Healed Under the Mistletoe Read online

  “Whatever you think. Just want to go through this once.”

  “The shot will be the most painful part. A few quick sticks, and I apologize. I’ll make them as quickly as I can,” she said, prepping the needle and scoping out locations to numb.

  “Were you by yourself on the subway this morning?” Distraction was a useful technique for dealing with pain, and she’d use anything to save patients from pain.

  “I was on my way to work.”

  She injected twice during his answer, his words only pausing or faltering a second for each injection.

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have kids?”

  “Two.”

  She finished the last injection and stood up to look down at him. “Injections over, should be feeling better any second. Boys? Girls?”

  “One of each,” he said a little more easily, his voice letting her know it was working. Not only did talking help by distracting, but it provided a connection that soothed fear.

  She found a couple of towels in a cabinet, got them under his leg and had flushed the wound to her satisfaction by the time Angel came in.

  “How’s it going?”

  “There was a little glass in the wound, but it’s clean now. I’m about to stitch it up.”

  “Great. I’ll go to my next patient and pop back over when I’m done.”

  “Is this your first day?” Mr. Axler asked.

  “It’s my first day at this facility, but I’ve been doing this for several years now,” Belle answered, smiling at him. “I was an RN before I went back to school. Even if I look like a kid.”

  “You do look young.” He chuckled but relaxed back.

  She kept him talking as she worked. How did he meet his wife? How old were their children? Was she coming to pick him up at the hospital after this?

  It worked. It usually did, and by the time she had him stitched and bandaged, that horrible anxiety from earlier had stopped chewing up her insides.

  She met Angel back at the monitoring station, where another nurse walked her through the hospital’s patient system, so the file could be updated. Then they were off to another patient.

  The morning continued this way, interspersed with patients and thoughts of McKeag. What had happened to him? Was he grieving too? Or trying not to grieve, like her?

  By the time lunch rolled around, the worst of the influx had been handled and Angel returned to seeing strictly children with Belle shadowing.

  Being busy always kept her from dwelling too much on the stuff she didn’t need to dwell on. This morning’s failure. Her reasons for coming to New York. The way Christmas now had a mood more suited to Halloween, but instead of ghosts and goblins, it was Christmas trees with teeth and murderous tinsel.

  Getting around the department meant she also saw McKeag growling at three other people before the day was up. Which helped shore up her resolve. It also helped negate her earlier estimation of his attractiveness. She might see and understand that he was wounded, and she might want to help him, but it did take the shine off his good looks and make his jaw seem less chiseled, more brutish.

  He needed someone to be kind to him, maybe even more than she needed someone to be kind to, to give gifts to this Christmas in New York when she should’ve been buying for her twin.

  Because she did need it and wanted to give to someone who might be a colleague for years to come. Someone she might be able to see change.

  Whatever the true definition of the twelve days of Christmas, she’d learned last year that the lead-up to the holiday was the hardest to get through.

  There were twelve more days left before Christmas Day. He might not be working that whole time, and she certainly wouldn’t be, but it had a kind of symmetry to it that appealed to her, even if she only managed to get him a few secret gifts before he took holiday.

  She’d give to him, her stand-in Noelle, an act her family would’ve been proud of. After work and on weekends, she’d visit the quintessential New York Christmas sites to get the pictures she’d need to write to Noelle about, another unnecessary, yet wholly necessary, act.

  That was how she’d survive Christmas this year. This second year alone had to be better than the first had been; she couldn’t do that again.

  * * *

  At the end of her shift, as soon as she could safely see to the handling of her last patient, Belle made her way back to the locker room.

  Lyons, which she’d decided to think of him now in an effort to separate him from the feelings she had about McKeag, would be irritated if she made him wait for her.

  Even with her new plan of action, the idea of facing him made her nerves tangle.

  He’d still been with a patient when she’d exited Emergency so she could have time to test her locker door to be sure it had been fixed before he arrived.

  Now all she had to do was get her things from Lyons and try to establish a new tone for their conversation, because his reformation couldn’t hinge entirely on gifts—he needed kind human interaction too. A friend. Or at least someone he had a less contentious relationship with than he seemed to have with all their colleagues. Earlier, she’d been nervous, which could’ve only come across as weakness. He was not a man who appreciated weakness, no question. She hoped that meant he’d be the kind of man who appreciated people trying to better themselves.

  She didn’t have to go to medical school to learn more of what she might expect in a busy, big city emergency department and be better prepared. This wasn’t the same as an Urgent Care, and maybe her skills had gotten rusty in those gentle positions.

  If she could inspire that in him, maybe it would trickle out to his interactions with everyone else and he’d stop yelling so much and make the department easier for everyone. Even if he wasn’t in charge, he still seemed to see everyone as an underling who continuously disappointed him.

  Noelle would’ve told her to be bold, to confront him and tell him that she wouldn’t be pushed around. Noelle had always been the brave one, never afraid of confrontation. The first year she’d been a pilot, she’d had to suffer fools daily who hadn’t thought a woman could safely handle an airplane.

  Belle was the introverted twin—which confused her really. The whole nature-or-nurture debate went nuclear when it came to the two of them, people who shared the same DNA and were raised in exactly the same way, but who were closer to two opposite halves of one complete person than identical twins.

  Had been.

  She was doing it again, dwelling on a subject that always stripped away shreds of her composure until she was a raw mass of emotional hamburger.

  The door to the locker room squeaked, and she cleared her throat and swallowed down the unwelcome surge of grief, turning in time to see Lyons rounding the bank of lockers in the middle—in much the same fashion as he’d done this morning in HR: as if it never occurred to him that someone could be in his way. Or wouldn’t move once they saw him.

  “Here you are.” His accent was a little more present, she noticed immediately. His words less clipped. Perhaps he’d shouted himself out? Or perhaps it was just her impression of him, and how she was trying to change it.

  “You were still with a patient, and I wanted to come up and make certain Maintenance had unstuck my locker.” She crooked a thumb toward the now repaired thing. “So, you won’t have to deal with the clutter of extra clothing tomorrow. Thank you for the loan of your space today.”

  He stopped and stared as soon as he saw her face, his brows slamming down above those icy eyes. No words came, he just scowled while searching her face.

  Her lashes were damp, she realized. Must’ve not stopped the tears in time to keep him from seeing the piece her memories had freshly ripped out. She’d thought she’d gotten control of herself in time, but even with her tanned skin, her eyebrows and nose had a tendency to go
red, even before the actual tears gathered. That was probably the tell.

  What surprised her was how long he took deciding what to do, or maybe think, about it.

  She willed him not to ask, and, although she had to draw the last ounce of today’s strength reserves, lifted her chin and held his gaze, daring him to bring it up.

  It was only a second, and he didn’t so much back down as decide to move on. He opened his locker and began fishing out her belongings. “It was no trouble.”

  She didn’t actually snort. At least on the outside.

  “I suppose it was less trouble than I was otherwise.” She took the still-packaged scrubs and the tote bag her clothing had been stashed in and began sorting it out for her ride home. Before he answered, she added, “About that, I don’t know if I’ll see that exact situation again, but I’d like to prepare myself better for it. For all this. I was wondering if you had suggestions on texts to read.”

  He pulled his top off, leaving the white tee shirt beneath it, and dropped the worn shirt onto the bench in front of his locker. Unfortunately, a snug cotton shirt only made his impressive torso more impressive. The material clung; she could mark the shape of each muscle across the top of his back and shoulders. “Any texts on emergency treatment. Field treatment texts are actually a good start. The Army has a good one available.”

  He shook out a nice dress shirt, pulled it on and began buttoning it up.

  It was weird to stand there talking while he changed, and she refused to—unlike he-of-the-impressive-shoulders, she didn’t have a tee shirt beneath her scrub top and having him see her in her bra once was plenty.

  Without the scrubs, it was easier to see him as Lyons, not Dr. McKeag. It also made her earlier attempts to convince herself he wasn’t really attractive completely ridiculous. He was handsome, but his face was also interesting. A study in angles, juxtaposed with a generous, soft mouth. Noelle could’ve had a field day drawing him—because being a brave warrior for women’s rights hadn’t been enough, her sister had also been able to work magic with a pencil.

  The burning returned.

  She had to get out of there. Stay on task. This was supposed to be about improving his impression of her and doing whatever she needed to become better equipped at dealing with her new duties, not having an emotional breakdown. She dug her fingers into the side of her thigh to give focus, and asked, “Earlier, what did I miss?”

  “His lungs, the crackling in his breath sounds. You were dazzled by the heart,” he answered immediately, finished buttoning his shirt, then turned more fully toward her. “The heart rate was a symptom of pulmonary contusion. They found an embolism that formed where the bruise had nearly collapsed it. So, he had both.”

  Yeah, pulmonary contusion, she hadn’t ever seen that, but she couldn’t find fault with his critique. She had been dazzled by the excessively fast heart rate and blinded by her own idea of what internal bleeding would look like.

  “Do you know how he’s doing?”

  “He is in ICU, still unconscious.”

  He’d kept up with the status of a patient who was no longer under his care. That was the sign she’d been hoping for—he was in the profession to help people. Whatever his unpleasant exterior—his demeanor and words—there was goodness there somewhere. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “His head trauma?”

  “That’s the reason he’s still unconscious.” He looked in his locker for a moment, took out a pair of trousers, then hung them on the corner of the locker door, apparently waiting until their conversation was over to finish changing. Bless him. She didn’t need to see more of his impressive parts.

  “Diagnosis?”

  “Diffuse brain injury,” Lyons answered, and still his voice remained even, almost gentle. This wasn’t just her reframing their interaction; he was more at ease now. “I don’t expect him to wake. He’s on steroids in the hopes of shrinking the swelling, but he’s also vented. We’ll know more in the next couple of days.”

  She seemed to have done what she’d planned, now she should get out. The sooner she left, the sooner he could dress and leave, and the sooner she could return and commence Operation: Secret Santa.

  “I’m glad he had you,” she said finally, swinging her coat on and hoisting the tote bag to her shoulder to go.

  “Sabetta?”

  She’d reached the bank of lockers when she heard her name and turned to look back at him. He still had that stoic, measuring manner, but with his arms uncrossed he didn’t look as forbidding. He looked almost open. And even with the strange scrubs-and-button-down-shirt combination, she could tell he could devastate half the female population by putting on a suit.

  “If you have questions about diagnoses, you may ask them of me. Use the comm.”

  She felt herself smile before she knew it was coming. “Thank you. I will. And I’ll go home and start reading. I don’t have anything on the schedule tonight in terms of sightseeing.”

  “Sightseeing?”

  Was he actually being polite? Even if the subject was hard, a glimpse of civility gave her hope.

  “I’m taking pictures of Christmas in New York to send to my sister.”

  “Not going home for the holidays?”

  “No.” She shook her head, falling back into the usual way she spoke of Noelle—the only way that let her keep any control over her emotions: by using the present tense. “We usually go somewhere for Christmas, no other family. But not this year.”

  “Perhaps next year.” Polite, but the words he’d said in kindness stuck in her chest. There would be no next year. No looking forward to things Noelle would never do. The trips they’d never take. The children she’d never have.

  The polite thing for her to do would be to ask if he was going home for the holidays, but her throat had clogged with the boulders of everything that could never be and filled with the sands of regret and grief, feelings she always tried to keep shoved down. It would’ve also been polite to say goodnight now, but no sound could pass through the whole world blocking her dry throat.

  All she could do, all she had been doing for more than a year, was try and put it out of her mind until later.

  Besides, she had tasks to accomplish. Tonight, she’d start simple, visit the boutique coffee shop near the hospital’s gift shop for a gift card, and pray it fit through the vents on the front of his locker.

  Then she’d have the weekend to come up with other gifts she could shove through the narrow openings.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FRIDAY MORNING ARRIVED with a winter storm, and Lyons credited the accumulating snowfall with the lightening of his mood, even if it also just made his drive to the hospital perilous.

  Most people reacted negatively when heavy snow started to fall, but in Lyons’s experience, weather affected the variety of patients they saw for the better. Shifted the balance from man-made to bad Fate: natural causes or accidents.

  Injuries were injuries, logically he knew that, but he’d rather blame the whims of Fate for tragedies to befall a person or family than another situation where he was forced to question humanity. Cold enough weather even encouraged psychopaths to stay in and commit their atrocities on a warmer day.

  He stomped his boots on the rug inside the rear entrance of the hospital, knocking off as much fresh powder as he could before heading to the locker room.

  Yesterday had been a bad Fate day, a terrible accident by all accounts, but the whole day, he’d been unable to shake the suspicion that someone had caused it. Done something to the train. Messed with the track or the electronics that ran the system. Something.

  No one had even hinted at such a situation, but it had still taken him until late in the evening, long after he’d left Sutcliffe, to convince himself he was being paranoid, that no reasonable person would jump to that conclusion with no basis or evidence. That kind of reaction was the
stuff of conspiracy theories and unstable minds. Lizard-people-controlling-the-government-videos-online-level paranoia.

  But knowing he was probably being paranoid didn’t make the idea he was being foolish comforting, or certain. Ten percent of What if? was stronger than ninety percent of No way in the moment, when even that measly ten percent could result in loss of life.

  Before the shooting, he’d never thought that way. Not without cause. Certainly, his wretched, emotionally abusive and manipulative parents had inadvertently taught him people were inherently selfish and would use anyone to get what they wanted, but the idea that someone he knew would take that to the point of murder? Couldn’t happen. Not to him. Not to someone he knew and cared about.

  It was stupid.

  Every day he saw people who never thought it could happen to them dealing with terrible tragedies, but he still would’ve never believed Eleni’s husband—a man he’d socialized with at hospital events—could turn that violent. Even after she’d confided in him about the abuse and had come to the hospital that day to finally take Lyons up on his offer of helping her get out, he hadn’t thought something like that possible.

  That kind of violence was cowardly, and something usually hidden from public view, not the kind that showed up with a gun in a busy ER on Christmas Eve.

  He hadn’t thought it could happen to anyone he knew. Not to her. And that was on him.

  He jerked opened the door to the locker room, shedding his heavy coat en route to his locker. Early. He always came in early enough to overlap the previous shift by at least an hour, because he couldn’t have another situation like that on him again. He went over the roster of patients, peeked into rooms to see who might set off his internal alarms and kept a sharp eye.

  He had to pay better attention than he’d paid at Ramapo Memorial.

  If he’d understood the likelihood of an escalation of the violence, he’d have taken precautions. It would’ve never gotten to the point of a madman loose in his ER with a gun. He’d have sent her to his home instead, which was well guarded and safer. He’d have directed hospital security to keep out anyone not authorized to be back there, even spouses and known family. If he’d understood how those kinds of situations could leapfrog over occasional hitting and frequent emotional abuse to murder, he’d have gone about it differently, he wouldn’t have had to step in front of a bullet only to have his friend die anyway, and he would’ve gotten the police involved early, no matter how fervently she’d pleaded with him not to.