he must have been unconscious at the time!
He remembered himself and let her go, stepping back out of harm’s way and sucking in his first breath for almost half a minute. ‘Um—hi, there,’ he managed inanely, and could have kicked himself. Damn, had it really been so long since he’d chatted up a woman that he couldn’t remember how to talk to one?
Yes—but more to the point she was a junior colleague, and he would do well to remember that. No cosying up to this one, no matter how good she might feel squashed up against his chest.
His body was busy disagreeing. He buttoned his coat to allow it a little privacy until he had time to argue about it. Meanwhile he had work to do and an impression to create—if he could just unscramble his tonsils and get the words out!
‘Ah—call me Ryan, please? And can I call you Virginia?’ Wow, what a smile! He could feel his socks beginning to smoulder.
‘Do—or Ginny. Whichever.’
He nodded. He had to. His brain had disconnected from his tongue and gone walkabout. He cleared his throat. ‘Ah—right, well, if you’ll come with me we’ll see what we can do. You’ll need a coat—’
‘I got one at Reception.’
‘—and a stethoscope?’
‘Here.’
She waggled it at him and he nodded. Lord, her grin was delicious. ‘Fine,’ he croaked. ‘Right. Let’s go and find some patients.’
He was lovely. Dreadfully uncomfortable, fascinated by her, embarrassed by his reaction—what a sweetheart! And she had to admit to a certain fascination herself. What healthy woman wouldn’t? He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but his craggy good looks and wonderful green eyes had a definite masculine appeal.
And that voice—soft, deep, a little gruff, with a slow drawl that put his origins from across the pond—Canada, perhaps? His speech was quite precise—or would have been if he’d been able to get his tongue off the roof of his mouth! Poor man. Hormones could be quite ruthless.
She didn’t remember his voice from the interview. Perhaps he hadn’t said a great deal. She seemed to remember that it had been Jack Lawrence who had done most of the talking. She was sure she would have remembered if Ryan had said much, with that smoky, gravelly voice just made for loving—
A shiver ran down her spine and she sighed. It was a shame he was a colleague. She didn’t like muddying the waters with personal matters.
Still, for him perhaps she could make an exception…?
She followed his broad, straight back down the corridor and round into the hub of the treatment area. There were trolleys with patients on, cubicles with people sitting and lying in varying states of undress and distress, and nurses bustling busily from one to the other, quietly efficient.
And once there, of course, they were instantly in demand. A nurse showed her the staffroom where she could stow her bag, and she slipped on her coat, hung her stethoscope round her neck and went back out into the fray.
‘Here.’ Ryan handed her a badge that said, Dr VIRGINIA JEFFRIES—SHO, and she pinned it to her lapel, grinned at him and looked around.
‘Where do we start?’
‘Over here,’ he said. He sounded better now, more in command of himself, his words precise and yet spoken with that lovely soft transatlantic drawl that made her skin shiver.
He picked up a file from a stack on a table. ‘I think for the morning you’d better stick close to me and see how things work,’ he said, and then turned away—but not before she saw recognition of the double meaning of his words strike home.
She nearly chuckled. The skin on the back of his neck warmed to a delicate shade of brick, and her grin wouldn’t be suppressed. If she’d got much closer to him she would have known exactly how things worked, she thought mischievously. She schooled her face into a businesslike mask and kept her chuckle private.
There would be plenty of time for jokes once she knew him better!
The morning removed the urge to laugh. Instead, she wanted to scream with frustration because, despite the early bustle the work died to a trickle and she was forced to stand around like a fourth-year student and watch the maestro at work.
It would have been a good idea if she’d been able to concentrate on taking in all the technical detail, like where the X-ray request forms were kept and who did the strapping on the sprains and which nurse did the casts and where the vomit bowls were in an emergency!
Instead, she watched his hands, long and strong, the fingers careful but thorough as he explored injuries. She studied his bent head, the hair short-cropped and springy—the ends tipped blond by the sun.
And she listened to his voice, and the warm, melodious flow of it lulled her into a sensuous daze.
But still she did no work, put her hands on no one, wasted a morning.
Ginny didn’t like wasting time—even time spent admiring Ryan O’Connor. She was glad, then, when things started to hot up a little and she actually got to examine a cut for fragments of glass and, wonder of wonders, examine, diagnose and admit an elderly lady with a Colles’ fracture of her wrist.
She was just about to lance an infected abscess on a young woman’s finger when the sister popped her head round the cubicle curtain and told her that there were two coming in on a blue light, and could she stand by in Resus with Ryan as Jack Lawrence, the other consultant, was busy with a cardiac arrest and couldn’t be spared, and Patrick Haddon, the SR, was similarly occupied with a child with severe bums?
‘I think they’re critical,’ she told Ginny. ‘Ryan’s on the phone to the paramedic in the ambulance, giving him instructions about one of them—could you come and talk to the other one?’
There was hardly time, though, because no sooner had she excused herself from the patient she was treating than they heard the sound of sirens entering the hospital grounds.
All hell broke loose then. The doors were held open, the trolleys brought in at a run and Ryan was working on the first casualty before they entered the resuscitation room. Ginny just had time to register masses of frothy blood around the girl’s face before her own patient was there under her nose.
The second trolley was pulled up parallel with the first, and the paramedic gave her a quick breakdown of the findings.
‘Motorbike accident,’ he said unnecessarily, as the lad was still wearing his leathers although his helmet had been removed. ‘Unconscious at the scene, hasn’t regained consciousness. Left leg is splinted—it’s very deformed in the lower third of the femur, but it looks like a closed fracture. Don’t know about spinal injuries but it’s possible. We put a backboard on to make sure, but we couldn’t leave the helmet on because we needed to get an airway in.’
She nodded. ‘OK. Thank you.’
While he was talking she checked the patient’s airway and ensured that it was working, and then frowned. His breathing was laboured and she was concerned about his chest.
‘Can we get these clothes off him, please?’
‘Put
