Nurse Gage bent to depress the button that lifted the head of the bed. When his body was adequately contorted, semi-sitting with leg suspended and right arm propped on a stack of pillows, she shook out a thin paper napkin and tucked it into the too-high neck of his hated hospital gown. “Now, then,” she said briskly, “let’s get you fed.”
She lifted the domed cover off his plate, revealing grayish meat and limp, overdone vegetables. Taking knife and fork in hand, she began cutting up the meat. He wondered, with some amusement, right up to the moment she placed the fork in his left hand, if she was actually going to feed him.
Ping, ping, ping, ping.
Glancing at the alarm board, Merrily shrugged into the roomy lab coat she preferred to wear over her simple scrubs. Room 18, Royce Lawler. Lydia Joiner, the charge nurse, groaned.
“Not again.”
“What’s wrong?” Merrily asked, checking her voluminous pockets.
“Eighteen’s on a rampage,” Lydia said, rising from the desk. “Found out he’s got to have surgery again on that leg, and he’s taking it out on the whole nursing staff.”
“I’ll go,” Merrily said, aware that she didn’t have to, since she was early for her shift.
Lydia inclined her head appreciatively. “Thanks, kid.”
Kid. Always the kid. Lydia was no more than three years her senior, but due to her appearance, Merrily was “the kid.” Sighing with resignation, Merrily moved toward Royce’s room. The alarm board ping-ping-pinged again as she pushed through the heavy door.
“Thank God!” Royce Lawler exclaimed, tossing the bell remote into his lap. “It’s about time somebody with some sense showed up around here. Where the hell have you been?”
Merrily tamped down a surge of gratification at his greeting. “I just came on shift.”
“They’ve moved the damned phone again. Every time they come, they shove that table aside and leave it that way, then I can’t reach the phone!”
Merrily pulled the table closer to the left side of the bed and shifted the telephone to the far right edge, within reach. “How’s that?”
He dropped his head back onto his pillow. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“The problem,” she explained, squeezing behind the table to check his IV output, “is that the IV poles are fixed to the head of your bed. I’ll see if I can’t get a rolling pole in here and place it in front of the table.”
“Why didn’t they do that to begin with?” he grumbled.
Merrily bit her lip to quell a smile. “Because you are not ambulatory,” she explained patiently.
“And I’m not likely to be anytime soon,” he complained. “They’re going to put a metal rod in my leg. I won’t even be able to go through the metal detector at the airport!”
She laughed. She just couldn’t help it. He glared at her, but then the furrow in his brow eased and his mouth curved into a wry smile.
“Okay, okay. So it’s not that bad. And don’t you dare say that I did it to myself. My mother has already pointed that fact out to me—not that I wasn’t already aware of it.”
“I understand,” she said. “When did they remove the fingertip monitor?”
“They didn’t. I did,” he declared flatly.
“I see.” She checked his pulse with her fingers. He lay still and quiet as she counted the beats and marked time on her wristwatch. As she retrieved his chart to make the proper notation on it, he lifted his head from the pillow to watch.
“You aren’t going to scold me?”
She didn’t look up from the chart. “Would it help?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. But after a moment he asked bluntly, “How old are you?”
The clipboard bearing his chart fell to her side. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you have to be older than you look.”
She squared her shoulders beneath the crisp white lab coat, trying to conceal how sensitive the subject was. “I’m twenty-six.”
“Holy cow! I’d have guessed eighteen, twenty, younger before I got to know you.”
Chagrined, Merrily snapped, “What makes you think you know me?”
He shrugged his left shoulder and fell back on the pillow. “I know you’re the only one around here with an ounce of compassion. First they tell me to rest, then they keep me up all night with tests. What kind of sense does that make?”
“Fiscal,” Merrily answered succinctly. “The hospital labs are so busy with outpatient procedures during the day that they have little choice but to conduct inpatient tests at night. Hospitalized patients, after all, aren’t going anywhere.”
“Tell me about it,” he mumbled. Then suddenly he announced, “I’m hungry.”
Merrily folded her arms. She’d noticed the “no intake” sign on his doorside clip. “What time is your surgery scheduled for?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Three.”
“Tell me what you want for dinner, and I’ll make sure it’s here when you get back.” She didn’t have to tell him that it was the best she could do.
Sighing richly he seemed to consider, then his eyes narrowed and he said, “Pizza with chicken and shrimp, pesto sauce, black olives, pineapple and mozzarella.” He lifted his head to see how she’d taken that.
Smiling because she knew he thought he’d stumped her, she said, “Number six, Riccotini’s. There’s one around the corner. I’m having the salmon and sun-dried tomatoes myself.”
“Number nine,” he said, tussling with a grin.
“Anything else I can get you? Orange iced tea, maybe?”
“Mmm. About a gallon ought to do it.”
“A number six with a large orange iced tea.”
“And turtle cheesecake.”
“And turtle cheesecake,” she echoed. Chuckling, she headed for the door.
“Wait.” He waved her back toward the bed and indicated the bedside table with a nod of his head. “In the drawer.”
She opened the drawer to find his wallet. “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Ignoring that, he groped the drawer blindly with his left hand until he found the wallet. Flipping it open, he laid it in his lap and extracted a twenty-dollar bill.
“Dinner’s on me,” he said, thrusting the money toward her.
“Oh, no, that’s all right. I was planning on going out, anyway.”
A grin spread across his face. “So? What’s your name? Given name, I mean.”
“Merrily.”
The grin spread wider. “Well, Merrily, I insist on buying your dinner, since you volunteered to pick up mine. No arguments, now. It’s the least I can do.”
Suddenly he stuffed the bill into the breast pocket of her lab coat. Electricity flashed through her, so strong that she stumbled backward a step—and into the corner of the bedside table, rocking it enough to send the telephone sliding toward the floor. She grabbed for it at the same time he did, and while they managed to keep the phone from falling, their arms became entwined. Her gaze collided with his and stuck.
For a moment the world and everything in it stopped. The second hand on the clock of time froze as they stared into each other’s eyes. Then, slowly, he blinked and carefully extracted