talked incessantly. But Brad loved her and they were very close. He remembered when she was a child and used to curl up in his lap and fall asleep. She called frequently now because she was concerned about him. He loved her for it.

  “So tell me what happened.”

  “What did the news report?” Brad reached over and picked up the remote control from the coffee table. He switched on the big-screen television and muted the sound. A costume drama was playing. Red coats with elaborately ruffled shirts swayed as much as the swords the actors used in the choreographed fight. He pressed a button and the WKYS logo appeared in the corner of the screen. As fate would have it, a photo of the entrance of Philadelphia General appeared behind the newscaster. Brad turned the sound up.

  “That a man had held a doctor hostage in the E.R. The doctor disarmed him and had to be treated for minor injuries,” Rosa replied promptly.

  “The man was on drugs and the doctor was a woman.”

  “A woman doctor disarmed a junkie? How’d she do that?”

  Brad took a breath. He remembered the way he’d felt in the E.R. when he was sure at any moment Mallory Russell would be another statistic in the drug war.

  “You wouldn’t believe how she did it.” He didn’t know if he believed it. “She used a maneuver I’ve only seen in the movies.”

  “What did she do?” He heard the impatience in his sister’s voice.

  “She cut off the blood flow to his brain and he passed out.”

  Rosa was speechless for a moment, clearly in awe. He understood her reaction. He was in awe of Mallory Russell himself.

  “I’d like to meet this wonder woman.”

  “It was an isolated event, Rosa. It happened in the moment. It doesn’t make her Wonder Woman.”

  “She impressed you.”

  Brad blinked and sat up. He was trying to make the leap of logic his sister had, but missed the mark.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can hear it in your voice. You sound different when you talk about her. There’s something else in your voice other than admiration and respect.”

  “Don’t read anything into this, Rosa. You’re too quick to jump to conclusions.”

  “No, I’m not.” For a moment there was silence. Then Rosa continued, “What were you doing while this man held a knife on the woman doctor?”

  “Holding my breath.”

  “Good sign. Looks like she matters to you.”

  “Rosa…”

  “You were holding your breath because of the woman doctor—”

  “Will you stop calling her that? Her name is Mallory Russell.”

  “Mallory Russell, not Dr. Russell. This is getting better and better. She even has a name. Two names.”

  “Rosa, I’m going to hang up on you.”

  His sister laughed, her voice a soft musical trill. “You like Dr. Russell,” she taunted gently. “Just listen to the irritation in your voice. At least it’s an emotion.”

  “I feel nothing for her other than what a doctor would feel for a patient.”

  “Doctors hold their breath?”

  “On occasion.”

  “This has been a wonderful call.” Again Brad listened to the sound of her laughter. “Someone has cracked that casing around you. I can’t wait to tell the family. It’s almost worth a trip down there to meet Dr. Mallory Russell.”

  “Rosa, it’s late and I’m tired and in no mood to try and convince you that you’re so far off the mark you could be in China.”

  “I don’t leave for China for months. I know exactly where I am. It’s you who’s confused.” Brad listened in silence. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Sometime,” she added. “Unfortunately, it’ll probably take you six months to do it.”

  Brad hung up a moment later, with his sister’s laughter still ringing in his head and Mallory Russell on his mind. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his thoughts. The night had been traumatic for everyone in the E.R. He chalked it up to that and nothing his baby sister had said.

  Yet Brad wondered if Mallory was all right. She had been tired, overworked, and then that terrible ordeal had played out with her at the center of it. How could she think she could bounce back, with no repercussions? Brad knew bouncing back so quickly was almost never the case. Mallory needed rest and someone to talk to. She’d said she would call her sister. He hoped she had. On nights like this he knew firsthand about needing someone.

  He stood up and stretched. The tiredness that had been in his bones fell away like layers of heavy armor. He was wide awake and wondering.

  Was she alone?

  Switching off the television, he wondered how Mallory was doing. She was technically his patient and he thought about all his patients, although most of them couldn’t drive themselves home. Mallory had acted as if her ordeal had been all in a night’s work.

  It hadn’t.

  The night was a trauma for most in the E.R., but for her it was an instance of facing her own death. She was probably suffering the after-effects of the episode. Yet doctors really were the worst patients. Mallory Russell had looked him directly in the eye and lied. She had no intention of taking his advice and calling someone to stay with her. Around the hospital she was a loner. And he was sure she had gone home alone and called no one.

  Chapter Two

  The coma wing took up the entire seventh floor of the Grace N. Clyburn Building, which the staff referred to as Building C. It had been bui
lt five years ago, funded by a grant from a man whose wife had died without regaining consciousness. She’d been placed in a long-term care facility a hundred miles away, and he’d had to drive that distance to sit with her. The donated building had a walkway on level three that connected it to Building B. Mallory rarely ever used the walkway, though she worked in Building B, the oldest wing of the hospital.

  “I am somebody,” she said, standing next to the bed. She leaned in close and spoke quietly. “I want you to repeat it, Jeff.” She stared at the smooth-skinned face of a twenty-something young man. He was a drug addict. He’d gone through a nightmarish withdrawal, but something went wrong. He’d gotten more drugs and the overdose nearly killed him. The doctors saved his life, but he’d slipped into a coma.

  Mallory thought of Wayne Mason. Her hand went to her neck, where the cut had healed. She could still feel the place where the scab had been. Would Wayne one day be in a coma, or would he die in some gutter before help could arrive?

  This patient’s name was Jeffrey Amberson. The Magnificent Ambersons came to mind, a book she’d read years ago about a rich, dysfunctional family and the effect losing their wealth had had on them. Jeffrey wasn’t much different from the fictional George Amberson, at least in age. He didn’t come from wealth, that she knew. He’d probably been on the road to becoming a model citizen when he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up here.

  “Say it, Jeff,” she repeated. “I am somebody.” He didn’t move or react in any way. “A very famous man said that. His name is Jesse Jackson. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

  Mallory touched Jeff’s hand, which was cool and immobile but soft. She leaned closer to him and whispered, “Live, Jeff! Fight. Wake up!”

  Mallory wanted to scream the words at him, but she kept her voice level. “Jesse Jackson is right, Jeff. You are somebody. Sure, you’re not at your best now and you’ve made some bad decisions involving drugs. Maybe there was a reason. You can change that. But you can’t do it if you don’t live.”