he’d be gone, on his way to deployment, and she’d be an ortho attending at Rapid City Health Sciences Center.
Tonight, though, she was his.
Tonight she’d live. If but just for a moment.
Seven months later
“PAGING DR. WALTON. Dr. Walton, please head to the emergency room, stat.”
Ingrid let out a sigh, not because she’d been paged but because she was hungry. The baby was kicking furiously, and there was a great chicken-salad sandwich with a big old dill pickle just two inches away from her mouth.
She was also dead tired, but that was to be expected. She was turning into a house apparently. A giant mountain of a woman who was forced to perform surgeries like a puppet on a string—dance, puppet, dance.
She glanced over at Dr. Maureen Hotchkiss, who’d just wandered into the ortho lounge and who sat down like she had no bones left in her body.
“Hey, Maureen, fancy going to the E.R. for a big, fat old pregnant lady?” She tried batting her eyelashes, but that never really got her anywhere.
“Sorry,” Maureen said. “I have to go check on my cast for a kid with a greenstick fracture of the upper ulna in a moment, and there’s no way in heck you’re big. Neither are you fat. It makes me sick.”
“You’re blind.”
Maureen snorted. “No way. You’re hormonal and delusional. Go on, I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I’ll watch your sandwich.”
“Don’t touch my sandwich or you’re dead meat.”
Maureen winked. “No promises.”
Ingrid chuckled and with a sigh of regret set her sandwich down. She stood up with relative ease. Her pregnant belly wasn’t a big issue now, but she imagined in a couple more months she wouldn’t be moving through the hospital’s hallways very fast.
Though she’d try her damnedest to keep up with the best of them. Right now she had control, but in a couple of months, well, she didn’t like to think about it.
She stretched and then headed toward the E.R., which thankfully wasn’t a long walk. When she got there, there wasn’t too much activity and no one in the nearby beds looked like they needed an ortho consult.
“Who paged me?” Ingrid asked the charge nurse, Linda.
“Oh, Dr. Allen paged you. He’s in room 26B.”
“And it had to be me?” Ingrid gave her best pouty face. “What about Phil?”
Linda’s glasses slid to the end of her nose as she looked at her. “Dr. Reminsky is on vacation and she’s not an ortho attending.”
Right. Oncologist and the all-inclusive Caribbean vacation that she and Philomena had been talking about taking when Ingrid was promoted. The one she had had to cancel because of her new circumstances. Don’t live a little was Ingrid’s new philosophy. She swore she’d never be so reckless again in her life.
She sighed. “Right. I’d forgotten she left this afternoon for that. Thanks, Linda.”
Linda gave her a sympathetic smile and turned back to her paperwork.
She’d never met Dr. Allen before. He was new, and she hoped that he was a decent guy to work with, since she seemed to get all the trauma pages. Ingrid shuffled down the hall and knocked on the room 26B’s door before opening it. “Hi, there, did someone page ortho?”
Dr. Allen had his back to her, but there was something about his stance that tugged at the corner of her mind.
It was when he turned around. “Hi, Dr. Walton …” The words died in his throat, whereas Ingrid felt like the world had dropped out from beneath her feet. She stood there stunned, like a deer trapped in a set of headlights, as she stared into those light cerulean eyes that had the darkest rims around them so they seemed to make the blue of his irises pop.
It was his eyes that had attracted her to him in the first place. The only difference now was that his dark hair had grown out from the buzz cut of all those months ago.
He’d also aged a bit, but then again war could do that to a person. Still, it was him. Clint. The soldier who had taken her virginity, the man she’d lived a little with.
The man who still haunted her dreams.
And for one brief flicker she could still recall the feel of his hands on her body, his lips on her skin. Those strong, large hands on her throat and in her hair as she moved on top of him, his deep voice in her ear, telling her what to do, encouraging her.
Suddenly it became very hot in the exam room and she knew her cheeks were flushing. She pulled at her collar and tried to dispel from her mind the memories of his naked body tangled with hers.
Though it was hard to do. So hard.
Dr. Allen cleared his throat. “Dr. Walton?” he finally managed to ask.
She couldn’t blame him for being shocked. She’d used a fake name the first and last time they’d met.
“Yes, sorry.” She dragged her gaze away from him and focused on the patient. Her cheeks were heating with a rush of blood and she knew he was still staring at her. “What seems to be the problem?” she asked, finally finding her voice.
“Dislocated shoulder. The patient, Mr. McGowan, is a bit of a golf fanatic and he insisted on having an ortho specialist reset his shoulder. I didn’t know …” He trailed off and coughed. “We can get another ortho attending down here if reduction—”
“I can reset the shoulder,” she snapped. It was her pregnancy messing with her job again. Once her belly had started to show, other surgeons didn’t think she had it in her to reset bones and dislocated joints. Well, she could still do all of that. She’d show them. In all the hot mess her life had become, one thing she could control was her knowledge, her job. She could manipulate a joint with the best of them.
She moved toward the patient, who was on very strong analgesics and was barely looking at her. She examined the arm. “It doesn’t look too bad. I think a simple reduction will be all it takes. Will you stand on the other side of him, Dr. Allen, and make sure he doesn’t fidget.”
“Of course, Dr. Walton.”
Carefully manipulating the man’s arm, she bent it, flexing it, and with the ease of having done this particular procedure many times popped the joint back into place. Even though the patient was on painkillers, he still cried out.
Ingrid grabbed a sling and secured Mr. McGowan’s arm in it. “He’ll need an X-ray of the arm and chest, just to make sure nothing has broken or punctured from popping it back into place.” Their gazes locked again for one tense moment before she turned her back to him and started writing a script for the patient. “Have the X-rays sent up to ortho for my attention.”
“Of
