A Doctor's Secret

“I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to pull some insurance scam. Who knows? Do I look like a thief to you?” he demanded hotly, indicating his clothing. Tania had to admit, except for the tear in the jacket, it looked like a high-end suit. “I’m going to sue that ape in the gray suit for battery and if you don’t want to be included, you’d better uncuff me!” he growled, yanking at the handcuff that tethered him to the gurney’s railing. “You hear me?” he demanded. “I want out of here.”

“No more than we want you gone, I’m sure,” Tania replied evenly. “But we can’t have you bleeding all over the place now, can we?” she asked sweetly. Glancing at the board over the front desk to see which room had been cleared, she saw a recent erasure. “Put him in trauma bay number four.” She pointed in the general direction, since she didn’t recognize these attendants. Tania spared the third patient one last glance. “Someone’ll be along to talk to you in a minute.”

“Not soon enough for us,” one of the patrolmen complained. He shook his head wearily as he followed in his partner’s wake. “It’s the heat,” he confided to Tania as he walked by. “It makes the crazies come out.”

She smiled. “So does the rain.” Tania signaled over toward the nurses’ station. “Elaine, take the gentleman’s information in trauma bay three.”

“What about one?”

“I’ll handle that myself.”

Elaine nodded, a knowing smile on her lips. “I thought you might.” Picking up a clipboard, she walked into trauma bay three.

Armed with a fresh clipboard and the appropriate forms, Tania went to trauma room one.

The moment she walked in, she could feel the man’s restlessness. Not the patient type, she thought, amused. Well, they had that in common.

While waiting for someone to come in, Jesse had taken off his jacket in an effort not to get it any more wrinkled than it already was. He wasn’t altogether sure why he did that. There was no saving the pants and without the pants, the jacket was just an extraneous piece of clothing.

Habit was responsible for that, he supposed. Habit ingrained in him since childhood, when every dime counted and no amount was allowed to be frivolously squandered or misspent. Stretching money had been close to a religion for his parents. They’d taken a small amount and somehow managed to create a life for themselves and for him.

He twisted around when he heard someone enter the room.

And smiled when he saw who it was.

“Hi.” She extended her hand to him. “I’m Dr. Pulaski. And you are…?”

“Jesse Steele.”

Succinct, powerful. It fit him, she thought, trying not to notice how his muscles strained against his light blue shirt.

“Well, Jesse Steele, I’m afraid there’s some paperwork waiting for you at the nurses’ station, but first, let’s see the extent of your injuries.”

“It’s nothing, really,” he protested. The woman was drop-dead gorgeous and in another time and place, he would have liked to have lingered. But hospitals made him uneasy and, in any event, he definitely had somewhere else he needed to be.

“The blood on the side of your head says differently,” she replied cheerfully. With swift, competent fingers, she did her exam. “I need you to take off your watch. I think you have a cut there.”

“It’s just a scratch.”

“Potato, po-ta-to, I still have to see it.” He took off his watch and set it aside on the nearby counter, then held his wrist up for her to see. “Okay, that’s a scratch,” she asserted. “You win that round. However—” she indicated his head “—that definitely needs attending to. Which means I get to play doctor.”

She smiled brightly as she crossed toward the sink. “So—” she turned on the faucet and quickly washed her hands “—I hear that you’re a hero.”

“Not really,” he answered with a mild shrug. Heroes were people who laid their lives on the line every day. Cops, firefighters, soldiers. Not him. “I was just in the right place at the right time. Or…” His lips gave way to a hint of a smile. “Taking it from the thief’s point of view, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Do you always do that?” she asked, looking at him as she slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. “Look at everything from both sides?”

Crossing back to him, she gingerly examined the gash at his temple more closely.

He tried not to wince. She could feel him tensing ever so slightly despite her light touch.

“Occupational habit,” he replied through clenched teeth.

Taking a cotton swab, she disinfected the wound. He took in a bracing breath. “You’re a psychiatrist? By the way, you can breathe now.”

He exhaled, then laughed at her guess. “No, I’m an architect. I’m used to looking at everything from every side,” he added before she could ask for more of an explanation.

“Never thought of it that way,” she confessed.

It was good to keep a patient distracted, especially when she was about to run a needle and suture through his scalp. The best way to do that was to keep him talking about something else.

A quick examination showed her that the bruises were superficial, but the gash at his temple was definitely going to require a few stitches.

“Well, aside from a couple of tender spots that are going to turn into blacks and blues—and purples—before the end of the day,” she warned him, “you do have a gash on your right temple. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a couple of stitches.” He looked as if he was going to demur, so she quickly added, “But don’t worry, they won’t be noticeable. You’ll be just as handsome as ever once it heals.”

“I don’t need stitches, it’s just a cut.” He shrugged it off. “So, I guess that’s it,” he said, beginning to get off the examination table.

She put her hands on his upper torso to keep him from going any farther. For a little thing, he noted, she possessed an awful lot of strength.

“No, it’s not a cut. That thing on the inside of your wrist is a cut. That—” she pointed to his temple “—is a full-fledged gash that needs help in closing up. That’s where I come in,” she added cheerfully. “You’re not worried about a little needle, are you?”

“No, I’m worried about a big meeting.” He blew out a breath, annoyed now. If he’d stayed in the taxi, he wouldn’t have gotten into this altercation. But then, he reminded himself, the old man would have lost his sack of diamonds. “The one I was going to when this happened.”

“Important?” Tania pulled over the suture tray and, taking a stool on rollers, made herself comfortable beside the gurney. “The meeting,” she added in case he’d lost the thread of the conversation.

Right now, her patient was eyeing the surgical tray like a person who would have preferred to have been miles away from where he was.

“To me.” He watched as she prepared to sew him up. From where he sat, the needle and suture was one and the same entity. He’d never been fond of needles. Jesse sat perfectly still as she numbed the area. “I was supposed to do a presentation. That was why I was cutting across the Diamond District,” he added. Then explained, “Because the traffic wasn’t moving and I needed to be there in a hurry.”

She nodded, her eyes on her work. “Lucky for that man that you did.” When he stopped talking, Tania momentarily raised her eyes to his face. Amusement curved her mouth. “I could write you a note, say you were saving a nice old man from a big bully,” she teased. “It’d be on the hospital letterhead if that helps.”

“No, I already called them to say I’d be late. They weren’t happy about it, but they understood.”

Her eyes were back on the gash just beneath his hairline. He had nice hair, Tania caught herself thinking. Something stirred within her and she banked it down. There’d be no more wild rides, she told herself sternly. They always led nowhere.

“Sound like nice bosses.”

“They are. For the most part,” he qualified in case she thought he had it too easy. Nothing could have been further from the truth. “What they are is fair.”

“So,” she said in a soothing voice, taking the first tiny stitch, “tell me exactly what you did to become a hero.”

Chapter 2

Tania heard the man on the gurney draw in his breath as she pierced the skin just above his temple. He sat as rigid as a soldier in formation.

Not bad, she thought. She’d had big, brawny patients who had passed out the very moment she’d brought needle to skin.

“It’s nothing, really,” Jesse said in response to her question as she slowly drew the needle through. He was aware of a vague pinching sensation and knew he was in for a much bigger headache later, when the topical anesthetic wore off.