Okay, so maybe there was an upside to being fussed over like this.
The other EMT whose name Jesse didn’t know jumped out and pulled Ben’s gurney out of the ambulance. “Shock and lacerations.”
Ellie walked alongside Ben’s gurney, glancing over her shoulder at Jesse as she walked through the automatic doors.
Lucky bastard.
Hawke held Jesse back. “I think they’re bringing a wheelchair.”
“I don’t need a wheelchair, for fuck’s sake.” Jesse grabbed the gauze out of Hawke’s hand and stepped to the ground, still in his ski boots, doing his best to maintain direct pressure.
He tromped inside, passing the person with the wheelchair, Hawke following along beside him.
“Where do you want this one?” Hawke called out. “He’s a pain in the ass.”
“Put him there.” Ellie pointed to the bed next to Ben, her expression serious. “If he gives you any guff, call security.”
“You got it.” Hawke grinned. “Hear that, tough guy? Get in the nice bed, or I’m calling security.”
*
Ellie took Jesse’s vitals again. Blood pressure, pulse, blood oxygen, temperature—they were all normal for an extreme athlete. She wrote down the results, stuck the pen and paper in her pocket and poked at the laceration on his forehead with a gloved finger. “Are you feeling numb yet?”
The doc had spread lidocaine gel on it about thirty minutes ago. They were going to have to clean the wound before they sutured it.
“A little.” Jesse sat up in the bed wearing only his boxer briefs, looking far too sexy for a patient in the ER, a sheet drawn casually across his lap.
They had already cleaned the dozen or so small lacerations on his back, his legs, and the back of his head. None of those had required stitches. But the laceration on his forehead was jagged and deep.
Ben, the other ski patroller, had already told her what had happened, breaking down in tears while she’d cleaned him up. His story had left a sick feeling in Ellie’s stomach. Jesse had come close to being killed today.
The logical part of her brain, the one that was helping her maintain a professional demeanor, kept reminding her that Jesse was fine, that he’d saved not only his own life, but Ben’s too. Still, something inside her couldn’t shake a sense of panic.
“We’ll let the lidocaine sit a little longer.” She turned to walk back to the nurse’s station, but he caught her arm.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“No,” she whispered. “You were almost killed.”
He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it. “Just one of the risks of the job.”
She yanked her hand away. “Getting blown up is a risk of your job? Well, then, I hate your job.”
Perilously close to tears, she turned and walked into a nearby conference room, shut the door, and leaned back against it, taking deep slow breaths.
The door opened, and Jesse stepped inside, long underwear drawn over his boxer briefs. “Hey, come here.”
She knew this wasn’t the time or the place for personal feelings, but when he reached for her, she went to him.
He drew her against his bare chest, one big hand stroking her hair. “It’s okay. It was just a freak accident. It won’t happen again—not on my watch.”
She fought not to cry, knowing that she shouldn’t be here with him like this. “You’re supposed to be in your exam bed. Patients can’t just run around hugging nurses.”
“Shhh.”
For a few minutes, he held her, strong arms enfolding her, his familiar scent and the warmth of his skin reassuring.
“I should get out there.” She pulled away. “I’m on the clock. I can’t be getting emotional like this.”
He searched her face, running his thumb over her cheekbone. “It’s okay.”
She narrowed her eyes, glared at him. “Next time you try to tell me you’re not a hero, I’m going to throw this in your face.”
He chuckled. “Okay. That seems fair.”
“Now get back in bed. Doctor Warren is going to be here to clean that out and stitch you up soon.”
“I could do that myself, you know.”
“This isn’t Iraq where you have to fix everything with duct tape. Get back in bed before you get me in trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
*
“I didn’t think the fuse was lit,” Ben told Julia Marcs, a sheriff’s deputy. “I didn’t see any smoke. I thought it had gone out.”
Jesse offered the only explanation he had. “Must have been the angle of the light.”
“You saw the smoke?” Deputy Marcs was conducting the official investigation on behalf of the sheriff’s department.
Jesse nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
Both he and Ben were waiting to be discharged, a process that seemed to take longer than stitching his head back together.
“What happened then?”
“I didn’t have time to do anything but react. I skied over to him, grabbed it and threw it. I knew we didn’t have enough time to get away, so I knocked Ben to the ground, hoping the blast wave wouldn’t catch us.”