Safe In The Surgeon's Arms. Molly Evans
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Like there weren’t ten years under her belt already. But this place. This man. Those were the things that made her tremble now. Thoughts of how they’d been together in the past made her quake.
“Get anesthesia in here. He has to be intubated now.”
“There was just an overhead page, Chase. They’ve been called to a code on the floor.” Liz, the charge nurse, supplied the answer, but picked up the phone on the wall. “I’ll see if there’s someone else who can help out.”
“Page any surgeon overhead. I’ll intubate, and someone else can do the IV placement. We need a central line right away.”
“Got it.” Liz made the call.
“IV set-up tray is ready, Doctor, but if you’d prefer to intubate first, I’ll get that one ready.” Though keeping her focus on the patient, Emily spoke in the direction of the doctor leading the situation. He stood with his back to her and was in the process of removing his lab coat when he froze.
Then spun.
Clearly astonished at her presence, he stared at her with his mouth open for a few seconds as he tried to force his mind to accept what his eyes were seeing.
Emily’s stomach tightened again; her heart beat as erratically as the patient’s. Chase had never looked better, and her heart was out of control. A look of stunned shock crossed his face for a second or two. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped and he jumped as if he’d been pinched. Only a few seconds of lapsed control, but she saw it, felt it in her chest. The depth of pain mixed with his surprise at seeing her would be etched in her mind forever. She’d done that to him. She’d caused the hurt he’d momentarily betrayed. Except for the shock on his face, he hadn’t changed in the three years since they’d broken up. Since she’d walked away from him.
“Emily?” He took a halting step toward her then stopped. “What are you doing here?” His blue gaze raked her from top to toe as if his brain still couldn’t comprehend what his eyes were telling him. “What happened to your hair?”
Before she could answer, what seemed like an army of people burst into the room and the focus returned to the critical patient in front of them. This was apparently the entire team of surgeons, from the senior fellow down to the first-year resident. At a teaching hospital staff seemed to move in large herds.
“Who called for a surgeon? We’re here.”
As the physician in charge, Chase forced his focus from Emily to the surgeon. “We need better IV access immediately. Can one of you put in a central line? Anesthesia’s tied up, and I’ll have to intubate.” Chase whipped off the bloody lab coat he’d worn to the crash site and threw it into a corner of the room.
The most senior member of the group emerged and nodded to Chase. “Sure thing.” He removed his lab coat and handed it to a student to hold.
“I’ll assist, Doctor.” Emily made the offer so she would be away from Chase’s penetrating glare and the waves of hostile energy flowing off him to flood the room. There was enough tension in the room already without adding more fuel to the fire she’d not been prepared for. Even though she’d known it would come, she wasn’t prepared for it on the first day. “I’ve got the tray ready.”
“Okay. Great. I thought this was going to be something difficult,” he said with a grin, and winked at Emily. Emily never knew whether to be relieved at the confidence of surgeons or shocked at their outrageous arrogance. “Hey, don’t I know you? Didn’t you work here a while back?” He, too, frowned, trying to make sense of his memory in the present situation.
“Yes, I did. Came back for more. Over here, Dr. Blaze.” Emily motioned him to the opposite side of the patient, and he moved around to where she stood. Relief overwhelmed her that he only remembered her from being an employee, not the rest. Or, if he did, he had the good graces not to say anything.
“Dr. Blaze. Ha! I haven’t been called that in years.”
“I remember with you everything was an emergency, wasn’t it? You flashed through rounds like your tail was on fire.” Emily smiled and her peripheral vision caught the glare Chase threw her way.
“Oh, those were the days.” He shook his head at the memory. “So what happened? He’s missing an arm.” He looked to Chase for answers.
“Trauma. Pinned under his truck. Had to amputate in the field.” Chase supplied the information, reinforcing one of the highest rules in trauma care: a limb for a life. Focus. That was what he needed right now—focus. Nothing mattered right now except saving this man’s life. That was why he was there.
It didn’t matter that he’d just had a bomb go off in the form of his ex-girlfriend appearing right in front of him in the middle of a trauma. He had to focus right now and ignore the kick in his pulse and the pain in his heart. He continued speaking to the surgeon, though he focused on aligning the patient’s head in the correct position for putting in the airway tube.
“Once he’s stable you can take him to OR and clean the arm up. It was pretty quick and dirty out there.” As an emergency surgeon, he was called on to perform such procedures as well as his normal shifts in the ER.
Though he would sound like he was in control to the others, Emily heard the tension in his voice, noticed the hardness in his eyes and the twitch of a muscle in his jaw. Always had been giveaways to his mood. He was brittle, and her shoulders tensed, waiting for him to snap. At her. She deserved it for not warning him she was going to be working with him again. But she’d been too chicken to call him and hear the intimacy of his voice in her ear and remember how that had used to feel. Now she could see it would have been better for her to have had someone let him know.
“Gotcha.” The chief surgeon turned to face Emily and accepted her assistance to don sterile garb.
“Liz, let’s get him intubated. Has next of kin been notified?” As the leading doctor in this case, Chase directed the care and the flow of procedures. This was his patient and his case until he turned it over to another physician.
“Family’s on the way in.” Liz expertly opened the tray and prepared it for Chase.
“Let’s get a line in this fellow, and you can get that blood into him, shall we?”
Though Emily had assisted in this procedure many times in her career as a nurse and had been a travel nurse in all manner of hospitals from small community centers to large teaching hospitals, she’d never had the added pressure of having her ex-boyfriend breathing down her neck. After a deep breath in, she let it out slowly, trying to calm her nerves, which had shot out of control. Why had she thought this was a good idea again? Facing fears and all that? What rot that was. Right now, on the edge of panic, she’d be happy to spend the rest of the shift hiding in a dark closet somewhere.
The procedure went as planned and as soon as the surgeon had secured the line with a few stitches she connected two pints of blood and opened the tubes full blast. The sooner she restored the depleted amount of blood the man had lost, the better his chances of survival.
The hum around her was comforting and familiar, even though some of the staff were strangers. As they moved past the trauma room she recognized people with whom she’d previously worked. Some excitedly waved to her; others waved, then a memory surfaced in their eyes and their smiles stiffened. Coming back here, she’d known it would be a risk to her privacy. Some people would only remember working with her; some would only remember what had happened to her.
Regardless, staff had jobs to do, and everyone seemed to be able to do it while talking about mundane issues like the weather or the upcoming sailboat races in the Chesapeake Bay. Now that the most emergent procedures had been carried out, they could take a breath and relax a bit.
Except for Emily. She could never relax. That word was no longer part of her vocabulary, and she didn’t anticipate it ever being again. Some days it was all she could do to focus on her work and not let the demons hiding behind every curtain or closet door terrorize her. Though