Nursing The Doctor (2 page)

The nurses both shook their heads in wonder. “How about the mother?”

“Broken ribs and a concussion. She’s stable now. The eleven-month-old baby, Nicole, was in the back, strapped into a car seat. She had no injuries at all. The father just came in to take her home.”

Mary nodded. “Yeah, I was holding her for a while. We finally got her calmed down, but it was good to hear her crying like that at first. It’s when they don’t cry that you worry. She’s a really cute baby. Doc Brulotte was pretending to interview her, asking her when she was born, whether she knew if she was a boy or a girl. He broke me up, and he even a got a smile out of the baby.”

Patricia laughed. “I doubt there are many females Brulotte couldn’t charm if he set his mind to it. I look at him sometimes and think it’s a good thing I’m happily married to Joe. He’s prime beefcake, our Doc Brulotte.”

Mary agreed, and Lily focused her attention on her cheese sandwich. She was the only one of the three nurses who was unmarried, and she figured they probably knew Brulotte had paid her a lot of attention six months before, when she first came to work at Emerg. Nothing much escaped the hospital grapevine.

“He was telling me he’s going skiing up at Whistler tomorrow,” Mary added. “He said he and Doc Halsey rented a chalet up there for the whole winter.”

Ben Halsey, the plastic surgeon presently working on Jason’s arm, was Greg’s close friend and housemate. When the doctors had purchased a lavish permanent residence on the ocean some months ago, the rumor mill had circulated an awed description of the house and details of the legendary parties the two bachelors held there.

“Those two live the good life, no doubt about it,” Mary remarked with a wistful sigh.

Patricia snorted. “Couple of playboys, if you ask me. They both need to get married and have a few kids. That would teach them what life’s really about.”

“They’re both excellent doctors, though,” Mary replied. “If I ever got hit by a bus, God forbid, I’d want Doc Brulotte to be on shift when they brought me in, and Doc Halsey to patch up my face. Brulotte’s demanding to work with and he’s got a foul temper, but I’ve seem him save cases I never figured would make it.”

“I ever get hit by a bus, I’d just as soon pack it in then and there,” Patricia declared. “Spending months in rehab isn’t my idea of a good time.” She glanced at her watch. “Gotta go see how my cardiac’s doing.” She gathered up her yogurt container and plastic spoon and tossed them into the garbage. “You on for the weekend, Lily?”

“Nope.” Lily shook her head. “This is my last shift in this rotation. I’ve got seven days off now.”

“Ahhaa, lucky you. You going skiing with the docs, by any chance?”

Lily smiled and shook her head. “Not likely. I don’t even own a set of skis. Besides, my brother’s on days until he goes on a course at the Justice Institute with the fire department, high angle rescue or something, so I’ll be keeping an eye on my grandmother.”

“How’s your grandma doing?” Mary’s voice was sympathetic. Alzheimer’s was a disease they were all familiar with.

“She has her bad days, but she still has lots of good ones, too.” Lily thought of Hannah’s sweet smile. She also thought of the fire Hannah had started in the kitchen just two weeks ago, and a shudder trailed down her spine. The disease was progressing more rapidly than Lily was prepared to admit. There were worrying times now when Hannah didn’t recognize either Lily or her brother, Kaleb.

“Well, be sure you take some time for yourself, have some fun on your days off.”

“I will.” The other nurses left, and Lily sipped her tea, grateful for the few moments of solitude. She was looking forward to her time off in spite of the work involved. She was determined to go running every single day, even if it meant hiring Mrs. Hosko from across the street to keep an eye on Hannah for an hour or two.

An image of a cozy cabin surrounded by snow, somewhere high in the mountains, popped into her mind. There’d be a full moon, and inside the lights would be dim, the fireplace blazing, soft music playing. Greg Brulotte would be sipping a glass of wine with a beautiful woman curled under his arm....

“Trauma, ETA three minutes. All available staff,” the speaker above her head intoned.

Lily got up and gathered her garbage, stuffing it into the can.

Greg Brulotte wouldn’t be sipping wine. He’d be stripping the clothes off that gorgeous lady, Lily decided. And it would probably be a great party while it lasted, but the lady should know that it wouldn’t last long.

Lily needed to keep that in mind when she was around him and her traitorous pulse hammered as if she were developing tachycardia.

She hurried over to the triage area. By the time she reached it, the paramedics were unloading a stretcher into trauma room two, calling out their assessment to the ER staff.

A few seconds more and Lily was again gowned, gloved and goggled, swiftly and efficiently removing work boots, heavy socks, pants and underwear from the writhing form of a huge man whose hairy chest and muscular arms were soaked with blood.

The brown handle of a kitchen knife protruded from the center of his chest.

CHAPTER TWO

“What happened here?”

Dr. Brulotte was rapping out questions, and he emanated the peculiar kind of high-stakes energy that bound the members of the ER into a formidable team.

“Lovers’ quarrel,” one of the paramedics said rapidly. “Name’s Harlan Mcfail. His wife stabbed him. Said she thought he’d move instead of just standing there. GCS’s 2-2-5.”

Lily’s brain automatically translated the coded message of the Glasgow Coma Scale.

Major injury, poorly responsive verbally, still responding physically to stimuli.

The trauma room had quickly filled with team members, and the action seemed totally chaotic, but Lily knew that each person was performing a separate and necessary function, just as she was, the procedures as expertly choreographed as the intricate steps in a ballet.

The team’s aggressive and invasive actions during the next few moments would determine whether or not Harlan Mcfail would survive to quarrel with his wife again.

The patient was intubated, and Lily quickly and expertly inserted the intravenous needle for the Ringer’s lactate. The knife was removed.
Blood was drawn and tests ordered. A portable X-ray machine would determine whether or not there was arterial damage from the knife.

Although his airways were unobstructed, Mcfail was not breathing well. Greg used his stethoscope. “No breath sounds on the right. We’ve got a pneumothorax of the right lung,” he concluded.

Lily had been monitoring blood pressure. “BP’s dropping rapidly, sixty over forty,” she reported.

Air was seeping into the chest with every breath, but not out, creating a bubble of air that was compressing the collapsed lung.

Greg inspected Mcfail’s neck. The trachea was visibly shifting to the left, indicating that the air was also pushing the trachea and other vital structures over.

“Tension pneumothorax,” Greg muttered, reaching for the needle Lily had ready. He quickly stabbed it into the man’s upper chest and released the trapped air, but the needle had to be replaced by a much larger tube that would help to re-expand the lung.

Again, Lily had the equipment ready before Greg could request it. With the scalpel she handed him, he made a small incision in the skin, dissected down and into the pleura and poked a large tube into the chest cavity. The tube would now suck out blood and air and re-inflate the lung.

Greg used his stethoscope again and nodded, satisfied.

Lily confirmed that blood pressure was up and holding steady. Harlan was stable enough to transfer to the OR.

“That’s it, boys and girls, another delighted customer will undoubtedly send us referrals the moment he wakes up.”

Under the glibness, there was satisfaction in Greg’s voice, and he grinned at Lily as she glanced up at the clock on the wall, astounded to find that an hour had gone by in what she’d assumed was the space of a heartbeat. It was now after seven. Her shift had officially ended fifteen minutes ago.

She tugged off her mask and goggles. She knew Greg was right behind her when she stepped out of the trauma room. A glance around told her that for the first time in hours, the ER was quiet. The waiting area was almost empty, Elizabeth and several other nurses sitting behind the desk sipping coffee as they brought charts up to date.

“I ordered a pizza a long time ago. Jimmy will be baby-sitting it for me,” Greg said. Jimmy was the clerk on whom everyone relied. “Care for a slice, Lil? Pepperoni and pineapple.”

Her refusal should have been automatic. It always had been before. Now, she turned and looked up at him. His mop of curly dark hair was matted from the headgear, and he reached up and tousled it. She could tell from the gleam in his deep-set brown eyes and the palpable air of vitality that seemed to radiate from his athlete’s body that he was still pumped from the drama they’d just been through, just as she was.

And she sensed from the mocking tone in the invitation and the cynical lift of one eyebrow that he absolutely expected her to decline.

More than anything she hated being predictable.

“Thanks, I’m starved.”

He blinked and his eyes widened in surprise.

She felt a jolt of perverse satisfaction.
Gotcha, Dr. Brulotte
.

“Staff lounge, five minutes. I’ve gotta wash up. You want a soda with it, Lil? I’m getting one from the machine."

“Sounds good.”

He was prompt. Exactly five minutes later he shouldered open the door to the lounge, balancing a cardboard pizza box and two cans of soda. With a graceful flourish he set everything down on the battered coffee table and sank onto the sagging brown sofa.

Lily perched on the edge of one of the straight-backed chairs wondering what on earth she thought she was doing. After months of being cool, professional and deliberately offhand with this man, she was about to eat his pizza, drink his soda and make conversation with him late at night in a deserted lounge. There truly was something wrong with her head.

“Let’s fix you up a plate, here, Lil.” Greg carefully tore the top off the pizza container and separated two hefty slices dripping with cheese. He balanced them neatly on the inside of the cardboard and handed them to her along with an opened can of soda and several paper napkins. Then he took a slice of pizza for himself and devoured it in huge bites.

He reached for another, and before Lily had even tasted hers, his second slice was also history. He glanced up as he reached for a third, and the mesmerized expression on her face made him laugh.

“Sorry. No manners. I missed dinner, and in the back of my mind I always figure I’m gonna get paged. The ER’s turned me into a crude speed eater, Olympic category.”

Lily nodded. “You have to be quick around here or you’d starve to death. Please, don’t let me slow you down.”

She bit into her own pizza, much too aware of him to be able to savor it. It had been a mistake to sit across from him, because she was forced to look directly at him. How could a man seem so sexy while bolting pepperoni pizza?

And in spite of the speed at which he ate, Greg was the picture of relaxation, slumped back on the sofa cushions, one long leg propped across the other knee. Under his lab coat he was wearing what he usually did in the ER, a pair of well-used gray cords and a dark plaid button-front shirt, with high-top basketball shoes on his enormous feet.

The clothing was comfortable and unremarkable. It was the body inside it that was distracting. He was pretty much a perfect male specimen, she estimated. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, long, muscular legs. And those sculpted good looks to top it all off.

“So, what are you gonna do with your time off, Lil? I overheard you telling Liz you were off for a week. You going down to Mexico to catch some sun?” He was still munching away, somehow managing to chew and talk at the same time without seeming boorish.

Lily swallowed before she replied, thinking of Hannah sternly admonishing her and Kaleb for talking with their mouths full when they were little. Greg had obviously never had the same lessons drilled into him. He was chewing steadily, one thick eyebrow tilted inquiringly as he waited for her answer.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She didn’t volunteer anything more, deliberately turning the conversation to him. “I hear you’re a skier. I guess it’s snowing like crazy up at Whistler today.”