Chapter 13
Please let me find the ring. Please let Nate still be there. Please don’t ever let Oliver know I snuck his twenty-thousand-dollar diamond inside a stranger’s pocket. McKenna hadn’t stopped praying since leaving the hospital.
How could she have been so stupid? So careless?
Maybe someday a neurology doctor could help unravel the mysteries of the human brain and explain how she forgot the one thing that had been at the forefront of her mind all day.
Until then McKenna was going to keep praying. Please let me find the ring. Please let Nate still be there. Please don’t ever let Oliver know I snuck his twenty-thousand-dollar diamond inside a stranger’s pocket.
“Nate!” McKenna yelled, bursting into the ER where she’d caught a glimpse of him before she followed Oliver to the other hospital. “Nate!” she yelled, rushing straight to the check-in counter. “I’m looking for Nate.”
“Last name?” said the lady behind the check-in counter.
“Boston. Or do you mean his? I don’t know. Bloody eye. Bloody leg. He was the bleeder that came in with the breather. Is he still here? Please tell me he’s still here.”
McKenna didn’t wait for the lady behind the check-in desk to say anything. McKenna could already tell by her confused expression that she wasn’t going to provide answers fast enough. McKenna shoved open the double doors to the department. “Nate?” She started flinging back curtains.
“Ma’am,” a stern male voice said behind her. “You can’t be running around back here.”
“I need to find Nate.”
“Nate who?” The stern voice belonged to an even sterner face. Or maybe it was the security outfit that made him look stern.
“Bloody eye. Bloody leg. Bleeder who came in with the breather. He has something extremely valuable that I need to get back.”
“You don’t know his last name?”
This was the same problem she’d run into when she tried calling during her drive here from the hospital in Omaha.
“I don’t know the last name, but I know he was just here.
” Good grief. These people acted like they worked in the busiest ER in the country, seeing thousands of patients a day.
She wagered they didn’t see more than a dozen patients in a week.
“He came in with the big guy? One of the river people?”
“Hey, are you talking about the guy with the bloody pants?” a voice called out.
McKenna spun to face the young guy in scrubs who’d just spoken. Yes. Finally. Someone who knew what was going on. “Is he still here?”
Now another voice piped in. “The guy that needed the stitches, right?”
“Yes.” She spun in a circle in search of whoever had just spoken. “Probably.” Nate had been bleeding, so McKenna could only assume he needed stitches. “Do you happen to know how I can get a hold of him?”
“The one Wendy was hitting on?” another voice spoke up from behind the next curtain.
“Sure. Maybe.” Nate wasn’t terrible to look at, so she could see how someone named Wendy might want to hit on him.
“You’re not talking about the guy from New York, are you?” an elderly man sitting in a wheelchair in front of the nurses’ station asked.
McKenna bit back a frustrated growl. “See, that’s the thing. I don’t know where he’s from or how to find him. Did he say he was from New York?”
“Yeah, but I thought he said he was on his way to visit his mom’s bed and breakfast in Tennessee.” Wonderful. Now a young woman on a stretcher with a barf bag was joining the conversation.
“I’ll be sure to get all the details when I call him,” McKenna said, directing her attention back to the nurses’ station. “All I need is his phone number.”
“But you don’t know his last name?” said the first guy in scrubs.
Why was everyone so hung up on that one little detail? “No, but as I said before, we all came in together, so I really don’t think he’d mind if you gave me his phone number.”
“Are you talking about the cute guy headed to Bugle?” This from a middle-aged housekeeper pushing a cart full of cleaning supplies.
“Oh my goodness, I don’t know. Okay? I don’t know where he’s from. I don’t know where he’s headed. I don’t know anything, which is why I just need one of you to tell me something helpful, like his last name!”
Side note—don’t ever yell at an entire department full of healthcare workers and patients unless you want a stern-looking security guard to escort you off the premises.
On the bright side, right before the automatic doors closed shut, leaving McKenna alone in a parking lot, a spiky-haired blonde with orange glasses stood in the doorway and called out, “Hey, honey, if you’re looking for Nate Lambert, hate to tell you, but he’s already taken.
And I don’t share,” she added with a wink.
Strange. But okay. Lambert. McKenna had a last name. Finally. She should be able to track him down and get back the ring. Nobody would ever have to know that it had even gone missing.