just as she was entering the medical dispensary. From what he observed in the ER, the young nurse appeared to be a close friend of Paige’s. If anyone could tell him about her absence, he figured Chavella would be the one.
“Yes, Dr. Sherman, is there something I can do for you?” she asked.
Feeling a bit embarrassed and hating himself because of it, he said, “I, uh, was wondering if you knew why Nurse Winters isn’t on duty tonight. Is she ill?”
The nurse’s dark gaze awkwardly fell from his. “I don’t think so. Samantha Newton is working a double shift to make up for Paige’s absence. As for Paige, I haven’t talked with her since she left the hospital at five this morning.”
Exactly when he’d ordered Paige to leave. Chavella didn’t say the words, but Luke knew the young Hopi nurse was thinking them.
“Do you think any of the other nurses might know why she’s not here?”
Chavella nervously darted a glance at him. “I’m not sure. You should probably ask Helen. She takes care of the shift roster.”
Nodding, he left the dispensary and walked out to the nurses’ station. When he approached the long, waist-high desk, Helen was on the phone. Trying to hide his impatience, he folded his arms against his chest and waited until she ended the conversation.
“Good evening, Dr. Sherman. Haven’t you ventured a little beyond your territory?”
Since Helen was nearly thirty years his senior and had worked in this very hospital for close to forty years, he felt she’d earned the right to say anything she wanted to say in whatever tone she wanted to say it.
“From time to time, I do stick my head out of the treatment area,” he informed her.
She cracked a smile at him. “Well, it’s nice to see your good-looking face tonight. What can I do for you?”
Good-looking? He’d never thought much about his appearance, other than to keep his face shaved, hair trimmed to a decent length, and his clothes clean and neat. Otherwise, it didn’t matter. But for some odd reason he was suddenly wondering how Paige saw him. Did she ever see him as a man, instead of a doctor? Had she ever thought of him as good-looking?
Silently cursing himself for having such idiotic thoughts, he said, “Nurse Winters isn’t here tonight. Can you tell me why? Did she call in sick?”
Helen’s chin lifted as she drew in a long breath. “Paige is not ill. In fact, she’s at work right now on the third floor.”
Luke stared at the veteran nurse as if she’d lost her mind. “Third floor! Paige is up in internal medicine?”
“That’s right,” Helen said smugly. “She’s been transferred out of the ER unit. At her own request.”
If someone had hit Luke square in the forehead with a baseball bat, he wouldn’t have been more stunned than he was at this moment. For as long as he’d known her, Paige had worked the ER. Sure, they’d exchanged heated words, yet he’d never thought she’d go to this extent to get back at him. But perhaps he was jumping the gun in assuming he was the reason she’d left the ER. Maybe there was a different reason.
He looked blankly at Helen. “Why?”
“Excuse me?”
He grimaced. “Why did Nurse Winters ask for the transfer?”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Think hard, Dr. Sherman. You’ll figure it out.”
Drawing in a harsh breath, he started to stalk away from the sarcastic nurse. But that would hardly garner the answers he was seeking.
Swiping a hand through his hair, he tried to keep his paper-thin patience from slipping completely away. “I don’t have time for mind games, Helen. Yes, Nurse Winters and I exchanged a few cross words last shift, but it hardly warranted her flying the coop!”
Helen’s head tilted to a challenging angle. “Perhaps you view the incident in those terms. Paige obviously sees it differently. Hmmph. I don’t suppose you bothered to ask her why she had tears in her eyes.”
His back teeth snapped together. “The reason for her breakdown didn’t matter then,” he uttered slowly and concisely. “Nor does it have any bearing on the issue now.”
The way in which the older nurse was eyeing him, Luke got the impression she’d like to spit a few salty words at him. Instead, she turned back to the desk as though to say her job was far more important than dealing with his demands.
Picking up a clipboard and pen, she said crisply, “Naturally you would have that attitude. You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand the deep pull of a woman’s maternal instincts.”
Maternal! Before he’d caught Paige crying, there hadn’t been any children visit the emergency unit. She couldn’t have been crying over a sick baby or an adolescent. Unless Helen was implying in a roundabout way that Paige was pregnant! No! Surely that couldn’t be!
“Helen, it might be helpful if you would explain that cryptic remark.”
“I think you should be having this conversation with Nurse Winters. Not me.”
He wasn’t going to have any more conversations with Paige, he thought crossly. She’d clearly made her choice to move on. Away from him. Away from the ER. If she’d gotten involved with some man and gotten herself pregnant, then he didn’t want to know about it. And he definitely didn’t want to think about it.
“Can you kindly explain if you have another nurse lined up to take Nurse Winters’s place? The unit was already short-handed on nurses.”
“I’m working on that, Dr. Sherman. Just give me a bit more time. Filling Paige’s shoes isn’t going to be easy, you know.”
Before he could make a retort, the telephone rang and Helen excused herself to answer it. Luke didn’t wait around to see if her conversation was going to be brief. He figured Helen had already spoken her piece on the matter.
Determined to put Paige and the whole incident out of his mind, he turned on his heel and started back to the treatment area. Yet as he passed the elevator used exclusively for ER patients, he suddenly wondered what Paige would think if he did show up on the third floor.
Would she tell him to go jump in the lake? Or apologize for calling him a bastard?
The nagging questions were rolling through his thoughts when the corner of his eye caught a flash of movement and he looked around to see Nurse Honanie motioning to him.
“Dr. Sherman, the paramedics are bringing in a patient with stroke symptoms,” she called to him.
Hurrying forward, he promised himself he’d think about Paige Winters later. Right now saving a life was his only priority.
Friday morning after Paige had finished her night shift, she was walking across the parking lot to her car when she heard a familiar voice calling to her.
Pausing,
