“It’s Eye Candy Wednesday.”
“Yesterday, you said it was Eye Candy Tuesday.”
“Every day that Thirty-Seven comes here is an eye candy day.”
Ignoring their light banter, Brooke continued to listen to the distinctive rumbling bass of one member of the Eye Candy Engine. Firefighter Zach Bishop was rattling off the patient’s basic information to the triage nurse, his voice coming from just behind Brooke and to her right—room three, she was sure—compound fracture of the tibia spoken in the same tone of voice as Mary Ellen, don’t break my heart and tell me that diamond means you’re engaged, darlin’.
Zach Bishop always conveyed the impression there was nothing to worry about. Nothing was unfixable or alarming. The patient could have confidence his injury was treatable. The nurse could flirt safely as she showed off her new engagement ring, knowing the firefighter with the movie-star looks didn’t truly expect her to betray her fiancé.
Dr. Brown, however, knew there was always something to worry about. Specifically, Brooke worried about the people of Austin who came to the emergency room of West Central with their complaints, big and small. She had confidence that she could handle the medical complaints—a professional confidence. Zach’s kind of confidence was personal—and masculine—and a distraction to the smooth operation of her department.
Was it any wonder that they’d spent nearly a year as something close to adversaries?
Adversaries wasn’t the right word. They worked together smoothly. He was a good paramedic, and his shameless appreciation of the female attention that was showered upon him always came second after the patient’s care. But as the handsome Mr. Bishop returned all the smiles that came his way, Brooke frowned in annoyance.
She couldn’t accuse him of trying to get attention. He’d just walk in, casually pushing a gurney, and the contrast between his sun-streaked short hair and his black uniform caught the eye. Whether he wore the black T-shirt of the fire department or the black button-down shirt of the ambulance corps he moonlighted with, the short sleeves of both uniforms revealed the defined muscles of his arms—biceps, triceps, carpi ulnaris.
After his first few visits, it had become obvious to Brooke that while the man didn’t seek feminine attention, he certainly didn’t discourage it. He wasn’t required to stop and chat with every woman who wanted to stop and chat with him, but he did.
Early in September, Brooke had leveled a look of disapproval his way as he was leaving the ER. He usually only raised a brow in an amused response to her glare, but that time, he’d leaned in just a bit too close to deliver the most ridiculous line she’d ever heard: If I had a nickel every time a woman as beautiful as you frowned at me, I’d have...five cents. Then he’d simply walked away, out through the sliding glass doors that led to the ambulances parked outside.
The next time he’d brought in a patient while Brooke was on duty, every woman in his vicinity had slowed her pace just enough to smile and be smiled at once more. Brooke must have frowned again, because he’d leaned in and quietly said, “Ten cents.”
She’d been ready that time. “I find it hard to believe you’ve only been frowned at twice in your life.”
“It’s not the frowns that are scarce. It’s that I never see women as beautiful as you are.” He’d had the audacity to wink as he’d left her standing alone at the nurses’ station.
And so it went. On the days she was working and Engine Thirty-Seven happened to bring a patient in, Zach would deliver a ridiculously corny line for her ears only. I finally placed your accent.
I don’t have an accent.
You must be from Tennessee, because you’re the only ten I see.
She’d either scowl or roll her eyes, because she was brunette and brainy and not the type that boys flirted with. Then they’d part company for hours or days or a week, however long it was before Engine Thirty-Seven again transported a patient to West Central during a shift that she and Bishop both happened to be working.
It was amazing, really, that they’d been carrying on this routine for the better part of a year, exchanging frowns for one-liners out of earshot of their coworkers. It was harder and harder not to smile each time; Brooke had a grudging respect for his unending supply of silly lines. Still, she didn’t like the way Engine Thirty-Seven’s arrival disrupted the concentration of her otherwise disciplined staff.
Case in point: the nurses in front of Brooke began debating whose turn it was to take this afternoon’s patient with the broken tibia. “It’s my turn to work with the hot fireman. You got the medevac guys last night.”
“Yeah, but their patient was critical. It wasn’t like they had time to stop and flirt.”
Brooke let their silliness slide past her as she finished dashing off her discharge orders for the patient she’d just seen. Like all doctors, she wrote quickly out of necessity, but she prided herself on slowing just enough when it came to numbers so that no pharmacist or nurse would misread the dose. Mistakes were unacceptable. Scribbling was irresponsible.
“But that man is delectable.” Both nurses sighed.
Yes, Zach was, in a strictly eye-candy kind of way, but Brooke had more important things to think about, and so did these nurses.
She handed the orders to one nurse. “Please discharge room two.” The nurse, blonde and single, wrinkled her nose in defeat as she left the nurses’ station.
Brooke nodded curtly at the other nurse. “Come to room three with me.”
Brooke had assigned the older, married nurse to work room three with her for reasons that had nothing to do with the firefighter. On a straightforward case like this fracture would probably be, an experienced nurse like Loretta could handle most of the care. Brooke would only have to see the patient twice—once to do the initial assessment and once to ensure whatever treatment she ordered had been completed. This freed Brooke for the cases where only an MD could perform the work. It was efficient.
“Radiology will be about twenty minutes,” Loretta said.
Brooke almost smiled. The nurse must have overheard Zach say the injury was a fracture, just as Brooke had, and she’d contacted radiology without being asked. Experience and efficiency were invaluable.
The nurse had known Brooke wouldn’t touch the injury without seeing an X-ray first. No doctor would. The X-ray was necessary to verify that no debris existed that might be driven deeper into the soft tissues of the injured leg while it was being set. A compound fracture, one with the bone protruding from the skin, could only be set temporarily, at any rate. The injury would undoubtedly require surgery within a few hours. That was a job for a different type of doctor, in a different part of West Central.
“Tetanus?” Nurse Loretta asked. “Whichever antibiotic is handy today?”
“Yes on both. Whatever cephalosporin is in the machine, if there are no allergies.”
Loretta had suggested exactly what Brooke would have ordered.
See? My decision was rational. It has nothing to do with keeping away from Zach Bishop a woman who is younger and single and more likely to appeal to him.
Brooke was not the type to be possessive when it came to a handsome face, a hard body or a deep cowboy voice. She tended to date men who were more bookish. Intellectually stimulating. Men she could engage in conversation without first needing to brace herself against the distraction of purely physical perfection.
Brooke paused outside room three and braced herself.
It did no good. As she walked in, her attention was caught by the most commanding presence in the room: his. It was human nature, she supposed, to notice who was dominant in every situation, and the tall man in