Healed Under the Mistletoe Read online

  That was as understanding as could be. She couldn’t get upset by that.

  But she did. Her eyes went glassy, and she pushed the spoon around in the thick soup she’d ordered, like a plow, and watched the track fill back in behind the temporary path.

  “I appear more out of practice than I thought.” The only way to end this was just to cut to the chase, get it out so neither of them felt obligated to keep talking. “Yesterday was a bad day. I was incorrect to put you in the position I did. How do I correct this?”

  She stopped her soup-plowing and lifted cautious eyes to him. Cautious but no longer clouded with the bitter cocktail of pain and anger there a moment before. The wariness wasn’t exactly a great look, but it was better than his first attempt.

  “That’s all. To fix it, I mean. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yesterday was very difficult.”

  Today was a little better. “How are you doing with Conley?”

  “Fine.” She answered quickly, then spoke more easily. “She’s very helpful. Kind. Welcoming. Got my locker fixed yesterday. Today hasn’t been terribly busy, so I’ve mostly been learning the hospital’s systems. Familiarizing myself with the layout of everything. Not so hands-on, but useful learning.”

  The lengthy answer didn’t irritate him for once. He even found himself feeling more kindly to Conley for helping after he’d bungled the morning. This woman he didn’t know at all somehow inspired something in him other than his own bitter cocktail of emotions that had been drugging his thoughts this year. Something that wasn’t ugly and twisted. So, he kept talking in the hopes she’d stay and talk too.

  “Important learning. If you like, you can shadow me the rest of the day. I tend to get anything interesting or difficult. I’m taking shadow to mean observe now. I’d just share thought process as I diagnose? Not tell you to diagnose.”

  Shadowing was probably supposed to be a teaching experience. And she wasn’t a doctor, he had to remind himself again. She wasn’t an emergency specialist, but they could both learn from those with another set of skills, if anything interesting came in.

  He took a bite of his sandwich and feigned casual politeness, waiting for her answer.

  It took her a year before she answered. “Can you just call me on the comm if you get something interesting? That way, I can still make sure I’m learning what I need to about operations, personnel and inventory in the meanwhile?”

  “Sure.” He agreed quickly. Too quickly. God, he had no idea how to talk to anyone anymore, let alone a caramel-haired beauty who’d managed to make him notice her as a woman, not just another possible source of danger.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER LUNCH, WHICH had carried on civilly once he’d apologized, Belle returned to the nurses’ station and the binder of information she’d been given to digest.

  Lyons had returned to prowling around Emergency as if he was taking a head-count. He was not the attending, he’d not been given charge of all the patients, but he looked into every single room—as spartanly packed as they happened to be—before he looked for his next case. Maybe he was looking to trade with another physician.

  Or something else as odd as he was. What else was there to think about him?

  Well, maybe she could say he was suffering from something too. That was the kinder description of odd. She was starting to wonder if he’d also suffered a loss.

  Even that tiny tangential reference to Noelle made her eyes start to burn. She reached under the table to pinch her thigh sharply, drawing her mind back from paths she shouldn’t take. Especially not at work. She had a task to focus on.

  She flipped into the directory, where she could see and familiarize herself with the names of the different doctors and their departments.

  There were a number of names in Emergency that she didn’t recognize—those on a different shift.

  There were italicized names, like Dr. Angel Conley, whose specialty overlapped two departments. And there was the other McKeag. Wolfe. Both named for predatory animals. That wasn’t messed up at all.

  Wait. Were they twins?

  Possibility. Something to ask Angel. Since she was dating Wolfe. And that would make her life even weirder, since she’d already pointed out how unpleasant Lyons could be.

  And that Christmas was hard for him. Not hard for the McKeags. Whatever had happened seemed personal to Lyons.

  Great. If she wasn’t tumbling down her own deep, bleak rabbit hole, she was tumbling down his. And...had no idea what she’d just read in the binder of important information she’d been studying all morning. She flipped back a few pages to find the last words that had stuck with her before her attention rabbit-holed.

  “Ysabelle Sabetta.”

  Her name erupted from the comm strapped to her chest, in a deep, sudden Scottish voice. She dropped the binder.

  Hell.

  How did she answer the thing?

  She took a chance and pushed the green button while rising from her chair to fetch her binder. “Yes. Hi. This is Belle.”

  “Meet me at the east ambulance bay.”

  “Okay.” She’d stuffed her head so full of information today she had to turn to the map posted on the wall to make sure she knew how to get to the east ambulance bay, but this was better than studying, even if it meant the possibility he might be setting her up to be judged again because she wasn’t a doctor.

  When she got there, Lyons was already waiting, and looking exceptionally vigilant.

  “What’s coming?”

  “Neck injury.” He turned slightly to look at her, but then focused right back out of the sliding glass doors, arms folded across his chest.

  His shoulders, wide and defined, made her want to ask if he worked out, but that was extremely creepy and inappropriate. Instead, she fell into a silent vigil beside him, as he got his brooding superhero glare on, watchful over the ambulance bay.

  Neck injury?

  Silence over. “What kind of injury?”

  “Hit the steering wheel, didn’t have on a belt. No airbags.”

  “Oh.”

  Whiplash? Broken neck? Tear to the carotid? She could come up with a lot of dangerous-sounding injuries.

  Before she gave in to the urge to ask him all the questions, the ambulance rolled up and Lyons headed out into the blustery snow, coatless, and she felt compelled to follow, just to keep things civil and calm.

  The paramedics gave a little more information, the vitals all seemed good, and the man’s neck was braced, with him awake and alert.

  They had him inside and heading for a predetermined room shortly, and Lyons began giving orders.

  “Can someone tell me what we’re doing?” the man asked, his voice grating so hard it almost carried a second tone.

  She wasn’t supposed to diagnose today, but she still wanted to help, and, as she was a nurse first, she knew something about that. “Sir, do you usually have a hoarse voice?”

  “No,” the man croaked.

  Lyons nodded to her; she almost smiled. It might as well have been praise compared to all other interaction over patients.

  “I’m going to take the brace off. I need you to be very still.” Lyons unfastened the brace once Belle got her hands on the man’s head to keep him from turning it.

  Lyons looked up, met her gaze and there was the briefest second when he seemed to smile, and then he was focused on the patient again. Bigger praise. He almost smiled; the corners of his mouth twitched.

  Stay focused on the patient, she reminded herself, not on wondering what it would be like if Lyons smiled for real. Better: What if he laughed?

  “Swelling,” she murmured, because that seemed the most dangerous thing to her right now and probably meant it was wrong—being the flashiest symptom and all. There was a nasty bruise in a slight bow across the front of his throat, but, still, the swelling could cut off
air.

  “Yes,” Lyons answered her quietly, then asked the patient, “Do you feel any restriction to your breathing?”

  “I don’t know.” If possible, he sounded worse.

  “Hold him.” It was said very quietly, just to her, but as she was already holding the man’s head still she gathered how much pain Lyons expected to shortly induce.

  The next warning was for the patient, then Lyons began to explore the swelling tissue with light pressure.

  The first prod and the man went stiff, hands twisting in the blanket draped over him, all color draining from his face. But the symptom that really stood out: his neck made a strange, almost growling sound where Lyons pressed.

  Two presses, and Lyons pulled his hands back.

  The patient wasn’t moving; she held his head still but couldn’t not look at Lyons’s face. The surprise she saw there mirrored her own.

  “He’s got a perforation in the larynx,” Lyons announced, not prompting her for diagnosis this time, thank goodness, then grabbed the collar to put it right back on. As soon as he had it in place, but before he fastened the straps, he looked at her. “Go check to see what trauma surgeons are free right now. Refer whoever you find here.”

  The directive had such a calm, level quality, at odds with the haste she saw in his eyes.

  “On it.”

  And she was, because she’d spent the day familiarizing herself with personnel and protocol, and that wasn’t information from the last three pages she hadn’t absorbed.

  “And look for a free OR.”

  “OR?” the man repeated, catching up as Lyons affixed the straps.

  “You need surgery right now, sir. I’m sorry, and it’s going to be all right, but you have air escaping into the tissue in your neck from a hole torn in your throat. That will get very infected if we don’t get to it immediately.”

  “It’s dangerous?”

  “It’s dangerous to leave it, but the surgery isn’t that bad, as surgeries go.”

  That was the last she heard before she ran back down the hall to the station.

  Within two minutes she’d found a surgeon and gotten a nurse busy claiming an OR. And because she hadn’t filled out any of those forms here, and because Lyons didn’t need her now—he had plenty of people coming to help him—she stayed to learn that too.

  It was nearly twenty minutes before he found her again, this time in person, no comms to startle her.

  “Hey,” she greeted first, still feeling a kind of jittery, nervous and excited energy. “Have you seen that before?”

  “Once,” he admitted, shaking his head. “That’s all it takes for it to cement in your memory. That sound when you press on the air pockets.”

  “Supercreepy,” she filled in, and he actually laughed, something she could see he didn’t do often. He was a handsome man by any standards, but there was an almost boyish quality to his smile that hit her right in the chest and made her want him to laugh again.

  “Kind of like a tiny, angry animal,” he ventured. Joking?

  “Little angry bobcat.”

  “That sounds too cute.”

  “A tiny, furious bunny rabbit.” She upped the cute factor, unable to help herself or the smile she felt on her face, especially when he laughed again.

  “Fighting for his last carrot.”

  “Cliché.” She waved a hand. “Tiny, furious bunnies feast on raw onion for fun.”

  He was still smiling. “So noted.”

  And it was then I realized I was flirting with the man who’d made me batty yesterday.

  Sometimes Belle mentally composed her emails to Noelle during the day, when she wanted to remember something, but if Belle was superstitious, she’d have sworn Noelle had just fed that line to her psychically to point out how insane this whole situation had turned. It even sounded like her sister.

  Maybe it was, but she knew one thing for sure: while the card hadn’t made him have a good day, it had helped. It had made a difference in his outlook. He was joking with her, not growling or yelling.

  Then the guilt hit. They were joking over someone’s suffering.

  “He’ll be okay though?” she asked, needing to hear it.

  “He’ll be okay. And I think in the future he’ll wear his seat belt.”

  “Lucky to have a survivable life lesson.”

  His comm sounded again and he answered but nodded a farewell before heading off in another direction.

  She needed a good gift to bring him Monday, and she had a whole weekend to shop for gifts and get pictures for Noelle.

  Did people still come to New York to go shopping? Was that a thing? Two deeds, one stop. Noelle would like a picture of some iconic department stores.

  * * *

  Monday morning, Lyons arrived his customary hour early to his shift, and this time he knew the instant he entered the locker room he was alone. No stumbling over her. No morning chatting, not that he had anything to say, but she always seemed to when she wasn’t panicking over something.

  A mild sense of disappointment stymied him and quickened his steps. He had things to do, he didn’t come in early to chat anyone up.

  He’d spent the weekend convincing himself that the strange emotion that had overtaken him the past few days was to do with Christmas’s rapid approach. And that was part of it. A sad anniversary he didn’t want to note the passing of but which was marked in such a way that he’d never be able to forget. Not while living in a country that celebrated the holiday.

  Maybe he just couldn’t get past it as long as he worked Emergency—a thought that came to mind more often than he’d like. That he should quit. Move to the country. Buy a horse farm. Abandon...everyone—not that he was much use to the world as anything but a doctor, and he didn’t want to continue that unfortunate McKeag tradition: living on the money, giving nothing back to the world.

  Stepping to his locker, he unlocked it and his heel bumped something under the bench placed before it.

  His stomach churned.

  The object had moved when he’d bumped it and produced the sound of crinkling paper.

  He carefully inched his feet forward.

  It’s nothing. Not another gift.

  Locker open, he shed his coat and stowed everything. He took his time getting his stuff ready, and even paused to drain the coffee he’d walked in with—the coffee he’d bought with the card Conley had denied giving him on Friday when he’d confronted her with a cup of her own. Ignore it.

  When the cup was empty, he walked to the trash and threw it in. He could’ve kept walking, not looking back to see what it had been, and hoping someone else would take care of it, but that idea irritated him almost as much as what he expected to see.

  Enough.

  He looked back, using the distance to see what his feet had touched.

  Small box. Red paper. Green bow.

  In front of his locker.

  “Dammit.”

  It looked wrong somehow, but then everything did in red and green to his eyes now. Anything that reminded him of that day could trigger it, and those two colors especially. If someone had ever told him a color combination could ever have a malicious feel to them, he’d have assumed they were far too fixated on a sporting team and told them to get help. Instead, he saw the red and green box and thought it might be a trap of some sort. As if he might touch it and blow a hole in the hospital.

  Beyond ridiculous. His foot had already hit it. If it had been wired to trigger by touch, he’d already be in pieces. This kind of thinking was the same as when he’d thought the subway had been tampered with. Nonsense. Paranoia. Ridiculous. Hard to dismiss or control. Infuriating.

  And eating into his preparation time.

  Storming back, he snatched the gift off the floor, saw his name neatly printed on a label—no handwriting for him to analyze
—and ripped it open to reveal a book.

  A humorous book about why Christmas sucked.

  Which just proved that this was some kind of sick joke. Whoever was leaving the gifts knew he had trouble with Christmas—probably knew why, that his colleague had been murdered because he was sloppy—and was forcing this on him as punishment. This gift was notice: the truth of why he’d come to Sutcliffe was out after all they’d done to keep it quiet. He hadn’t told anyone. Wolfe? Conley?

  Or maybe he was losing his mind and should double-check before giving in to that reaction.

  Grabbing his phone, he pressed the first of very few numbers he kept in the memory, and as soon as his brother answered, Lyons asked, “Are you giving me gifts?”

  “Good morning.” Wolfe’s easy greeting went right along with his complete inability to take anything seriously. Well, anything but Conley, apparently, and his practice. “I haven’t decided. Do you have something on your Christmas list?”

  “Not for Christmas,” he bit out. He should’ve known the conversation would go this way. “Now. I want to know if you’re leaving gifts for me in the locker room. Now. Today.”

  He paused, only for a second, and when he spoke, sounded more serious. “Angel said you had brought her coffee and asked about a gift card. I didn’t leave it.”

  “And a book this morning.”

  “Really?” He sounded far more interested suddenly. “No signature?”

  “No writing. Printed label.” He heard something and stopped, then walked to where he could see around the bank of lockers. No one. His ears were playing tricks. “And it’s a book called An A to Z Reference of Why Christmas Sucks.”

  “Well, whoever sent it certainly knows you,” Wolfe muttered. “Which leaves me out. And which I’m determined to change. You should come to dinner on Friday.”

  “Not this again.”

  “I’m going to keep asking until you say yes.”