“What are the numbers?” he asked, both volunteer and patient wide-eyed as he raced past.
“White blood cells just below four hundred.”
“Damn,” Nick repeated.
“BP at two-ten over one-twenty.”
He attacked the elevator button with ferocity.
“Do you think—” Lori started to ask.
But of course he thought that. Nine-year-old Robby Martin had been brought in four days ago, the victim of a rollover, one that had killed his father. But this kid was a fighter, even with burns on eighty percent of his body, so maybe it would be all right.
The minute he entered the ICU, Nick knew it wouldn’t be all right. If the dusky pallor of Robby’s face—the only part of him that wasn’t bandaged—didn’t tip him off, the way each breath gurgled in the boy’s chest in spite of the respirator would have done it. Pneumonia.
Damn.
Nick almost hurled the metal chart. He jerked the cover back, the aluminum flap swinging on its hinges with a protesting squeak barely audible above the respirator.
He was losing him.
“Should we up his meds?” Lori asked.
But Nick knew pumping more drugs into the child’s feverish body would do no good. “Up the morphine.” And when he met Lori’s eyes, he could tell she understood. The savvy, first-year resident had impressed him with her cool head and soothing bedside manner. Now she had tears in her eyes, too.
“Okay,” she said, blinking rapidly before turning to do as ordered.
Nick moved to the side of the bed where Robby lay, the kid’s brown eyes barely open. What was it about this one that tugged at everyone’s heart? That had every nurse and every resident on the floor checking in to see how he was? They all ached for him. They hurt for the little boy who’d lost his daddy, whose skin had been ravaged by flames while his dad screamed next to him.
“Hey, Robby,” he said. The back of his esophagus swelled as he fought the impulse to cry. The boy couldn’t talk. Hell, he was barely conscious. But he could moan, and the sound was pitiful. He’d been groaning like that when they’d brought him in, the hospital staff hushed by the child’s pain-racked cries.
Get a hold of yourself, Nick. You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to be immune to this.
But he wasn’t. No doctor ever could be, especially the head of a burn trauma unit.
“Get his mother,” he said to Lori, his voice grating.
When Lori left, Nick reached a hand out and gently fingered a tuft of the child’s blond hair sticking out from the bandage. “It’s okay,” he said softly, his damn eyes blurring again. “It’ll be better soon.”
His hand began to shake.
“Dr. Sheppard,” Robby’s mom said from the doorway. “What’s wrong. What is it—”
But one look at Nick’s face and the child’s mother knew. She took a step back, covering her mouth with both hands.
Nick could only stand there, suddenly out of emotion.
“Mrs. Martin,” Lori said as she came into the room, placing a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
But Robby’s mom didn’t hear her.
“Robby?” she called. But the boy didn’t respond, his consciousness already slipping away.
“Page me when—” He met Lori’s gaze, and there was no need to finish the sentence. She nodded, looked away.
As he left the room, he ignored the staff members who tried to stop him.
He was a kid. Just a damned kid.
He didn’t want to lose another one.
By the time he reached the stairwell, the words were a chant.
Not another kid.
By the time he climbed up a floor, his eyes were welling.
Not another kid.
And by the time he reached the hospital’s roof, the cry that clogged his throat erupted into the cold winter air.
“Bastard,” he moaned. “Bastard,” he said again, the stars blurring into smudges dotting the black sky. He sank to his knees, the rooftop gravel digging into his legs. But he didn’t notice anything except the despair he felt.
Dr. Nicholas Sheppard had lost his faith.
Chapter One
Naked.
Alison Forester stopped so fast she almost stepped out of her pumps.
Dr. Nicholas Sheppard looked to be…naked.
She peeked around the Los Molina Rodeo grounds to see if anyone else had noticed.
Hey, Naked Man over here. Whoo-hoo.
But everyone had left the arena, the rodeo practice long since over. The only things left behind were the pipe panel livestock chutes and tall, aluminum grandstands that appeared to be deserted beneath the blueberry-colored sky. Cows and horses called out to one another from their pens, but Nicholas Sheppard didn’t notice as he rummaged through a brown duffel bag.
No. Not naked, she realized when he stood. He wore underwear, the kind that usually came with tiger stripes or leopard spots—only these were white. His tanned body was completely at ease as he shook out a pair of black jeans, his chiseled rear swinging around toward her as he started to pull them on.
My, my, my.
He turned.
Ali jerked back.
So did Nicholas Sheppard.
“Can I help you?” he said, holding up his waistband.
He was supposed to look different from his medical school picture. Bald, maybe. Or pudgy. Really, really pudgy—with a pocket protector in his shirt. But this was the same, darkly handsome face that had just about taken her breath away when she’d first seen it.
“Dr. Nicholas Sheppard?” she asked, knowing it was him. He’d left his jeans undone, the white V of his underwear visible behind the—
He cleared his throat, quickly doing up the zipper and the snap.
“I’m Nick Sheppard,” he confirmed. Nicholas Sheppard was tall. And tanned all over—she should know—with eyes the color of riverbed grass and a face too masculine to belong to a world-renowned reconstructive surgeon.
“I’m a—” Ali swallowed. “I’m—” Who are you, Ali? Think. Think. “I’m Ali Forester,” she said in a rush.
She knew he recognized the name. And why shouldn’t he? She’d left enough messages on his machine to fill a movie reel.
“Well, well, well,” he drawled, standing there with his hands on his hips like the jolly Green Giant, only with dark brown hair, not green. “I guess if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed—”
“Mohammed came to you,” she finished for him.
In response he turned and—oooh—bent down. She wished he wouldn’t do that. Her body warmed as he retrieved a beige shirt from his bag. With one smooth jerk, he had the shirt on.
“Do you always change out in the open?”
“I do when my old clothes are dirty and I need to go someplace afterward.”
“Oh,” she answered, feeling as intelligent as the fly that buzzed around her face. Obviously he’d been riding, which meant the truck and