Chapter 11 #2
I swallowed.
That one landed.
She left before I could answer.
Smart girl.
I stood there another minute, breathing through the ache.
Then I walked out.
I found charge at the desk and asked, quietly and professionally, to be moved off Dylan Degan’s direct care unless it was medically necessary.
She studied me for one second.
Then nodded.
No questions.
Hospitals ran on stories no one had time to tell.
I went to Bay Six.
A man with a kidney stone was swearing at God, the American healthcare system, and possibly his own kidneys in alphabetical order.
I smiled.
I adjusted his IV.
I got him medication.
I did my job.
Toward dawn, I passed the ICU hallway again.
Not on purpose.
Not entirely.
The blinds to Dylan’s room were open just enough to show Georgia still in the chair beside him. Her head rested on the edge of his bed now, one hand wrapped around his. The ring caught the pale morning light.
Dylan was asleep.
Or sedated.
Or pretending, if he had enough strength to be that much of an idiot.
I stopped for only one second.
No more.
His face was turned slightly toward the door.
Toward the hallway.
Toward me.
My heart made a desperate little reach.
I stepped back.
“No,” I whispered.
Not to him.
To myself.
Then I kept walking.
Outside, the sky over Albuquerque had begun to pale. The first thin light of morning stretched over the hospital parking lot, turning windshields silver and concrete almost soft.
Another day was coming.
Dylan was alive.
Georgia was still there.
And I was still standing.
For now, that had to be enough.
By morning, I had made a promise to myself.
I was not going back into Dylan Degan’s room.
Not unless the hospital caught fire.
Not unless he coded.
Not unless some official medical necessity put me there, because apparently my heart could not be trusted within ten feet of a man attached to an IV pole and another woman’s future.
I had been very proud of that decision for almost forty-seven minutes.
Then charge ruined it.
“Rourke.”
I looked up from the station where I was charting on a post-op patient and pretending the ICU hallway did not exist to my left.
“No.”
The charge nurse stopped.
Her eyebrows lifted.
I winced. “Sorry. I mean, yes?”
“You don’t even know what I’m asking.”
“I sensed danger.”
“You sensed staffing.”
“Worse.”
She handed me a tablet. “Marisol called out sick. Fever. Possible flu. I need you covering vitals and routine checks for Degan until I can shuffle assignments.”
The name hit my chest like a fist.
Degan.
Not Dylan.
Not Beautiful’s Dylan.
Not the man whose hand I had kissed in the dark.
Patient Degan.
Room 412.
Critical but improving.
Fiancée at bedside.
Complications possible.
Heart dangerous.
I stared at the tablet too long.
Charge’s expression changed, just enough to tell me she knew more than she was saying. Hospitals were like small towns with worse lighting. Secrets did not stay secret; they just got charted under professional silence.
“I can put someone else in there when I can,” she said, quieter. “Right now, I need hands.”
Hands.
That was what I had.
Hands that knew how to take vitals, check dressings, adjust tubing, document drainage, assess pain, monitor neuro responses, and pretend they did not remember the warmth of Dylan’s hair sliding between their fingers.
I took the tablet.
“Of course.”
Charge gave me one long look.
“Routine checks only.”
“I know.”
“Professional.”
My mouth tightened. “I know.”
She nodded once, not unkindly, then moved away.
I stood there with the tablet in my hand and the strange urge to laugh.
Professional.
Right.
Because professionalism was apparently the thin paper gown I was supposed to wear over a heart that kept trying to bleed through.
I waited longer than I needed to before going in.
Cowardly, maybe.
Human, definitely.
I checked another patient. Answered a call light. Refilled a water pitcher. Helped Lily hunt down a missing medication that turned out to be exactly where she had already looked twice because hospitals enjoyed gaslighting overworked nurses.
Finally, there was nothing left between me and Room 412 but my own dread.
I stopped outside his door.
Georgia was not in the chair.
That should have made it easier.
It didn’t.
Her sweater was still draped over the back of it. A tote bag sat tucked beneath the side table. A half-finished cup of coffee waited near the window. She had probably gone for breakfast, or a shower, or ten minutes to cry somewhere Dylan couldn’t see. She had earned that.
The empty chair felt worse than if she had been sitting in it.
It made the room too quiet.
Too open.
Too dangerous.
Dylan lay propped slightly against the pillows, pale but awake.
Better than yesterday. Still rough. Still bruised by surgery, pain, and whatever stubborn bargain had kept him alive.
His beard was darker against the hospital pallor of his skin.
His hair was a mess. An IV line ran into one arm.
The monitor beside him kept steady watch like it trusted machines more than men.
His eyes were closed.
I considered backing out.
Then they opened.
So much for that.
His gaze found me immediately.
Not slowly.
Not with confusion.
Immediately.
Like some part of him had known the second I stepped inside.
The air changed.
I hated that.
Loved it.
Hated that too.
“Morning,” I said, because I had a job and a voice and apparently those things still worked.
His eyes stayed on mine.
No smile.
No joke.
No Beautiful.
That was good.
That was terrible.
“Nurse Rourke,” he rasped.
The formal name slid over my skin like a punishment we both deserved.
“Patient Degan,” I said.
His mouth almost moved.
Not quite a smile.
More like pain remembering humor existed.
I walked to the monitor first because numbers were safer than faces. Heart rate slightly elevated. Oxygen okay. Blood pressure acceptable. Temperature normal. I entered what needed entering, felt him watching every movement, and told myself I did not notice.
Impossible.
Dylan’s gaze had weight.
It moved over me with maddening restraint, not careless, not crude, not even obvious enough to call him on it. But I felt it. At the side of my face. Along my hands. Down to the diamond studs in my ears, then away before he gave himself up completely.
He was engaged.
I was at work.
Georgia’s sweater hung over the chair between us like a flag planted in conquered territory.
I pulled on gloves.
“How’s your pain?”
“Manageable.”
I looked at him.
He looked back.
I typed seven into the tablet.
His brow twitched. “Didn’t say seven.”
“You have a tell.”
“I do not.”
“You get meaner around six and quiet around seven.”
His eyes held mine.
For one second, something almost soft moved through them.
“You remember that much about me?”
The question was quiet.
Too quiet.
My fingers froze on the tablet.
No.
No, we were not doing this.
Not beside Georgia’s coffee cup.
Not with his fiancée’s sweater on the chair.
Not after he held Georgia’s hand while I stood in the hallway with my heart in my throat and my dignity in both fists.
“I remember patients,” I said.
Lie.
The monitor betrayed him with one sharper beep.
I pretended not to hear it.
He did not.
“Right,” he said.
I moved to his side to check what needed checking.
Dressings, drains, lines. Clinical things.
Real things. Things that did not care about longing.
He stayed still beneath my hands, but stillness from Dylan had always been deceptive.
Even half-wrecked in a hospital bed, he seemed leashed rather than weakened.
I lifted the edge of the blanket carefully. “Any dizziness? Nausea?”
“No.”
“Shortness of breath?”
“No.”
“Chest pain?”
His eyes flicked to my face. “That a medical question?”
I should not have looked at him.
I did.
The silence thickened.
There it was.
Everything unsaid.
Cabo.
The grave.
Santa Monica.
The ICU.
His hand in mine.
My mouth against his knuckles.
I love you.
His eyes darkened as if he remembered too. As if the words were sitting between us, alive and dangerous, waiting for one of us to be foolish enough to touch them.
I stepped back.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a medical question.”
His jaw tightened.
“No chest pain.”
“Good.”
I reached for the blood pressure cuff because I needed something to do with my hands before they remembered how much they wanted to smooth his hair back again.
The door opened.
Dr. Bennett walked in with the kind of timing men only had when they were about to make everything worse.
Evan Bennett was one of the younger trauma attendings. Smart, charming, clean-cut, and fully aware of all three facts. He had sandy hair, rolled sleeves, and a smile that made half the hospital forgive him for being too pretty to work this many hours without looking destroyed.
I liked him well enough.
Professionally.
Mostly.
“Rourke,” he said, brightening when he saw me. “There you are.”
Dylan’s eyes shifted to him.
Slowly.
Dangerously.
I felt it before I saw it.
The temperature in the room dropped.
“Doctor,” I said.
Bennett glanced at Dylan’s chart, then at the monitor. “How’s our favorite gunshot wound?”
Dylan stared at him.
“Our?” he said.
The single word came out rough enough to sand wood.
Bennett’s smile faltered only a little. “Figure of speech.”
“Try another.”
I pressed my lips together and focused very hard on the cuff around Dylan’s arm.
Bennett looked at me with a faintly amused expression. “Patient charming as ever?”
“He’s alive,” I said. “We’re calling that progress.”
Dylan’s gaze cut to me.
There was heat in it now.
Not soft.
Not sweet.
Possessive.
Angry.
Confusing as hell.
Because he had no right to look at me like that with Georgia’s ring sitting in the world.
No right at all.
And yet my pulse still answered like an idiot.
Bennett came closer, checking the chart. “Vitals?”
“Temperature normal. O2 stable. Pressure acceptable. Pain underreported.”