“Then Oliver Massey is of little concern to me, Sloane.” I can hear the wicked smile in the tone of his voice. “I mean, why the hell would I need to worry about him when you have me, anyway?”
He’s an arrogant bastard sometimes, but he makes me laugh. He also has a really good point. There isn’t a man alive on this planet that can come close to being anywhere near as sexy, thrilling, scary, alluring, or terrifying as him, all in one go. “Good to know your ego’s fighting fit this evening,” I laugh.
“Every part of me is fighting fit, Sloane. Always.”
“Oh, god, I’m going before your modesty overwhelms me and I fall to my knees in worship.”
“I like when you’re on your knees, worshipping me. Or worshipping a certain part of my body, anyway.”
Just hearing him talk about me going down on him makes my body tremble a little. I thought my inexperience in that field would mean I would be terrible at it, but turns out, despite how Zeth has command over me at every other single moment we’re in bed together, I have total power over him when I use my mouth.
As I hang up the call, being wrapped up in him, feeling his hands over me, his mouth on me, my mouth on him… it’s all I can think about.
I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.
My thoughts of Zeth are rudely interrupted three minutes later by my pager—911. An emergency. Great. And there was me thinking I was going to get out of the hospital at a reasonable hour tonight.
******
A drunk driver smashes through the central reservation of the freeway, hits a school bus carrying twenty-three teenagers home from a trip to McCaw Hall, where they were seeing Swan Lake. Five teenagers are dead. Thirteen are injured. The drunk driver went head first through the windscreen of his Tacoma, and the EMTs have reported visible brain matter on the scene.
Who do you help first?
Oliver is shouting something over the bedlam taking place in the emergency room. I can barely hear him, but I’ve gotten pretty damn good at reading lips since I started this gig. He has a kid with internal bleeding who needs an urgent CT scan. He’s taking her upstairs right now. Meanwhile, I’m stuck with the guy on the gurney who, I’m pretty sure, would go up in smoke if he were anywhere near an open flame. Flammable skin, flammable clothing, flammable breath, for crying out loud. By the smell of it, his pungent odor is because he’s been bathing in Jim Beam. And drinking his bath water while he was at it.
I hear Oliver this time. “You gonna be okay down here?” he yells.
I give him a short, curt nod, which is all he needs before he vanishes through the swinging doors toward the elevator with his patient. Somewhere on the ER floor, a girl starts screaming at the top of her lungs. She’s not in pain. I know what agonized screams sound like all too well. No, she’s grieving. Make that six dead from the school bus.
As doctors, we’re not allowed to differentiate between our patients while we’re helping them. They could be serial killers, mass murderers, rapists, drug dealers…we’re not allowed to treat them any differently than we would if we were treating any other civilian. That’s not to say staying calm is easy, though. And it sure as hell isn’t easy to refrain from cursing them as you assess the damage to their bodies.
“Fucking asshole,” I growl, unwinding the temporary bandaging the paramedics have put around the guy’s head. He moans something, maybe in pain, and I nearly drop the shard of his skull that falls out of the packing material. Holy shit. They weren’t wrong about the brain matter. The guy has a two-inch wide hole in his head, and I’m holding the missing piece of his cranium in my hand, complete with scalp and hair.
A long time ago, I remember when the very sight would have turned me green and had me vomiting in the intern’s bathroom. Now, the piece of this guy I’m holding in my hand is nothing more than a broken part of a machine that I have to fix.
Hours later—hours, and hours and hours—I emerge from the operating room, feeling rather pleased with myself. Not only did I manage to fix the hole in the driver’s head, but I also had to think fast and mend his internal bleeding. Jerk didn’t deserve the time we spent on him, perhaps, but hey. At the end of the day, it’s not my job to judge people. It’s my job to make sure they’re alive so someone else can in a court of law.
When I hit the locker room, Massey is waiting for me with a grin on his face. “How’s your brother?” I ask.
“He’s stable and conscious. Hence the shit eating grin I’m wearing right now. Time to celebrate.“
Relief floods me when I hear Oliver’s news about his brother. I’ve been thinking about him constantly, wondering if we did enough to guarantee his recovery. “That’s amazing, Ol. Thank fuck for that, huh? But as for celebrating… once again, we’re finishing work after the bars have closed. Looks like we’re gonna need another rain check on that drink.”