From House Calls To Husband Page 2

  In those same seconds, a respiratory therapist began bagging the patient, relieving Katie of having to breathe for her, and Mike snatched the paddles. He had them a fraction of an inch from the patient’s chest when Katie called for gel pads.

  Mike froze, the tension in his body almost palpable as a package came sailing across the bed. Katie snatched it up, ripped it open and slapped on two hand-size orange conduction pads, one on the right ribs, the other near the bright red scar bisecting the chest. She knew Mike wouldn’t like the delay, but the pads conducted the electricity better, and without them, the paddles left bums that hurt like the devil.

  He had the paddles in place even as she pulled back.

  “Clear.”

  His brisk command was followed by a heavy, hollow thwump as two hundred joules of electricity bucked the body on the bed. Eva landed as she’d been, and lay as limp as before.

  From across the room, Katie heard something solid hit a wall and slide to the floor.

  “Somebody check the bathroom,” she called, quickly adding the three leads from the defibrillator monitor to the other leads already on the patient’s chest so they could see what was going on. “I think the aide’s in there.”

  Next to Katie, a nurse in blue scrubs like her own was hanging an IV, connecting it to the catheter in the patient’s needle-bruised arm. Behind the redhead tossing out supplies from the code cart, someone in green scrubs was recording the beehive of activity on a clipboard. The doorway was jammed with personnel leaving because there were enough people working the code and others arriving to see if they were needed.

  Katie had the third lead in place. Atop the cart, the monitor jumped to life, the white lines spiking over a black screen indicating a shuddering heart. “She’s still in V tach.”

  “Go to three hundred,” Mike called.

  Another sharp, “Clear,” and the patient’s body bucked once more.

  The frenetic pattern of the deadly arrhythmia still looked like tremors on a seismograph.

  “Three sixty.”

  Mike applied the paddles again.

  “That did it. She’s in sinus,” Cindy announced, watching the heartbeat on the cart’s monitor.

  Sinus rhythm was good. It was normal. It was exactly what they wanted.

  Mike’s glance met Katie’s in a split second of mutually acknowledged relief even as Eva moaned and her eyes fluttered open. The respiratory therapist eased the bag from her mouth. Confusion, then panic, washed over the woman’s suddenly flushed face.

  Wanting to ease her fear, Katie murmured, “It’s okay, Eva. We’re right here.”

  “What’s going on?” The tremor in Eva’s voice was mirrored in her hand as she reached to clutch the sheet Katie pulled up to cover her exposed chest. “Why are all these people here? Wasn’t I sitting up?” Without her glasses, identities were hard for the woman to establish. She blinked past the dozen people surrounding her bed to focus on the darkly attractive man towering over her. “Dr. Brennan? Where did you come from? Why are you here?”

  Katie’s hand rested on Eva’s shoulder. Feeling the woman tremble, she automatically gave Eva a comforting squeeze, and glanced at Mike as he handed her a blood pressure cuff. The faint smile carving lines into his lean cheeks was intended to reassure his patient, but his blue eyes remained intent while he explained to Eva that her heart had jumped out of rhythm, and that they’d had to use electricity to get it back in sync again.

  Fear and anxiety were a patient’s inevitable responses to such an episode. So were tears. They gathered in the corners of the older woman’s eyes, then slipped down her cheeks as the gravity of her situation sunk in. Katie, her thoughts divided between the various needs of her patient while she strapped on the cuff and took the woman’s blood pressure, glanced toward the box of tissues on the far side of the bed.

  Mike was already ahead of her. Handing the shaken woman a tissue, he told his patient to try breathing deeply, then pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. With his focus on the monitor, he explained that she would be moved to CICU as soon as they could get her there.

  “Just until we’re sure you’re stable,” he assured.

  Over the tearing sound of Velcro releasing its grip, Katie removed the cuff and passed on the reading. “I’ll go with you and make sure you’re settled.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Mike replied, seeing how tightly his patient was holding her hand.

  “Is this going to happen again?”

  It wasn’t often that the patient’s surgeon was around when a patient crashed. But since he had been—and since it was Mike—Katie knew she wouldn’t be left to interpret explanations or decode words that often left patients more frightened than they already were. Even as the activity continued around her with Katie administering the drugs Mike ordered and the respiratory therapist adjusting the oxygen cannula around her head and under her nose, Eva responded to the considerate way Mike answered her questions. Or maybe, Katie mused, thinking of the comments others had made, what the patient responded to was simply the deep, soothing timbre of his voice. It held authority, assurance, certainty. Strength. As Katie watched the agitated beats slow on the monitor, she wondered if maybe his voice couldn’t calm a heart, as well as excite one.

  Not that he excited hers. At least, not since she’d recovered from the crush she’d had on him when she was nine years old. He’d been thirteen at the time, and very much the big brother she’d never had. Now she thought of him only as a friend. One of her best. Over the years, she’d come to realize she simply couldn’t let herself think of him any other way.

  Except, like now, when she thought of him in professional terms. In the eight years she’d worked in cardiology, she’d encountered any number of surgeons whose arrogance was exceeded only by their lack of sensitivity. And cardiac surgeons—because the human heart was literally in their hands—could be the most arrogant of the lot. Neither she, nor any of the other nurses in the unit, considered Mike among them. He was exceptionally skilled. Brilliant was the word often bandied about by the surgical staff. And he demanded as much of those who worked with him as he did of himself. That was something that intimidated the daylights out of the newer, younger nurses. The rest, those who’d been around for a while, simply stood in awe of him. But Katie knew what many did not. Despite the self-confidence, the drive and the talent, he often found the work he did profoundly humbling.

  As she listened to him repeat an explanation to Eva, she also knew he’d put even more demands on himself lately. His bedside manner was changing, too. She rarely saw him touch a patient to offer reassurance or comfort anymore. It was a professional barrier, she was sure. But since his divorce last year, that barrier seemed to be slipping into his personal life as well.

  As bad as she was about having no time for a social life, Mike was ten times worse.

  “So, how are you feeling now?” Mike asked.

  Eva’s indomitable spirit fought through her fear. “Like I was hit in the chest with a wrecking ball.”

  “With or without spikes?”

  Eva seemed to consider. “Without.”

  “That sounds about right.” The comers of Mike’s eyes crinkled with a faint smile as he glanced toward the monitor again. Just as he did, his pager went off. “You’re looking good,” he assured her, reaching inside his lab coat to silence the electronic device clipped to his belt. “Almost good enough to start chasing those grandkids of yours.” His glance slid to the illuminated digits on the pager. “But we’ll have you rest across the hall for a while anyway.”

  “You know, Katie,” the patient whispered, watching her adored doctor check the number he was to call. “You should get yourself a man like this. I know for a fact he’s not married. I asked him about every one of the pictures in his office and there wasn’t a wife among them.”

  That was because he’d finally divorced the little gold digger, Katie thought.

  “Oh, I’m afraid that really isn’t possible,” she
replied, going along easily with the conversation while removing the telemetry leads from the woman’s chest. “The day I graduated from nursing school, two friends and I signed a pact. We agreed never to marry a physician. Ever.” Raising the side rail, she shook her head in mock seriousness. “I’m afraid getting involved with someone like Dr. Brennan is out of the question.”

  Mike’s expression was utterly bland. “I think everything’s under control here,” he announced, having heard—and deliberately ignored—what they were saying. “I’m going to leave you in this nurse’s capable hands, Eva. But I’ll check on you this evening. You behave yourself.

  “Make sure that IV is wide-open,” he said to Katie when he turned. “And if I’m not here when you get back from across the hall, page me. I need to talk to you.”

  Katie was back from the CICU in less than ten minutes. But when she walked back through the unit’s double doors, she immediately encountered Dr. Aniston, an opinionated, overbearing cardiologist who still thought of nurses as subservient ladies in starched white hats who dusted patients’ rooms and passed out pills. He was imperiously demanding to see the nurse assigned to one of his patients. Since she was that nurse, and since she hadn’t been around when he’d come onto the floor, his mood was not good.

  “I was about to leave,” he informed her, signing off on an order with his flashy gold pen. “I don’t have time to wait around for nursing staff.”

  “I was moving a patient to intensive care.”

  She’d been doing her job. Since he had no reply for that, he chose to ignore her statement completely.

  “This patient can be discharged,” he said without so much as a glance toward her. His balding head gleamed like a strobe under the overhead lights. “I’m changing the dosage on his meds. Explain that to him and have him make an appointment with my office in three days.”

  On the other side of the counter, Alice rocked back in her chair. Catching Katie’s eye, she rolled hers toward the ceiling—an antic which would have made Katie smile had Dr. Aniston not been facing her. The cardiologist was a royal pain in the posterior. Even his patients found him abrupt. But he was good and he knew it, and his ego had grown to exceed all five feet eight inches of his bantylegged frame.

  He and Mike were so totally opposite, she thought, the comparison unavoidable as the man huffed off. Mike could be in the middle of a crisis, but he’d be like the eye of the storm. Dead calm. Dr. Aniston was the storm. And even if something wasn’t a crisis, he turned it into one.

  “Is Dr. Brennan still here?” she suddenly asked Alice.

  Alice opened her mouth, but it was Jan, of the fantasy-inducing Hawaiian vacation photos, who replied as she approached the desk. “If you’re looking for him, he’s in the lounge. I just saw him go in.”

  After a quick “Thanks,” Katie headed down the hall, the soft soles of her white sneakers soundless on the polished floor. She’d see what Mike wanted, then distribute meds, check on her new admit and start on her discharge. But if he intended to rope her into some new project now that his old one was nearly complete, the answer would simply have to be no. Friend or not, she had to start asserting herself somewhere.

  Since he was the one who’d pointed that out, he shouldn’t complain if she decided to practice on him.

  The staff lounge was part locker room, part lived-in living room. The old willow-green sofa sagged from years of interns and residents catching a few winks between crises. The round, white Formica table sported a couple of cigarette burns from the era before smoking had been banned from the building. But the microwave, refrigerator and coffeepot worked, and the tall window at the far end of the room let in daylight—what wasn’t blocked by gray clouds and the parking garage, anyway.

  Mike was on the far side of the room. Standing by one of the gray lockers, he was trading his lab coat for his suit jacket.

  “Heading for your office?” she asked, her gaze skimming over the shoulders of his crisp, white shirt.

  “Yeah. I’ve got appointments this morning. Surgery this afternoon.” Looking preoccupied, he flicked a glance across the newspapers cluttering the table, watching her approach. “How’s Eva doing?”

  “She was stable when I left her. She thinks you walk on water.”

  She thought he might smile. All he did was shake his head. “She’s just feeling grateful right now.” He shrugged a beautifully tailored jacket over his broad shoulders, automatically tugging his shirt cuffs from his sleeves. The smile finally formed. Not much of one. But it was there. “I can’t believe you told her about that crazy pledge.”

  “Hey, I’m a woman of my word. I couldn’t have her getting her hopes up now, could I?”

  Katie’s soft smile was infectious. Mike returned it mostly because he couldn’t avoid it—even though he knew there was far more to that pledge of hers than she’d ever admit. The old oath she and her buddies had taken sounded like a joke. And it might have been just that at one time. But it wasn’t any longer. Not for Katie. He had the nagging feeling she was dead serious about never marrying a doctor, because in her mind, to marry a doctor would be to marry a man like her father.

  Most people wouldn’t see that as a problem at all. Dr. Randall Sheppard was one of the town’s most prominent pediatricians, a man who was incredibly generous with his time and his talents. A true gift to the community. But while, to Mike, he was the inspiration for why he’d become a doctor himself, Katie saw him only as someone who’d taken far more than he ever gave as a husband and father.

  Mike grabbed his overcoat, checking the pocket to make sure he still had the ticket for the dry cleaning he kept forgetting to pick up. He couldn’t help but think that Katie was cheating herself big-time letting such a prejudice interfere with her prospects, especially since he knew how much she wanted a family of her own. But her hang-ups about her dad were one subject he’d learned to avoid with her.

  “Anyway,” she continued, reaching into the inside pocket of his overcoat to hand him the slip of paper that was sticking out, “Eva wanted to fix me up with her grandson, but I told her I didn’t do blind dates, either. Is this what you’re looking for?”

  Exasperation lined his brow. “Thanks,” he muttered, shoving the ticket into his shirt pocket.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “I’m not picking up your dry cleaning.”

  “Cute.”

  “And I’m not going to coordinate another research study for you. I got roped into the one you’re doing by default as it was. Nurses started coming to me with their questions because they knew I knew you, and the next thing I knew, I was monitoring half your study patients because no one else ‘understood your criteria.”’ She mentally stiffened her spine. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she added, softening anyway. “Please, don’t ask.”

  “Do I detect a backbone?”

  “I mean it,” she warned, refusing to soften any further.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing it’s not another study.” He knew the extensive checks and cross-checks in a research project could be a real pain for the nursing staff. He truly appreciated Katie taking his on. “But it’s not like you didn’t owe me. Didn’t I rescue that schizophrenic cat of yours last month?”

  The light of triumph turned his blue eyes wicked. He had her there and he knew it. Spike, her chickenhearted guard cat of indeterminate pedigree, had escaped her apartment as she’d dragged in her Christmas tree and headed straight up the twenty-foot pine by her front window. Mike happened to own an extension ladder. It had been left behind by the previous owners of his house.

  “Okay. So we’re even,” she decided. Skeptical anyway, she tipped her head. “What’s the favor?”

  He had one arm in the sleeve of his overcoat. “It’s not that big a deal. I just need a date. For the Heart Ball,” he explained, fabric rustling as he tackled the other sleeve. “Dr. MacAllister insists that I go. It’s kind of hard to turn down the chief of staff.”


  Katie blinked at the man looming four feet in front of her. When she looked at Mike, she saw...Mike. But she also knew what other women saw. His hair was a rich shade of sable, thick and worn just casual enough to invite a woman’s fingers to test its softness. His features were chiseled, his jaw angular, his nose thin as a blade, and his mouth carved and sensuously full. Then there were his eyes, those incredible, piercing blue eyes that held such intelligence and compassion, and revealed very little of what was actually going on inside the man himself.

  All that before she got below his neck.

  Under his nicely fitting clothes were a pair of broad shoulders, a set of sinewy biceps, taut pecs and a six-pack of abdominal muscles that would have any woman with an ounce of breath left in her body sighing with pure longing.

  Having gone a tad farther than she’d intended to prove her point, she casually glanced back up to meet his eyes, dismissing the faint flutter in her stomach as nothing more than autonomic response.

  “You want me to get you a date? Geez, Mike. Look around you. There are a dozen women in this hospital alone who’d kill to go out with you. And what about all those hard little bodies at the gym?” She didn’t go to the gym herself. Her ego couldn’t take it. But she’d seen him in a tank and jogging shorts. All he’d have to do was walk through the weight room and women would be dropping at his feet. “You could probably have your pick.”

  “I don’t want a real date,” he countered, too busy dismissing the idea to be flattered by Katie’s certainty. “I don’t want to have to call somebody back, or make small talk all night. Then there’d be the expectations and hints about getting together again. Or maybe she’d be bored to death with me and chomping at the bit to go home. I just don’t want to deal with any of that right now.”