of X-ray, anyway. Dr. Bamber hadn’t been on duty earlier, and—
“I’ve got tickets to the ballet tonight. Orchestra, row E.” He flourished them before her like a two-feathered fan. “Score.”
Score, indeed. Brooke loved the ballet, beauty created from precision. It was sweet of Tom to remember, but—
Tom kept talking. “I have my doubts that a young troupe can truly do justice to Balanchine, but we might as well go and judge their attempt. Shall we say seven? We can dine with the Philistines at the food trucks outside the theater.” Tom stepped just a little too close to her. “Then I’ll buy you a drink after the show.”
Good grief, the man was asking her out on a date. Brooke rarely went out with friends and even more rarely on dates, but now she had two men wanting to buy her drinks. On the same night. At the same moment. Asking in front of one another.
She stole a glance at Zach, to whose presence Tom seemed to be oblivious. Zach raised her coffee cup to his lips, watching her conversation like a man watching a sporting event. He blew across the top of the hot liquid, which made his mouth look like he was about to give someone a soft, sweet kiss.
No, no, no. Don’t go there.
Brooke smiled politely at Tom. His lips looked unremarkable. His mouth wasn’t about to do anything except question her.
Normal lips were a good thing. Tom was exactly the sort of man she should date. They spoke the same language as doctors. They’d discussed their mutual appreciation of the ballet once, over lunch in the hospital cafeteria. They were evenly matched, even in their height. She could look him squarely in the eye.
Brooke had to glance up at the fireman who’d also just asked her out for a drink. She wondered what kind of place a man like Zach would take a woman like her. What was a playboy paramedic’s idea of a night out in Austin? Where would it begin—and where would they end up?
No, no, no.
Zach was all wrong for her, yet she couldn’t accept Tom’s ballet invitation in front of Zach. She felt a little relieved, actually, that she had an excuse not to go out on a perfectly nice date with a perfectly nice man like Tom.
Likewise, even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t tell Zach yes in front of Tom.
Even if she’d wanted to?
She had wanted to. She’d almost said yes to a fireman just because he dripped sex appeal. Tom had unknowingly stopped her from making a big mistake.
“I’m sorry, but—”
The kitchen door burst open once again.
“There you are.”
Brooke felt relieved; this man was almost as handsome as Zach, but also quite happily married. The head of the emergency department, Dr. Jamie MacDowell, wasn’t going to offer to buy her a drink.
“Can you work late?” Jamie asked her instead. “We just got a call that there’s been a multi-car accident on I-35.”
“Sure, I can stay.” Brooke recognized the cowardly relief she felt. Now she didn’t have to turn down two men.
Jamie nodded at Zach as if they were old friends. “Surprised your engine hasn’t been called yet.”
An obnoxiously loud series of three tones sounded from the radio at Zach’s hip.
“Now it has.” Zach silenced his radio as he started for the door.
“Jinxed you,” Jamie said. As Zach passed him, the two men didn’t shake hands as much as do some kind of forearm-to-forearm punch. Brooke had seen that move before. It seemed that all three of the Dr. MacDowell brothers and half the emergency responders in the Texas Rescue and Relief organization had played on the same high school football team.
She should have guessed that Zach’s cocky grin and his confidence with women had started in his teen years. Of course, Zach Bishop had been a high school football star.
As he turned back to her, he added a wink to the grin that had probably slayed a dozen cheerleaders. “Looks like neither one of our shifts is over. Tonight is not our night, but the offer still stands.”
Then he left. Tom Bamber frowned at her. Jamie MacDowell lifted one brow in speculation.
Brooke turned her back on both men and grabbed her white coat off its hanger. It was time to go to work. Zach was gone, and she was once more left alone with a little thrill of awareness, same as always.
The offer still stands.
Or maybe, things weren’t the same as always.
* * *
An hour later, Brooke was making decisions in that quick yet methodical state of mind, going down the logical checklists ingrained in her brain regarding the injuries and complications of accident victims. She had no time to wonder where Zach was.
She wondered, anyway, during those moments when she transitioned from one patient to another. She’d worked a hundred shifts not caring who pushed the gurney as patients arrived. She’d worked a hundred more without replaying the last words a man had said to her. Yet tonight, she kept remembering the way Zach had said Brooklyn Brown. The way he’d told her the offer still stood.
Each time she walked into a treatment room, she noticed that Zach wasn’t there. Each time the sliding glass doors opened and paramedics wheeled in a patient, she noticed that Zach wasn’t there. When Loretta stopped to let her know that Harold Allman was doing well after his heart procedure, Brooke made a mental note to be sure to pass on the good news to Zach—later, because he wasn’t there.
Still, Harold’s recovery was a useful thing to have ready to discuss, because she wasn’t sure what else she would say the next time she saw Zach. Whenever that would be.
It wasn’t that day. When she took her purse out of the gym locker for the second time, it was after midnight, and she was so tired, the cot in the physician’s lounge was starting to look inviting. She wondered if Zach felt the same, wherever he was.
No fire engines had arrived from the crash scene. Fire engines didn’t transport patients; ambulances did. But if a fire engine was first on the scene and its paramedic was the first to begin a victim’s medical treatment, then that paramedic would stay with the patient, continuing medical care in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The fire engine followed the ambulance, staying with its paramedic, ready for him to rejoin the engine’s crew once the handoff to the hospital had taken place.
Any time an ambulance pulled up to the hospital doors and Zach Bishop emerged with a patient, that big red Engine Thirty-Seven pulled in right behind him, like Zach was some kind of superhero with a red fire truck instead of a red cape sailing behind him.
Not tonight. Brooke assumed that meant Zach was working as less of a paramedic and more of a firefighter. Was he still on the scene, putting out a fire or cutting open a crumpled car? Or was he, like she, dragging himself home, staying awake through sheer willpower long enough to take a shower and then falling into bed with hair still wet, sleeping like the dead until it was time to wake for the next shift?
As
