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Beck glanced briefly into her eyes just before he took it. For one beat their gazes locked. At close range, her eyes were blue, just like January’s. Damn.
A mini-jolt of adrenaline helped him refocus. Using the rigid guide, he inserted the tube into the pleural cavity and aimed upwards as he slowly advanced it until he felt resistance. He pulled back a tiny bit and clamped the tube. With no sign of blood, the wounded young man had been lucky. Jan connected the tube to an underwater seal before he undid the clamp. A reassuring bubbling sound gave him the confidence to begin suturing the tube in place. Soon, with the trapped air removed and no longer pressing against the lung, the lung could reinflate and the man would be breathing a lot easier.
“OK, let’s get a chest X-ray to check positioning,” Gavin said as he clamped a hand on Beck’s shoulder. “Good job.”
To say Beck wasn’t relieved would be lying, but the knowledge of a job well done admittedly felt good. “Thanks. It’s been a while.”
Jan wrapped adhesive tape around the tube and affixed it to the patient’s chest wall, then Beck looped the chest tube and taped it snugly to the patient’s abdomen before applying the final dressing.
Once Beck stepped back after his part was finished, Gavin took over. He’d located the superficially lodged bullet and removed it, then plopped it into a plastic specimen container held by Jan.
“Fantastical,” she mumbled as she studied the bloody ball of metal while Gavin stabilized the patient and readied him for surgery.
Had she just said fantastical? That was it. The missing link. In the midst of chaos and saving a life, quick memories popped into his mind of the only other person he’d ever heard say “fantastic” that way. If he hadn’t been sure before, he definitely was now.
But this person was nothing like that girl.
Still reeling from the notion that he’d stumbled on his first love, he watched Gavin proceed with a secondary survey head-to-toe assessment for more subtle injuries.
While consciously avoiding any thoughts about his ex-girlfriend, he waited for the chest X-ray films. Beck leaned against the wall and observed the team hovering over the patient, whose vital signs were already improving. He lifted the protective goggles from his eyes where perspiration had started to bead and steam them up, resting the glasses on his forehead. He glanced around the gurney from person to person, with everyone intent on what they were doing. Excellent teamwork.
Beck noticed a second pile of discarded clothing on the floor next to Jan’s feet. He moved to kick it aside and couldn’t help but notice something out of character for the subdued nurse. Completely out of place on her seriously sensible shoes were bright pink satin laces. A telltale sign of who she really was. So she hadn’t dumped all her flash. His gaze traveled up to her face carefully hidden behind dark, thick-framed artsy glasses. He looked more closely. Her eyes were as bright a blue as they had been thirteen years ago.
How had he not recognized her mouth right off? In high school she’d carefully outlined those soft, well-shaped lips with liner before she’d applied the brightest shades of pink he’d ever seen. It had driven him crazy. She was the last person in the world he’d ever expected to run into here.
For a woman who wrapped herself in the loosest scrubs possible, it was hard to imagine her as once dressing like a birthday present in loud patterns over a curvaceous figure. Short skirts had never looked better than over those legs. But today her legs were covered in baggy, faded scrubs, making it impossible to compare. Yet there were those pink satin laces shining up at him. And she had said “fantastical”.
It all added up to one person. January. And he was still as mad as hell at her.
She caught him looking at her and quickly glanced away. Could she tell that he’d just figured out who she was? Years before, she’d trampled over his heart without so much as a backward glance. He’d joined the army intent on seeing the world and had expected her to wait for him. Maybe it had been a lame plan, but it had been the best he could come up with at eighteen. When he’d gotten out of bootcamp, she’d disappeared. When he’d tracked her down, she’d broken up with him. Over the phone!
The skittish nurse shoved something toward him. He jumped back from sorting through memories to the present. She gave him a kit, avoiding his eyes. It was a Foley catheter kit.
“Make yourself useful,” Jan said, jabbing the plastic-covered box at him then quickly turning away.
He glanced at the naked patient lying on the gurney. The young man was in and out of consciousness, and Beck hoped when he catheterized him, for the patient’s sake, he’d be out of it.
As he opened the sterile package and started to set up, he glanced back at Jan, who was completely wrapped up with hanging a unit of blood. She chewed on her lower lip, like she used to whenever she’d concentrated on anything. How had he missed it? All the parts were there, though skewed a bit by time.
Thirteen years had made some major changes to both of them.
Before inserting the catheter, he looked at her one more time. Sure enough, it was January Stewart…the biggest love and the worst heartbreak of his life.
* * *
Jan had managed to avoid Beck after the gunshot-wound patient had been prepped and awaited transfer to surgery. She’d passed him off on a younger nurse who was already captivated by his strikingly handsome looks and who gladly agreed to assist him. As long as Gavin didn’t find out and he got emergency practice, it would make no difference which nurse assisted Beck.
He didn’t react or seem to mind.
Anyhow, there was a group of needy residents with an assortment of patients to keep her busy. And she was.
She’d spent thirteen years putting her life in order. Just because Beck had been her big love in high school it didn’t mean they had anything to reminisce about. Their horrible ending tugged at Jan’s conscience. But now was not the time to relive the past. It couldn’t be changed.
She tamped down the memories and tried not to cringe. Not today. Not when the emergency department was crawling with patients.
Jan escorted her next patient into the last available ER room and handed the young man a gown. “What seems to be the problem?”
“I think I have an infected spider bite, and now it’s spreading.”
He showed her his thigh. She put on a disposable glove and gently touched a red, raised, angry-looking boil. It was warm and definitely infected.
“How long have you had this?”
“About a week now.”
She noticed little pimple-like satellite areas budding around it. “Any fever?”
The patient shook his head no. “But it keeps getting bigger.”
Before she could put the digital thermometer into his mouth, a shadow fell on her.
“Looks like MRSA.”
She glanced over her shoulder and found Beck. Methecillin-resistant staph aureus was a perplexing condition, cropping up in and out of hospitals. How he could make a snap diagnosis like that astounded her. And blurting it out right in front of the patient showed poor judgement.
“I’ll have Dr. Riordan take a look,” she said, dismissing Beck.
“You play team sports?” Beck walked around her and faced the patient.
“I’m on a football team.”
“Anyone else have ‘spider bites’?”
“You know, a couple other guys might, come to think of it. We thought we got ’em on our last away game.”
Beck glanced at Jan. “Trust me, its MRSA. If we don’t treat it properly now, he runs the risk of developing myositis. Rather than wasting time treating with the wrong antibiotic, I’d lance and drain it, get a culture tonight. Save the cost of an expensive antibiotic and a return visit to the ER.”
“We’ll be right back.” Jan strained a smile at the patient, excused herself from the bedside and escorted Beck out of the room by his elbow. “What are you doing?” she said, once in the hall. “The kid hasn’t even been examined by a doctor yet, and you’re already diagnosing and treating him?”
“I’ve been in the military for years and I’ve seen MRSA all over the place. Believe me, it’s a waste of time treating him with antibiotics alone, especially if the staph infection is resistant to it. He’ll just be back in here next week with more of those boils, and they’ll be ten times worse.”
Jan glared at him, until he gave her a sarcastic smile. She hated it when he grinned so smugly like that. Just like the time standing by the lockers in high school after art class when he’d first figured out how much she’d liked him. She spun around and strode down the hall to Dr. Riordan’s office. He’d obviously figured out who she was. Her only line of defense? Avoid him!
“Dr. Riordan, can you do a quick examination of a spider bite?” She glanced down the hall to find Beck already gathering the equipment he’d need to lance and drain the eruption, and her face went angrily hot. She bit back her thoughts and followed Dr. Riordan down to the exam room, hoping he’d put Beck in his place.
After doing a quick assessment and patient interview the doctor said, “Looks like MRSA.”
So much for back-up.
“We can either treat you with broad-spectrum antibiotics, which may or may not help, or we can open and drain the area tonight, stitch you up and send you home. We’ll get culture results in forty-eight hours and make sure you’re on the right antibiotic. Then you can follow up with your primary-care physician next week.”
Jan felt conspired against as she chewed her lower lip and had the patient sign the consent for the procedure. She started to leave the room when Beck rolled his tray of equipment inside.
“Stick around,” he said. “I’ll need your help.”
The exam room took on a red cast as she swallowed her anger and nodded her head, knowing this was a one-man job. As long as he didn’t let on that he knew who she was, she’d play along with his little game, even if it meant her blood pressure getting elevated.
With her throat growing sorer by the minute, and her nasal congestion getting worse, she’d avoid him tomorrow by calling in sick to work.
* * *
Beck finished the last stitch and turned to Jan. “You can take it from here.”
She nodded dutifully, but refused to look at him. He smiled at the patient, who thanked him, then left the room.
It was almost more than he could do not to grab her by the arm and drag her down the hall to some secluded place and tell her exactly how she’d screwed up his life. Oh, but he’d had the last laugh because he’d risen above all the dirt everyone in Atwater had tried to dump on him his whole life. He’d proved wrong everyone who’d said he would never amount to anything. He’d served his country well, seen more countries than most people dreamed about, and now he proudly wore the LAPD badge and served on the elite SWAT team. For someone who’d received the infamous honor in his senior class of being tagged “most likely to wind up in a correctional center” he’d done pretty damn well for himself.
Beck straightened his shoulders and swaggered toward the doctors’ lounge. He needed a drink, but a good strong cup of coffee would have to do instead.
* * *
Jan finally had a chance to take her dinner break around eight p.m. She notified Carmen and headed for the nurses’ lounge. Unable to wait one more second to read the special letter, she dug it out of her pocket and ripped it open. This time every year, as promised, the updated letter arrived.
A shining smile from Meghan Jean greeted her inside the envelope. She’d be twelve and a half now, and in seventh grade. Long dark brown French braids rested on her bony shoulders. A handful of freckles were sprinkled across her nose, a nose very much like Jan’s. But the eyes were definitely placed and shaped like her father’s, except their color was blue…like hers.
Dear January,
We’re reporting in on this year’s progress with our daughter. Meghan has joined the track team and also loves to dance. She scored in the top ten percent for her annual scholastic testing and her teachers want to place her in some gifted classes. It seems that out of the blue she has discovered a love of art, and wants to take painting classes. She continues to be a warm and loving girl with a natural excitement and curiosity for life even though puberty is fast approaching. Meghan absolutely hates wearing braces, but we’ve discovered clear wires and sometimes she likes to have bright blue ones applied just for fun. As you know, she’s quite the ham and keeps Daryl and me laughing. We promised her a Disney World vacation this year and she can barely go to sleep each night from thinking about it.
On another note, something new has cropped up in school. Meghan’s science class is studying genetics and genealogy and she is suddenly bursting with questions about her birth parents. Would it be okay for us to tell her a bit more about you? We understand that you never named the father, but if there is any information whatsoever you can provide, we’d appreciate it.
As always, Daryl and I are so grateful to you for your unselfish act and want you to know we treat our daughter as the precious gift she is. We pray that life is treating you well.
All the best,
The Williams
The last part of the letter went blurry. Had it been an unselfish act? Could giving her daughter away to strangers in an open adoption be considered anything less than an easy way out for a frightened seventeen-year-old? Sure, they had been well screened, willing and anxious to become parents, but they’d solved her “problem” and life had never been the same since.
She glanced again at the school picture, and choked back her tears.
The door flew open behind her. “Apparently only the nurses keep fresh coffee in the pot,” Beck said.
Jan startled, dropping the letter, and the picture went flying through the air to the floor. She scrambled to reach it before Beck could see, but he was just as quick.
She leaned. He knelt. They almost bumped heads. They looked into each other’s eyes. Fear of being found out sent a rocket fueled with adrenaline through her chest. His hand rested on top of hers on the picture on the floor.
CHAPTER TWO
“SO HOW’VE you been, January?” Beck asked, glancing up from the overturned picture on the floor and staring deep into her eyes.
Jan glanced into Beck’s challenging glare and willed herself not to shake. She swallowed a hard lump and narrowed her gaze, then reverted to old, well-practiced techniques of evasion.
“I’ve been fantastical, Beck. And you?” She gingerly retrieved the photograph of her daughter from the floor and slipped it back inside her pocket before he had a chance to see it.
“Outstanding. I’ve been outstanding.”
Was his point to let her know how well he’d gotten along in life without her? To point out that leaving her behind and joining the army had made him “all that he could be” like the ad on the military poster said? Or was he lying through his teeth, like she was?
He seemed on the verge of saying something more.
Before Jan could begin to decipher the multitude of expressions in his eyes, Carmen appeared in the doorway.
“Here you are. I’ve got good news,” she said, looking toward Beck. “Gavin has arranged for you to scrub in with the gunshot wound. You’d better high-tail it up there before anyone changes their mind.”
“Fantastical,” he said, slanting a glance Jan’s way. A grim look that promised they hadn’t even begun to broach the subject foremost on their minds. Then Beck swept out of the tiny room without looking back, leaving a gust of air that seemed to strangle her instead of offer relief.
Carmen leaned against the door frame, cocking a brow. “Did he just say ‘fantastical’?”
Jan nodded solemnly.
“He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?” Carmen continued.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Then those glasses are the wrong prescription. Did I interrupt something?”
“Not at all. He was just looking for a decent cup of coffee, and, being a smart guy, knew to come to the nurses’ lounge.” She feigned a carefree smile, gathered her letter and lunch items and hustled back to work.
* * *
The next day, her guilty conscience wouldn’t let her call in sick to work. Sure, her nose was congested, but she wasn’t running a fever and she could sneeze into the crook of her elbow on the job if needed. If her condition warranted it, she’d don a mask. But knowing the glut of emergencies on weekends, not to mention the people without health insurance who used the ED as their doctor’s office on their days off, she couldn’t leave Carmen short a nurse for a shift.
She’d tried all night long not to recall the challenge in Beck’s glare when he’d asked how she’d been. Not answering his calls and letters when he’d shipped out for bootcamp had been the second-hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Even with her heart aching for the boy she’d loved since tenth grade, nothing had compared with the pain of giving up their child for adoption.
That was all in the past now. They were grown-ups with careers and personal commitments. She assumed Beck had responsibilities, being both a medic in the National Guard and on the SWAT team. She could only imagine the different countries he’d been sent to in the last thirteen years, and she’d never even ventured out of California.
She hadn’t noticed a wedding ring on his hand when he’d reached for the picture in the nurses’ lounge. Why did that somehow garner a feeling of relief?
Jan shook her head, popped a twelve-hour antihistamine, and dressed for work.
On the drive to Mercy Hospital, she turned on the radio and heard the two o’clock news. There had been a car chase which had turned into a hostage situation and from there escalated into a stand-off in an apartment building in the Wilshire area of Los Angeles. Her mind shot to Beck. Would he be called in with the SWAT team to handle this explosive situation? Anxiety welled up, as if a tight squeezing harness was wrapped around her chest, with the knowledge he could be in harm’s way. But that was the life he’d chosen for himself, and he was no longer her business.
When she arrived at work to an already hopping emergency department, there was no sign of Beck. She pondered the hostage situation and Beck’s possible involvement. The thought that he was otherwise engaged and that she might not have to face him in the ER that night didn’t soothe her mounted concern in the least.
* * *
A wild and crazy Saturday night in the emergency department had postponed Jan’s meal break until nine p.m. The inundated ER felt stifling and she went outside for fresh air. She found a secluded bench and was unwrapping her sandwich for dinner when the loud rumble of a motorcycle rolling into the parking lot broke the silence. The rider gave one last rev of the engine, parked, and threw his leg over the machine as if he were a wrangler, a helmet in place of a cowboy hat.
The leather jacket and the swagger unmistakably belonged to Beck. Apparently he still preferred motorcycles to cars. What was he doing here? She hadn’t had time to catch the news and didn’t know whether the earlier incident had been resolved or not but, even so, why would he report to the ED after such an intense afternoon and evening?
A quick flash of the undaunted guy she’d once dated appeared before her. He’d been pegged as a troublemaker since grammar school and had never lived his reputation down. He’d played along and acted the role of bad boy all through high school, but Jan had known the softer, more playful side of him. They’d laughed together just as much as they’d kissed or argued. She’d never understood why he’d let people think so little of him, expecting the worse and assuming when anything had gone wrong that he’d been at the core of it.
They’d met in an open-grade art class when she had been a sophomore and he a junior, and had bonded over painting delicate eggshells. He’d helped her pass algebra and walked her through her science experiments whenever she’d been confused. He’d been the guy to hold her until her tears had dried after her dog got hit by a car. No one else had seemed to see the noble and tender side of Beck but her…back then.
She sighed and suddenly lost her appetite. It had hurt like hell to break up with him all those years ago. And what must he have thought of her for the cowardly way she’d done it?
By the time her meal break was up, Beck had already donned scrubs and was tending to a laceration in one of the emergency exam rooms. She tiptoed by, only to be snagged by Carmen.
“We’ve got a DUI in transit. The guy wrapped his car around a telephone pole and partially scalped himself. Gavin wants Beck to stitch him up, so get a minor operations kit and meet him in the procedure room pronto.”
Jan nodded, wishing they’d assign Beck to someone else, but she needed to accept there’d be no getting away from the ex-love of her life for the next month.
In a world where justice had a way of weaseling its way in at the most inconvenient times, she knew this would be her punishment for lying to him.
Fifteen minutes later Jan cleaned the wound. She flushed the patient’s skin with copious amounts of saline followed by antiseptic solution then patted it dry with sterile towels. The majority of the patient’s hair was intact. A full head of brown hair had been partially severed from the forehead back, looking like a floppy, cheap toupee. She’d never seen anything like it before outside old cowboy and Indian movies.
Jan dabbed at the last few trickles of blood as Beck injected a local anesthetic along the forehead and waited for it to take effect. She avoided his eyes as much as possible after his initial raised brow and shake of the head when first examining the wound. But occasionally their gazes met. Each and every time small explosions of adrenaline made her tremble. She prayed he couldn’t tell.
Jan had to admit Beck was a skilled clinician. But even with his expert suturing, the patient would have a thin white scar along his hairline for the rest of his life to remind him of his bonehead decision to drive while drunk.
Fortunately, the patient was still inebriated enough not to mind having his scalp sewn back onto his head. Thankful for the mask she’d opted to wear to protect the patient against her cold, she didn’t have to breathe in his liquor fumes first hand.
Beck concentrated, using a curved needle in a holder and toothed forceps to help insert the needle through the thick skin and out again. He made even stitches with fine braided silk, taking meticulous care to fit the jigsaw pattern of the “scalping” together. He’d divided the wound into manageable lengths, placing a suture at the halfway and quarter points to avoid “dog-ears”—unequal bites of tissue that would heal with gaps. Even without the help of the plastics department, the patient stood a good shot of healing with minimal visible scarring—as long as his hairline didn’t recede.
Once the tedious procedure of what seemed no less than fifty stitches concluded, Beck dropped the needles into the sharps container on the wall and, gathering the remaining instruments, helped Jan clean up.
“I can do this,” she said, dismissing his efforts.
“Just trying to help, January.” He wadded up the betadine-stained blue paper barrier and tossed it, like a basketball, into the nearby trash can. It landed perfectly, and Beck stared at Jan with deep-set penetrating eyes that almost made her knees buckle.
He’d matured and grown into a formidably handsome man. Muscle had thickened and replaced the lanky limbs of his youth. With his hair nearly completely shaved, his features seemed all the more chiseled and striking. The old trace of a furrowed brow had settled more deeply into the map of his forehead. Lightly etched squint lines hinted at the many sights he’d seen since his departure from her life.
He’d once had thick wavy dark hair and he’d worn it styled and gelled to perfection. He’d warn her not to mess with his do and she’d complain about how he always managed to ruin her hairstyle and then she’d run her fingers through his hair just to spite him. Typical of high-school students, they’d end their silly challenges and arguments by glaring at one another, calling each other a name, and rushing into a smoldering make-up kiss.