“I can see what you’re thinking, but I wasn’t being threatened. It really was an accident.”
“Jumping from a window isn’t usually an accident.” Unless she was intoxicated, but he didn’t smell alcohol and she seemed perfectly composed. More composed than most of the people around her. The ER on a Saturday night wasn’t a pretty sight. “Why not leave by the front door?”
Her gaze slid from his. “It’s a long story.”
And one she obviously didn’t intend to share.
Ethan thought through his options. They saw plenty of domestic abuse incidents in the ER, and they had a duty to offer a place of safety and whatever support was needed. But he’d also learned that not everyone wanted to be helped. That it was a process. “Miss Knight—”
“You don’t need to worry. I was on a date, if you must know, and it wasn’t going well. My mistake.”
“You jumped to get away from your date?”
She stared at a point beyond his shoulder. “He wasn’t exactly the way his profile described him.”
“You’d never met him before?” And now he was thinking trafficking. And maybe he’d been wrong about her age and she was closer to twenty than thirty.
He checked the form and saw from her date of birth that his first guess had been the correct one. She was twenty-nine.
“I was trying online dating. It didn’t go quite the way I thought it would. Oh, this is so embarrassing.” She rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “He lied on his profile, and I didn’t even realize people did that. Which makes me stupid, I know. And naive. And yes, maybe it also makes me a risk-taker, even if I’m an unintentional risk-taker. And I’m horribly bad at it.”
He was still focused on her first words. “Lied?”
“He used a photo from thirty years ago and claimed to be all kinds of things he wasn’t.” She squared her shoulders. “I found him a little creepy. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing so I decided to make an exit where he couldn’t see me. I didn’t want him to follow me home. You don’t need to hear this, do you?” She leaned down to rub her ankle and her hair slid forward, obscuring her features.
For a moment he stared at it, that curtain of shiny gold.
He breathed in a waft of her perfume. Floral. Subtle. So subtle he wondered if what he was smelling was her shampoo.
He never became emotionally involved with his patients. These days he didn’t become emotionally involved in anything much, but for some reason he felt a spurt of anger toward the nameless guy who had lied to this woman.
“Why the window?” He dragged his gaze from her hair and focused on her ankle, examining it carefully. “Why not go out through the front door? Or even the kitchen or the rear entrance?”
“The kitchen was in sight of our table. I was worried he’d follow me. And to be honest I wasn’t thinking about much except getting away. Pathetic, I know. Is it broken?”
“It doesn’t seem to be.” Ethan straightened. The injury was real enough. Her hurt was real enough, and he suspected it extended a whole lot further than a bruised ankle. “I don’t think you need an X-ray, but if it gets worse you should come back or contact your primary care provider.”
He waited for her to argue with him about the need for an X-ray, but she simply nodded.
“Good. Thank you.”
It was such an unusual response he repeated himself to check she’d heard him correctly. “I don’t think an X-ray is necessary.”
“I understand. I probably shouldn’t have wasted your time, but I didn’t want to make it worse by doing something I shouldn’t. I’m grateful to you, and I’m relieved it isn’t broken.”
She was accepting his professional judgment just like that?
No arguing? No cursing? No questioning him or threatening to sue him?
“You can use whatever pain meds you have in your cabinet at home.”
This was the point where a large proportion of his patients demanded something only available on prescription.
Or maybe he really was turning into a cynic.
Maybe he needed a vacation.
He had one coming, the week before Christmas. A week in a luxury cabin in Vermont.
He met up every year with family and friends and this year he needed the break more than ever. He loved his job but the relentlessness and the pressure took its toll.
“I don’t need pain meds. I wanted to check it isn’t broken, that’s all. I walk a lot in my job.” She gave him a sweet smile that fused his brain.
In his time in the ER he’d dealt with panic, hysteria, abuse and shock. He was comfortable with all those emotional reactions. He even understood them.
He had no idea how to respond to a smile like hers.
She struggled to her feet and he had to stop himself from reaching out to help her.
“What’s your job?” The question had clinical relevance. Nothing to do with the fact that he wanted to know more about her.
“I run a dog-walking business. I need to be able to get around and I don’t want to make it worse.”
A dog-walking business.
He looked at the freckles that dusted her nose.
He could imagine her walking dogs. And believing in Santa.
“If dog walking is your livelihood, you might want to steer clear of stilettos in the future.”
“Yes, it was a stupid idea. A whim. I’ve been trying to do things I don’t normally do, and—” She broke off and shook her head. “You don’t need to hear this. You’re busy and I’m taking up your time. Thank you for everything.”
This one patient had thanked him more in the past five minutes than he’d been thanked in the past five weeks from all his other patients combined.
Not only that, but she hadn’t questioned his clinical judgment.
Ethan, who was never surprised by a patient, was surprised.
And intrigued.
He wanted to ask why she’d been trying to do things she wouldn’t normally do. Why she’d chosen to wear stilettos. Why she’d had dinner with a man she’d met online.
Instead he kept it professional. He talked to her about rest, ice, compression and elevation, the whole time feeling guilty that he’d doubted her.
He wondered when, exactly, he’d started being so suspicious of human nature.
He definitely needed a vacation.
