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He waited for her to come back. Thomas looked at the contract again.
Was he making the right decision staying here? Would she want him after he told her what he’d done?
He looked out the window at the mountains. The snow had slowly begun to melt and patches of green replaced the white.
The winter still bothered him as his chest rattled with a cold, but Thomas couldn’t imagine a life without Lucy. If she was going to be the clinical director of the ER, he had to stay here. For the first time, he wasn’t worried about setting down roots.
Just like his parents had done so many years ago, he’d finally found where he belonged.
The restlessness had all but calmed because of a fiery redhead who literally knew how to kick ass.
Quick footsteps and the buzz of the digital door lock caught his attention. He threw the door open and saw hers begin to close.
Taking a deep breath, he approached her room, paper in hand.
Before he could knock, her door flew open. “What?”
Her fury wasn’t what he expected. “Congratulations on the catch.”
“I got lucky.” She turned and let the door begin to close.
He stuck his foot in the way of the door before it locked behind her. “Lucy, what’s wrong? You did an amazing thing today.”
“Turns out he’d swallowed a piece of a toy. It was lodged in his throat.” Fat tears ran down her face. “We missed it. We all missed it.”
“But you caught it, right?”
“Yes, he’s fine. He’s on his way to Billings. The ENT staff is waiting to take him to surgery. Why didn’t you tell me you were taking my job?”
She’d said everything so fast it took him a moment to process it all. “That’s good. Wait. What?”
“You and Evan walked by the office earlier.” She clenched her fists at her sides. “Do you know how long I’ve worked for a position like this? How little sleep I’ve gotten? How long I’ve waited.”
“Lucy, wait. Wait.” He held up his contract, but she slapped it away.
“You lied to me.”
“When?”
“You said you had no desire to be the ER Director.
He handed her a box of Kleenex when she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t.”
“Ugh, you’re confusing.”
He reached for her, but she put her hands up, warning him to stay back. Considering what she did to Junior, he had no doubt she’d make good on her threat. “Lucy.”
“What? What are you going to lie to me about now?”
“I didn’t lie. Things changed. I changed.” He waited for her emotions to soften before saying anything. Even then, he chose his words carefully. “Lucy.”
“Stop saying my name. Just spit it out.”
“I love you.”
She shook her head as though she struggled to believe him. “How can you?”
“How can I? Why wouldn’t I?” Clenching his fists at his sides, he tried to find the right words, but she deserved the truth, no matter how weak it made him look. “Lucy, I can’t be the ER director and I was never considered for the position anyway.”
“What? Why?” Concern replaced fury, which made him only love her more. “Thomas, are you okay?”
How he hated what he was about to do. He hoped his confession wouldn’t make him less of a man in her eyes.
Removing his shirt, his chest tightened from angst. “I have to tell you something.”
“As impressive as you are, I don’t think this is the time.” She sniffled and stepped forward.
“I love your sense of humor.” He turned his back to her. “The scars to my back. That’s from when Jade’s ex-husband stabbed me. Punctured a lung.”
“Yes, you’ve told me. Showed me.”
Facing her, he ran his finger along his left flank. “He got me again here. These two spots here, they’re where my chest tubes where.”
Lucy’s eyebrows furrowed as she approached him. Her fingers tracing along the scars. “You must have been in so much pain.”
The tenderness of her touch made him shiver from delight. “He had knocked me to the ground, had me by the hair and was about to cut my throat when she shot him.”
“Why are you telling me this, again?” Her eyes, her hands roamed his beaten body without pause.
Every nerve ending was on high alert to her touch. “My pulmonologist suggested I quit ER after I was cleared from rehab.”
“What? Why? You’re a tremendous physician. Why would he tell you—”
“Because of the patient load, the constant exposure to respiratory illnesses. Said I would do better being behind a desk for a year, but I didn’t want to listen. I figured if I came here, I’d be in a smaller unit, get some good air in my lungs and be on my way.” He slouched on the end of the bed. “But turns out, I’m still tired in a smaller unit. Not up to where I was before.”
“Maybe you simply need more time to recover.”
“It’s been close to two years, Lucy. I’ve recovered as much as I can.”
She knelt in front of him, resting her hand on his knee. “I’m sorry to hear that, Thomas.”
“I’m not.” Taking her hand, he interlaced her fingers with his. “Because now I get to work with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m in charge of getting the hospital ready for JCHAO.”
“What?” She tried to pull her hand away.
“All those files in your office? That’s my job now, which leaves you in charge of the ER.” He waited for her to say something. “I’m good with details. Evan said I can still work in the unit a shift or two when needed, but working daylight hours and getting out of the unit for the most part will help me.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“You need help, Lucy. You can’t do it all yourself.” He’d expected her to smile and pull him into her arms, beg him to make love to her, but not anger.
“I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s—” She pulled her hand out of his grasp and backed away. “Ugh, I hate how I sound right now.”
“Dammit, Lucy. Why are you so stubborn? You can’t do it all. You can’t work sixty hours in the ER and do one hundred hours of paperwork a week. No one can.”
Fat tears ran down her face. “I needed to prove I can do this job without anyone. Without being anyone’s sister or daughter or some girl who survived a crash. Do you know how long I’ve tried to break out of that mold and now I’m here and... and... I find I can’t do it all by myself.”
“You think you should be able to?” Cautiously, he approached her.
“Why not? My siblings do.”
“I bet their lives aren’t as easy as you think.” He moved her hair away from her neck. “You’re my Lucy. The kick ass, Kung Fu ER doctor who runs the unit with an iron fist.”
He waved his arms around in an attempt to look like he knew anything about martial arts.
She sniffled and laughed. “You look like you’re having a seizure.”
Taking her hands in his, he kissed her wrists. “Lucy, I’ve moved a long time and I’ve never wanted to stay anywhere. But you’ve given me a place to settle. A place I want to stay. Build a life with, because I can’t imagine being anywhere you aren’t.”
“That’s the sweetest or creepiest thing you could say to me right now.”
“Which one is it?”
“I haven’t decided.” Grabbing him by the shirt, she closed the gap between them. “Kiss me first and I’ll decide.”
He leaned down to kiss her, but stopped short. “Does this mean you’re happy about my job? Being the QA director?”
“Of course I am.” She fiddled with the buttons on his shirt, loosening the top couple. “I’m glad you found your place in the world.”
“But?” The tenderness of her touch drove him mental. He wanted to throw her on the bed and make love to her all afternoon.
She let out a long breath as if trying to find the right words. “I can’t promise I’ll be easy to work with. I’m stubborn and really, really ODD at times. That I’ll still try and do it all on my own.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
“But there is one problem with this plan.” Her fingers danced tentatively over his skin then unbuttoning his shirt. “If we’re going to be working together every day, how am I going to keep my hands to myself? How am I going to get anything done with you looking as good as you do?”
“Don’t worry. When I start talking about coding and billing errors, that should make you want to keep your hands to yourself.” He pulled her flush, relishing the feel of her next to him.
“My own hot nerd.” Her hands slid under his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders. A look of lustful determination on her face as she raked her eyes over him.
His cock stood at attention as she ran her hands down his hips, then grabbing his butt. “I would have given anything for a girl like you to look at me like that when I was in high school.”
Resting her head on his chest, her fingers danced up and down his spine. “If no girl was smart enough to snatch you up back then, it’s my gain. Their loss.”
“We should probably have a safe word while we work.” He buried his nose in her hair, soaking in the ginger and lemon scent. “We can get a small stack of those files caught up in a day.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
He whispered in her ear. “It’s all on the computer. I can organize every printed file put it in digital folders where you can find it anytime you want.”
“Keep talking.” Her arms wrapped around him as her breathing quickened.
A feeling he’d never get enough of. “Once a computer geek, always a computer geek.”
Her head popped back, almost hitting him in the chin. “Wait, what did you say?”
“Once a computer geek, always a computer geek.”
“Oh, my gosh! I’ve figured it out. Those charts on my desk. Can you help me right now?” Before she could escape from his arms, he kissed the base of her neck.
“You sure you want to take care of it right now?”
She sighed. “In an hour?”
“Make it two.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Dr. McMasters hobbled in, his serpentine cane clutched in his hand. “Getting me down here on a Friday afternoon. I don’t have time for this.”
“Thank you for coming, Dr. McMasters.” Lucy held a chair out for him as he plopped down.
Jade sat on the opposite side of the table. She wrung her hands in her lap. “I’ll be damned. You really did get him here.”
“This better be worth it, I’m in the middle of a binge watch of...” He grumbled something under his breath, then noticed the files. He opened one and closed it, shoving it across the table. “I’m not doing this.”
“Actually, yes, you are.” Lucy sat next to him as Thomas entered the room. “Dr. McAvoy and I have done some digging. The last week you worked here, more than half your patients received narcotics of different sorts. Mostly pills, but some orders for Demerol and Phenergan.”
“And? What? People come in pain.”
“They do.” Thomas added, “But your patients had an extraordinary high narcotics rate, higher than any other doctor at the time.”
Dr. McMasters remained stone-faced. His finger tapped on the head of his cane. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t think you have to say anything.” Lucy shrugged. “That day at the pharmacy, when you were talking to Carol Bingley.”
“So?”
“She mentioned you’d run short of your medications at home a few months before. The insurance company was dragging their feet with coverage. You didn’t want to be in pain, so you wrote orders on patients after they left and pocketed the medication.”
The man’s lip twitched and he opened a file. “Why are you talking to me? She saw the patient. Why aren’t you asking her about this? She’s probably stealing for her brother.”
“You mean, mean old man!” Jade slammed her hand on the table. “I would never do such a thing.”
Lucy drummed her fingers on the table. “Dr. McMasters, there’s no need to lash out at Jade. She’s gone through and signed off on the orders you gave and there are about a dozen charts that were changed after the patient left. Specifically to obtain narcotics.”
“Changed after the patient left?” Shaking her head, Jade adjusted in her seat. “As much as I’d like to believe this, Dr. McMasters would have a hard time faking anything on the computer. He can’t use them.”
The man beamed as though he’d won the Super Bowl. “She said it.”
“Really? The entire time you were trying to train him, Jade, he was memorizing your passwords.” Lucy raised an eyebrow. “All these charts that I showed you with the narcotics orders? You didn’t write them or enter them to get them out of the Pixis. He did.”
Thomas laid a piece of paper on the table between Jade and Dr. McMasters. “This column is the time the patient was checked in to the unit. This column is when the patient checked out per written documentation and this is the time the medications were ordered and taken out of the dispenser.
As much as Lucy initially hated needing help, Thomas had been brilliant when it came to charting and organization. With his brilliance, it took less than half a day to figure out what happened with the files.
Jade’s hands shook. “Why would you do that?”
The man’s mouth blanched from him thinning them so hard.
“I worked with you for over a year. Why would you set me up this way?”
“Because my insurance kept screwing me over on my pain medication. I was about to retire. Ever sit around with rheumatoid arthritis? It’s painful, all day. Every day.” He held up his hands, his swollen knuckles kept him from closing them all the way. “I couldn’t go without so I figured who would it hurt?”
“Who could it hurt? I could have lost my job! They thought I’d stolen drugs from the hospital.” Jade buried her face in her hands. “Oh, my gosh. I trusted you.”
Without a hint of compassion, Dr. McMasters replied, “That was your first mistake. Don’t trust anyone.”
“Okay, y’all have work to do.” Lucy turned to Thomas. “Can you take it from here? I’m going to check the unit.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Yes, yes it is.”
A few hours later, they were done, and Dr. McMasters left, grumbling every curse word under the sun as he headed out the ambulance entrance.
“Thank you, Lucy.” Jade picked up her purse. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“After we talked last week, I realized you and I aren’t that different. I know what it’s like to try and do it all on your own. To refuse to let anyone help you. Think you don’t need anyone.” Reaching across the table, Lucy gave Thomas’s hand a squeeze. “It’s not the easiest thing to admit that it’s not a one person job.”
“No, no it’s not.” Jade’s eyes darted back and forth between Lucy and Thomas. “And you’re right, I couldn’t have done this without your help. I hate saying this again, but thank you.”
“I know you hate saying that. You’re welcome. Truce?” Lucy extended her hand to shake. “We don’t have to like each other, but can we be professional and work together?”
She turned to Thomas. “Still whistling?”
He nodded. “Yep. Gonna be for awhile.”
A sweet sadness washed across Jade’s face. “I’m glad for you.”
“Whistling?” Lucy’s forehead furrowed.
“I’ll tell you later.” Thomas winked.
“Truce. We can work together.” Jade responded in kind, taking Lucy’s hand. A phone beeped. Jade picked it up and smiled. “It’s Maddie Cash. She’s meeting me today. Helping me make some decisions. Tough choices.”
“Junior still giving you trouble?” Thomas stood and gave Jade a hug before she left.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“You sure?”
She sighed. “Well, if I can’t, I know who to ask for help.”
Lucy and Thomas watched her drive away before walking back to the Graff. Spring was in full force. The sun light up a cloudless blue sky.
As they walked toward the hotel, relishing the warmth of the sun on their faces, Thomas asked, “Are you going to turn him in to the state medical board?”
Lucy shook her head and grabbed his hand. “No, he’s retired. He’s not interested in practicing medicine ever again.”
“Lucy, you can’t—”
“However, we are going to give Denver and Evan a rundown of what happened. Let them have the final say.”
He held up their hands as they walked into the lobby of the hotel. “I thought you didn’t want any show of affection at work or anywhere else.”
Lucy shrugged as the elevator doors closed behind them. “Meh, Carol knows I bought condoms. The entire town probably already knows we’re having sex.”
“It’s a helluva lot more than sex.” Thomas leaned down, kissed her cheek, whispering against her skin, “We shared some hot chocolate.”
She shuddered when the heat from his breath tickled her neck. “You’re impossible to resist. You know that?”
The ding from the doors opened and they walked into the hallway, still hand in hand.
“That’s because you love me.”
For the first time, Lucy had no reservations or worries hearing those words. “You’re right, Dr. McAvoy. I absolutely do.”
The End
