something you couldn’t finesse your way out of.”
“Correction. I did get us out of it.”
Cross waited.
“Okay, with some help.” And, Sam thought, things had been looking pretty dismal until Tabitha Monroe and Jake White had arrived. Yeah, that bothered him.
“Now you find yourself doubting your every move in areas that had always been your strong suits,” Cross continued.
“Not every move.” Though he’d had a horrible moment in surgery yesterday, Sam thought. What was the sense in denying it? He had asked this guy for help. “Just most of them.”
“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder,” Cross said.
Sam stiffened. “I don’t do stress and I don’t do disorders.”
“You do now.”
“That’s bull—”
Cross held up a hand to cut him off. “It basically happens when the predictable order of one’s life is suddenly derailed by any sort of catastrophic event. Things you once put trust in are no longer viable. You find yourself reacting differently, in ways you never considered before.”
Sam breathed again. There it was. The answer. That was why he couldn’t get little Nurse Sweetness off his mind. “So give me something for it.”
Cross shook his head. “No can do.”
“Come on, there’s a drug for everything these days. Turn me into me again.”
“You’re a doctor, a surgeon. Kids’ lives depend on you. I’m not prescribing you so much as an aspirin. Besides, it wouldn’t work, anyway.”
There was that, Sam thought, feeling chastened. But he was desperate. “What, then?”
“I want to see you again. Make an appointment this time. We’ll talk our way through it.”
“I’m not going to start seeing a shrink over this.”
“You already have.”
Sam rubbed his jaw. “I’ll think about it.”
Cross stood. “In the meantime, you might want to think about confronting the source of your trauma.”
“Come on, Jared, ‘trauma’ is a little harsh.”
“The scene of the crime, then.”
Sam’s mind flashed immediately to Caitlyn—and what they had done in that basement room. “You can’t be serious.”
Cross gave him an odd look and nodded. “Try visiting the place where it began, where you started realizing you were a day late and a dollar short on saving yourself and Nurse Matthews.”
“The storage room.” Sam breathed again. That he could do. “Why not? It beats the hell out of tangling with little Nurse Prim-and-proper.”
“You seem more focused on your hostage situation than on the actual abduction,” Cross observed. “What exactly happened to the two of you in that underground room, anyway?”
I lost my mind for a woman I never thought I liked, Sam thought, and now she’s metamorphosed on me. “Nothing.”
Cross shrugged. “You’ll tell me. Sooner or later.”
Sam had a staggering thought. “This post-traumatic stress disorder could have happened to Cait, too, right?”
“Cait?”
“Caitlyn. Nurse Matthews.”
Cross fought a grin. “Presumably. If the normal order of her world was rocked.”
“This sort of thing could really change people,” Sam mused.
“It changed you.”
“It’s tripped me up a little, that’s all.”
“You know, after we’re finished with the stress disorder, we can work on your ego problem if you like.”
Sam made a gesture in Cross’s direction to tell him what he thought of that. Then he got to his feet, too. “You’ve already fixed me. Thanks for taking the time.”
“Make an appointment, anyway.”
Sam watched Cross leave the office and he took a deep, steadying breath. It wasn’t him. Well, not entirely. It was Caitlyn, too. She’d gone wacky on him. He was essentially fine.
He had pre-op routines to do on Gilbert. Sam headed for the door. He stepped into the corridor almost squarely into Dr. Kimberlie Leon’s impressive chest.
“Hey there,” he said, grinning. “Looking for someone?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. You.” She tossed back her mane of long, dark-blond hair. She was the newest addition to Mission Creek Memorial’s staff—an oncology physician.
“My lucky day.” He leaned a shoulder against his door. “What can I do for you?” He was back, Sam thought. Oh, yeah, he was definitely back on his stride.
Then he looked over the doctor’s shoulder. He saw Cait Matthews coming toward them down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder with one of the interns, a dark-eyed Lothario from somewhere out West. California, Sam thought it was. As he watched, she tucked that tidy, short blond hair behind one of her ears and glanced up at the guy out of the corner of her eye. Then she laughed.
She’d been a virgin until a few days ago! Was she trying to turn that one inaugural event into a whole four-year term or something?
“Got to go,” he said suddenly to Kimberlie.
“But—”
“Catch up with me later.”
He left the doctor gaping after him and stepped back into his office. He slammed the door hard.
It was well after four before Cait returned to the maternity wing. She was so tired her legs felt weak.
She had managed to keep her contact with Sam to a minimum through the rest of the day, but each isolated encounter with him had drained more out of her. Emotions had been ricocheting through her for the past eight hours—ups, downs, highs, lows and everything in between. She’d found herself sneaking peeks at him, remembering. Again. Then she’d found herself hating him for his newfound brusqueness, though she’d noticed that he was foul with everyone, not just with her.
Maybe he, too, was having trouble regaining his equilibrium after what had happened to them, she thought as she made her way down the flamboyant corridor. The absurdity of such an idea would have made her laugh if she’d had the energy. The unflappable, outrageous Sam Walters? Hardly.
Cait’s feet stalled as she reached the storage room across from the nursery. She touched the doorknob tentatively, praying it would be locked and she could
