First-Time Valentine

Perhaps, if they’d had sex… Who was she kidding? She’d chosen him as a safety net—one that kept her focused on her honors status rather than her status as a woman.

Still, had they had some form of sex she’d be more suave today, more adept around the J.D.’s of the world.

Pretty. His word swirled in her mind. She’d never considered herself pretty. Anna, her sister, was the pretty one. No, the beautiful one with the white-blond hair and lovely blue eyes.

If J. D. Sumner saw Anna, he wouldn’t look a second time at Ella with her plain brown eyes, the straight dark hair she hacked off the instant it closed in on the collar of her lab coat.

Be grateful for what you’ve got Ella.

And she was grateful. For many things. Her siblings. This hospital, founded on the ethics and standards of her late father. Her family’s resources to send her to university. Her intelligence.

So…why couldn’t she be grateful and pretty?

She gave herself an inner shake. She didn’t have time for this—this silly vanity. She’d taken the Hippocratic oath, for God’s sake. Nothing mattered but her skill. She had no time to think about J.D. and the experiences he had with beautiful women.

So she told herself…every spare second of her shift.

Chapter Two

At 8:00 p.m. that night she pulled her Yaris into her garage from the back alley and shut off the ignition. Bone-tired, she sat listening to the engine tick. The car had been her father’s last birthday gift, a month before his retirement—and untimely death.

She remembered the massive red ribbon on the hood, the gigantic card with Happy 29th, Ella! Love always, Dad on the driver’s seat.

Her eyes stung. Never again would she see her barrel-chested daddy, hear his kind voice, feel his big bear-paw hands stroke her hair or rub her shoulder affectionately.

That birthday had been the best. Sometime during the night, he’d driven the car into her garage and had her beatup Chevy removed. Then he’d rung her doorbell at five in the morning, an hour before her shift at the hospital. He’d stood there on her little porch with a cup of Starbucks in one hand and The Boston Globe in the other. And the biggest grin.

The early morning sun dappling his gray hair, he’d led her through her little backyard, with its grand old maples, to the garage, saying he needed a ride to the hospital because he’d cabbed it to her house to wish her a happy birthday.

And there sat the little blue Yaris.

Ah, Daddy. I hope you know I miss you like crazy.

Sighing, she hit the remote for the garage door before climbing from the car with a sack with homemade clam chowder from Prudy’s Menu, a deli she frequented when she worked overtime.

Tugging her wool-lined coat tight around her, she headed across the snowy, moonlit backyard for the rear door of her small Cape Cod house, the one her maternal grandmother had lived in for sixty-two years and bequeathed to Ella and Anna three years ago. From the start, Anna hadn’t wanted the house, but Ella vowed to buy out her half by setting up an account and depositing monthly increments in her sister’s name.

As she stepped inside her quaint country kitchen, a squeaky meow greeted her before a three-legged bundle of gray fur came around the corner. A year ago, Ella had found the wounded kitten on the side of a highway, and brought her home to heal.

“Hey, Miss Molly.” She cuddled the animal close. “Smell the soup, do you? Let’s find you some nice tuna instead.”

At nine, she turned out the kitchen lights and headed down the hall to take a bath. Oh, but she was tired.

Today had been a grueling one. Ice on the highways resulted in two traffic accidents, causing broken legs, a shattered shoulder and a fractured spine. Then there was the man shoveling snow off his roof who’d fallen to a cement patio, smashing both heels.

And of course, J. D. Sumner with his damaged knee.

She had popped into his room before leaving the hospital. Why she’d left him until last on her evening rounds, she couldn’t say. Normally, she checked each patient room-by-room, ward-by-ward.

But she’d gone to check the roof faller first before backtracking to room 239—one of only three private rooms in the hospital.

Nothing but the best for the executive of Northeastern HealthCare, she thought wryly.

Eyes on the small muted TV, cell phone attached to an ear, he’d been resting comfortably when she entered the room.

Finally, I get some attention, he’d grumbled after ending the call. His sensual lips quirked and between his lashes there lay a gleam. Heard you in the corridor, he’d gone on. Either you were afraid to come into my room or I’m your favorite patient and you saved the best till last.

At that, she laughed. She couldn’t help it. Despite his helplessness in that hospital bed, the man had an impossible ego. She explained that his room was near the exit—at which he’d chuckled and called her a fibber.

The banter continued for several moments before she examined his surgery, checked his blood pressure, pulse and temperature. And then he asked, Why are you doing the nurse’s job?

Why, indeed? she thought now, letting herself slide beneath the steamy water for a moment before rinsing out her hair.

How could she characterize her father’s legacy to a man geared to implementing the type of corporate practices armed to decimate the care of WRG? Practices that filed a patient under a number rather than a name, that sent patients home with little more than a fare-thee-well.

So the rumors went.

James Wilder was the reason she’d gone into medicine. His compassionate teachings were entrenched in Ella. She would not give them up. Not even if the hospital board decided to accept NHC’s takeover bid, should it come to that. Which she desperately hoped would never happen.

The water grew cool and she pulled herself lethargically out of the tub. Molly offered a squinty-eyed look from the mat by the sink.

Ella laughed. “Yeah, I know. Nothing riveting.” No, Anna was the family beauty queen. Elegant, lovely and gifted. Oh, Anna. I miss you.

With a sigh, Ella pulled the tub’s drain. Maybe one day they would be close again—as sisters should be.

The phone rang. The nightstand clock read nine twenty-eight and caller ID indicated the hospital. Although she wasn’t on call, she became immediately alert, and lifted the receiver. “Dr. Wilder.”

“It’s Lindsey, Doctor.”

The night nurse.

“Your patient, Mr. Sumner, is reacting to the Demerol, I believe. Heart’s pounding, sweats, woozy.”

She climbed from the bed, reached for her clothes. The symptoms definitely sounded like a reaction. “Temp and BP?”

“Fifty-two, and seventy over sixty. Feels as if he’s about to pass out.”

Damn. His admission form hadn’t signified any allergies. “Get two liters of saline into him, flush it out. Now. And get Doctor Roycroft in to check his stats.” Roycroft was on night call. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She hung up, rushed into her jeans and a sweatshirt. She didn’t stop to think why she needed to race to his bedside. The nurses and on-call doctors were there.

They’re competent, Ella. You’re not dealing with an alcoholic nurse who wouldn’t acknowledge her own problems.

Still, she couldn’t take the chance. This time she was responsible, not a scrub nurse. She had prescribed the meds.

In her car, she shivered, although the vents blasted hot air. At the hospital, she half-jogged up the stairs to the second floor.

A male nurse inputting computer data sat behind the counter of the floor station. “Is Lindsey with Mr. Sumner?” she asked.

The man glanced up from the screen. “No, but the patient is okay, Doctor. We got him settled. Changed his nightshirt and the sheets. Sponged down his skin.”

Ella scanned Sumner’s chart. Heart and blood pressure back to normal. Saline doing its work. “Thank you. I’ll check on him while I’m here.” She headed down to the room.

A nightlight glowed from the opposite wall, casting a dim hue across the bed and J.D.’s form under the blankets. His leg had been propped on several pillows. He was still awake.

“Hey, Doc,” he said, voice deep and raspy. “You come all the way back just to see me?”

Sick as he’d been, she heard the grin in the tone, pictured his grass-green eyes in the dark.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, automatically checking the pulse along the arch of his elevated foot for circulation. Steady.

“Wasn’t feeling so hot a while ago.”

“You reacted to the Demerol. Were you aware about the symptoms before, by chance?”

“No. Never bother with meds unless it’s aspirin or some such. Don’t like taking prescription meds. Don’t need ’em.”

She wanted to ask about his jumper’s knee. He hadn’t gone without pain at some point in his life. But he was drowsy and he’d been through enough for one night. “You may need a medical alert bracelet for the Demerol.” Setting a palm against his forehead, she noted the coolness of his skin. He was okay.

“Get some rest, Mr. Sumner.”

“I wish…” His eyes drooped. “I wish you’d call me J.D.”

She ignored the request. J.D. was far too personal. It gave him an edge she wasn’t prepared to relinquish. “Sleep, sir. It’s best for your injury. Let the saline and the

medication do its job.”

“They gave me Tylenol 3.”

“It’ll help with the pain.” And the fever. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“What time?”

“Around seven.”

“I pressed the call button right away,” he said, as if reluctant to let her go. “Was surprised someone attended so fast.”

“That’s how our hospital works. No calls go unnoticed or unattended. Here, patient care is first and foremost.”

“Good.” His breathing slowed, his eyes drifted closed. “Wish you were on call. I hate…hospitals.”

“Well,” she said softly, “I hope you won’t hate ours too much.”

“’Ni’, Doc.”

“Goodnight.”

She left his room, returned to the nurses’ station and wrote her observations on his chart. Several minutes later she was heading home, hands gripping the steering wheel. Would she ever get past the horrifying repercussions of that surgery in Boston?

One day at a time, the counselor had told her.

God help her if something had gone wrong with J. D. Sumner.

He’s already scared. The thought popped up like a weed.

Oh, he had a cocky attitude, but an underlying current of apprehension rode his voice from the moment Mike O’Rourke, one of the hospital’s paramedics, brought him into the E.R. Which, she supposed, was understandable, but still…

In her mind she backtracked the past two days. His constant questions, the hint of anxiety. His need for her at his side. And it was more than simple attraction. He saw her as his lifeline. Why?

Why was J. D. Sumner, executive of one of the largest health care corporations, leery of hospitals?

Or was it just her hospital?

J.D. woke in a cold and drenching sweat.

The hospital gown stuck to his clammy skin and for a moment his brain didn’t register his surroundings. And then his eyes focused.

He lay in the hospital, a place he had not spent one night—never mind two—since his birth. The clock radio read 12:03 a.m. He’d been asleep less than two hours. His mouth tasted of dryer lint. He reached for the water, took a sip. The ice had long since melted.

Someone had placed the call button within reach, tying it to the guardrail near his hand. He pressed the red glow light of the tiny plastic knob—one, two, three. Shudders rolled through his body.

Within ten seconds, a soft tread came down the corridor. A woman entered his room.

“Doc?” J.D. rasped, eyes blurry.

“It’s Lindsey,” the woman said. “The night nurse. Are you okay, Mr. Sumner?”

“I’m soaked.” His teeth rattled. He tried to focus, but she stood etched in the dim glow from the hallway. “Need the doc,” he slurred.

At his bedside, the nurse ran gentle fingers down his arms, took his cold hands between her palms. “I’ll get you a clean gown and some extra blankets,” she said, then disappeared.

J.D. shivered. He hadn’t been this cold since he’d been a kid and had to shovel his dad’s truck out of a ditch one bitter winter night when the old man hit an icy patch and plowed into the snowdrift along the shoulder of the road. I’m frozen, he’d told his dad.

You’re not shoveling hard enough, Pops had retorted.

Another shudder rushed through J.D.’s body.

Lindsey returned with blankets in her arms, a fresh water bottle in her hand and the male nurse on her heels.

“We’ll get you comfy in no time, Mr. Sumner,” she said.

Gently, they assisted him from bed to a chair. And while Lindsey changed the linens, the man changed J.D.’s nightshirt. Minutes later he lay snug and dry under the covers. His knee throbbed like a son of a bitch.

While he sipped water, Lindsey took his pulse and inserted an ear thermometer. She had calm hands and a soothing voice. He’d always imagined hospitals as semi drug-induced prisons where the injured were at the mercy of emotionless medical staff who pretty much wanted you out of the way and not holding up the assembly line.

The type of hospitals NHC praised. For some reason, tonight the standard felt false.

Checking his stats, Lindsey asked, “How’s the knee?”

“Feels like it’s been run over by a truck.”

“We’ll give you some more Tylenol.”

His breathing eased. “Is the doc coming?”

“We’ve called her, but it’s just the Demerol working itself out of your system.”

After he’d taken the pills, the nurse tucked him in as if he were a child. “You’ll sleep now,” she said kindly.

He damn near expected her to kiss him goodnight on his forehead, but she stepped back and drew up the guardrail. “Good night,” she whispered.

He was too tired to respond. Already the pills were spreading their smooth serenity into his raw knee and his last thought was that he couldn’t remember anyone ever tucking him in at night.

Definitely not his old man.

The wind had died down by the time Ella drove through the cold dawn to the hospital the next morning. All night, between bouts of sleep, she’d worried about Sumner. Considering Lindsey would have notified her if something had gone awry, forfeiting sleep had been silly and foolish. Sheesh. If she thought of the thousands of lost nights during her studies and internship….

Pulling into her parking spot, she inhaled hard. If she hadn’t been so driven, so fevered over getting her medical degree, maybe there would have been someone after Tyler….

Oh, God. The last thing she needed was to remember Tyler. Dear Tyler with his brilliant medical mind. His broken body after his skiing accident in their first year of internship. Tyler whom she had loved, but hadn’t been in love with. Until he was gone, dead of acute pneumonia, and she cried and despaired and regretted.

More for him or for you, Ella?

The thought stopped her cold at the door of the change room.

Be honest. Tyler hadn’t wanted to live. He hadn’t been able to surrender his dreams of neurosurgery.

All right. The tears were more for me.

Her conscience shaken, she pushed into the room. As always, changing into her scrubs and lab coat made her a doctor once more. No time for regrets or moaning over lost chances.

She walked to the nurses’ station and collected her charts, scanning each of the seven patients requiring her attention. J.D., she noted, hadn’t slept well initially according to Lindsey: Cold sweats, shivers, dry mouth. 9:35—Changed Demerol to T3. 24:03, paged Dr. E.W.—Changed bedding/gown. Patient repeatedly asked for Dr. E.W.

That his temperature rose a half degree after a restless night was normal. His vitals overall were good. She reread repeatedly asked for, glanced down the hallway to 239 and her heartbeat quickened. He was okay. The remainder of the night had been uneventful. She wondered if he was awake, if he’d eaten breakfast, if he waited for her.

She began her rounds. Each patient received her personal attention, each received encouragement for healing. These were the ethics her father had taught that made WRG a hospital where patients could heal in comfort and ease. Patients are people. She could almost hear her father’s voice. They have faces and names. They are not medical terms.

She walked into J.D.’s room with her dad smiling over her shoulder. “How are we this morning, Mr. Sumner?”

He was sitting up in bed, knee raised by pillows, his hair falling endearingly over his forehead—and with a sex appeal that seared like a flame.

God, he was a striking man. All the studying, all those late, late nights when she’d propped her eyes open with toothpicks and drank coffee until her back teeth floated…none of it prepared her for this. For J. D. Sumner.

Her next breath snagged at the flash of his smile. “Hey, there, Doc. Can you get me out of here this morning?”

On the pretense of checking his chart, she walked to his side. “You had a bit of a tough night.”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Mm-hm.” She pressed two fingers against his wide, warm wrist. Heart rate steady, strong and slower than yesterday. “Do you exercise regularly, Mr. Sumner?” she asked, examining his knee for discoloration and swelling.

It took her a moment to realize he hadn’t replied. Ella lifted her head. Eyes dark and deep as jungle pools stared back.

“Why won’t you call me by my first name?” he asked quietly.

“It’s better this way.” First names are too close and persona.

A chuckle. “Ah…got it. Better for you. Interesting.”

“Not interesting, professional.”

At that he laughed. “Now there’s a fun word coming from one of this hospital’s finest. In my world, professional comes with proficiency and competence.”

“And we’re not?” she asked mildly.

“Oh, you’re professional, don’t get me wrong. You just need to speed things up a little. Not do so much hand-holding.”

She ignored his critique. “Hold as still as possible, I want to change the bandages. Then later this morning we’ll get you up and around for a few minutes. And for your information, professionalism is at the top of our agenda, particularly when it comes to patient care.” She shot him a stern look. “Which your company doesn’t seem to understand, from what I hear.”

“My company understands you would do well to update equipment, move into the modern world. Why work with old tools, old standards, if new ones are at your fingertips?”

She tossed the bandages in the trash bin by his bed. “God forbid, I ever need medical care in an NHC-run hospital. I’d be a faceless, nameless entity.”

“You’d be cared for in the most resourceful, sophisticated way possible.”

Ella paused, her eyes locking on his. “Have you received any unsophisticated medical attention since you were admitted, J.D.?”

She realized her error the instant his name left her tongue and his grin bloomed big as a kid’s on the last day of school.

“Now, that sounds perfect,” he said, much too brash for her liking. “A little culture, a little smokiness, a little se—”

“Stop right there.”

“I was going to say—”

“Do not go there.”

“—sensitivity.” Another broad grin. “Ah. You thought I had something else on my mind.”

Despite his injury, the man was relentless. And he read her too well. “What you have on your mind is not my concern.”

“That a fact?”

“Absolutely. My interest in you, Mr. Sumner, falls into one category. You are my patient. Nothing else.”

He sighed with flair. “You break my heart, Ella.”

Oh, boy. She had to force herself to remember that he’d been in the board meeting the other night representing Northeastern HealthCare. He could possibly eradicate everything Walnut River General stood for. Which meant he could not, in any way, be trusted.

His flirtations were a guise, a smoke screen to obtain information to sink her hospital. The hospital her father had worked all his life to uphold with integrity and dedication—and above all—class-A skills and leadership. Shifting the subject, she placed her fingers on his knee and hiked her chin toward the S-shaped birthmark on the inside of his thigh. “Who gave you the birthmark?”

“Probably some ancient ancestor.”

“Do you have family in Walnut River?” She moved her fingers around his kneecap.

“Why?”

“I have another patient with the same birthmark.”

His leg jerked. “Take it easy,” he breathed.

Concerned, she touched the area where her fingers had been. “This hurt?”

“It’s sensitive.”

Leaning closer, she examined the region below the knee. “Hmm. It shouldn’t be. It’s too far from the incision.” Beyond the small line of stitches, his knee appeared normal in its healing. No signs of blood poisoning, thankfully.

Ella pressed the call button. “I’ll prescribe a topical cream.”

“Now?” J.D. asked, suddenly serious. His gaze searched his injury, his Adam’s apple bobbed.

For a moment Ella was tempted to reverse her call to the nurses’ desk and ease the nervousness his tone carried. “Everything’s fine, but a nurse will finish up here so I can continue my rounds.”

“Will you be back later?”

June Agger, a twenty-year veteran with the hospital, entered the room. “Dr. Wilder?”

“Could you finish dressing Mr. Sumner’s surgery for me, June? Thanks.” To J.D., she said, “I’ll be back when I do rounds tonight. We’re going to keep you an extra day to monitor your meds, make sure nothing else causes you fever and nausea. If you need me for anything concerning your knee, June will know where to find me. Meantime, Ashley, our physiotherapist, will begin some passive and very mild ambulatory exercises. Don’t overdo it, though.”

“Doc,” he called before she made it out the door. “The day can’t go fast enough.”

Until she returned to him.

She headed down the hallway, convinced danger was spelled J.D.

Except for the octogenarian dozing at the tiny desk near the door, the hospital library was empty at three in the afternoon.

Dressed in a blue terry robe and using the crutches the physiotherapist prescribed, J.D. quietly thumped his way across the hardwood floor. The library was elementary-sized. Ten inner shelves were stacked with fiction and two walls held reference, research and an assortment of current magazines.

Situated in the northwest corner of the hospital’s ground floor, the library had a cozy nook facing two corner windows where patients could enjoy the hospital gardens now under three feet of snow.

Gingerly, he sank into a cushiony chair. Beyond the glass, a variety of trees—elm, oak and maple, New England’s finest—were scattered across the gardens. He’d read about them in a brochure at the information desk four hours before he busted up his knee. Which at the moment throbbed like an insane drum behind the brace.

Too much damn walking, he thought. Hadn’t she told him not to overdo it? Mercy, but he wanted out of here. He wanted to get back to his job, back to New York. He wanted out of Walnut River.

Barely loud enough to be discerned, the PA system called “Dr. Ella Wilder, recovery three. Dr. Ella Wilder, recovery three.”

He pictured her hurrying to the patient, her pink Nikes quick and quiet on the tiled floor, a worry line between her fine dark brows. He imagined her slim hands on the patient’s forehead, taking his pulse, her voice—the one with smoke and sex rolled into its vowels—a balm to distressed nerves.