“What?” he snapped, taken off guard. “I don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Oh, come on, Zac. You’re not sleeping, you’re jumpy...”
“I’m trying to get back into routine.” He sighed. “I was cleared by the Annapolis psychiatrists. I disclosed that I’d had PTSD to Charles in my interview, had being the operative word.”
“Okay,” she said, but didn’t sound very sure.
“I’m clear, Ella.”
Just as she opened her mouth to say something further, the door rattled and then opened. A maintenance man poked his head into the room.
“Sorry, Dr. Lockwood. We got here as fast as we could. We had to get the generators up and running to the essential parts of the hospital.”
“It’s okay. How long have we been in here?” she asked groggily, not looking at him.
“Only an hour.”
“Good.” Ella got up and then ran her hands over her scrubs. “I’d better check the trauma floor.”
Zac wanted to call after her as she hurried away, but he had to get control of himself.
The maintenance man was ignoring him as he picked up the broken doorknob and scratched his head. “Don’t know if I can fix this. It’s Christmas Eve and storming—might be hard to get a part in, Dr. Davenport.”
“Close down this room, then, Miles,” Zac said, reading the man’s name tag. “We can’t have any more staff locked in here. We’re running with a skeleton crew as it is.”
“I can take the door off, Dr. Davenport—that way staff can still rest,” Miles offered, clearly wanting to hash this out with Zac as he was the only Davenport on shift tonight. “And sorry about the brownout. This new system is having some hiccups tonight, what with the storm and issues with the city’s power grid.”
“It’s okay and the door idea sounds good,” Zac said quickly, trying to end the conversation he didn’t want to get sucked into. He wasn’t Charles or even his father.
He didn’t want to make these decisions for the hospital. All he wanted to do was save lives. He would leave the administration stuff to Charles or his father.
Of course, he was the only Davenport on duty and he’d left his brother and father in the lurch for a long time while he’d been on tours of duty. He hadn’t come home for many years.
He owed it to them.
Especially to Charles, who’d shouldered so much on his own.
Zac needed to step it up now. He couldn’t be so selfish.
“Okay, Dr. Davenport, and about the generators...”
“You do what you think is best, Miles, and I’ll approve it, but I have to get back to the trauma floor.”
Miles nodded. “Will do, Dr. Davenport.”
Zac left the on-call room and searched for any sign of Ella, but she’d vanished.
He wanted to talk to her about what had happened. To apologize again for kissing her. He didn’t want to lead her on. He didn’t want her to think that there was something there when there couldn’t be.
His pager went off.
Incoming trauma.
Right now he didn’t really have time to think about Ella or what had happened between them. The storm was starting to take its toll and while the storm raged, they would have a long day ahead of them.
He ran toward the emergency room.
Ella was in the fray, pulling on her disposable yellow trauma gown and gloves. Her blonde hair, which had been loose in the on-call room, was now drawn back in a tight bun. In the emergency room confidence radiated from Ella. In the thick of chaos she commanded respect. Though she was short and might be swallowed whole, she was a giant when it came to her patients.
Dr. Lockwood commanded her trauma team and brooked no fear.
And no one questioned her right to be there.
She barely glanced at him as she tossed him a gown before heading outside to wait in the snow, where a couple of interns were helping the maintenance man clear a path from the freshly plowed drive to the ER doors of the ambulance bay.
In the ambulance bay, it was slightly protected from the elements, but the wind was biting. The snow wasn’t as dense, but it still blew in blasts under the protective cement covering.
Ella stood beside him, her teeth chattering as they waited in silence with a couple of residents Then over the howl of the storm and wind they heard the faint siren of the ambulance as it approached.
His pulse began to thunder and even though it was bitterly cold, he could feel the sweat on his brow. The howl of the wind and the screech of the siren melted away and he could hear the sound of missiles. Screams.
He shook those thoughts away. Once he was back in the grind of trauma triaging he’d be okay.
“Zac!” Ella shouted, shaking him. “Look alive!”
“Right.”
Ella looked unsure. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I said I was fine. I’m tired, but I’ve got this. I can handle this,” Zac snapped as the ambulance pulled up, stopping in front of them. He jumped forward and tried to put Ella out of his mind.
Which was easier said than done.
* * *
Ella glanced at Zac across the turmoil of the emergency room. He was working on the passenger of the motor vehicle accident, while she was working on the driver. The car had spun out and the car had gone into a cement median, ejecting the passenger through the windshield.
It was a mess.
She’d been worried when Zac, once again, had seemed to zone out when the ambulance had been approaching. Like the noise of the storm, the cold and the ambulance itself had been too much of a sensory overload.
She’d studied post-traumatic stress disorder in medical school. Zac was a textbook case, but he stated he had been cleared.
He’d said he had control of his post-traumatic stress disorder.
She needed to know whether she had to pull him or not. Even though he was a Davenport and his brother Charles was in charge of the emergency room, she was still the most senior attending on duty at the moment.
Right here and now, this was her ER and she couldn’t jeopardize her patients or her staff.
Her patient moaned as she palpated his abdomen. He’d said that he was fine and that it was just his arm that was banged up, but the reaction to her palpation had her nervous about something more sinister beneath the surface.
“Mr. Jones, I’m going to just look at your abdomen.”
“It’s fine,” he said through pants and there was something about him, his movements that threw her off. It reminded her of a person going through drug withdrawal and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was an addict. Then she saw his arms. His veins and also his teeth were a mess.
Definitely a user. The labs would confirm it, but she had her suspicions.
I seriously doubt that you’re fine.
“I’m going to have a look all the same.”
She lifted his shirt and could see the dark discoloration of a bruise across his abdomen. As she palpated again, the belly was not tender but hard. There were no broken bones or bruises on his chest, so she had to assume that the steering wheel had not struck him.
Still, given the fact she