Pregnant Nurse, New-Found Family Page 2

  Where did they go from here? Hot sex with a stranger was one thing, but did he really want to get to know her? Maybe some things were best left forgotten.

  It tickled when she drew something on his back and applied light, chilling drops of liquid. He relaxed and enjoyed the sensual feeling.

  She began to scratch him beneath each of the droplets with something that felt like a needle. Hey! What was that?

  “How does it feel, Dad?”

  “Not bad at all,” he fibbed. “Sort of like a pinch.”

  “Just a light scratch,” Beth said.

  Yeah, and we’re just work colleagues.

  Wanting to be a good example for his son, he managed a reassuring smile then laid his forehead down on the backs of his hands and forced himself to relax. But soon his head shot up. “I felt that one.” Oops.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking about the last time I saw you. A lady, um, called you away.”

  OK. So she definitely remembered him. Yeah, Carmen’s timing had certainly sucked that night, but she’d found out that Patrick had been in the ER and had done the right thing by beeping him. It had been a much wiser choice than breaking in on them, though he was certain Carmen had known exactly what had been going on.

  Ignoring another sharp scratch, Gavin seized the opportunity to explain. “That was no lady, that was my ER charge nurse, Carmen.”

  “I like Carmen,” Patrick chimed in. “She lets me watch videos at her house sometimes.”

  “She was my designated driver, Bethany.” He raised his head and looked over his shoulder. “What is your last name?”

  Her eyes quickly flitted away. “Caldwell. Bethany Caldwell. Now, lie still or these drops will run together.”

  “Nice to meet you again, Bethany Caldwell. Carmen was supposed to keep me out of trouble that night.” Gavin couldn’t resist reminding her about them meeting the month before. Sure, he’d wished he’d known her last name and where she worked. If he’d had it all to do over again, he’d definitely handle the situation differently. It was probably too late to worry about that now, though.

  “Did you get into trouble, Dad?”

  “Nah, I was just kidding.” Turning his attention back to Beth, he said, “As I recall, you’re divorced, right?”

  “My mom and dad are divorced.” Patrick hadn’t a clue what was going on but, as usual, just wanted to be in on the conversation.

  Beth rolled the stool she sat on toward the counter to discard her cotton swabs and lancets. “Well, I guess we have something in common, then.”

  Gavin remembered her silly toast about her exhusband at the party. Something about “May the dog lose his pecker in a mysterious accident.” He scratched his nose and tried not to crack a smile. It sounded as though her marriage had ended as badly as his had.

  She washed her hands and rolled toward Patrick’s gurney.

  “Now it’s your turn, fella.” She gave Patrick a warm smile. Gavin liked the way she treated his son, especially as he missed his mother so much. He went back to resting his chin on a pedestal made from two fists, and thought he could get used to looking at Beth.

  “That’s cold,” Patrick protested. “It tickles.” He giggled and contorted while she drew lines and letters on his back.

  “OK, let’s get all the squirming over with before we start the test.” She tickled his sides until he laughed so hard he relaxed.

  It took a special woman to know how to work with kids. He’d give her that. Gavin optimistically calculated the odds of getting to know Bethany Caldwell better. He genuinely wasn’t a cad. Not asking her full name or getting her number really had been beneath his usual standards. And never in his life had he carried on with a woman he hadn’t even been introduced to. But, as they said, there’s always a first. Hell, if they’d been dating and the sex had been that amazing, he’d have sent flowers the next day. But that night, with the strong sexual current flowing between them, his good sense had gotten left behind. And when Carmen had beeped him and alerted him about Patrick, well…

  Now the question was, how could he make up for it?

  Intense itching ratcheted up in wicked swirls around the test patches on his back. “Am I allowed to scratch?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You’re sadistic, you know that?”

  “What’s sadistic mean?” Patrick asked as Beth made the first scratch on his back. He didn’t protest, but his face turned red from trying to hold still.

  “It means she made my back itch a lot and won’t let me scratch it.”

  “It’s one of the perks of the job,” she said, looking playfully at him for the first time that evening. He remembered that look.

  Beth quickly finished testing Patrick without a peep coming from him. Gavin wondered why his back felt on fire but his son wasn’t complaining at all.

  “OK, guys. Now you have to lie here for twenty minutes.”

  “Hey, where are you going?” Gavin asked.

  “To clean up the work station. It’s closing time. Talk amongst yourselves.”

  He lay there like a good boy trying to be teacher’s pet but his skin flushed from warm to hot, beginning from the top of his head downward. His scalp felt tingly. “Does your head itch?”

  “Nope,” Patrick said, looking very comfortable. “Hey, let’s arm-wrestle.”

  Gavin cleared a tickle in his throat. His lungs twitched and itched inside. His beeper went off. He sat up. “Maybe later.”

  Using the wall phone, he dialed in the familiar ER numbers. “Riordan.” He coughed while he listened, then glanced at his arms. They were covered with the beginnings

  “I’ll be right down. Contact Orthopedics and the plastic surgeon on call.” He hung up.

  Beth reappeared at the door. Her eyes flashed both a double-take and alarm when she saw Gavin. “Are you all right?” She glanced at Patrick to make sure he was OK.

  “A four-year-old was just brought into the ER. I’ve got to go,” he said, as the intense itching from his back spread all over his body.

  “You can’t leave. It looks like you’re having a systemic reaction. And you can’t leave a minor alone during skin testing. California law.” She reached into the cupboard for a syringe and a vial.

  The soles of his feet and palms of his hands joined the tornado of itching traveling across his skin. “They’re waiting for me.”

  She wiped his arm with an alcohol swab and popped him with a needle.

  “Ouch! Hey, what was that?”

  Patrick looked on in alarm. “Do I gotta have that, too?”

  She shook her head. “No, you’re fine. But your dad is having a big reaction to the testing.”

  Patrick coughed.

  “That was epi. Here, take this.” She handed Gavin a small foil packet she’d torn open. “It’s an antihistamine. Dissolve it under your tongue.” She turned him round and assessed his back. “Good God, a whole section of the testing has run together into one huge welt. Let me check your blood pressure.”

  “I told you I have to go.” He coughed and Patrick

  “Sit down.” She gave his chest a firm shove and angled him into a chair. “You won’t do anyone any good if you collapse in the elevator.” She fastened the blood-pressure cuff around his arm, pumped it up, and listened with her stethoscope. He flashed her an annoyed stare. Unfazed, she bent forward in silence, almost head to head with him as she listened to his blood pressure.

  He started to stand up.

  “Hold your horses. Good. Your pressure hasn’t dropped. Let me listen to your lungs.” She placed the cold stethoscope bell first on his chest then on his back and commanded him to breathe in and out for each. “I hear a little wheezing, but not bad. Let me roll you down to the ER in a wheelchair. You shouldn’t be running around like this. And you can’t leave Patrick alone here.” She glanced at his back. “Man, you should be a bubble boy.”

  “Yeah, I’ve always been special. Look, this is ridiculous. I can walk.”

  “Maybe
you can, but we don’t want to spread this reaction any further by increasing your circulation with physical activity, so you’re going in a wheelchair.” She reached into the cupboard again and tossed him a small gray canister and then an aerochamber. “Take a couple of hits off that while I get the wheelchair.”

  He felt like an insolent teenager screwing up his face at a teacher’s stupid idea, but did what he had been told for Patrick’s sake. The woman was as pushy as his ER nurses, but he trusted her knowledge.

  Before Beth left, she’d obviously become aware of what Gavin had been noticing for the last few weeks—Patrick’s troublesome, persistent cough. He kept coughing as though he had a nervous tickle.

  “Maybe you should take your asthma medicine, too,” she said.

  “I don’t have it with me.”

  “Later, when we have time, I’ll teach you about keeping peak-flow records and carrying your inhaler wherever you go, but for now, use what I gave your dad. You guys both need a bronchodilator.”

  She disappeared around the corner. Gavin heard her explain to Dr Mehta over the intercom what was going on, while they did what they were told.

  Reappearing and rolling the wheelchair behind him, Beth caught the backs of his knees and pushed his shoulder down to force him to sit. She handed him his scrub top and lab coat and gave Patrick his basketball jersey.

  “Would you like an ice pack or should I put some cortisone cream on your back before you get dressed?”

  “Don’t have time now, but I’d definitely like to take a rain-check on the second part.” Though nervous about his reaction to the testing, he couldn’t resist horsing around to lighten her intense mood and help himself relax. He lowered his voice. “My choice of cream, though.”

  She lightly cuffed his shoulder and rolled her eyes toward Patrick. Ignoring Gavin’s come-on, she spun the chair round and pushed it toward the door. “I’m missing dinner because of you, and I already skipped lunch today.” With the clinic normally closing at five o’clock and it now being almost six o’clock, the hall was empty.

  “Nurses are tough. What about our dinner?” He gestured to his son. “You know, I think you owe us dinner for all this grief.”

  “It was your idea,” she said.

  “Are we asking her to take us out, Dad?”

  He grinned. “Maybe.”

  She ignored the implication and let Patrick push the elevator button on the fifth floor. Amazingly the door opened right away. She rolled him inside and stood across from both of them. Patrick punched number one.

  “How am I supposed to figure out what you’re allergic to if you’re running around in the ER?” She fanned herself, looking suddenly flushed.

  “You can’t.” Gavin studied his shaky hands. How was he supposed to examine a traumatized kid when he itched all over and his back burned hotter than Hades?

  “Are you OK, Dad?” Patrick asked as he stood next to the wheelchair.

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s just the medicine I gave him, Patrick. It will wear off. How about you? You seem to have stopped coughing.”

  “I’m good.”

  “The medicine helped?”

  “Maybe.”

  Now pale and looking droopier by the second, Bethany leaned against the adjacent wall. “And why is it no one else can take care of this emergency?”

  “Because I’m the head of the ER and the kid had his hand practically torn off by the family dog.”

  He glanced across the elevator just in time to see his new, and definitely favorite, allergy nurse fainting.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GAVIN punched in the code on the number pad of the emergency room door—it swung open to harsh fluorescent lights and a barrage of noise. Ah, home, sweet home.

  “I need an ammonia ampoule,” he said, acting like carrying a woman over his shoulder was the most natural thing in the world. Patrick followed, pushing the empty wheelchair.

  When Bethany had started to fall, he’d lunged across the elevator, catching her just above the knees, and hoisted her over his shoulder.

  With her usual ER charm, Carmen nailed him over her half-rimmed glasses. “Where have you been, and who is she?” After twenty years in the ER, nothing fazed her.

  “This my allergy nurse.” He made a circle, looking for a vacant exam room.

  “Room three is open. Hi, Patrick, darlin’.” Her icy glare cracked into a smile just for him. “You can leave the wheelchair right there.”

  Gavin headed across the ward with Patrick behind him, gently laid Bethany on the gurney in the vacant

  Carmen appeared at the doorway, arms folded, a curious look on her face. She handed him the smelling salts. He’d thought he’d save her the question.

  “She passed out in the elevator when I mentioned the boy’s hand almost being ripped off by a dog.” Realizing his son had heard every word, he gave him a steady look and said, “I’ll make sure the boy is fine. These days surgeons can reattach just about everything.” Patrick nodded thoughtfully. Glancing back at Carmen, who was waiting for more explanation, Gavin said, “I caught her before she hit the floor.” He popped open and waved the smelling salts under Beth’s nose. A reflex made her shake her head side to side. “Keep an eye on her for me while I take a look at the boy, will you?”

  “Sure. We’ve only got patients crawling out of the rafters and as usual I’m short-staffed, but I’ll take care of her.” Carmen approached the bedside and applied the blood-pressure cuff to Beth’s arm. “Is this some new dating strategy?”

  Patrick laughed as if he understood what she was talking about. Carmen’s mock vitriol for Gavin disappeared when she smiled at the boy.

  Choosing to ignore her smart-aleck question, Gavin said, “Patrick, you stay with Carmen and Bethany.”

  “The boy’s in room six, we’ve got a GI bleed in room three, and there’s a possible kidney stone in eight.” Carmen’s expression changed from all business to concern when she had time to study him more closely. “What the heck happened to you?”

  “She tried to kill me.” He nodded toward Beth before

  “Already have, but thanks for making it official,” Carmen spouted off confidently, making note of her newest patient’s BP. “Hey, Gav, what about something for pain for the possible kidney stone?” she called over her shoulder.

  He slowed his pace. “Any drug allergies?”

  “None.”

  “Demerol 75 milligrams IM.” A deep appreciation for his skilled and competent nurse made him smile. He’d left Beth in good hands. “What would I do without you?”

  “Crash and burn,” she said on a sigh as she headed for the tiny medicine alcove.

  Beth lay perfectly still, woozy yet distracted by the noise and chaos. She opened her eyes and saw Patrick’s inquisitive gaze watching her as if she’d died and come back to life. He’d been raising and lowering the height of the bed by pushing the buttons on the side rails. For a while she’d dreamed she was on a Caribbean cruise, rocking and rolling at sea.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hi.” He quickly moved his hand. “Dad said you fainted.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not very long.”

  She sat up, fighting an uphill battle with the gurney. “Can you push that and fix this?”

  The boy eagerly complied, already a pro at the bedside controls. The blood-pressure cuff automatically pumped

  She glanced across the cavernous ER to another room. Behind the glass wall, Gavin was conversing with a doctor and a man and woman. A small boy lay behind him on the gurney. Her gaze came to rest on a teenage girl standing just outside the door. The girl chewed on her index finger and rubbed at red, swollen eyes; fear and concern furrowed her brow as she peered inside.

  The timer on Beth’s wristwatch went off. She’d set it just before they’d left the allergy department. “Oh, Patrick, it’s time to check your back.” She fished around in her pocket for her calibrator to measure any redness or induration fro
m the tests. “Take off your shirt.” She found her pen and a piece of scrap paper in her lab coat and, when Patrick backed up so she could see, began assessing the few small welts on his back. “Most everything is normal. You’ve got a mild reaction to grass and a couple of the trees. Oh, cat fur is borderline.”

  “What does borderline mean?”

  “It means you’re probably OK. Do you have a cat?”

  “No. But I used to.” He got suddenly quiet.

  “Well, other than the grass and trees, you’re OK. Can you get me a glass of water?”

  He put his jersey back on and used the bedside sink to fill a small cup normally meant for pills. She smiled and took it gratefully, threw the contents back in one gulp and asked for another. “Do you have any candy on you? I’m starving.”

  He shook his head but just as quickly his eyes brightened. “I know where the snack machines are.” Spoken like a kid who’d spent more than his share of hours hanging around the hospital because his dad was head of the ER.

  Carmen appeared at the door with a lab tray.

  “Oh, I’m fine now. I just need to get something to eat.”

  “You know the drill,” Carmen said, setting her tray at the bedside and applying a tourniquet to Beth’s arm. “You show up in the ER and we’ve got to do blood tests. I had Rick, the supervising PA, order them.”

  Knowing there was no getting around hospital protocol, Beth lay back and let Carmen do her job.

  “Do I have to watch?” Patrick asked, his fine brows pinched together.

  “If I give you a dollar, will you buy me a chocolate bar?” With her free hand Beth found a dollar and some change in the other pocket and gave him a handful. “Get yourself something, too.”

  He shot out of the room as though on a world-saving mission before Carmen had a chance to expose a needle.

  “So what did you do to Gavin? He looks like Lobster Man.”

  “I know! And because he’s running around here, I can’t read his skin tests to find out what he’s allergic to.” She sighed. “What am I being tested for?”

  Carmen was so skilled at drawing blood that Beth barely felt the needle pierce her skin. “The usual lab tests. Blood sugar. Electrolytes. When was your last period?”