The Nightshift Before Christmas

He flashed a smile in the nurse’s direction, lifted up his worn duffel bag to show her he was just going to unload it before getting to work. The smile he received in return showed him he had an ally. She shot a mischievous glance at his retreating wife and beckoned him toward the central desk.

“Don’t mind her,” Jorja stage-whispered. “A kitten, really. Just a grumpy kitten at Christmas.” She shrugged off her boss’s mysterious moodiness with a grin. “As long as she knows you’ve got your eye on the ball, she’s cool.”

Josh nodded and gave the counter an affirmative rap. “Got it. Cool. Calm. Collected. And Christmassy!” he finished with a cheesy grin.

“Says here you’re double-shifting.”

“You bet. Where else would a fellow want to see in Christmas morning?”

Jorja laughed. “Cookies are in the staff room down the hall if you need a sugar push to get you through the night. Canteen’s shut and the vending company forgot to fill up the machines, so there might be a brawl over the final bag of chips come midnight!”

“Count me in! I love a good arm-wrestling session. Especially if the chips are the crinkly kind. I love those.”

“I can guarantee you’ll have a fun night...at least with most of us.” She shot a furtive look down the corridor to ensure Katie was out of earshot and scrunched her face and shoulders up into a silent “oops” shrug when Josh raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“You two don’t know each other or anything, do you?”

“We’ve met.” It was all Josh would allow.

It was up to Katie if she wanted to flesh things out. He’d been the only crossover she’d allowed between personal and professional and he doubted she had changed in that department. She was one of the most private people he had ever met, and when news of what had happened to them had been all but Tannoyed across Boston General, it had been tough. Coal-pit-digging tough.

Jorja giggled nervously and flushed. “Sorry! Dr. McGann is great. We all love her. The ER always runs the smoothest when she’s on shift.”

Josh just smiled. His girl always strove to achieve the best and ended up ahead of the game at all turns. Except that night. She’d been blindsided. They both had.

He shook off the thought and waved his thanks to Jorja. First impressions? Young to be a charge nurse. Twenty-something, maybe. She struck him as a nurse who would stay the course. Not everyone who worked in Emergency did. She was young, enthusiastic. A nice girl if first impressions were anything to go by.

He’d gone with his gut when he’d met Katie. Made a silent vow she would be his wife one day. It had taken him a while, but he’d got there in the end. And today the vow still hit him as powerfully as the day they’d made good on a whim to elope. Five years, two months and fourteen days of wedded... He sighed. Even he couldn’t stretch to “bliss.” Not with the dice they’d been handed.

He thought of the divorce papers stuffed inside his duffel bag. There was only one way Katie could ever convince him to sign them. Prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she felt absolutely nothing for him anymore. He gave a little victory air punch. So far he’d seen nothing to indicate she would be able to get him to scrawl his signature on those cursed papers tonight.

Just the shift of her shoulders when she’d heard his voice had told him everything he needed to know. She could change her name, her hair and even her dress sense if she wanted to—but he knew in his soul that time hadn’t changed how his wife felt about him. No matter how bad things had become. She couldn’t hate without love. And when she’d finally turned round to face him there had been sparks in her eyes.

* * *

Katie stuffed her head into the stack of blankets and screamed. For all she was worth she screamed. And then she screamed some more. Silent, aching, wishing-you-could-hollow-yourself-out-it-hurt-so-bad screams. There was no point in painting a pretty picture in these precious moments alone.

Seeing Josh again was dredging up everything she had only just managed to squeeze a lid on. Just. In fact, that lid had probably still been a little bit open because, judging by the hot tears she discovered pouring down her face when she finally came up for air, she was going to have to face the fact there was never going to be a day when the loss of their baby didn’t threaten to rip her in half.

What was he thinking? That he could saunter into her ER as if it were just any old hospital on any old day? With that slow, sweet smile of his melting hearts in its wake? She’d not missed the nurses trying to catch his eye. Jorja’s giggles had trilled down the hallway after she’d stomped off. Josh did that to people. Brought out the laughter, the smiles, the flirtation. The Josh Effect, she’d always laughingly called it. Back when she’d laughed freely. Heaven knew, she’d fallen under his spell. Hook, line and sunk. If only she’d known how far into the depths of sorrow she’d fall when she lost her heart to him, she would have steered clear.

She swatted away her tears and sank to the floor of the supplies cupboard, using her thumbs to try and massage away the emotion. Her patient was going to be wondering where she was, so she was going to have to pull herself together. Shock didn’t even begin to cover what she’d felt when Josh had walked into her ER. Love, pain, desire, hurt...those could kick things off pretty nicely.

“Of all the ERs in all the world, he had to walk into this one.”

Talking to herself. That was a new one to add to her list of growing eccentricities. Maybe she should have fostered some of those friendships she’d left behind in Boston.

“Sounds like the start of a pretty good movie.” Josh’s legs moved into her peripheral vision as his voice filled her ears.

“More like the end of one.”

“No, that’s the start of a beautiful friendship.”

“Well—well...” She trailed off. Playing movie quotation combat with Josh was always a bad idea.

She huffed out a frustrated sigh. Couldn’t she just get a minute alone? She should have gone to the roof. No one went there in the winter, and she relished the moments of quiet, the twinkle of Copper Canyon’s Main Street. She swiped her hands across her cheeks again, wishing the motion could remove the crimson heat she felt burning in them. Against her better judgment she whirled on him and tried another retort.

“Should I have said ‘of all the stalkers in all the world’?”

“Oh, so going to the supplies cupboard to track down some mandated holiday scrubs has turned me into a stalker, has it?” he asked good-naturedly.

The five-year-old in her wanted to say yes and throw a good old-fashioned tantrum. The jumping-up-and-down kind. The pounding-of-the-fists kind. The Why me? Why you? kind. The Katie who’d shored up enough strength to finally call their marriage to a halt knew better. Knew it would only give Josh the fuel he wanted to add to a fire she could never put out.

She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much she still cared. That had been his problem all along. Too trusting that everything would be all right when time and time again the world had shown him the opposite was true. Who else had become an adrenaline junkie after their daughter had been stillborn? Hadn’t he known how dangerous everything he’d been doing was? And she’d always been the one who’d had to pick up the pieces, apply the bandages, ice the black eyes, realign the broken nose... Trying her best to laugh it off like he did when all she’d wanted to do was curl up in a corner and weep.

Couldn’t he see she had to play it safe? That losing their daughter had scared her to her very marrow? If she were ever to feel brave enough to move forward—let alone try and conceive again—he needed to call off his game of tug-of-war with mortality.

She scratched her nails along the undersides of her legs before standing up, using the pain to distract herself from doing what she really wanted.

“Large or extra-large?” she bit out.

“Guess that depends on if you need me to play Santa later.” He grabbed a pillow from a shelf and stuck it up his shirt.

Without bothering to examine the results, Katie yanked a pair of extra-large scrubs from a nearby shelf. Not because she needed a Santa but because she didn’t need to see how well he filled out the scrubs. The first time they’d met—woof! And she was no dog owner.

The first time they’d met... He said it had been in the library, but she was convinced to this day that he’d made it up. The day she’d first seen him—easily standing out in a crowd of junior residents, all kitted out in a set of formfitting scrubs—his eyes had alighted on her as if he’d just gained one-on-one access to the Mona Lisa herself... Mmm... That moment would be imprinted on her mind forever... She’d never let anyone get under her skin—but she’d been powerless to resist when it had come to Josh.

“Green! Good to see you remember red always makes my complexion look a bit blotchy.”

Katie blew a raspberry at him. She wasn’t playing.

“Or is it that you remember green always brings out the blue in my eyes?” He winked and took hold of the scrubs, trapping her hand beneath his.

Just feeling his touch reawakened things in Katie she had hoped she’d long-ago laid to rest. Her eyes lifted to meet his. Stormy sea-gray right now. Later... He was right. Later they’d be blue, and later still the color of flint. She had loved looking into his eyes, never knowing what to expect, trying to figure out how to describe the kaleidoscope of blues and grays, ever-shifting...ever true.

As the energy between them grew taut, the butterflies that had long lain dormant in her belly took flight, leaving heated tendrils in their wake. She tugged her hand free of his and gave him a curt smile. Physical contact with Josh was going to have to be verboten if she was going to keep it together for the next eight days. It was bad enough he’d seen her red-rimmed eyes.

She glanced at her watch.

T-minus...oh, about one hundred and ninety-two hours and counting!

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Beg pardon?” Josh shook his head.

Hadn’t he been riding the same train of thought she had? If she’d gone off on a magical journey down memory lane, the chances were relatively high he’d done the same thing. Different tracks—different destinations.

She cleared her throat. There was about half an ounce of resolve left within her and she needed to use it. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours.”

He raised his eyebrows and gave her his What gives? face.

“Oh, don’t play the fool, Josh. You’ve ambushed me. Pure and simple. And on—” She stopped, only just missing having her voice break. “It’s the minimum notice I have to give the agency if I want a replacement.”

“What are you on about, Kitty-Kat?” He pulled himself up to his full height. Josh always played fair and he could see straight through her. This was a below-the-belt move.

She jigged a nothing-to-do-with-me shrug out of her shoulders, her eyes anywhere but on his. “If it’s quiet enough we might be able to let you go earlier without telling the agency.”

She might not want him here, but she didn’t want to tarnish his record. He was a good doctor. Just a lousy husband. She squirmed under his intent gaze, pretty sure he was reading her mind. A sort of, kind of lousy husband.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Christmas is always busy! You’re going to need me. What kind of man would I be, leaving you to deal with a busy ER all on your own?”

“That’s terribly chivalrous of you, Josh. I’m going to need a doctor—yes. But I don’t need you.” She looked at her watch again, not wanting to see how deep her words had hit. Laceration by language was way out of her comfort zone—but tough. Josh had pushed her there—and she had an ER to run.

“Sorry, I’ve got to get to this patient.”

“Yup! I’m certainly looking forward to mine!” He mimed snapping on a pair of gloves with a guess-it’s-time-to-suck-it-up smile.

If she was feeling generous, she had to give it to him for keeping his cool. Assigning him a rectal examination as a “welcome gift” was not, she suspected, the reunion he had been hoping for. Then again, finding out her estranged husband would be her locum for the next week wasn’t much of a Christmas present for her, so tough again! Hadn’t two years’ worth of sending him divorce papers given him enough of a clue?

“Uh... Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to move so I can get my patient’s Christmas ornament back on the tree?”

“Yes!” she blurted, embarrassed to realize she’d been staring. “Yes, of course. I was just...” She stopped. She wasn’t “just” anything. She stepped back and let him pass.

“I’m happy to see you, too, Katiebird,” he said at the doorway, complete with one of those looks she knew could see straight through to her soul.

She rubbed her arms to force the accompanying goose bumps away.

“Me, too,” she whispered into the empty room. “Me, too.”

* * *

“Hello, there... Mr. Kingston? I understand you’ve got a bleeding—” Katie swiftly moved her eyes from the chart to the patient, instantly regretting that she’d wasted valuable time away from her patient.

Unable to resist the gore factor, the young man had lowered his hand below his heart and tugged off the temporary tourniquet the nurse had put in place. Blood was spurting everywhere. If he hadn’t looked so pale she would have told him off, but Ben Kingston looked like he was about to—

Oops!

Without a moment to spare Katie lurched forward, just managing to catch him in a hug before he slithered to the floor.

“Can I get a hand in here? We’ve got a fainter!”

Katie was only just managing to hold him on the exam table and smiled in thanks at the quick arrival of— Oh. It was Josh. Natch.

He quickly assessed the situation, wordlessly helping Katie shift the patient back onto the exam table, checking his airways were clear, loosening the young man’s buttoned-at-the-top shirt collar and loosening his snug belt buckle by a much-needed notch or two as she focused on stanching the flow of blood with a thick stack of sterile gauze.

“Got a couple extra pillows for foot elevation?”

“Yup.” Katie pointed to the locker where they stored extra blankets and pillows. “Would you mind handing me a digital tourniquet first? I’ll see if I can stem the bleeding properly while he’s still out.”

“Sure thing.” Josh stood for a moment, gloved hands held out from his body as they would be in surgery, and ran his eyes around the room to hunt down supplies.

“Sorry, they’re in the third drawer down— Wait!” Her eyes widened and dropped to Josh’s gloved hands. “Weren’t you in the middle of...?”

She felt a sharp jag of anger well up in her. Typical, Josh! Running to the rescue without thinking for a single moment about protocol! Was simple adherence to safe hygiene practices too much to ask?

“Done and dusted.” He nodded at the adjacent exam area. “He’s going through the paperwork with Jorja.” He took in her tightened lips and furrowed eyebrows and began to laugh. Waving his hands in the air, still laughing, he continued, “You didn’t think...? Katie West—”

“It’s McGann,” she corrected quietly.

“Yeah, whatever.” The smile and laughter instantly fell away. “I always double-glove during internal exams. These are perfectly clean. You should know me better than that.” His eyes shifted away from hers to the patient, the disappointment in his voice easy to detect. “You good here?”

She nodded, ashamed of the conclusion she’d leaped to. Josh was a good doctor. Through and through. It was the one thing she’d never doubted about him. He had a natural bedside manner. An ability to read a situation in an instant. Instinctual. All the things she wasn’t.

She slipped the ringed tourniquet onto the young man’s finger and checked his pulse again. It wasn’t strong, but he’d be all right with a bit of a rest and a finger no longer squirting an unhealthy portion of his ten pints of blood everywhere. He’d need a shot of lidocaine with epinephrine before she could properly sort it out, so she would need to wait for him to come to. Being halfway through an injection wasn’t the time when a patient should regain consciousness. Especially when Josh was leaping through curtained cubicles, coming to her rescue. She jiggled her shoulders up and down. It wouldn’t happen again.

“Are you nervous, Doc?”

“Ah! You’re back with us!” Katie turned around in time to stop the young man from pushing himself up to a seated position. “Why don’t you just lie back for a while, okay? I have a feeling your finger didn’t start bleeding half an hour ago, like it says in your chart, Ben.”

He looked at her curiously.

“Is it okay if I call you Ben?”

“You can call me what you like as long as you stitch me up and get me outta here, Doc! It’s Christmas Eve. I’ve got places to go...things to do—”

“Someone to drive you home?” Katie interrupted. “After your fainting spell, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get behind a wheel.”

“And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to boss someone around on Christmas Eve!”

Katie backed away from Ben as his voice rose and busied herself with getting the prep tray ready. Emotions ran high on days like this. Especially if the patient had had one too many cups of “cheer.” Unusual to encounter one on the day shift, but it took all kinds.

“Cheer” morphed into cantankerous pretty quickly, and Ben definitely had a case of that going on. She stared at the curtain separating her from her colleagues, knowing she’d be better off if there was someone else in the room when she put in the stitches.

She sucked in a breath and pulled the curtain away. “Can I get a hand in here?” She dived back into the cubicle before she could see who was coming. Josh or no Josh, she needed to keep her head down and get the work done.

“Everything all right, Dr. McGann?”

At the sound of Jorja’s voice, Katie felt an unexpected twist of disappointment. It wasn’t like she’d been hoping it would be Josh. Her throat tightened. Oh, no... Of all the baked beans in Boston Harbor... Had she? Clear your throat. Paste on a smile.

“Yes, great. Thank you, Jorja. Nothing serious, just thought we could do with an extra pair of hands now that Mr. Kingston here has rejoined us.”

* * *

Josh tried his best to focus on the intern’s voice as he talked him through how he saw things panning out on Christmas Eve based on absolutely zero experience, but he couldn’t. All he could hear was Katie, talking her patient and the nurse through the procedure in that clear voice she had. The patient had definitely enjoyed a bit of Christmas punch before he’d arrived, and Josh didn’t trust him not to start throwing a few if he was too far gone.

“Hey.” He interrupted the intern. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Michael,” the young doctor replied, unable to keep the dismay from his face. He’d been on a roll.

Tough. Fictional projections weren’t going to help what was actually happening.

“Michael, what’s your policy on patients who’ve had a few too many?” He mimed tossing back some shots.

“Oh—each ER head is different, but Katie usually calls the police.” He looked around the ER as if expecting to see someone stagger by. “Why?”

“Just curious.” He gave Michael’s shoulder a friendly clap with his hand, hoping it would bring an end to the conversation. “Thanks for all the tips,” he added, which did the trick.

He tuned his hearing back into the voices behind the curtain where Katie was working. The patient was young and obviously a gym buff. As strong and feisty as she was, Katie was no match for a drunk twenty-something hell-bent on getting more eggnog down his throat. Drunk drivers on icy roads were the last thing the people of Copper Canyon needed on Christmas Eve. Or any night, for that matter.

“Okay, Ben, you ready? I’m just going to inject a bit of numbing agent into your finger.”

“What is that?”

Josh inched a bit closer to the curtain at the sound of the raised voice.

“It’s a small dose of lidocaine with epinephrine,” Katie explained. “It will numb—”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” The patient—Ben, that was it—raised his voice up a notch. “I’ve been on the internet and that stuff makes your fingers fall off. No way are you putting that poison in me!”

Josh only just managed to stop an eye roll. Self-diagnosis was a growing epidemic in the ER...one that was sometimes harder to control than any actual injury.

“I think if you read all of the article you’d find that’s more myth than reality.”

Always sensible. That was his girl!

Ben’s voice shot up another decibel. “Are you telling me I’m a liar?”

“No, I’m saying digital gangrene is about the last thing that’s going to happen if I—”

“You—are—not—putting—that—sh—”

“Hello, ladies.” Josh yanked the curtain aside, unable to stay quiet. “Need an extra pair of hands?”

“No,” Katie muttered.

“Yes,” Jorja replied loudly over her boss.

“They’re trying to give me gangrene!”

“Really? Fantastic.” Josh rocked back on his heels and grinned, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “I haven’t seen a good case of gangrene in ages.” He flashed his smile directly at Katie. “Are you trying to turn Mr. Kingston here into The Gangrene who stole Christmas?”

Everyone in the cubicle stared at him for a moment in silence.

“The Grinch!” Josh filled in the silence. “Get it? Gangrene? Grinch?”

There was a collective headshake, which Josh waved off. “You guys are hopeless. They’re both green!”

Jorja groaned as the bad joke finally clicked.

“Well,” he conceded, “one’s a bit more black and smelly, and isn’t around for the big Christmassy finish, but, Ben, my friend...” Josh took another step into the cubicle, clapping a hand on the young man’s shoulder from behind and lowering himself so that he spoke slowly and directly into the young man’s ear. “I’ve known this doctor for a very long time, and if she needs to stabilize the neuronal membrane in your finger by inhibiting the ionic fluxes required for the instigation and conduction of nerve impulses in order to stem the geyser of blood shooting from that finger of yours, she knows what she’s talking about, hear?”

Ben nodded dumbly.

“Right!” Josh raised a hand to reveal a set of car keys dangling from his fingers.

He saw Katie’s eyebrow quirk upward. He would have laid a fiver on the fact she was thinking he’d taken up pickpocketing to add a bit more adrenaline to his life. He’d win the bet and she’d be wrong. He’d just seen enough drunks in his Big City ER Tour. The one where he had done everything but successfully forget the brown-eyed beauty standing right in front of him.

He cleared his throat and stepped away from Ben. “You owe Dr. We—Dr. McGann an apology. And while you do that—” he jangled the keys from his finger “—I’ll just be popping these babies over to Security until we get someone to pick you up.”

Ben opened his mouth to object, his eyes moving from physician to nurse and back to Josh before he muttered something about being out of order, his mother’s stupid car, and then, with a sag of the shoulders, he finally started digging a cell phone out of his pocket.

“Excellent!” Josh tossed the keys up in the air, caught them with a flourish, gave Jorja a wink and tugged the curtain shut behind him before anyone could say boo.

“Well...” Josh heard Jorja say before he headed off. “He’s certainly a breath of fresh air!”

Katie muttered something he couldn’t quite make out. Probably just as well.

Josh grinned, his shoes glued to the floor until he was sure peace reigned behind Curtain Three. He heard Katie clear her throat and put on her bright voice—the one she used when she was irritated with him.

“Now, then, Ben, if you can just show me that finger of yours, we can get you stitched up and home before you know it. Jorja? Could you hand me some of the hemostatic dressing, please? We need to get the wound to clot.”