Nurse DeLuca—unless of course you have some icebergs you need to create.”
Jolene pressed her lips together, stifling the retort that had sprang up in response. “This way.” She turned on her crepe heel and quickly led the way to the room that Jorge had only now freshly sanitized.
Once inside, she closed the door behind Mac, then hurried over to the bed as the boy was placed there. He began to whimper again.
Rather than step back the way she fully expected him to, she saw Mac take the boy’s hand in his.
“It’s going to be all right, Nameless, I promise.” Mac carefully made the boy as comfortable as possible. “You know, you’re about my nephew’s age. His name is Kirby.” He kept talking to the boy as if they were old friends, hoping to put him at ease. “Kind of a funny name for a kid, but I suspect he’ll grow into it. What do you think, Nameless? Think he will?”
The boy took a deep breath, then let it slowly out again. His small chest quavered slightly. “Tommy.”
Breakthrough, Mac thought.
He looked at the boy innocently. “You think he should be called Tommy?” Mac pretended to think the choice over. “Yeah, that’s a pretty cool name. Maybe I’ll ask him if he wants to change his name to Tommy.”
“No,” the boy contradicted softly. “My name.”
Mac maintained a serious expression as he asked, “You want to change your name to Tommy?”
For the first time, there was a hint of a smile on the small boy’s face as he looked up at him. “No, my name is Tommy.”
“Ah.” Nodding sagely at the revelation, Mac solemnly took the boy’s hand in his and shook it. “Glad to meet you, Tommy.” He inclined his head toward the boy. “I’ve got to admit that Tommy sounds a lot better than Nameless.” Still smiling, though this time it was purely for the boy’s benefit and not easy, Mac looked into the boy’s eyes. “Who did this to you, Tommy?”
She’d been grudgingly giving him points for his behavior toward the boy, but the insensitive, not to mention possibly incorrect nature of the question had Jolene taking offense for the boy’s absent parents. “You can’t just assume—”
The woman was really beginning to get on his nerves. Not even sparing her a glance, Mac held his hand up to silence her. His entire attention was focused on the boy. He needed to bridge this gap that existed between Tommy and the rest of the world.
“You can trust me, Tommy,” Mac assured him softly. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen to you again.”
A shaky sigh came from the boy’s lips and then he pressed them together before raising his eyes to Mac’s. His lower lip trembled, as if he was struggling against the urge to cry.
It was clear that he didn’t want to say anything, was afraid of saying something, whether because he thought he would be punished, or that something more dire would happen to him. To Mac, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the boy was afraid and that he had been harmed. And that he never should be again.
Tommy seemed to search his face before lowering his eyes again.
“Hugo,” the boy said so quietly that for a moment, it seemed to Mac that he’d imagined it. And then Tommy raised his head again, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Am I gonna look like a monster?”
Finally something he could control in this awful scenario. There was no hesitation in his voice whatsoever. “No, absolutely not, Tommy. You’re going to be the same good-looking guy you always were.
“Nurse DeLuca,” he uttered Jolene’s title deliberately, his smile never wavering for Tommy’s benefit, “do you think you can put your disdain for me on hold long enough to bring me a suturing tray?”
Without waiting for her affirmative reply, Mac went on to enumerate the rest of the supplies he was going to need in order to begin the first phase of Tommy’s recovery.
He’d almost had her.
Watching Harrison MacKenzie interacting with the boy, she’d almost been touched by his behavior.
But then when he looked at her, every single warning signal in her body went on the alert. This was the arena she was accustomed to. Being treated like little more than a semiliterate lackey by a doctor.
Jolene stiffened her back automatically.
“Yes, Doctor,” was all she said in response as she turned on her heel. She went to retrieve the items he was going to need.
“Good as new,” Mac promised Tommy again as Jolene walked out, knowing that a child’s retention ability numbered in the seconds when it came to fear.
His sister Carrie had gone on to marry a successful stockbroker and along the way had provided him with two nephews and a niece. Mac had instantly evolved into a doting uncle. The trio had given him a broad learning spectrum from which he’d picked up a great deal more insight into dealing with kids than he’d gotten from either his child psychology courses and even his short rotation in pediatrics.
Tommy wrapped his small fingers around Mac’s hand and nodded, his eyes if not trusting, at least a little hopeful.
For now, it was the best Mac could ask for.
Wanda stuck her head in just as he was finishing up his work. She’d observed Jolene entering the room with a suture tray earlier. It was Wanda’s custom to stay on top of the new personnel—be they doctors or nurses—when they joined her E.R. team until she was sure that were they were well integrated into the whole.
“Everything okay in here?” she asked cheerfully. And then her milk-chocolate complexion seemed to blanch when she saw the patient. “Tommy?”
Mac stripped off his gloves, tossing them into the trash. He flashed a wide smile at the boy. “You know this trooper?”
“Sure I know him. This is Tommy Edwards.” There was an infinite amount of compassion in her eyes as she looked at the boy. “His mother, Jane, was a nurse here. One of my best.”
That would explain why the boy had turned up here, Mac thought. He moved away from the boy and closer to Wanda. “Was?”
Wanda lowered her voice. That was a whole other story. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Mom died,” the boy said with the on-target honesty of a child.
Wanda came closer to the bed. She threaded her hand through the boy’s silky dark hair. Her heart ached just to look at him. “What happened, Tommy?”
“He sustained a laceration,” Mac said simply for the boy’s sake, avoiding technical terms that he knew would only frighten him. “He said Hugo did it.” Turning his back to the boy so he couldn’t hear, Mac took Wanda aside. “That his father?”
Wanda shook her head. It was a sad story all around. “He doesn’t have a father, he’s got a stepfather. His father left before the boy was born. Stepfather’s name is Paul Allen.” She’d heard that the man wasn’t happy being saddled with Tommy’s welfare now that the boy’s mother was dead. Wanda stopped to think.
