The Doctor's Devotion (Love Inspired) (15 page)

Empathy turned to caution on Kate’s face. “Oh, wow. Never mind. I’m sorry.” Kate made her getaway.

“Kate, please. If there’s something I need to know…”

“Mitch will tell you. Because he hasn’t, it clearly means you’re better off not knowing for now.” Kate went for the nearest door.

“Not so fast. Tell me what’s going on or I’ll step foot out that door and not come back. I mean it. I’ll bail for good.”

That stopped Kate. She whirled. “Why would you do that?”

“Because if we were
truly
a team, like you and Mitch and Ian claim, I’d already know what was going on with Mara.”

Kate’s countenance fell but her shoulders rose. She drew in a breath and studied Lauren. “You know what? You’re right. But still, due to legalities, Mitch needs to be the one to say it.”

“Say what?” Mitch stood at the door with a bag of chips.

Both women eyed each other. “That’s my cue.” Kate slipped out. And took Mitch’s chips with her.

Lauren moistened her lips. “Kate misunderstood a conversation between us and almost let it slip about Mara.”

Mitch paled. Came closer. “Did Kate tell you?”

“No. Said she couldn’t.”

“Good. She was prudent to do so, Lauren. Don’t be angry.”

“I told her that if we were truly a team, if I was totally trusted and an integral part of your crew as you avidly claim, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Because I’d already be aware of whatever it is that I don’t know about Mara.”

“It’s complicated, Lauren. Come with me.”

“What, to the medication room so you can tranquilize me?”

He shook his head. “Conference room. We’re having a team meeting about Mara. You’re part of that team.”

A terrible sense of dread and foreboding gripped Lauren. What was Mitch about to reveal? Could she handle it?

That second, the trauma bell screamed. As loud and disconcerting as questions sirening through her mind.

What devastating piece of Mara’s puzzle had they felt the need to keep from Lauren? And why? To protect her? What else had Mitch neglected to tell her?

Had the bond between them been a farce? Lauren wavered between wanting to trust Mitch’s intentions and feeling as if everything he said was a lie. If so, all he’d said about her being competent was also a lie. Yet Mitch would never put patients in jeopardy. He took extreme measures to ensure patient safety.

Lauren’s feet felt sunk in ten inches of sand as she ran to whatever waited on the other side of those emergency doors. Fear flew back. And doubt, with a vengeance. She forced it aside to focus on providing safe and stellar care.

She’d spent much of her downtime on Lem’s computer doing online trauma montages to better her skills. Had it all been in vain?

“This place has been a zoo!” Nita said hours later while scooping up paperwork for the fifteenth patient since midnight.

“Literally.” Lauren grabbed another bandage.

Kate came alongside her. “Yeah, what is it with all these animal-related accidents tonight?”

Lauren thought back. Kate was right. “Let’s see…we’ve had a man fall from a horse and fracture his foot and skull.”

“A kid bitten by a dog at a park. Not to mention the dog owner’s broken nose when the kid’s dad bashed him after the bite.”

“A man fell off a ladder shooing birds from his gutters,” Lauren said.

“A lady freakishly fractures her hip feeding squirrels.”

“No, freakish was the kid whose ear swallowed a tree frog.”

Kate laughed. “I will never understand how that happened.”

“His mom couldn’t, either. But I thought she’d die of shock when we told her what his earache was all about.” Lauren smiled.

“Freakier is that the frog lived to
ribbit
about it.”

“Don’t forget the youth leader who choked on a worm.”

Kate smirked. “That doesn’t count. It was a gummy worm.”

“Then how about the attorney kicked by a wild deer who got loose in his office?” Lauren slid his chart in a discharge slot.

Kate’s face softened. “Speaking of attorneys, how are you?”

Lauren stopped. “I’m— What about attorneys?”

“Oh, man. Open mouth, insert shoe store. Mitch obviously hasn’t had a chance to talk to you about Mara yet?”

Lauren sighed. “Nope. In fact, he’s avoiding me again.”

“Trust him. Okay? He has your best interests at heart.”

“What about Mara’s?” Lauren’s stomach twisted.

“Helping people is why he became a doctor. No other reason. Know that about him. Believe he has Mara’s future at heart.”

“Then why do I feel like her only advocate?”

Kate’s stance firmed. “She wasn’t the only patient that night, Lauren. Understand that many things are out of Mitch’s control. Ethically. Morally. Professionally.”

“Don’t forget legally. You mentioned attorneys.”

Kate nodded slowly, confirming Lauren’s worst fear for Mara without breaking confidentiality. Someone related to the wreck pursued litigation. Mara had enough on her plate. Lauren couldn’t contain the compassion or explain her mercy flowing for Mara, but everything screamed it was God-given.

Things might be out of Mitch’s control, but never out of Yours. Despite her mistake, You have Mara’s best interests at heart.
The nagging knowledge that some consequences stand after forgiveness didn’t give Lauren a good feeling. Not at all.

What was Mitch going to tell her about Mara? And when?

The questions dogged her into the night after she retired to the nurses’ sleeping room, since she was still on call. Lauren slept in restless snatches. The next morning in the central report room, Lauren, encircled by Ian, Kate and Mitch, surged from the table. “They’re putting her in
jail?
”

“Miss Bates, kindly sit,” the hospital attorney directed.

Lauren did so. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

Attorneys nodded. The director scowled at her. Mitch scowled at the director. Apparently the two didn’t play well together. Then again, the director didn’t get along with anyone.

“She committed a serious crime, Lauren,” Mitch said gently.

A lawyer leaned in. “Texting while driving is against the law. She’s been charged with vehicular homicide.”

“Homicide? She’ll go to prison.” Lauren’s heart thudded.

“Likely.” The attorney twisted his pencil on the table.

Lauren could puke. “May I speak to Mitch privately?”

Attorneys nodded. Once outside, Lauren grabbed his lab coat lapels. “Mitch, please. Don’t let that happen to Mara. There must be something you can do.”

“I can say with all honesty I wish there was. But no.”

“Can you see if they’ll go for a lesser charge? Involuntary manslaughter?”

“I have nothing to do with it. I haven’t spoken to the family since the night I had to inform them their son was killed. With her in and out of consciousness, we can’t know if she’s remorseful.”

“Did you put it like that? That she ‘killed’ him? Because I can’t imagine she meant to.”

“I don’t remember how I put it. I didn’t incriminate her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking. Look, I understand their side. I do. Mara incriminated herself. But—”

“You’re one of the rare few who can see Mara’s side, too.”

She shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. You’re right. Maybe Mara deserves what comes to her.” Despite the words, tears streamed.

“Come.” Mitch led her down the hall, to Mara’s bedside.

“To say goodbye?” Lauren squeaked.

“To say goodbye.” Mitch swallowed. Hard.

Lauren took Mara’s hand and tried not to cry.
When are they coming for her?
she mouthed. Didn’t want to mention aloud that Mara was headed to the jail’s sick ward, where she’d be kept until well enough to stand trial.

“Before ten.” In other words, within minutes. Lauren bit her lip. Mitch hugged her. “If it’s any consolation, I think God’s heart for Mara comes through you.”

“That means?”

“No idea. Just sounded like the thing to say.”

“Maybe it was one of those things you hear from God and speak His mind about without realizing it. You do that often. He operates so naturally through you during codes, triage and trauma care, Mitch. It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring to watch.”

“That’s good to know.”

“He’s good to know. My comfort and prayer for Mara is that somehow she’ll also realize that He is good to know.”

She took Mara’s hand and prayed exactly that.

Chapter Seventeen

“L
auren, wake up. You have to see this,” Mitch said days later.

Lauren looked adorable as she roused herself from sleep in the women’s on-call room. Momentary disorientation ebbed with each blink.

Mitch knelt beside her. Kate snored one cot over.

It had been too busy for anyone to leave, and the trauma crew staggered shifts and napped in batches.

Mitch angled his phone screen. Lauren looked into it. Her focus centered on a photo with eerily familiar words scrawled across a medical clipboard.
God is a good person to know. The best.

Lauren blinked. “Where did that come from? Who wrote it?”

“It came from a chart in Mara’s room on her jailhouse hospital bed. She woke up and couldn’t talk because her throat was sore from intubation. So she wrote.”

“She wrote that?” Lauren sat abruptly, causing Kate to stir.

“Every word, Lauren. I’m not making this up. She penned the
exact
phrase you left her with.”

Lauren leaned into his open arms. “She’ll be okay.”

“I hope this gives you faith for other things.”

Lauren nodded. “He hears.”

Ian burst through the door. “We got a fallen planker. ETA fifteen minutes. Bilateral leg fractures.”

Kate flipped over and up like a pancake, and shoved her feet into shoes before she grew fully awake.

“What’s a planker?” the three asked Ian simultaneously.

Ian shifted. “Planking is where people pick odd surfaces to lie facedown and flat on. Then take photos of themselves doing the stunt and post images on social network sites to outdo one another with the coolest funny photo.”

Mitch smirked. “I’m scared to ask how you know this, Ian.”

He jabbed Mitch, and the two commenced a clipboard joust.

Kate inserted herself like a referee. “What else, Ian?”

“Unfortunately this kid planked on a second-story brick ledge. Eagle Point High School. He fell. Knees first. Onto concrete. Landed hard.” They followed Ian to the staff hub.

Kate and Lauren’s faces twisted identically. “Ouch.”

Ian rapped the desk. “Let’s put him in O.R. Three.”

Mitch cornered Lauren near the O.R. suites. “So, you scrubbing in with me on this case?”

“Just try and keep me from it.”

Kate smiled. “That’s what I like to hear.”

“No, you like to hear that there’s chocolate involved.”

Kate laughed. “True. Got any?”

“In my bag at the desk. Leave some for Ian or he might be grumpy.”

“Hey, what are you trying to say?” Ian smirked.

“Uh, that you might need a chocoholic intervention?”

“I love the laughter you bring to the team, Lauren,” Mitch said as he reached for a sterile hand scrubber.

“Then go with me to the jail to visit Mara sometime, and I’ll work with you until the day I leave for Texas.”

Mitch paused scrubbing. Wow. She drove a hard bargain. “I’m not sure I can legally do that. She awake?”

“On and off. She’ll be devastated when she wakes and gets informed that people died in the accident she was involved in.”

“Responsible for.”

Lauren’s head whipped around. “Have you no mercy?”

Mitch narrowed his eyes. “Not with people who don’t pay attention when they drive. That kind of person killed my dad and destroyed my family.”

No one moved. Or spoke. Or breathed. All motion ceased.

The only perceptible sound originated through the O.R. door, where vital-sign monitors beeped in anticipation of a patient.

Jaw clenched, Mitch held up scrubbed and dripping hands and backed himself into the operating room with a conflicted scowl on his face. Today was monumentally hard.

He didn’t know who he was more irritated with: Lauren for standing up for Mara. Mara for vehicular homicide, which Mitch’s dad also died of. Or himself for still being mad about the other two.

Not to mention Lauren had said “until the day I leave for Texas,” which indicated intent to return.

Lauren walked in, garbed for surgery. She cast an apologetic glance, same time he did. They acknowledged one another with nods.

“Amazing how you two communicate so well without words. My wife and I never had that.” Ian lined his anesthesia tray with syringes and pulled equipment within reach. He eyed Mitch carefully, then Lauren.

Now who was talking without words?

Ian’s expression willed Lauren to tread lightly. “It’s not that he doesn’t have a soft spot for Mara. Today’s the anniversary of his dad’s wreck.”

Mitch wasn’t sure he was relieved for Ian’s verbal intervention or not. The whole world didn’t need to know.

Yet this wasn’t the whole world. This was his crew. His closest friends, cohorts, confidants. He’d acted like a jerk to them.

Especially the one he cared about the most. Not that she knew. He sought her out.

Lauren’s eyes rimmed with tears. “I’m so sorry, Mitch.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t know.” Obviously he still had festering wounds about circumstances surrounding Dad’s death.
Treat that internal ailment ASAP, will You, Lord?

Trauma techs brought in the youth. He not only looked bruised and bloody, but…

“He looks shocky.” Lauren finished Mitch’s thought as the crew transferred the patient to the table with a backboard.

“Type and cross him for six units of blood STAT. Give him two now, and I want to see his lab work ASAP,” Mitch instructed the circulating nurse.

An orthopedic specialist with whom Mitch had consulted their case-in-progress arrived and stood across from Mitch. The specialist nodded at Lauren. “She new?”

* * *

Lauren’s nerves rattled as the formidable man sized her up.

“She’s my scrub tech.” Mitch’s answer apparently appeased the intense surgeon. His visual scrutiny stopped instantly, proving his great professional respect of Mitch and his choice in staff. The man would probably hit the roof if he knew surgery wasn’t her primary specialty.

But Lauren trusted Mitch, too. If he didn’t think her completely capable, she wouldn’t be in here. That didn’t keep Lauren from hoping like mad that Mitch’s judgment was sound.

Doubt crept in. If Mitch had called in a specialist, perhaps Lauren wasn’t the best scrub tech for this case?

The specialist’s scrub tech entered. After Kate gloved him, he stood opposite Lauren and nodded professional acknowledgment.

“Should I step out?”

“Stay. You’ll learn a lot,” Mitch answered before Lauren could bail. How did he continue to read her mind and heart?

After Mitch updated them on the patient, the specialist fired up a drill and began piecing bone together with hardware. A burning smell reached her nostrils and made her eyes water, despite surgery goggles. Fine misty powder floated in the air. The smell made Lauren nauseous. She tried not to breathe.

That only worked well for a couple minutes. “Should I go check on other patients?” Lauren asked, feeling suddenly queasier. She didn’t like the orthopedic instruments. Or the sounds they made. Particles sprayed the air like sawdust. Lauren leaned in. Was that…? Bone powder. Her queasiness rocketed.

“Soon as we’re done here,” Mitch answered with his head and hands lowered to the surgical site.

Lauren puffed shallow breaths and begged herself not to gag or pass out. “I—I
really
think I need to step out now.”

Mitch eyed her. “You look a little pale. You okay?”

She nodded but couldn’t say another word.

When her stomach revolted in a telltale gallop, she knew she was no longer okay. Frowning, she shook her head.

“Go.” Mitch nodded to the double doors, which wobbled and turned into four as Lauren stumbled toward them. Or perhaps she wobbled rather than the door. Everything whirled around her.

Don’t let me pass out or throw up.

“She’s going down!” someone yelled.

Don’t…let…
Lauren’s thought floated off, and so did the surface she stood on. The room tilted. Her stomach sank like a magnet sucked into the floor. She reached out, flailed for anything to hold on to, but air was the only thing within reach.

Besides the pretty floor tiles, which slammed upward.

She had a vague sense of someone swooping in. Breaking her fall. Arms shoved beneath her pits. And so she hung there. Tried to talk but could only blink into Mitch’s face, which floated in and out of her vision.

“Get a gurney. Check her blood sugar. We have a nurse on the floor.” Mitch’s voice. Soothing. Serious. Ordering. Her?

Lauren tried to explain to the voice that there were many nurses on the floor. But her tongue felt like a two-ton anchor. She slowly blinked eyes open, but saw only an odd ring of green ankles and a blue circle of surgically booted feet around her.

* * *

Moments later, Lauren tried to lift her head.

“Whoa. Don’t move, Lauren.” Mitch’s hand rested on her forehead. A poke stung her finger. She looked down. And came fully to, to find herself flat on her back. Nita held a glucose monitor. “Have you eaten today, sweetie?”

She
was the nurse on the floor. Literally. On the tile, outside the operating area. Embarrassment and horror hit her. Had she jeopardized the patient by becoming one?

The specialist probably thought she was a first-class idiot with a one-way ticket to Weaklingville.

Speaking of tickets, a Texas-bound flight sounded
real
good right now. She fought a maniacal urge to laugh.

Why did Mitch trust her? Under the guidance of his gentle hands, she sat up slowly. Put her head between her knees, mostly to hide the rush of tears and her blazing red cheeks.

“Lem makes sure she eats,” Mitch said. Good thing because Lauren’s mouth still felt sutured. “But juice and crackers couldn’t hurt,” he added.

The team lifted her to a gurney. She hated to trouble them over a stupid fainting episode. Yet they’d scold her if they knew her thoughts. Every patient mattered and somehow, Lauren knew with all her heart, she mattered immensely to them.

Thank You, Lord.
Friendship was an unexpected summer blessing.

“Tell me what’s going on, Lauren.” Mitch’s fingers brushed her forehead, so he must not be angry. He certainly didn’t sound it, which baffled her. Nita brought juice and crackers and left.

“It’s the bone powder. The burning smell didn’t help. I think it got to me in there,” Lauren said with intense effort and slur.

Mitch chuckled. “That happened to me in residency, if it makes you feel better.”

“You passed out?” Lauren blinked, overcome with surprise.

“Whammo!” He smacked his palms together. “Face to the floor.” He pointed at his eyebrow to a tiny scar. One she may not have noticed, had he not been so close and pointing it out.

“You had stitches?” That almost made her laugh.

“Only four.” He smiled. “But my ego needed a few more.”

Now Lauren did laugh. “No doubt.” She turned serious and put her hand on Mitch, which seemed to momentarily arrest him. “How’s the patient?”

“Better than my scrub nurse at the moment.” He grinned.

Then in one athletic motion, he hopped onto the gurney. He used his thigh to brace her back as she sipped the juice. “Don’t you dare think a fainting episode is going to excuse you from scrubbing with me.” Determination glinted in gorgeous eyes, alongside deep compassion and a killer smile.

“I’m sorry.” She dropped her face. Stared at pulp floating in her orange juice.

With the world’s most tender motion, Mitch raised her chin. “No need to be sorry. Or embarrassed.” His eyes softened as they dragged like silk across her face.

She swallowed. The hall closed in around them. They stilled like two enamored sculptures with gazes tangled.

If anyone walked by, their feelings would be discovered.

In a surprising moment, his fingers slid down her neck and bent her head back in a way that could only position it for a kiss.

Every reason not to marched across her mind and massacred the moment. “I— Mitch, this—” But the safe, sedating look in his eyes killed the protest on her tongue as he responded with a high-caliber hug, and solid muscles squeezed the reasons out.

“I know. No need to be embarrassed about that, either.” His voice lowered delectably, as did his chiseled face.

Thrill scuttled through her. Followed by all the reasons this would qualify them for a prescription of Anti-Stupid Pills.

“It can’t work. I live in Texas. And you have someone else’s stinkin’ ring in your glove box,” she blurted out before his mouth brushed hers. Heated breaths mingled. Utterly engrossing eyes and luscious, inviting lips hovered millimeters from hers.

Her words must’ve slapped instant sense into him.

He drew a confounded breath, clenched his jaw and backed slowly away.

And Lauren could breathe again. Think again.

Knock her stupid, stubborn head against the floor again for stopping the ridiculously gorgeous man from kissing her.

Good. Gravy. The near-kiss scorched Lauren’s cheeks.

They looked around, startled, as if remembering they were still technically at work. Therefore this near-miss-kiss hadn’t been the brightest, most professional idea.

He stood, face rigid. “Don’t move until the juice kicks in. I’ll have Nita bring more crackers, then I’ll drive you home.”

“Thanks.” Every nerve ending still fizzed.

He lifted her side rail. “I mean it. Don’t get up without assistance. You’re a fall risk.”

The way his eyes bored into hers as he leaned in with his torso, as well as his words and direct stare, Lauren knew he didn’t mean “fall risk” merely in the sense that she was likely to pass out again and hit the floor.

He very clearly meant she was a fall risk…for him.