Czytaj książkę: «Healed Under The Mistletoe»

CHAPTER ONE

NURSE PRACTITIONER YSABELLE SABETTA signed the last page of her employment paperwork and slid the bundle back across the desk.

No matter how many times she did it, her first day in a new facility always filled Belle with a mix of excitement and anxiety. She did it a lot, in fact, since she had only worked in contracted, short-term positions since she’d been accredited, first at home in Arizona, and then in neighboring southwestern states. This time the process was different: she’d taken the position straight out, and still wasn’t sure why she’d done that. Once the signings were complete, she’d be a full-time employee of a Manhattan hospital.

Her sister would’ve approved of this move, living in New York, a city they’d always felt linked to by their grandmother, who’d been born and raised in Queens, but followed to Arizona the injured soldier she’d fallen for while tending him in Korea during the war.

After a lifetime of Nanna’s stories about magical New York Christmases, the girls had vowed to make it there for the Christmas season so many times, but Belle had only made it after Noelle died.

She was never supposed to be there alone. But she was. She’d been there three days and although she was able to keep clear-headed most of the time, sometimes the world around her seemed to have sped up or she’d slowed down, as if she was out of pace with not only the city, but reality. The world didn’t spin, but the sensation was there deep in her chest, as if her inner gyroscope were broken and everything around her were spinning.

Nothing good could come from dwelling on it right now. Not on her first day. Really not on her first day in the biggest city she’d ever visited, let alone moved to—a place that might be too big for her, too much for her.

She had no idea what she might encounter, aside from the sort of situations depicted in horror-story documentaries about life in the ER, and sexy television medical dramas. Which narrowed expectations down to removing some bizarre item from a place it should’ve never been stuck, and a sexy rendezvous in the supply room with an arrogant ladies’ man who saved lives in between supply-room romps.

Or maybe she’d be taken hostage by an injured criminal who somehow had gotten a disposed syringe from the sharps container, filled with a mysterious cleaning fluid, and stabbed her in the neck while threatening to fill her carotid with something caustic and deadly if they didn’t give him a helicopter and a million dollars in untraceable bills. Anything was possible.

What curdled this morning’s coffee was more terror-tinged anxiety than excitement, mixed with the nitroglycerin-like certainty that she’d made a terrible mistake. That New York was too big for her, even outside work. She’d always been the timid twin—Noelle could stare down a dragon and Belle had once been cowed by a grumpy chihuahua.

“I hope you’ll enjoy your time at Sutcliffe Memorial, Ms. Sabetta.” The woman handling her paperwork smiled, showing no teeth and no warmth. A smile with too much knowing in it to inspire confidence, as if she could read anxiety in Belle’s penmanship.

She peered at her signature, half convinced she’d see the same shakiness that had seeped into Nanna’s penmanship near the end.

Once again, Ms. Masterson went over the guidelines of the probationary period, delineating the date where she’d become officially an employee of Sutcliffe, and the restrictions. Belle initialed where appropriate, and kept up the polite conversation expected of her. “I’ll look forward to that date and...”

Muffled alarm bounced off the closed office door, stalling her words and kicking her pulse up a notch.

Raised voices.

A woman’s voice. Maybe the assistant who’d seen her in earlier. What had she said?

She twisted to look at the door, muscles tense, ready to run one way or another, then turned again to Masterson. It was her office. If she should be alarmed by the commotion, as the prickling sensation on the back of Belle’s neck argued, Masterson would show it.

People shouted in hospitals more than one would think. People in pain couldn’t be faulted, but that wasn’t the only reason people lost control. Emotions ran high where life-and-death decisions happened. People got angry. Sometimes people were delusional and not capable of controlling outbursts. Sometimes, even more sadly, outbursts were prompted by mind-altering substances.

But this office was nowhere near treatment facilities. It was an office at the end of a hallway packed with other offices.

Masterson’s calm, slow head tilt didn’t clarify whether Belle’s alarm was unfounded, but the shift of her gaze over Belle’s shoulder to the door behind her said enough. Paying extra attention to a commotion? A distinct reason for alarm.

Unable to help herself, as the voices continued—now with a deep, clipped masculine voice breaking through—Belle twisted back to watch the door in case a madman burst in.

“Should we check?”

The sudden swing of the door, combined with that hyper-alert prickling of her skin, launched her from the chair. She whirled to face the coming danger, every muscle balled and ready to do...something.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in scrubs strode in, a sheet of paper held in one hand—not a weapon. He glanced at her, but she clearly wasn’t who he’d come to see, as his glacial blue eyes returned to Masterson, still in her chair, far more at ease than Belle.

Past him, she could see the assistant hovering in the doorway, looking apologetic and worried.

“I’m not doing it,” the man said without preamble, giving the paper a flick to send it fluttering onto Masterson’s desk. “I’ve told you twice, I’ll not be dragged into this holiday madness. I’m not my brother—he can be Administration’s puppet.”

He had an accent, there but slight, and the man projected such unpleasantness, she didn’t want the little thrill his accent stirred. Didn’t want to examine it.

It reminded her of a person who’d spent their first ten years in another country but moved early enough to nearly lose their original accent. However, the clipped, perfectly enunciated words were like another language entirely; fluent irritation was the strongest accent she heard, strong enough it was impossible to miss.

“Your brother isn’t a puppet, Dr. McKeag,” Masterson said, reaching for the paper to read it.

The fact that Belle had leaped from her seat as one might a burning building went blessedly unacknowledged, but that did nothing to diminish the creeping sense of foolishness inching down her spine. Still standing out of the way of an irritated, paper-wielding doctor? All remnants of her nurse’s pride bristled.

He was just so close to her chair. Returning to it felt like sitting on a snake’s rattler but moving farther away would look as if she was every bit as intimidated as she felt, especially when he looked at her and those ice-shard eyes shouted at her.

I see you.

I know I’m interrupting.

I don’t give a damn.

It wasn’t that he reeked anger, but she couldn’t imagine anyone missing the cold, disdainful irritation that put him above, somehow. It was almost how she’d picture an angry king, forced to communicate with his lowly, and possibly scabby, subjects. Superior. Arrogant. Bothered.

If the universe had any affection for her, this would be her only interaction with him. Ever. Even if she was intrigued by the accent. And his shoulders.

“Isn’t Wolfe doing enough of this nonsense with Conley? I suppose it’s somewhat suiting to Pediatrics, but it’s beneath the other departments. This is Manhattan, not the North Pole Hospital.”

“I’m sure your inclusion was a mistake, Dr. McKeag,” Masterson said, looking a little bit bored. “And there’s no need to be sarcastic.”

Hands free of the offending paper, now propped onto his narrow hips, drawing her attention again to the breadth of his shoulders. The black scrubs stretched tight across his chest, defining everything. Impressive torso: one more shallow mark in his favor. Also, as inappropriate of her to dwell on as the man’s other attributes. Like his haircut: a strange mix of a carelessly natural, longish top and neckline razored to perfection. His hair should not matter.

“I’m a Scot. It’s genetic.” He said this so precisely she wanted to believe him. She could see the title of the imaginary medical journal article now: Sarcasm Gene Discovered in Ancient Scottish Burial Site.

The deadpan way he delivered it said he wasn’t done, no wrap-this-up inflection to his words, even though he’d just won. Masterson’s words were both admission and apology. The argument should be over. He should be going. Belle would like to get back to the business of finishing her paperwork, so she could get to the Emergency Department and get on with being out of her depth and out of her mind to take this position in the first place.

“Good.” He looked at her again and the curiosity she didn’t want to feel bloomed into life, a sign Belle should sit back down so he would be out of her line of sight and less inclined to sexually harass him in her mind—something he’d surely see on her face if he had any intuition or experience with women, which he certainly did, looking like that.

He wasn’t her type anyway, even if his attractiveness could counter his personality. Belle tended to date the kind of man who never stormed anywhere, outside video games. And, generally, only had the broad-shoulder thing happening in the avatars they selected. They were kind, quiet, intelligent and introverted, like her. Storming anywhere besides a digital castle to fight an electronic troll would never, ever occur to them.

The mental comparison conjured him in a set of armor, a battered iron helmet, with a broadsword, and was somehow less laughable than she would’ve hoped. Instead, it made her think of the sexy Viking book she’d read the other day.

Whatever. She was going to sit. Not stand there and stare at the man.

Pretend he wasn’t standing close to the chair she was foolish to continue avoiding when he wasn’t a threat, just exceedingly cranky about a Christmas molehill. Irritating. Not dangerous. She’d moved to New York City and had to act like it. Have some gumption. Decide he could just take his impressive torso, enviably square jaw, and step to the side to avoid standing close to her.

Yeah! Lie to herself. Might as well. Vigorous denial got her through everything else in her life, let her pretend she wasn’t the last Sabetta standing.

She sighed before she could stop herself, but Masterson’s glance pushed those thoughts aside.

She was usually better at putting away the misery she’d been avoiding for over a year, but since she’d arrived in New York her subconscious had waged a near constant assault.

She took a breath, stepped right back to the chair and sat, keeping him and his dark, foreboding shoulders out of view.

But not far enough away that she couldn’t still feel him, looming like a thundercloud in his black scrubs.

She glanced down into the bag still sitting beside her chair where she’d stashed the three sets of departmental scrubs she’d been provided. The black scrubs.

Her stomach dropped.

Damn. He was from Emergency, and this rude showdown wasn’t even related to the job. Nothing to do with patient care. She liked to think of all medical professionals having the guts to go to the mat for their patients, but all this was about Christmas activities?

One glance over her shoulder confirmed the sharp set of his clean-shaven jaw was not that of a happy man. The dissonance between his reaction to the event and the importance of it clanged like a gong in her ear.

If anyone understood dreading the holidays, it was her. Thanksgiving had been bad enough the past couple of years, but Christmas was worse.

Although her family had a history of service—starting with Nanna exchanging her white cap for fatigues to serve in the Korean War, continuing with Dad, a Scottsdale policeman until his death, to Belle becoming a nurse—Noelle had started her career as a flight attendant, then secured flight training and become one of the few female pilots in a major commercial airline. Her life had been flying around the world, gone most of the time, but she’d always come back home for Christmas. At least for long enough to fetch Belle for their traditional adventure.

They were always together for Christmas, and that now made the season about two months of misery.

Yet, even she—with her impossibly good reasons to dread the season—couldn’t drum up this level of irritation at being included by someone.

The muscle at the corner of his ridiculously square jaw bunched and flexed, bunched and flexed, and could be doing nothing but gritting and grinding his back teeth. Not irritated. Angry.

“Emergency, of all departments, is too busy and too critical for this kind of nonsense to take up space in anyone’s head. Lives are on the line.”

This was him holding back? Boggled the mind.

“This is a hospital. Lives are on the line in all departments.”

“And in Emergency, the line is much narrower than most other departments. It’s the front line. People need to be focused, not distracted by and gossiping about orchestrated, compulsory...festivities.”

The pause that lingered before he uttered the word festivities spoke to this civilized visage he projected to cover some of his anger, but her mind supplied several less civilized words that better expressed his vibe, and Nanna’s mantra sprang to mind right behind it: People who hurt others are suffering too. Suffering.

No. Nope. Not thinking that today either. She didn’t have space left in her head to worry about a random, cranky doctor on her first day in a job that was probably too big for her anyway.

“It’s just a holiday gift exchange.”

“And it can occur without my participation, as can anything else that’s being planned. I hope the third time is the charm, as I’ve made this request twice, then found that slid into my locker this morning.”

If anyone needed Christmas...

“There’s nothing else planned as yet for Emergency.” Masterson smiled again, but the corners of her mouth barely lifted. It might not even be a smile, maybe it was an extremely pleasant grimace. Unpleasant smile, highly pleasant grimace.

Sliding the offending invitation out of the way, Masterson moved on with a gesture to Belle, where she sat with McKeag still over her shoulder.

“This is Ysabelle Sabetta, your new nurse practitioner.” And there went her stomach again. Nervous to get going, or hating being the focus of attention. Or dreading being labeled his. Dread. That was totally dread.

“I was about to call down to get Dr. Backeljauw to send for her. We’ve agreed she’s to shadow you today, learn the ropes before she’s assigned her own patients.” By the time Masterson had gotten it out, Belle’s soul had sunk right through her body and seeped out of her toes, which was probably why it took so much effort to stand back up, but she had to stand. It was either that or implode like a socially awkward black hole and wink out of existence.

She stuck her hand out, mustered a smile and waited.

Although he looked at her hand, his attention shot back to Masterson. “I’ll take her down, but I don’t need a nurse practitioner.”

Rejected.

She let her hand fall, but he caught it before she got away.

His hand was large and warm and drew attention to how cold her hands always were, now enfolded in his warmth. Another mark in the pleasant column for this unpleasant man. He didn’t shake right away. When she met his gaze, the coldness she’d seen in his pale blue eyes had dimmed a bit. Only a little and only for a second—so fleeting she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it—but it reappeared after the obligatory shake and withdrawal.

“Have you just received your license?” The first time he’d spoken directly to her, and that was what he said? Maybe he didn’t have experience with women, even looking as if he did.

She didn’t flinch, although it took a second for her to decide how to take his words.

Kindly, she decided, with the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t mean to be rude, despite all she’d seen of him so far. Rude people, mean people, insufferable and just plain unpleasant people were the ones who needed kindness the most. They needed the greatest benefit of the doubt.

The kind interpretation: his question was about how old she looked. She did look younger than her years and had heard so with annoying frequency since she actually was young.

Normally, it didn’t bother her, but on the heels of everything that had gone on this morning—coupled with his tone—it took effort to take it kindly, and not as an insinuation she wasn’t up to the task.

Which rankled.

Even if she might not be up to the task and had been questioning that too since before he’d barged in.

“Three years ago.” Words. An answer. Truthful, and not even said with the frustration making her forehead tight.

“Three years,” he repeated, turning to Masterson. “She doesn’t need to shadow anyone. I’ll bring her down, but she’s not a child. She doesn’t need babysitting.”

Another whiplash turn. Insults to expressions of faith? Or just getting out of spending more time with her specifically, for whatever reason.

The idea of being lassoed to him for a day sounded about as appealing as a root canal, but she’d rather admit to possible inadequacy than risk patient lives, and they’d picked him for a reason—probably not because he was a bad doctor.

“I usually work in small facilities—Urgent Cares and small-town emergency rooms, which send their critical patients to bigger cities with trauma wards, usually before they get to the hospital. I haven’t seen much, if any, intense, man-made trauma. Although I appreciate the vote of confidence, I haven’t earned it.”

But she hoped to sort out the position and her capability before three months were up. The earlier the better, so if she needed to run, she could just go, no harm, no foul. They could fire her without much explanation in that time too, but she should be able to judge her inadequacy first, regardless of whoever got stuck babysitting her.

It didn’t need to be him.

It was still an insulting word, but she’d take whoever would allow her to shadow them.

“Take it up with Backeljauw,” Masterson said, stepping neatly out of the discussion and standing up. “Good luck, Ms. Sabetta. Welcome again. Don’t let McKeag scare you off—he’s not the brother we use for PR for a reason.”

McKeag gave a long-suffering eye-roll, looked at her clothes, then turned. “Come on. We’ll go to the locker room, you can quickly change, and we’ll continue to Emergency.”