“My egotistical need?” Tamara sputtered in outrage.
“What about you? Every decision you make is based on the false assumption that you can never be wrong. You take risks with patients’ lives like you’re rolling dice on a craps table. Don’t you dare lecture me about my ego when you’re the one with the God complex!”
Victor scowled blackly. “I don’t have a—”
“Like hell you don’t!”
He glared at her another moment, then scrubbed his hands over his face and shook his head at the ceiling, as if he were petitioning God for a flood that would sweep her away. He needed a shave and a haircut, Tamara noted irritably, eyeing his stubble-roughened jaw and the thick dark hair that brushed his collar. He always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, tossed on some clothes and hopped on to his Harley to ride to work. Tamara supposed that the rumpled, sexy look worked for some women. But not her. Everything about the man grated on her damn nerves.
She felt an unwelcome jolt as his strikingly blue eyes suddenly returned to hers. “Look, St. John,” he said in a low, controlled voice, “I don’t have time to stand here arguing with you, and the patient sure as hell can’t afford any more delays in her treatment. Before you rule out administering Naphtomycin, just ask yourself what you would do if Mrs. Gruener were your mother.”
“I wouldn’t endanger her life by giving her a drug that hasn’t even been approved by the FDA!” Tamara snapped.
“How do you know?” Victor shot back. “Until you’re in that situation, you have no idea what measures you’d take to help your mother.”
“I don’t deal in hypotheticals. I deal with hard, cold facts, which is something you seem incapable of—”
“Why am I standing here talking to you?” Victor cut her off. “You’re an intern just like me, so ultimately, it’s not your call whether or not Mrs. Gruener receives Naphtomycin. And thank God for that!”
Tamara’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare go over my head.”
“Think I wouldn’t? Let me tell you something. Mrs. Gruener’s recovery is more important than your stubborn need to be right.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Sure as hell could have fooled—”
Beep, beep, beep!
The two combatants glanced down at the pagers clipped to their waists. When they saw the familiar code that signaled a crisis requiring all available medical personnel, they turned and rushed downstairs to the emergency room.
They were greeted by pandemonium as several stretchers bearing injured victims were wheeled into the hospital, where a triage had been set up to evaluate the new arrivals. Those who were most seriously injured were already being tended to.
Tamara and Victor hurried over to fellow intern Jaclyn Campbell, who was examining the bloody head wound of a teenager who was moaning in pain.
“What happened?” Tamara asked anxiously.
Jaclyn grimaced. “School bus accident. At least thirty students were on board, not to mention the driver and several other motorists involved in the collision.”
“Shit,” Tamara and Victor swore in unison.
“Let’s go, people!” shouted Dr. Lucien De Winter, the new head of the E.R. at Hopewell General. He strode through the bustling emergency room, calling out authoritatively, “All hands on deck!”
Alerted by the wail of an approaching ambulance, Tamara and Victor raced outside to greet the arriving EMTs, who had just removed a stretcher bearing a teenage biracial girl covered with blood and multiple lacerations.
“She’s hypotensive,” one of the EMTs informed them as he and Victor quickly wheeled the gurney toward the entrance to the hospital. “Blood pressure’s eighty-three over forty-two, pulse is one-thirty-six.”
Moments after they rolled the new patient into the E.R., she went into cardiac arrest.
“She needs to be opened up!” Victor said urgently.
Tamara was already sprinting ahead, adrenaline pumping through her veins as she frantically searched for an attending physician to assist them. To her dismay, none could be found.
Victor and the EMT had wheeled the patient into an available trauma bay and were using a defibrillator on her. As Tamara raced in after them, Victor called over his shoulder, “We’re gonna have to open her up!”
Tamara stared at him. “We can’t!”
“Why the hell not?”
“We’re interns, Victor! We’re not supposed to be operating on patients!”
“If we don’t help this girl ASAP,” he barked, “she’s going to die!”
Tamara knew he was right. The teenager had suffered blunt chest trauma during the traffic accident, so time was of the essence. Surely she and Victor wouldn’t be punished for taking matters into their own hands in order to save the girl’s life, she reasoned.
After casting one last glance around the chaotic emergency room, Tamara sprang into action, setting up the ultrasound machine as Victor hurriedly unpacked a tray containing the necessary equipment for an emergency resuscitative thoracotomy. They didn’t have time to get the patient transported to an operating room. They’d have to perform the procedure right there in the E.R.
After intubating the patient and donning protective equipment, Tamara and Victor went to work cutting open her chest cavity to gain access to her heart. With the hospital’s medical staff stretched perilously thin that morning, she and Victor had to rely on each other’s training and instincts to ensure a successful operation. Like a precisely choreographed ballet, they passed the scalpel, scissors and forceps back and forth, and moved out of each other’s way without being told. As Victor massaged the patient’s heart with his gloved hands, Tamara murmured encouragements to him.
Suddenly their personal differences and grievances didn’t matter. All that mattered was the single goal they shared—to save a young girl’s life.
So that’s what they focused on doing until an attending physician arrived to take over.
Later that evening—after their young patient had been transported to the intensive care unit for recovery, and the other accident victims had been stabilized or discharged—Tamara and Victor found themselves alone in the interns’ locker room. It had been a long, exhausting day. All Tamara craved was a hot shower and a soft bed, though part of her was so wired from today’s events that she wondered whether sleep would elude her tonight.
She was tying her sneakers when the deep, masculine timbre of Victor’s voice came to her from the other side of the lockers. “You did a great job today.”
Tamara straightened slowly from the floor. She was surprised by the unexpected compliment. And undeniably pleased.
“Thanks,” she said. “So did you.”
“Gracias.” Victor paused for a moment. “We make a good team.”
Something foreign fluttered in her belly. “Yeah,” she agreed softly, “we do. Shocking, isn’t it?”
He gave a low chuckle. “Yeah.”
A long silence fell between them.
Tamara found herself holding her breath, waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, she rose from the bench, grabbed her backpack from the locker and swung the door shut. As she started from the room, she tossed over her shoulder, “I’ll see you tom—”
“Wait up. I’ll walk you outside.”
She turned