Chapter 24
Scarlett
When I’d left Dr. O’Rourke’s office that day, he said he’d think about adding me to his on-call team. It’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve heard nothing about it. Irritation has replaced adrenalin.
He comes into the class three days a week, executes the most flawless and effective lesson plans I’ve ever seen, and then leaves. Most days without looking at me. I tell myself it means he’s decided not to add me to the team.
I sit cross-legged on my bed, flashcards spread across my comforter. I’m supposed to be studying for one of his quizzes, but every time I try to focus on drug mechanisms, my mind jumps back to him.
And his silence.
Has he found a girlfriend? The idea of him being married by the end of the semester makes something hot and ugly coil in my stomach.
Images of another woman getting fucked by Cormac shatter when my phone vibrates with a call from an unknown number.
I hold it, worrying if Pierce has found a way through the security layer block. But it stops ringing. Then a message comes in:
It’s me, pick up. - C
C. Cormac. Not… Dr. O’Rourke.
“Hello?” I say when it rings again.
“Meet me in the teaching wing. The clinical side,” he says, voice steady.
My pen stills. “Why? What happened?”
“I have a female coming in. She had a fall.”
I push away the tug that all humans with empathy get from sensitive cases.
“And you want me to assist you?” I swallow, loving his faith in me. “As part of the on-call team you needed?”
“Exactly. Are you in?”
“Yes,” I say, pulling on my shoes.
“Scarlett…” he says, breaking from the stoic tone just a second ago. “Hurry. This one is…personal.”
Female. Personal. “Is… Is this the woman you’re going to marry?”
His silence rips my heart out. “No. But it is family.”
My heart goes back online, because if it’s personal for him, somehow it’s personal for me, too. I don’t understand this possession I feel for a man who I shouldn’t want because he’s my professor, and he specifically said he can’t be involved with me.
“On my way, Dr. O’Rourke,” I say to show I’m taking him seriously.
The teaching wing is too clean for what usually happens here. White tiled terrazzo floors. Harsh, bright fluorescent lights make everything look extra ugly.
The first thing I notice is my fellow classmates Voss and Mercer. They are still and attentive. Hands readied like they’re musicians waiting for a conductor to lift his baton.
Then I see the dark SUVs lined up outside the glass double doors with sidelights. Men wearing sharp suits are positioned along the curb. They don’t pace, and they don’t look panicked.
Guards.
Mafia.
Family.
A woman.
Oh my God. I’m going to be treating a real-life mafia wife.
A man emerges from one of the SUVs. Very tall. Auburn hair. Breathtaking. Jacket over jeans, both soaked with dark blood. The woman under his arm is smaller with short, dark hair, wrapped in a coat, and she’s gripping his arms with white knuckles. Her lap is full of blood.
From a fall?
Cormac rushes out of the treatment room in tight blue scrubs. Whoa. That’s fucking hot.
Standing next to an empty gurney, his spine is straight. His face contorts into a calm, lethal neutrality I’ve only ever seen on the surgeons I met. The ones who’ve never lost a patient.
The man, who I assume is the mafia boss, marches up to Cormac. “She’s pregnant.” An Irish brogue rolls thick off the man’s tongue when he speaks. “And she’s bleeding.”
I hear the same murmuring accents from the guards who followed the handsome mob boss into the waiting area.
The woman’s eyes flick over Voss and Mercer, assessing. Then her gaze lands on me. The floor shifts beneath my feet for some reason. Like destiny is pulling me in that direction.
Cormac brings me next to him. “This is my student. She’ll be assisting.”
Only me. Not Voss and Mercer, who suddenly look like furniture. And a little furious.
The woman nods once, accepting it. Trusting him and me without question. That lands harder than it should. Another thing to get used to as a doctor. And not addicted to. How people put their lives in your hands. Literally.
Inside the treatment room, everything snaps into motion and blurs at the same time. I find an apron for the woman’s X-rays. Taking them, I find out her name is Ava, and her husband is Griffin.
Minutes later, I pull up the scans on the workstation to review them.
“She ruptured her spleen,” I say, showing Cormac the X-ray. “I think that’s where the blood is coming from.”
To my surprise, Cormac brushes his shoulder close to mine. Our eyes meet, and he looks proud that I called it.
“Cormac!” the mob boss breaks the tension. “What…what do we do for that?”
“Surgery,” Cormac says, clearing his throat. “Scarlett, order a transport to Mercy. I’ll call a renal surgeon I know.”
“I haven’t been to a doctor yet,” Ava says, sounding guilty. “For the pregnancy.”
“Tell them that, too, Scarlett,” Cormac orders me in a velvety, husky tone.
I nod and move to the phone near the entrance of the treatment room. There are transport companies on speed dial, and I choose the first one. After I provide the codes required for care as well as my cell phone number, I immediately get a text confirmation that a transport is on its way.
When I get back, Cormac has the ultrasound machine pushed next to the woman.
He scans her stomach, his jaw flexing, watching the monitor.
I realize this is the first time I’ve seen him fully in action.
Not as a professor, but as a doctor. He’s not restrained.
This is who he is when people are hurt and need his help.
“Scarlett, look at this?” he calls me over.
I blush, attacked with imposter syndrome. But I push that away and remind myself, I call the shots all the time on my ambulance emergencies.
I come up beside him and brush against him the way he did me. Something I’ve never done with a colleague when it could be avoided.
With Ava’s immediate danger out of the way, she and Griffin seem more relaxed.
“Did you know I was at your sister’s wedding?” Ava says to Cormac.
His nose twitches. “I didn’t.”
Sister’s wedding. He has a sister and a twin brother.
“I was in this guy’s trunk.” Ava tugs playfully on her husband’s shirt. “But I still considered myself being there.”
Trunk?
“Okay,” I snicker. “You guys seem like a fun bunch.”
“Yes, we are, Scarlett,” Cormac says, raising his eyes to me.
The woman looks at my school badge. “Shouldn’t you be calling her Dr. Ford?”
“I haven’t passed my boards,” I inform her.
“Ford?” Griffin’s voice tightens. “Is your father Bradley Ford?”
My stomach drops, and I freeze. “Yeah,” I answer. “You know my father?”
“I’ve met him.” Griffin leans on the side of the gurney next to his wife. “Cormac, you’ve known her father forever.”
“Yeah. And he’s the…dean here,” Cormac admits.
Ava snorts, but the laugh is edged in pain.
I feel my cheeks heat up. But the text from Mercy steals my focus. “Dr. Fredricks is prepping the OR at Mercy. He wants a pelvic ultrasound.”
“Copy that,” Cormac says to me and resets the machine.
“She does the pelvic,” Griffin says, pointing to me. “Not you.”
Cormac is family… But when it comes to sticking a wand up a mob wife’s nether regions… They’d rather a female do it, even if she’s a stranger.
Cormac leaves the room to give Ava privacy.
Prepping for the test, I catch the way the two of them look at each other.
More so, the way the husband obviously adores his wife.
My throat bobs. If this was a mafia-arranged marriage, it’s possible they didn’t know each other or even like each other at first.
Now look at them!
That will be Cormac in a few months. Married, spoken for. Unavailable. For some reason, I feel like breaking down.
I suck it up and focus, prepping the ultrasound wand and telling Ava what’s going to happen to relax her before I start the exam. I’ve done this test before during hospital rotations, and I call on my memory.
“Clear. The amniotic sac hasn’t ruptured,” I announce.
Griffin dips his head against his wife’s chest. “Thank God.”
With the good news, I decide to expand the ultrasound to look around and take additional measurements. Why not? More experience can never hurt.
“How far along are you?” I ask Ava.
“I’m thinking three months,” she answers.
Sounds like the pregnancy wasn’t planned. The way they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other, I imagine they’ve been boning like rabbits. And whoops, she’s preggers.
I angle the probe, adjusting slightly until the monitor flickers, then steadies on a second heartbeat.
I side-eye Ava. She said she hadn’t been to a doctor, so she doesn’t know she’s pregnant with twins. Am I authorized to tell her?
I pull the wand out, cover her, and snap off my gloves. “Excuse me.”
I head out into the hall to find Cormac, who’s talking to a man of at least six-five, with curly auburn hair and wearing a suit.
Approaching them slowly, I say, “Dr. O’Rourke. I need you.”
His eyes fly my way, and I notice the tall guy’s eyes do, too. Then he nudges Cormac in my direction.
“She needs you, doctor,” he says smoothly with a sexy brogue.
“Go… Enforce your empire,” Cormac says and pushes him away.
Family. They’re family.
Mob.
God.
“Yeah, Scarlett,” Cormac says to me, and suddenly I’ve got his full attention.
The patient. Right.
“Ava said she hasn’t seen an OB yet. I did the pelvic exam. The sac is secure. But I heard two heartbeats.”
His eyes sparkle. “Twins?”
“I think.” I nod. “Like you and your brother.”
“Right.” He pushes a hand through his golden hair. A move that, for some reason, puts a spotlight on his tatted fingers and neck. “Did you tell them?”
“I didn’t think it was my place.”
“Thank you.” He pulls me in for a hug, and his lips brush my cheek.
I enjoy the feeling and chuckle at what’s got into him. “Why are you so excited?”
“You’ll see.” He takes my hand and pulls me back into the treatment room.