“Sit down.” She gave his chest a firm shove and angled him into a chair. “You won’t do anyone any good if you collapse in the elevator.” She fastened the blood-pressure cuff around his arm, pumped it up, and listened with her stethoscope. He flashed her an annoyed stare. Unfazed, she bent forward in silence, almost head to head with him as she listened to his blood pressure.
He started to stand up.
“Hold your horses. Good. Your pressure hasn’t dropped. Let me listen to your lungs.” She placed the cold stethoscope bell first on his chest then on his back and commanded him to breathe in and out for each. “I hear a little wheezing, but not bad. Let me roll you down to the ER in a wheelchair. You shouldn’t be running around like this. And you can’t leave Patrick alone here.” She glanced at his back. “Man, you should be a bubble boy.”
“Yeah, I’ve always been special. Look, this is ridiculous. I can walk.”
“Maybe you can, but we don’t want to spread this reaction any further by increasing your circulation with physical activity, so you’re going in a wheelchair.” She reached into the cupboard again and tossed him a small gray canister and then an aerochamber. “Take a couple of hits off that while I get the wheelchair.”
He felt like an insolent teenager screwing up his face at a teacher’s stupid idea, but did what he had been told for Patrick’s sake. The woman was as pushy as his ER nurses, but he trusted her knowledge.
Before Beth left, she’d obviously become aware of what Gavin had been noticing for the last few weeks—Patrick’s troublesome, persistent cough. He kept coughing as though he had a nervous tickle.
“Maybe you should take your asthma medicine, too,” she said.
“I don’t have it with me.”
“Later, when we have time, I’ll teach you about keeping peak-flow records and carrying your inhaler wherever you go, but for now, use what I gave your dad. You guys both need a bronchodilator.”
She disappeared around the corner. Gavin heard her explain to Dr Mehta over the intercom what was going on, while they did what they were told.
Reappearing and rolling the wheelchair behind him, Beth caught the backs of his knees and pushed his shoulder down to force him to sit. She handed him his scrub top and lab coat and gave Patrick his basketball jersey.
“Would you like an ice pack or should I put some cortisone cream on your back before you get dressed?”
“Don’t have time now, but I’d definitely like to take a rain-check on the second part.” Though nervous about his reaction to the testing, he couldn’t resist horsing around to lighten her intense mood and help himself relax. He lowered his voice. “My choice of cream, though.”
She lightly cuffed his shoulder and rolled her eyes toward Patrick. Ignoring Gavin’s come-on, she spun the chair round and pushed it toward the door. “I’m missing dinner because of you, and I already skipped lunch today.” With the clinic normally closing at five o’clock and it now being almost six o’clock, the hall was empty.
“Nurses are tough. What about our dinner?” He gestured to his son. “You know, I think you owe us dinner for all this grief.”
“It was your idea,” she said.
“Are we asking her to take us out, Dad?”
He grinned. “Maybe.”
She ignored the implication and let Patrick push the elevator button on the fifth floor. Amazingly the door opened right away. She rolled him inside and stood across from both of them. Patrick punched number one.
“How am I supposed to figure out what you’re allergic to if you’re running around in the ER?” She fanned herself, looking suddenly flushed.
“You can’t.” Gavin studied his shaky hands. How was he supposed to examine a traumatized kid when he itched all over and his back burned hotter than Hades?
“Are you OK, Dad?” Patrick asked as he stood next to the wheelchair.
“I’m fine.”
“It’s just the medicine I gave him, Patrick. It will wear off. How about you? You seem to have stopped coughing.”
“I’m good.”
“The medicine helped?”
“Maybe.”
Now pale and looking droopier by the second, Bethany leaned against the adjacent wall. “And why is it no one else can take care of this emergency?”
“Because I’m the head of the ER and the kid had his hand practically torn off by the family dog.”
He glanced across the elevator just in time to see his new, and definitely favorite, allergy nurse fainting.
CHAPTER TWO
GAVIN punched in the code on the number pad of the emergency room door—it swung open to harsh fluorescent lights and a barrage of noise. Ah, home, sweet home.
“I need an ammonia ampoule,” he said, acting like carrying a woman over his shoulder was the most natural thing in the world. Patrick followed, pushing the empty wheelchair.
When Bethany had started to fall, he’d lunged across the elevator, catching her just above the knees, and hoisted her over his shoulder.
With her usual ER charm, Carmen nailed him over her half-rimmed glasses. “Where have you been, and who is she?” After twenty years in the ER, nothing fazed her.
“This my allergy nurse.” He made a circle, looking for a vacant exam room.
“Room three is open. Hi, Patrick, darlin’.” Her icy glare cracked into a smile just for him. “You can leave the wheelchair right there.”
Gavin headed across the ward with Patrick behind him, gently laid Bethany on the gurney in the vacant room, then adjusted the head of the bed so that her head was below her heart.
Carmen appeared at the doorway, arms folded, a curious look on her face. She handed him the smelling salts. He’d thought he’d save her the question.
“She passed out in the elevator when I mentioned the boy’s hand almost being ripped off by a dog.” Realizing his son had heard every word, he gave him a steady look and said, “I’ll make sure the boy is fine. These days surgeons can reattach just about everything.” Patrick nodded thoughtfully. Glancing back at Carmen, who was waiting for more explanation, Gavin said, “I caught her before she hit the floor.” He popped open and waved the smelling salts under Beth’s nose. A reflex made her shake her head side to side. “Keep an eye on her for me while I take a look at the boy, will you?”
“Sure. We’ve only got patients crawling out of the rafters and as usual I’m short-staffed, but I’ll take care of her.” Carmen approached the bedside and applied the blood-pressure cuff to Beth’s arm. “Is this some new dating strategy?”
Patrick laughed as if he understood what she was talking about. Carmen’s mock vitriol for Gavin disappeared when she
