“We have a two-year-old, approximately fourteen-foot fall out of a window. She has a Glasgow coma scale of seven but the medic couldn’t get a breathing tube in her because . . . well, frankly, because it’s his first day on his own and he sounded like it may be his last. BP is sixty-four over thirty-two, HR one fourteen, RR twelve, and are assisted with a bag valve mask. Oxygenation is ninety-one percent and trending down. The medic got a twenty-two-gauge IV to her left AC and should be arriving any moment,” Mo called, ever efficient.
“Everyone in this hospital fears that woman, but Mo sure loves my wife.”
Grace jumped at finding Spence next to her. “Is the little girl going to be okay?” she asked, not wanting the answer if it was bad.
“She will be if my wife and Mo have anything to do with it,” Spence told her.
“Are we keeping you from something, Cheryl?” Mo shouted at a lab tech, who quickly put her phone away and stood at attention.
“She has a roar but she’s got a heart as big as Texas,” Spence said.
“I’ve always enjoyed her. Sage loves her to pieces,” Grace replied.
The brand-new paramedic spoke with a shaking voice, preventing Spence from saying anything else for a moment as they both listened. He confirmed Mo’s findings.
With that, the medic, who was almost as pale as the patient, finished his job by helping to get the patient transferred to the hospital’s gurney and monitoring equipment. He slowly crept to the back of the room as if watching a movie unfold before him.
Sage began her head-to-toe assessment of the patient, calling out her findings. In minutes, the child was assessed, medicated, intubated, and on her way to the CT scan, and out of Grace’s sight.
“I don’t know how you do this day after day,” Grace whispered.
“We do it because we make a difference,” Spence told her, his hand resting on her shoulder.
They watched Mo walk over to the medic, who was obviously only still standing because of the counter behind him, holding him up. “Listen, kid, you did great . . . Not an easy call, but you managed everything perfectly.” She walked toward Spence and Grace after that. “I think you saw way more than you wanted to see there, darling.”
“Yeah. I really shouldn’t have peeked in,” Grace said, her voice shaking.
“We’re here to help people. Sometimes it’s messy, but at the end of the day we go home knowing we did everything we possibly could have.” Mo walked away without waiting for a response.
“I have to get out of here,” Grace told Spence.
Not paying attention to where she was going, she turned a corner and slammed into a rock-hard wall of flesh. She would have fallen on her butt if strong arms hadn’t shot out and caught her.
“Twice in one day. I’m a lucky man.”
Grace had to crane her head back to look up into Cam’s smiling face. Quickly, he lost the smile and concern took its place.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I need to get out of here,” she said, her stomach shaking with the control it was taking not to throw up.
“Something’s wrong,” he told her as he took her arm and began steering her down the hallway toward the exit of the building.
“I just watched a trauma patient come in. It shook me up,” Grace admitted as they reached the outside of the building.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but she could see he was just humoring her.
She was silent for a moment while she took some deep breaths. “What are you doing here?” she finally asked.
“I came in to talk to Spence and I saw you,” Cam replied.
“Well, then, I guess I have bad timing,” she told him.
“Or great timing,” he answered before he pulled her into his arms.
“Cam, stop,” she said, but she couldn’t seem to pull away.
“It looks like you really need this.” That was her only warning before he lowered his head and captured her mouth. Later, Grace would blame shock for needing five minutes before she managed to wobble away on shaky knees.
“So, not to be nosy or anything, but usually when you kiss a woman, she doesn’t go running.”
Cam turned around to see his brother standing in the doorway, a grin on his face. “She had someplace to be. What are you doing out here?” Cam murmured.
“I was looking for Grace. She was shaken up.”
“Well, luckily I was here to comfort her,” Cam replied.
“Must not have been too comforting by the way she ran away from you,” Spence said.
“There wasn’t an issue with the kiss. The issue was spending time with you.”
“All righty, then. If you say so.”
“Don’t you have lives to save? As a big, bad doctor, I would think you’d have far more important things to do than spy on your brother.”
“Nah, I have a competent staff. Besides, because I’m a married man with a single brother, I’d say your love life is more interesting than babysitting said competent staff who know how to do their jobs well. At least, that’s how I see it,” Spence told him. “What are you doing down here, anyway?”
“I wanted to see you, though I’m regretting that choice,” Cam said before sighing. “I’ve been trying to get Grace to talk to me about her case, and she manages to avoid it like it’s a freaking plague I’m trying to infect her with. I should just give up, but we both know I won’t do that. She thinks if she just runs far enough and fast enough from her problems, they’ll all go away. The law doesn’t work that way.”