Her Texas Rescue Doctor

Dad hesitated and glanced at Alex before answering. “And baseball. We’re doing baseball this year.”

Justin looked from his father back to Alex. “And b-baseball.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of sports.” Alex hadn’t missed the child’s fearful glance. He took his stethoscope off his neck. It gave him the perfect excuse to lift the boy’s shirt to listen to his heart. He’d be looking for bruises, too. Usually, an overbearing soccer dad was just that, but sometimes that overbearing personality became violent, and children could be the victims.

“What sports do you do?” the boy asked.

Alex smiled a bit. Kids only knew their own worlds. If their world was an endless cycle of practices and games, they assumed everyone was involved in sports. Thankfully, little Justin had no bruises. His life with his dad centered on sports whether he liked it or not, but it appeared his life was free of physical violence. Not like Alex’s had once been.

“I’m not on any teams like you are. I ride my bike a lot, though.”

He could’ve felt the father’s derision even if he hadn’t heard the snort of disgust. Alex was used to it from a certain type of man. Alex had been raised in Europe, in the dangerous, crumbling Soviet Bloc. The best moments of his grim childhood had been seeing the professional cyclists in their brightly colored kits go whizzing through his town, training for the Tour de France. When Alex had escaped to America as a teen, he’d been shocked that his new schoolmates didn’t know any pro cyclists by name.

“I can ride a two-wheeler,” Justin said.

“Yeah? That’s great.” Alex started palpating the child’s good leg, picking up the diminutive foot in his hand and rotating it to test the ankle. “Do you have a favorite movie?”

The kid lit up like a lightbulb. “I like Star Wars. Do you know that one? And I like Guardians of the Galaxy. And I like Space Maze.”

“I’m going to bend your knee now.” Alex wanted to keep Justin focused on something else. “Who’s your favorite character out of the whole Maze world?”

“I like Eva. You know, Princess Picasso.”

Dad snorted again. “A princess? Goya the Destroya, that was the best guy in the movie.”

“But Dad, Goya was a bad guy. Eva was the good guy.” Justin looked ready to cry, and Alex didn’t think it was because his leg hurt him.

“So what? Goya kicked azzz...uh, butt.”

Justin showed a little spark of defiance. “Eva had a cool laser gun. She kept it hidden in her boot.”

Good for you, kid. You’re going to need that stubbornness with a father like yours.

Alex had liked the Eva Picasso character, too. “She was really brave. She saved her people from the maze. I’m going to need you to be really brave for a minute. I’m going to move your knee as far as it will go.” It was a matter of millimeters before Justin responded in pain and Alex stopped. He patted the kid on his good leg. “Do you remember what the princess kept in her other boot?”

Justin’s grimace relaxed a bit. “Yeah, that really cool knife that could cut right through anything. Even metal.”

“You’re talking ’bout the chick who wore the boots?” His father sat back, sounding relieved. “She was hot. Sophia Jackson, that’s the one. Okay, yeah, the boots chick was hot.”

“And brave,” Justin said.

“And brave,” Alex agreed as he stood up. “I don’t think the bone in your leg is broken, but I need to get an X-ray to be sure. It won’t hurt. An X-ray is a special kind of camera.”

“I know,” Justin said. “It can take a picture right through your clothes. Princess Picasso could get one with her boots on.”

Dear old Dad couldn’t help himself. “I bet the doc would love to get a picture of Sophia Jackson right through her clothes. Who wouldn’t? Am I right?”

Alex didn’t reply. What he’d like to see was Princess Picasso giving this Neanderthal one of her go-to-hell looks.

A brave princess in his ER?

That would make his day.

Chapter Two

Grace was a coward. She darted a glance around the van, petrified of getting caught.

Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. All eyes are on Sophia, anyway.

Grace pulled her sister’s phone out of her bag. What she was about to do was for Sophia’s own good. When the lock screen lit up, she tapped in the four-digit access code.

It was rejected.

The code was supposed to be the year Grace had been born. Although it surprised the few people who learned of it, Grace was actually the baby sister, only twenty-five to Sophia’s twenty-nine. Her big sister loved her. Her big sister used baby Grace’s birth year as her code. Only it didn’t work now.

How old was Deezee? Grace typed in his birth year. It worked.

The stab to her heart was starting to feel too familiar. With jaw clenched, Grace began deleting photos, horrible shots of her sister’s bare breasts covered by Deezee’s hands, shots that would never, ever end up on Instagram, not when she could prevent it.

Delete, delete, delete.

The van doors opened with a sudden rush of air. Grace dropped her sister’s phone like a hot potato.

A woman about her own age poked her head in. “Hi. You’re with Sophia Jackson, right?”

“Yes.” She blinked in what she hoped was an innocent way.

“There’s been an accident.”

For one horrible moment, the world stopped.

An accident. Careers and reputations and idiot boyfriends evaporated before the image of a hurt Sophia.

“Oh, my God.” The words were a whisper, but inside her head she was screaming. My sister, my sister! Their parents had been killed in a car accident. A stranger, a woman like this one, had come just this kindly to tell them there had been an accident. Grace had been fifteen. Sophia had been nineteen.

“It’s nothing life threatening, I promise. We have so many Texas Rescue doctors and paramedics and firefighters here, she’s being well taken care of, but they do think she should go to the hospital to have things checked out.”

The only reason Grace had survived the loss of her parents was because Sophia had been by her side, taking on the role of parent, loving her with all she had. But now Sophia had been in an accident, hurt badly enough that she needed to go to the emergency room. My sister, my sister!

“Would you like to ride in the ambulance with her?”

Grace clutched her tote bag as she scrambled out of the van. The fans behind the barricade were silent, wide-eyed. The yellow ribbon had been cut. Its ends flapped in the light breeze as the ceremonial scissors leaned against the building, standing on their points, forgotten. All the men and women in suits and uniforms were now by the open doors to an ambulance. The kind woman escorted Grace right through the little cluster. A paramedic offered her a hand up, and there Sophia lay, looking miserable on a gurney. Miserable, but very much alive.

Grace threw herself onto her big sister for a hug. “Are you okay?”

Sophia put her hand on her shoulder—and gave her a shove. “Don’t bump my leg. I’m going to sue somebody if this makes me miss Deezee’s party. Give me my phone. I need to call him. He’s going to freak when he sees this on Instagram.”

Deezee was going to be worried? What about me?

While Sophia lapsed into another coughing fit, Grace sat on the metal bench that ran the length of the ambulance’s interior. She slid her tote bag closer, slowly, buying herself time to get her emotions under control. For all of her life, she’d been the one whom Sophia had worried about. After their parents had died, they’d been afraid to be apart, afraid of the future—afraid they’d lose each other in a split second, the way they’d lost their parents. Sophia had let Grace crawl into her bed when she was afraid of the dark.

“You know, when they said you were in an accident just now, all I could think of was Mom and Dad...” The words hurt her throat.

Sophia went still and looked at her, really looked at her for the first time in ages. “Aw, Gracie.” And then, also for the first time in ages, it was her sister who reached out to fix her hair, smoothing Grace’s plain brown hair over her shoulder. It had once been blond like Sophia’s but had darkened in adulthood.

A paramedic jumped into the bay with them, a man who could get work as a body double for Thor. Grace said hello; Sophia ignored him. Doors slammed shut, and the ambulance began moving.

The cell phone in her tote bag rang. Her sister practically jackknifed into a sitting position on the gurney, which immediately made her yelp in pain and freeze in place. Still, she could give an order through clenched teeth. “Answer it. Hurry.”

“It’s mine.” Grace dug in her bag and silenced the ring.

“Hand me mine. Maybe Deezee called.”

Deezee never called. Sophia was to do the work. Sophia was to come and see him, at his convenience, without any notice. If Deezee saw a photo on Twitter or Instagram of Sophia being loaded into the back of an ambulance, he’d expect Sophia to call him and tell him the latest. Didn’t she realize that?

Sophia held out her hand and made a little grabby motion. “He’ll get pissed if I don’t tell him what’s going on. He’ll want to know what hospital I’m at.”

Or maybe Sophia did realize how little effort Deezee made, and she just didn’t know that wasn’t normal. Maybe she’d forgotten how Dad had treated Mom, once upon a time.

At any rate, Grace didn’t have Sophia’s phone. She’d tossed it aside in her haste to make sure Sophia wasn’t dying. She couldn’t say that, though. The phone should have been in her tote bag, not in her hand.

“It must have fallen out of my bag in the van.”

“You lost my phone?”

The paramedic chose that moment to interrupt by wrapping the black Velcro of a blood pressure cuff around Sophia’s upper arm. “Let’s get your blood pressure.”

Grace tried to reassure her sister. “I’m pretty sure I remember seeing it lying on the seat with your lipstick, actually.”

Sophia laid back with a huff, her life so inconvenienced by a handsome paramedic who was taking care of her. She glared at Grace, looking pretty fearsome for someone who was hurt badly enough to be in the back of an ambulance at the moment.

“It’ll be okay. We know it’s in the van, and I’m sure the Texas Rescue people will find it and bring it back to the hospital.”

“They’ll look at my personal stuff. You’re the one who is always so worried about what will get out on social media. You think those Texas Rescue people aren’t going to pass around Sophia Jackson’s personal phone for kicks and giggles?”

The paramedic didn’t like that, Grace could tell from the way he clenched his jaw. Neither did she. She wouldn’t lose her temper, though. Confronting Sophia never worked.

“They can’t see what’s in your phone.” She spoke as sweetly as possible, but she knew it sounded fake. It was her sister who was the actress, after all. “You have your phone locked. Our special secret sister code is still protecting it, right?”

Sophia opened her mouth, then shut it again, and looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Of course.”

The wall between them seemed just a little higher. Just a little harder to breach. It was a wall in the shape of a man. A stupid, worthless type of man, who was systematically pushing Grace out of her sister’s life.

Grace couldn’t imagine being so blind in love. If she were to fall in love, one thing was for certain: she would never, ever love a man who didn’t also love her sister.

* * *

Alex Gregory hated Sophia Jackson.

It was a shame, because she’d been a good actress in some excellent films. He’d be blind not to think she was attractive, but it had taken less than two sentences to determine that the person behind the famous face was rude and shallow.

“Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Gregory.”

“What took you so long?”

Rude.

But no more rude than young Justin’s father. Alex had pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “That seems to be a popular question this afternoon. We’re a little busier than usual during South by Southwest. What’s brought you in today?”

“Where the hell is my phone?”

And shallow.

Nothing during the exam was changing his first impression of her. While he examined her ankle, she complained about the facility. She’d been placed in the overflow area, an older part of the emergency department where the beds were separated by curtains rather than walls. This was, according to the not-so-noble woman who’d provided the noble face of Princess Eva Picasso, utterly unacceptable.

“It’s also unavoidable,” Alex said. “By definition, overflow area implies that all the other rooms are full.”

“When my personal assistant gets back with my phone, she’ll have me moved.”

Alex raised an eyebrow on that one. Not many patients brought along a personal assistant, at least not this far from Hollywood. Still, a movie star’s personal assistant had exactly zero influence on how the emergency department of West Central Texas Hospital ran. Alex took the stethoscope from around his neck and inserted the ear pieces.

“Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t get to slip your hand inside this dress. It’s my ankle that hurts. Do you think I don’t know that you’re dying to tell everyone that you felt me up?” Her indignation dissolved into yet another coughing fit.

Sarcastic comments flashed through his mind. You’re right. The stethoscope works just fine if I stand three feet away and aim it at you. We doctors have been lying about that for centuries, but you’re the one who figured it out.

But he was here to provide medical care for a twenty-nine-year-old female patient, not to teach a lesson in sarcasm to a movie star. “I’ll be able to hear your lungs through the material. Would you like for me to call in a nurse anyway?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, but leaned forward a few inches, granting him limited access. “You can listen to my back. Then go see if my assistant has found my phone yet. Your Texas Rescue people are probably hiding it from her.”

Just provide medical care. Alex put the chest piece on her back, which felt like the back of any other human, whether male or female, attractive or ugly, famous or obscure. Provide care, then get her out of here.

He heard the crackles he’d expected to hear. He flipped the stethoscope to hang around the back of his neck again, then slid the curtains back on their metal rings. “We need to get some X-rays, but you won’t have to move to a wheelchair. An orderly will roll your gurney down to radiology. There’s a bit of a wait right now, but the nurse will be in to check on you periodically.”

“You’re planning on wheeling me around the hospital in this bed? No, no, no. You need to bring an X-ray machine up here, right after you put me in my own room.”

“That’s not the way it works here.”

“My privacy needs to be guaranteed. Be sure you send my assistant back as soon as you see her. She’ll handle everything.”

Alex left without another word, snapping the curtains shut behind him. If Sophia Jackson had that much faith in her assistant’s ability to make a hospital bow to her whims, then that assistant must be even more of a harridan than Sophia herself. Dr. Gregory planned to steer clear of her. As the only doctor on duty, he didn’t have time to spend deflating some puffed-up bit of Hollywood hot air.

His most senior nurse, Loretta, was coming on duty. He’d let Loretta handle Sophia Jackson’s personal assistant.

Alex wanted nothing to do with her.

Chapter Three

“Dr. Gregory, we have a problem.”

Alex kept writing his notes on the patient in room three, but he nodded to his nurse to continue. Loretta had worked in the ER for so long that nothing shook her up. If Loretta was concerned, then Alex was concerned.

“Go ahead,” he said, as he signed his name for the twentieth time today and tossed the paper into the in-box on the nurse’s station.

“They just roomed another patient in the overflow area.”

“That makes two. The overflow area holds eight.”

“I know, but the beds are only separated by curtains in overflow.” Loretta lowered her voice as if she were about to tell a secret. “Sophia Jackson is in one of those beds. We’d better do some rearranging. Her assistant is asking about HIPAA.”

HIPAA, or hippah, as everyone called it, governed medical privacy. The harridan of a personal assistant had arrived, and now she wanted to threaten his ER with privacy regulations, did she?

“You know that the curtained area is considered HIPAA compliant.”

“Yes, but Sophia Jackson is famous.”

Surely his best nurse didn’t expect him to move a patient just to pander to someone famous. For the second time this shift, he felt as he had when he’d first come to America. The culture shock had been extreme. To survive the jungle that was the American high school, he’d quickly dumped his cycling stars and learned who the heroes of American football were. He’d killed all trace of his Russian accent. He’d worn blue jeans and Dallas Cowboy T-shirts, but all of that had been camouflage. Surface-level changes.

Deep down, he’d never quite caught that American mindset. To this day, he didn’t understand the fascination with the famous. Of all the traits a person might have, fame was one of the most useless. In his old life, rank in the political hierarchy mattered. Wealth mattered, for money bought power, and both could assure safety. Smarts mattered—a smart man could be valuable to those who held rank. But fame? Fame didn’t put bread in your belly when you were hiding from corrupt government officials. Fame didn’t pay for passage on a rickety ship to a country that didn’t want you.

“You know people will overhear you,” Loretta said.

“Then I’ll try not to call out her full name too loudly as I ask for her autograph.”

“Be serious, Dr. Gregory.”

He was always serious, even when the sarcasm slipped out. Sophia Jackson was famous and frivolous and nothing more. She’d be in no danger if her name slipped out, but she didn’t need to worry: Alex was not a man who let names slip. He could remember a time when his mother’s life had depended on his ability to keep her name a secret.

He paused, mentally closing the door on unwelcome memories. “Every room is full because you’ve got only one doctor on duty, so let me get back to work. Sophia Jackson will survive with curtains instead of walls. I’ve already examined her, so there’s nothing medical for anyone to overhear, anyway. If she doesn’t want anyone to overhear her other types of complaints, then she can stop complaining.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Loretta, one more thing. When the soccer kid in room three goes for his X-ray, make sure he doesn’t cross paths with Sophia Jackson. He’s a big fan of one of her movies, and I don’t—”

“You wouldn’t want him to bother Miss Jackson.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t want Miss Jackson to ruin his image of her.”

“Understood. By the way, her personal assistant is going to want to know how we’ll keep her identity a secret while we roll her gurney down to radiology.”

“If Miss Jackson doesn’t want to be seen, then perhaps her personal assistant would care to throw a blanket over her head.”

“I don’t get paid enough to deliver that message.”

Alex sighed. “I’ll talk to her assistant myself.”

* * *

Grace was very aware that a new patient had been placed on the other side of the curtain, a woman who’d barely answered the nurse’s questions with more than a syllable. There was a man with her, too, who’d loudly done most of the talking. Now that the nurse had left them alone, he was keeping his voice to a vicious whisper, but Grace could still hear him.

She wished she couldn’t.

“You already know what I’ll do to you, bitch. You want to see what I’ll do to your kids?”

Grace looked at Sophia in a panic, but she was lying on her bed, twisted away from her, typing madly away on the precious phone Grace had retrieved.

The unseen man on the other side of the curtain was obviously trying to be quiet, but he wasn’t quiet enough for Grace’s ears. “You tell the doctor you fell down the stairs. Say it. Now.”

“I f-fell down the stairs,” the woman said. “But we don’t have stairs.”

“The effing doctor doesn’t know that, you dumb-ass.”

Grace was paralyzed in her vinyl chair. She’d be horrified if this were a movie scene, but this was even worse. This was real life, and she was no Sophia Jackson heroine. Grace didn’t know what to do.

“Say it again, like you mean it.”

“I fell down the stairs.”

“Smile when you say it. You get me in trouble, I will hunt your kids. You send me to jail, and they’re dead when I get out.”

Grace couldn’t move. Couldn’t make a noise. The man clearly didn’t know someone was sitting inches behind him on the other side of a cloth curtain. If she made a sound, he would.

What would he do? Would he hurt those children that were apparently waiting somewhere in a one-story house?

Frantically, she reached forward to tap the mattress of her sister’s gurney, but her sister only hunched her shoulders and kept tapping away on her screen.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said, sounding so pitiful as she tried to soothe the man who had hurt her, who was threatening her still. “Everything will be okay. You can trust me, you know you can. I would never want you to get in trouble. I’ll fix everything.”

On her gurney, Sophia coughed.

Grace froze.

There was utter silence on the other side of the curtain, and then the curtain was pushed aside. “Who the hell are you?”

She had to do something. Her sister’s back was to the angry man, so before Sophia could roll over and reveal her famous face, Grace jumped to her feet and faced him. “We’d like some privacy.” She dared to grab the curtain and whisk it shut, right in the man’s face.

The silence on the other side of the curtain was more frightening than the angry whispers had been. Her heart was already pounding out of her chest when she heard more curtains being pushed aside on their metal rings. Not hers—the ones next door.

“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Gregory. What brings you in today?”

“I fell down the stairs.”

Her sister chose that moment to emerge from her absorption in the phone. “How slow is this place? Didn’t you tell them to bring the X-ray machine up here?”

Frantically, Grace put her finger against her lips to silence Sophia. Shh, shh, shh...

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Grace leaned in close to her sister’s ear, so she could whisper. “I want to hear what they’re saying next door.”

“What for?”

She cringed. Every normally spoken word sounded like a trumpet blast to Grace. She could hear the man doing most of the talking next door. The woman’s voice sounded so timid. The third person, the one who’d said he was Dr. Gregory, had a better voice. Calm and confident. He spoke with the good cheer of someone who didn’t know his patient was in danger.

“We’ll need a few X-rays because you might have one or more fractures. There’s a bit of a wait for radiology right now.”

Sophia spoke loudly. “This X-ray is taking forever.”

Grace whirled around and pleaded for silence with her finger on her lips. It figured that Sophia had just now started paying attention.

Dr. Gregory kept talking. “While you’re waiting, Mr. Burns, you can get the paperwork taken care of. You’ll be able to leave sooner that way.”

The curtain rings made their sliding sound again.

“Loretta, perfect timing. Could you show Mr. Burns to admin while we’re waiting to take Mrs. Burns to X-ray? He needs to fill out the spousal consent forms.”

“The spousal consent forms? If you’ll just follow me, Mr. Burns.”

After another swish of curtain rings, the violent Mr. Burns was gone with the nurse.

“We’ll take care of you,” Dr. Gregory said to the woman. “It might have sounded like I was rushing you out of here, but you can stay as long as you need to.”