Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
“HEY, GABE, ROOM twelve is asking for pain medication.”
He glanced at his smart watch before looking at the nursing assistant assigned to his room. “Thanks, Sharon. He’s due for some. I’ll grab it now.”
When he left the DEA, he started using his middle name, Gabriel, as his first name. No one called him Max anymore. At work, they called him Gabe, but everyone else called him Pulse, the nickname given to him by the club due to his profession. Hearing the cops call him Max the other night had fucked with his head.
He logged off the computer where he’d taken a minute to catch up on some of his charting. It’d been a busy shift so far. This was the first time he’d sat down in the past four hours, and it had lasted a whopping six minutes.
After taking care of the pain medication request, he started an IV in room eleven and answered a call from surgery, who had a room prepared for the patient in ER room ten. They were sending transport down to have the patient wheeled up for an emergency appendectomy.
Never a dull moment in the emergency room.
As he attached room ten’s IV pole to the transport gurney, the pager clipped to his name badge beeped.
“Trauma coming in?” Sharon asked.
He nodded as he read from the pager. “MVA with one victim. You’ll let Amy know?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks,” he called as he jogged toward the ambulance bay. As the primary nurse on trauma call for this shit, he was expected to respond to every incoming trauma. That meant he had fewer ER patients to care for during his shift so that others could cover for him during traumas, but it still made for a hectic, sometimes highly chaotic shift.
He fucking loved it.
The adrenaline rush, the life-or-death spur-of-the-moment decision-making. Pulse thrived on his work. Long before he’d gone the federal agent route, he’d wanted to be a trauma surgeon. Unfortunately, he’d let other’s opinions sway him, and by the time he’d come to his senses and left the DEA, he felt he was too old to take on the time commitment and debt of becoming a surgeon. Critical care nursing was the next best bet, and he loved every second of his job.
The rest of the trauma team had assembled at the ambulance bay by the time the ambulance rolled in. Connor and Leslie, a paramedic team he knew well by now, lowered a gurney from the back of their rig and jogged toward the waiting team.
“What do we have?” Pulse asked as they reached him.
“Thirty-two-year-old female involved in a single car MVA, though she claims she was hit and the driver of the other car took off. Unconscious at the scene but has since come around. She’s alert and oriented times four. No agitation. Positive for headache and nausea. No vomiting. Significant bruising on the sternum from the seat belt. She has about a three-inch laceration on her forehead. Bleeding is under control. She said no allergies or major medical conditions.”
“Thanks, Connor.”
The woman on the gurney had her head secured to a backboard as per spinal injury protocol. Once they were confident she didn’t have spinal involvement, that could be removed. The paramedics taped a bulky wad of gauze to her forehead to help control the bleeding and keep the wound clean.
Pulse moved to the head of the gurney to talk to the patient and get some more information while they wheeled her toward a trauma room for evaluation. “Hey there, ma’am. I’m Gabe, one of the nurses here at the hospital. We’re going to take good care of you, okay? Can you tell me your name?”
He glanced down for the first time and almost swallowed his tongue.
“Talia?”
Her eyes were dazed and pain-filled, but they widened at the sight of him. “Pulse?” she whispered with a tremor of obvious fear. “Am… am I…”
“Shh, shh, shh.” He picked up her hand and squeezed gently. “You’re gonna be all right, hon, okay? Promise we’ll get you all fixed up.”
She couldn’t nod because of the head restraint, so she whispered, “O-okay.”
“Are you in pain right now?” he asked as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm.
“Yes, m-my chest hurts, and my head. My face.”
“Okay, the paramedics gave you some medication through the IV to help with that, but I’m going to bump it up, okay?”
“T-thank you.”
He winked, maintaining his usual calm and friendly expression. Patients in shock or panicking responded best to him if he was almost playful when talking to them. This helped distract them from their fear and pain.
“Okay, Talia, don’t mind me here. Promise I’m not getting fresh,” he said as he held up a handful of sticky pads. “While the docs are checking everything out to make sure you don’t have any obvious injuries, I’m going to get you hooked up to an EKG so we can monitor your ticker. Is it okay if I unbutton your blouse?”
Despite everything she was going through, her face flushed. “Uh, yeah. That’s fine.”
“After we’re done here, we’ll get you up to radiology for some head and neck scans. Easy stuff. You won’t have to do a thing but lie there and answer a few questions,” he chattered as he slipped the first button of her silky blouse through the hole.
Then the next.
And another.
When he had them all free, he parted the fabric, and there were her tits. Right in front of his face, full, lush, and encased in a bright pink lace bra.
Never, not once, did he have a physical reaction to a patient in this kind of situation. Hell, he barely looked at his female patients as women. They were just parts he needed to assess for damage. Ninety-nine percent of the time, someone could offer him a million dollars five minutes after evaluating a patient, and he’d never be able to recall what color bra they wore. There was nothing sexual or attractive about trauma care.
Never.
But, of course, someone had drummed up that stupid phrase never say never for a reason.
And goddamn, those were some phenomenal tits.
His dick twitched beneath his scrubs.
A single tear leaked from the corner of Talia’s eye. The sight of it shocked him back to reality faster than a slap. He hardly knew the woman, but his gut told him she’d deny that tear to her dying day if anyone asked. Talia was not the type of woman who wanted to show an ounce of what she would consider weakness.
“Hey,” he murmured, taking her hand in his. Her palm was clammy and cold despite the seventy-five-degree night. “We got you now. We’ll get you fixed up good as new.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she said, sounding like she was fighting sobs. “I’m j-just a little nervous.”
Nodding, he squeezed her hand. “Understandable. But I promise we’re gonna take the best damn care of you. Is there anyone you want me to call?”
She bit her lower lip and then sighed. “No. There’s no one.”
Why did those words have him wanting to press her hand over his heart?
Focus on your damn job. He refused to think of her as anything other than a patient. This was work. Same thing he’d been doing for the past few years.
He cleared his throat. “The paramedic said you got a doozy of a gash on your head as well, so after your scans, we’ll get that all stitched up for you.” He placed the electrodes for the EKG with quick, clinical precision, having done it countless times. Once he clipped on the wires, a familiar beep sounded as her cardiac rhythm registered on the monitor.
“O-okay.”
“Gabe, radiology transport is on the way.” He nodded at the nursing assistant before focusing on the telemetry monitor. Everything looked good. Her blood pressure was elevated but not to critical levels and not unsurprising due to the circumstances. The EKG showed a normal heart rhythm, and her oxygen saturation was within normal limits, which meant she was breathing normally and hopefully hadn’t broken any ribs in the crash.
“Vitals are stable,” he announced, receiving a nod from the physician.
“Abdominal ultrasound shows no signs of internal bleeding.” The physician moved up to Talia’s head. “I’m Dr. Ragusa,” he said with a gentle smile. “We’ll get this off your head and let you sit up as soon as we are sure you don’t have any spinal cord involvement or bleeding on your brain. Okay, ma’am?”
Her eyes widened, wary with fear. “Okay.”
The physician pulled off his gloves. “Radiology is here. Gabe will help get you on your way, and I’ll see you when you return from the CT scan. I’ll be the one to stitch up your head.”
“Thank you.”
Dr. Ragusa smiled his customary warm grin that helped set patients at ease. He could be a prick when stressed, but most of the time he was a great physician to work alongside. After patting Talia’s shoulder, he exited the room, leaving Pulse alone with her.
“I’m going to unclip the EKG leads but leave the sticky pads on. It’s standard procedure. If we need them again later, we don’t need to reapply them.”
“Makes sense,” she whispered.
He nodded as he unclipped the leads and then pulled a blanket up over her exposed chest. He didn’t bother to button her blouse up again—radiology would only undo it. If she were anyone else, he’d help remove it entirely and slip her into a hospital gown, but he’d already had an unprofessional reaction to her. Seeing her bare tits might put him over the edge. They could take care of her clothing situation upstairs in radiology, though he’d probably get an earful later for sending her up unprepared.
“Why are they calling you Gabe? I thought your name was Max?”
A sour taste filled his mouth. “Gabe is my middle name and what I prefer to go by.”
“Oh.” She frowned. The woman was too damn perceptive and would probably have questions about that later.
“All set,” he said when he’d finished his task. “It’ll just be a few more seconds.” He rested his arms on the bed’s side rail and then stared down at the woman who was terrified, bloody, and hurt yet still managed to look beautiful. “Wanna talk about what happened?” he asked. “Sometimes talking helps you get over the shock of it all.”
“Um… yeah.” She tried to nod but could only tilt her chin. “I do need to tell you about it. Are we alone?”
He frowned. “Yeah… just us.” Why did that matter? Unless she was embarrassed to tell him she was giving her boyfriend roadhead when he crashed or something equally awkward.
Why did that idea make his skin feel too tight?
“Pulse, I-I was run off the road.”
He froze. “What?”
“I was followed from my office on my way home. I worked late tonight and didn’t leave until around ten. The exit I take off the highway to get home is fairly rural. A car followed me as I exited and rode my ass the entire time, then they hit me. More than once.”
What the fuck?
He swallowed what felt like a spiked ball. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I kept going faster, and I even tried to pull over, but they followed every move I made. Then, they hit me multiple times until I lost control.”
He’d call Curly to relay this information as soon as he left this room. “Who… fuck, do you have any idea who it was? A pissed-off client, maybe? Someone who didn’t like the verdict in their trial? Has anything crazy happened at work?”
She bit her lower lip but didn’t respond. The longer the silence lasted, the more unsettled he became.
“Talia…”
“Hey, Gabe. This our patient waiting to head up to radiology?”
He jolted and then looked up at Ricco, a transport tech he met on his first day of hospital orientation. “Yeah. She’s all set, Ricco.” He looked back down at Talia, whose eyes were heavy from pain and medication. “We’ll talk about this more later,” he murmured. He couldn’t resist the urge to cup her cheek.
“Wait…” She grabbed his hand. “I had a visitor, Pulse. Before I left the office.”
The way she stared at him, straight in his eyes despite her obvious exhaustion and discomfort, told him all he needed to know.
And it made him angry enough to kill.
They weren’t alone anymore, and she was about to be wheeled out, so the hundred questions he had would go unanswered for now. But when she returned, he’d do whatever it took to carve out a few minutes alone to get some answers.
Ricco unlocked the casters on her bed and then wheeled her out of the room. Pulse stood staring after her until he was looking at an empty hallway. Fuck! He mouthed, though he wanted to scream it at the top of his lungs. He gripped his hair and paced the length of the empty room. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
The DEA had gone after Talia.
What the hell did that mean? Did they want something from her? Was this to get at him? He barely knew the woman. Hell, he didn’t know her. Why would they think injuring her would get to him?
Yet there he stood, his heart pounding and the fire of rage heating his blood, wanting to go to war, not because the DEA wanted him back but because they dared to involve Talia.
“Gabe, you okay?” Sharon appeared next to the open curtain at the mouth of the trauma room.
“What?” He dropped his arms and rolled his shoulders. “Yeah, all good.”
She eyed him with pursed lips before shrugging. “Okay, room eleven’s IV is finished, and he needs his next dose of antibiotics hooked up.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll head in there now.”
After casting a final concerned frown his way, Sharon nodded and left the room.
Pulse sighed. He still had hours on his shift, and they would drag by slower than a mile-long line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
He cracked his neck side to side and shook out his hands. Years of undercover work meant he could act his ass off when necessary. Tonight, it was more than necessary. He had to fool the entire emergency room into believing he was fine and not pissed as fucking hell.
You got this .
As he strode from the room, pushing all concerns but work out of his mind, one rogue thought shot itself to the forefront of his mind.
Just what had Talia’s visitor told her? Did she know exactly who he was? And at what point would she call Curly to inform him one of his men was a former federal agent?
He’d be back in this room the second Talia returned from testing.