The big, goofy grin shaping his face at the mention of his live-in girlfriend sent a pang of something unidentifiable through Tess’s belly. She liked Harlow a lot—the woman was scalpel-sharp and took neither prisoners nor crap from anyone, plus, she made Connor happier than Tess had ever seen the guy—and with his laid-back demeanor, that was really saying something. But all of her close friends had paired off. Hell, her best friend Charleston had just (re)married the guy of her dreams, Parker Drake, who just happened to be one of Remington Memorial’s interns. In a move that had surprised exactly no one who knew them, her fellow attending and hotshot trauma surgeon, Jonah Sheridan, had proposed to another fellow surgeon, Natalie Kendrick, last month as she’d entered the maintenance part of her chemo for the leukemia she’d beat twice now. Connor and Harlow were shacking up. Even the goo-goo eyes Young and her fellow intern, Christopher Boldin, had been making at each other a few months now had grown more serious than short-lived.
Tess was happy for her friends, and not in that shitty, always-a-bridesmaid sort of way. If anyone deserved love and to be loved, it was Charlie, Parker, Nat, Jonah, Connor, and Harlow. For her, love was just going to come from a different place, in a different form. Because that whole soul mate/share the covers/no-you’re-the-schmoopie thing wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
That’s what vibrators were for.
God knew Tess’s had given her far better orgasms than her ex-husband ever had.
Is it really my fault you’re so frigid?
“Here we go,” Tess bit out, gesturing to the rig trundling into the ambulance bay before any heat could reach her face over the unbidden thought. Quinn Copeland jumped out of the driver’s side (annnnd cue up another person who was getting hitched…seriously, there was, like, a true-love epidemic going on in this place), the ambulance’s back door swinging open courtesy of Connor’s grab-and-pull, and Tess thanked her lucky fucking stars she’d elbowed her way into a trauma gown, because even from ten feet away, she could tell her new patient was a hot mess.
The other paramedic, Luke Slater, a.k.a. Quinn’s fiancé, unlocked the head of the gurney as Young unlocked the foot, with Connor on the assist to guide the thing out of the ambo. “Adult male, conscious but altered, possible head and neck injuries from a four-foot fall, no obvious skull or spinal deformities. Obvious multiple lacerations—”
“Understatement of the year,” Tess muttered. None of the wounds appeared particularly deep at first glance, but damn. The guy was going to need more stitches than an Amish quilt. Not to mention the debriding they’d have to do before they could drop a single suture.
“GCS 10 in the field.” Slater finished with the guy’s vitals—holy heart rate, Batman—and yeah, there was no chance this guy wasn’t somehow chemically polluted.
“Hi, Mr…” Shit. Tess split a glance between Slater and Quinn. “Do we have a name?”
Quinn’s smile spanned ear to ear. “According to him? Captain James T. Kirk.”
“Awesome.” This from Connor. Naturally. But Tess had heard worse—seen it, too—so she simply shrugged and did a closer once-over of the guy.
“Hi, Mr. Kirk. My name is Dr. Michaelson, and I’m here to help you.” To her surprise, the guy tracked a glassy, wide-pupiled look in her direction. At least, with his eyes. His neck had been completely stabilized by a C-collar and the rest of him strapped to the backboard on the gurney. “Can you tell me if you feel any pain?”
“No, no, no,” Kirk said, his grin all teeth as he sent it to the sky. “No pain, sweetheart. That’s the idea! No pain! I just wanna fllllllyyyyyyyyy…”
He dissolved into a fit of giggles. Man, Tess did not want to be around when he crash-landed back to reality. “Do you know where you are?”
“Heaven,” Kirk crooned. “I’m in heavennnnn, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speeeeeeeak…”
Right. “Okay.” Tess looked at Connor and Young. “We’re headed to Trauma Two.”
The trip was quick and, thankfully, uneventful. They went through the motions of transferring the Captain to the gurney in the trauma room so Quinn and Slater could reclaim their gear and hit the road—the lucky ducks—then Tess got down to the business of a rapid trauma assessment. Her patient was in rough shape, but not life-threateningly so, just as long as the head and neck films she’d just asked Connor to shoot came back clean.
“Looks like other than these lacs and some nasty contusions, there aren’t any serious injuries.” Tess said, looking at Young. “While we wait for the films to back that up, where do we go from here?”
“I’d order a CBC and BMP. And a tox screen, obviously,” she replied, but Tess shook her head.
“Nothing’s obvious in emergency medicine, ever. You have to tell Connor exactly what tests you want ordered. He’s good, but he’s not clairvoyant.”
“Right.” Young, who might’ve been intimidated by Tess’s response a few months ago, turned to look at Connor. “Let’s run a CBC and BMP, along with a full tox screen. In the meantime, start a line and run some saline, and let’s get as many suture kits in here as possible, please.”
Tess translated her attagirl into a smile. “There you go.”
She took the films Connor handed over, popping the first one onto the backlit screen on the far wall. “Ahhhh, it seems you’re a lucky man, Mr. Kirk. You don’t have any major injuries to your head or neck.”
“I’m invincible!” her patient called out, turning to look at Tess as she carefully removed the C-collar from around his neck. “Are you an angel? Oh, shhhh! I am in heaven! Don’t tell the others.”
Tess slid a glance at Connor. “Can we get a rush on that tox screen?” To Kirk, she said, “I’m afraid this isn’t heaven, sir. But you’re in very good hands.”
“Okay. Will you marry me?”
She barked out a laugh that matched Connor’s. “Sorry, no can do, Mr. Kirk.”
“I see,” the man said, nodding gravely. “It’s because they’re listening, right?”
For some reason Tess couldn’t quite explain, she replied with the truth. “Nope. I’m just not the marrying sort. We’ll get you fixed up in no time, though, okay? Don’t you worry.”
She went through the final steps of sending the request for labs upstairs and having Young and Connor start in on the poor guy’s sutures. The memory of the sunlight on her face, the fact that it had taken her this long to realize how long it had been since she’d felt it, popped back into her head. Tearing off her trauma gown and disengaging from her gloves, she washed her hands and headed out to the ambulance bay on a what-the-hell. It really was nice outside, the kind of day that wasn’t hot enough to scorch your Pop-Tart, yet was still sunny enough to warm a girl right up.
No one else was around, having probably opted for more scenic spots, like the courtyard in the middle of the hospital grounds or the outdoor eating area by the coffee cart. Tess didn’t mind, though. Yeah, the view was mostly of the brick-wall variety, and okay, so the faint smell of diesel was only a slight improvement on the eau de sanitizing gel that clung to Tess like the lover she tooootally didn’t have. But the shot at solitude gave her a chance to lean back against the bricks at the mouth of the alcove and let her eyes drift shut.