The Shy Nurse's Rebel Doc

Blake checked his watch again but Sam could see that the drugs weren’t going to be needed. The chaotic movements of Jess’s body were subsiding. She could see their patient’s chest heave as she took a deep breath. Blake quickly turned her into the recovery position, talking quietly as he did so.

‘It’s okay, Jess,’ he said gently. He pulled up the bed cover and tucked it around her shoulders. ‘You’re fine. Everything’s okay. Just rest for a minute.’

Then he straightened. ‘Where’s that ECG?’

Sam took the manila folder from where it was clipped behind the observations chart she had been filling in a short time ago. The sheet of pink graph paper was behind the ambulance officer’s report form. She handed it to Blake and he stared at it for a long minute.

Sam waited, holding her breath, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he handed the trace to her.

‘What do you think?’

Her mouth went suddenly dry. All aspects of cardiology were fascinating to her but she was no expert and traces were difficult to read. Then she let her breath out slowly. She didn’t need to analyse every lead on this ECG. All she needed to look at was the rhythm strip at the bottom and to remember what the normal interval between the downward Q spike and the end of the T wave was. She started counting the tiny squares, the figure of ten being in her head.

‘Eight, nine...ten...’ She was whispering aloud. ‘Eleven...no, it could be twelve.’ Her gaze flicked up from the paper. Was she making an idiot of herself, here?

‘Hard to tell without a ruler, isn’t it?’ Blake’s gaze was steady. He wasn’t looking surprised any more. And curiosity was long gone. This look had a very different message.

He looked seriously impressed.

‘Definitely long.’ One side of his mouth curled up just a fraction. Okay, maybe there was a bit of surprise mixed into that lingering look. He hadn’t expected this from her, had he?

She had wanted a chance to impress him but it was kind of annoying that he was so impressed that she might have a brain. Blake Cooper might be the hottest thing on two legs she’d ever met but his attitude was less than desirable. It wasn’t the first time that Sam had encountered a reaction that suggested she didn’t look as smart as she was. What usually followed was the impression that the fact that she could think was just an added bonus that wasn’t particularly relevant.

The burning fuse of the potent attraction she’d been so aware of had just been doused with a bucket of cold water and, ironically, in the moment of realising she didn’t have to avoid eye contact with this man any more, it became remarkably easy to break it. She turned towards her patient who was waking up properly now.

But Blake had turned as well and they both reached to take Jess’s pulse at the same time.

Skin brushed on skin and Sam had to snatch her hand away as if she’d been burnt.

It felt like she’d been burnt.

Maybe that fuse hadn’t been extinguished as well as she’d thought.

Blake didn’t seem to have noticed anything. ‘Give Cardiology a call, would you, Sam?’ he asked. ‘And bring a monitor when you come back. Hopefully this isn’t going to happen again, but it would be helpful to be able to record it if it does.’

* * *

‘Good call, mate.’ Luc Braxton paused by the central desk in the ER to talk to Blake. ‘I was having lunch with one of the cardiology team and they told me all about your case. Sounds like you probably saved that young woman’s life.’

Blake couldn’t take all the credit. He couldn’t actually take any of it.

‘It was a good call,’ he agreed. ‘She could well have gone on being treated for epilepsy that didn’t exist and died from a VF arrest down the track.’

‘You should write the case history up for a journal,’ Luc suggested.

‘I think it’s been done,’ Blake said. ‘What bothers me is that nobody queried whether her seizures could have been due to oxygen deprivation in the first place. And I can’t really take the credit...’ He lifted his gaze to scan the emergency department. ‘It was actually one of our nurses who joined the dots.’

‘Wow. That’s impressive. Who was it?’

‘Samantha...someone. She’s new.’

‘Ah...’ Luc raised an eyebrow. ‘The one that looks like a model?’

‘Mmm.’ The response was meant to be discouraging. He didn’t want to find out that any of his colleagues found her attractive. And he certainly didn’t want to give anyone the impression that he did. She wasn’t his type and never would be.

‘Give her a pat on the back then.’ Luc turned away but then threw a grin over his shoulder. ‘Figuratively, I mean.’

Blake ignored the subtle reference to his reputation with women but the suggestion had already been made by the cardiology team. ‘I’ll do that.’

Not that he could see Sam anywhere. After a week of being so aware of her in the department, half expecting her to do something else that was clumsy or inappropriate, it was a little disconcerting to realise he might have to go looking for her to pass on the congratulations.

Maybe that had something to do with the impression he’d been left with that she hadn’t exactly been thrilled to have him take over Jess’s management until the patient was transferred to the cardiology department. She’d barely spoken to him when she’d brought the monitor back and busied herself attaching electrodes and then she’d faded into the background when Jess asked her to contact her parents and let them know what was going on.

What had he done to offend her?

And why did it bother him, anyway?

Okay, maybe she’d ditched those frivolous nails but she still belonged to a world he did his best to avoid. A supermodel clone who drove around in a real-life Dinky toy and had the time and inclination to sit around in beauty salons.

The fact that she was intelligent made no difference.

The jolt of electricity he’d felt when his hand had brushed hers shouldn’t make any difference, either.

But it did, dammit.

Against his better judgement, Blake had to admit that he was lying to himself by pretending he wasn’t attracted to this newcomer.

He was. Seriously attracted.

Not that he was going to act on it.

So, maybe it wasn’t a bad thing if he’d somehow offended her. A useful insurance policy if his body decided it would be worth overriding his better judgement and he was tempted to find out if Samantha Braithwaite was single. Or interested.

And why would she be interested anyway? He didn’t sit around in wine bars or treat his dates to great seats for some show at the Sydney Opera House. His spare time was devoted to helping out the less privileged members of society at the free clinic and keeping up with any DIY or gardening at his mother’s house. And training, of course. If it wasn’t an organised session with the SDR team, he’d be out running or at the gym using the climbing wall or something. Physical kind of stuff for the most part.

The kind that made you sweaty and dirty.

Could break your nails, even.

Nope. She definitely wasn’t his type.

And he didn’t need to go and find Sam. He’d see her soon enough and he could pass on the message.

Or he could write a note and leave it under the windscreen wiper of the car he couldn’t help looking for every day when he arrived at work. Except that she’d think it was a ticket or something, wouldn’t she? She might be really annoyed by a gesture like that.

Blake thought about that for a moment. Then he turned to Emily who was working nearby at the central desk.

‘Got a bit of scrap paper, Em?’

CHAPTER THREE

THE SUN WAS low enough in the sky that Blake had to shield his eyes as he walked through the car park. He almost didn’t see the figure standing beside the little red car.

No. Not exactly standing. Samantha Braithwaite had one hip resting on the bonnet, close to one of the headlights. She looked like she was waiting for something. The roof of the car was down so maybe she was waiting for the interior to cool off?

He had to walk past her to get to his bike. It would have been rude not to acknowledge her, so he nodded.

She nodded back.

‘I got your note.’

Blake’s steps slowed. Uh-oh...

He’d left that note a couple of days ago. He’d had a day off the next day and he’d barely seen her today with the department having been so busy so he’d forgotten that it could have been annoying. That she might have thought she was getting a ticket for parking in the wrong place or something.

But Sam was smiling now. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It was nice to know that someone was impressed but...’

Blake had stopped walking. He raised an eyebrow.

‘But how did you know this was my car?’

Oh, man... She had been waiting for something, hadn’t she?

She’d been waiting for him.

He shrugged. ‘It’s a distinctive car. I saw you getting into it. On your first day here, I think it was.’

She slid off the car. The way she caught the length of her hair and pushed it back over her shoulder came across as a defensive gesture. An understandable one, perhaps, and Blake felt a slight twinge of remorse. He hadn’t intended to remind her of the humiliating incident of dropping a bedpan in front of everyone.

‘Fair enough. And you ride a Ducati.’

His eyebrow still hadn’t lowered. Maybe because he remembered that she’d been watching him ride away that day. That he’d revved a bit more than necessary.

That he’d liked that she was watching him.

Dangerous territory, here. It would be oh, so easy to keep talking. To flirt with her a little, even. He willed his muscles to tense, ready to keep moving forward. Oddly, they weren’t co-operating.

‘That’s right.’

‘Seven-fifty Sport, I believe.’

Good grief. She knew about bikes? His eyebrow had dropped now. His jaw probably had as well.

‘My brother was into bikes.’

‘Ah.’ Past tense. ‘So he grew out of his wilder inclinations, then?’

Sam seemed to have found an interesting oil stain on the asphalt. ‘Something like that.’

It was time for him to move. To wish his new colleague a good evening and then go and get on with what was left of his own.

‘So...do you know what happened? To Jess, I mean. The girl with the long QT syndrome?’

‘She was kept in for some tests but I expect she’s been discharged by now.’

‘I meant her management. Did she get put on beta blockers? Or is an implantable defibrillator on the cards?’

So she’d been waiting for him just because she wanted follow-up on a case they’d both been involved with?

Very professional but a bit odd to be doing it in the car park when she could have approached him at work at any time. Usually, if women went out of their way to talk to him, they had a very different agenda in mind.

Sam didn’t wait for him to respond. ‘I guess it depends on the genotype and the exact QT interval when it’s been corrected for things like gender and age.’

‘Yeah... You got it.’ A warning bell was ringing somewhere in the back of Blake’s mind. Sam clearly wanted to keep this conversation going.

She wanted...something...

He actually took a step forward to suggest that he had someplace else he needed to be. It could go two ways. Either she’d take the hint and give up or she’d reveal what it was that was really on her mind.

It appeared that Sam could ignore hints.

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m friends with Harriet Collins. From ICU?’

‘Yeah... I know Harry.’

‘She’d told me about the Specialist Disaster Response team. I heard all about that last callout you had, to that bushfire?’

Blake waited politely for the question he was supposed to answer but Sam seemed to be searching for what she wanted to say.

‘And?’ he prompted.

The movement of her chest as she took a deep breath caught his eye. That hint of cleavage in the low scoop of her T-shirt was even more eye-catching. He looked away swiftly.

‘And it’s the sort of thing I’d really like to be able to do myself. To be somewhere on the front line, in a crisis. To be part of an emergency response when it really counts. When it can be a matter of life or death.’

If he’d wanted to flirt with her, this was an ideal opportunity. He could make himself look pretty good by sharing a few war stories, too, if it went that far.

But it wasn’t going to go that far.

It wasn’t going to go anywhere at all.

‘You get that yourself. We get plenty of life or death situations in ED.’

‘But it’s not the same. We’ve got any amount of backup and resources in ED. It’s...’

There was a frown line between Sam’s eyes as, again, she tried to find the words that would explain exactly what she meant.

She didn’t need to explain because Blake understood perfectly well. Working in a well-equipped emergency department wasn’t as exciting. Or challenging. You didn’t have to dig deep and find out what you, as an individual, were really made of.

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