whatever.” The smile and laughter instantly fell away. “I always double-glove during internal exams. These are perfectly clean. You should know me better than that.” His eyes shifted away from hers to the patient, the disappointment in his voice easy to detect. “You good here?”
She nodded, ashamed of the conclusion she’d leaped to. Josh was a good doctor. Through and through. It was the one thing she’d never doubted about him. He had a natural bedside manner. An ability to read a situation in an instant. Instinctual. All the things she wasn’t.
She slipped the ringed tourniquet onto the young man’s finger and checked his pulse again. It wasn’t strong, but he’d be all right with a bit of a rest and a finger no longer squirting an unhealthy portion of his ten pints of blood everywhere. He’d need a shot of lidocaine with epinephrine before she could properly sort it out, so she would need to wait for him to come to. Being halfway through an injection wasn’t the time when a patient should regain consciousness. Especially when Josh was leaping through curtained cubicles, coming to her rescue. She jiggled her shoulders up and down. It wouldn’t happen again.
“Are you nervous, Doc?”
“Ah! You’re back with us!” Katie turned around in time to stop the young man from pushing himself up to a seated position. “Why don’t you just lie back for a while, okay? I have a feeling your finger didn’t start bleeding half an hour ago, like it says in your chart, Ben.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Is it okay if I call you Ben?”
“You can call me what you like as long as you stitch me up and get me outta here, Doc! It’s Christmas Eve. I’ve got places to go...things to do—”
“Someone to drive you home?” Katie interrupted. “After your fainting spell, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get behind a wheel.”
“And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to boss someone around on Christmas Eve!”
Katie backed away from Ben as his voice rose and busied herself with getting the prep tray ready. Emotions ran high on days like this. Especially if the patient had had one too many cups of “cheer.” Unusual to encounter one on the day shift, but it took all kinds.
“Cheer” morphed into cantankerous pretty quickly, and Ben definitely had a case of that going on. She stared at the curtain separating her from her colleagues, knowing she’d be better off if there was someone else in the room when she put in the stitches.
She sucked in a breath and pulled the curtain away. “Can I get a hand in here?” She dived back into the cubicle before she could see who was coming. Josh or no Josh, she needed to keep her head down and get the work done.
“Everything all right, Dr. McGann?”
At the sound of Jorja’s voice, Katie felt an unexpected twist of disappointment. It wasn’t like she’d been hoping it would be Josh. Her throat tightened. Oh, no... Of all the baked beans in Boston Harbor... Had she? Clear your throat. Paste on a smile.
“Yes, great. Thank you, Jorja. Nothing serious, just thought we could do with an extra pair of hands now that Mr. Kingston here has rejoined us.”
* * *
Josh tried his best to focus on the intern’s voice as he talked him through how he saw things panning out on Christmas Eve based on absolutely zero experience, but he couldn’t. All he could hear was Katie, talking her patient and the nurse through the procedure in that clear voice she had. The patient had definitely enjoyed a bit of Christmas punch before he’d arrived, and Josh didn’t trust him not to start throwing a few if he was too far gone.
“Hey.” He interrupted the intern. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Michael,” the young doctor replied, unable to keep the dismay from his face. He’d been on a roll.
Tough. Fictional projections weren’t going to help what was actually happening.
“Michael, what’s your policy on patients who’ve had a few too many?” He mimed tossing back some shots.
“Oh—each ER head is different, but Katie usually calls the police.” He looked around the ER as if expecting to see someone stagger by. “Why?”
“Just curious.” He gave Michael’s shoulder a friendly clap with his hand, hoping it would bring an end to the conversation. “Thanks for all the tips,” he added, which did the trick.
He tuned his hearing back into the voices behind the curtain where Katie was working. The patient was young and obviously a gym buff. As strong and feisty as she was, Katie was no match for a drunk twenty-something hell-bent on getting more eggnog down his throat. Drunk drivers on icy roads were the last thing the people of Copper Canyon needed on Christmas Eve. Or any night, for that matter.
“Okay, Ben, you ready? I’m just going to inject a bit of numbing agent into your finger.”
“What is that?”
Josh inched a bit closer to the curtain at the sound of the raised voice.
“It’s a small dose of lidocaine with epinephrine,” Katie explained. “It will numb—”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” The patient—Ben, that was it—raised his voice up a notch. “I’ve been on the internet and that stuff makes your fingers fall off. No way are you putting that poison in me!”
Josh only just managed to stop an eye roll. Self-diagnosis was a growing epidemic in the ER...one that was sometimes harder to control than any actual injury.
“I think if you read all of the article you’d find that’s more myth than reality.”
Always sensible. That was his girl!
Ben’s voice shot up another decibel. “Are you telling me I’m a liar?”
“No, I’m saying digital gangrene is about the last thing that’s going to happen if I—”
“You—are—not—putting—that—sh—”
“Hello, ladies.” Josh yanked the curtain aside, unable to stay quiet. “Need an extra pair of hands?”
“No,” Katie muttered.
“Yes,” Jorja replied loudly over her boss.
“They’re trying to give me gangrene!”
“Really? Fantastic.” Josh rocked back on his heels and grinned, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “I haven’t seen a good case of gangrene in ages.” He flashed his smile directly at Katie. “Are you trying to turn Mr. Kingston here into The Gangrene who stole Christmas?”
Everyone in the cubicle stared at him for a moment in silence.
“The Grinch!” Josh filled in the silence. “Get it? Gangrene? Grinch?”
There was a collective headshake, which Josh waved off. “You guys are hopeless. They’re both green!”
Jorja
