3. Riley
3
RILEY
D r. Riley Parker was once again in surgery, working on a patient who had suffered multiple injuries during a car crash. When she finished, she walked out of the operating room and took a deep breath before she had to notify the patient’s family that the surgery was a success.
There were some complications and the patient was going to have some notable scarring, but they would live—and considering how bad of a state they were in, that’s all that mattered.
Riley finished notifying the family, receiving an awkward hug from the patient’s wife, and walked back into the Emergency Room to see what else she could do. She was barely there for long when suddenly, the sound of multiple pagers going on attracted the entire department’s attention.
Before Riley even had the chance to look at her pager, the head of the hospital, Dr. Josephine Mars, came rushing into the Emergency Room in her heels and smart skirt and white doctor’s coat. She looked disheveled, which was rare for her.
“Everyone!” Dr. Mars called out. “A building under construction has collapsed a few miles away. We’re the closest hospital, and paramedics and firefighters are bringing all survivors here.”
Everyone had their attention on Dr. Mars, and Riley felt her stomach drop. Building collapse could mean mass casualties and lots of unsurvivable injuries. She took a deep breath and steadied herself; she was going to do whatever it took to have as many survivors as possible. She looked at Dr. Mars and resolved to be the best doctor she could be.
* * *
The next few minutes were chaos. While they waited for the first ambulance to arrive, everyone prepared the Emergency Room. Nurses moved patients to allow for the flood of people that would arrive. Doctors and everyone laid out gauze and emergency supplies they thought they might need.
Everyone worked like a storm of elephants, seemingly without order, but still managing not to trample anyone else. When the first ambulance arrived without its lights on, Riley knew something was wrong. One of the nurses came back into the Emergency Room looking shaken and informed everyone that the patients in the first two ambulances died before they made it to the hospital.
Riley felt that pit in her stomach and knew that today would be difficult, both in keeping patients alive and keeping one another’s spirits up.
When the next ambulances arrived, the patients were fortunately alive, but they also brought someone who caused Riley to scowl to herself before she schooled her face into a neutral expression.
A certain tall athletic very attractive angry paramedic. Now was not the time for dislike or rivalries. But Riley couldn’t deny how she both wanted to and didn’t want to see her at all.
Riley took a stretcher and loaded it into the ER getting briefed by another member of the ambulance staff, hoping to avoid the angry paramedic, but she knew that the other woman noticed her when she saw the obvious frown on the her face as she looked in Riley’s direction and their eyes met for just a second.
Just as Riley expected her to leave with the ambulance, Dr. Mars raised her voice.
“Jett,” she called out and the paramedic turned around to face the head of the hospital.
“Josephine?” the paramedic replied and Riley tried to tune out their conversation as she focused on her patients, but it was hard. Nobody called Dr. Mars Josephine. Apparently this Jett the paramedic knew her boss on a personal level, which slightly annoyed her.
“Can you stay here and help in the ER?” Dr. Mars asked, and Riley inwardly groaned as she noted the awkward angle of her patient’s arm. They would need an X-ray to be sure what they were looking at, but Riley could already tell that her patient likely needed surgery.
“Absolutely,” Jett said. There isn’t too much left to do on scene. I’m sure they will cope without me.
Jett spoke into her radio most likely ascertaining permission with her commander.
Riley couldn’t stop her gaze from being drawn to the curve of Jett’s lips as she spoke.
“Awesome,” Dr. Mars said. “Thank you so much.”
Jett got to work. She focused mainly on stabilizing patients and helping the nurses hook them to monitors and IV lines. At one point a patient needed to be intubated and Riley couldn’t help but notice in admiration how efficiently Jett performed the procedure. She had a look of determination on her face that Riley couldn’t get out of her head.
When Jett accidentally walked into Riley, Riley couldn’t help but snap at her, memories of Jett calling her a glory chaser surfacing to her mind.
“Hey, watch it,” Riley said as their bodies clashed and they both pulled sharply back. Jett looked back at her, dark eyes hard to read suddenly, and Riley definitely noticed when she started to roll her eyes but stopped.
“Sorry,” Jett said, a little reluctantly.
Riley wanted to say more, but the situation definitely didn’t allow it, so she got back to work.
“My arm! My arm!” Riley heard someone screeching, causing many nurses and doctors to fumble in their work before they refocused. Riley finished with her current patient and headed to where the commotion was to see what was happening. When she got there, she saw a man with what was obviously a compound fracture to his arm.
When the man saw Riley, he started sobbing.
“Please,” he said. “Can you fix my arm? I need it.”
Riley inspected it, noticing that the arm needed immediate surgery to avoid further damage or potentially him losing the arm. Riley wasn’t an ortho specialist, but she had done a surgery like this before and she was confident that she could do it again.
“Please,” the man said again. “I don’t care about anything else, but I won’t be able to work without my arm.”
“Okay,” Riley said, and then, because she was curious and also liked to get to know her patients: “What do you do for work?”
“I’m a construction worker,” the man said. “My name is Dennis.”
“Okay, Dennis,” Riley said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
At that time, a nurse and Jett came walking toward her, and Riley zeroed in on the nurse. “Hadley,” Riley said, pointing at her, “are you doing anything right now?”
“No, I was just showing Jett where we keep the gauze.”
“When you’re done with that, get an OR ready. We need to get this man to X Ray and then get this compound fracture sorted quickly. Get him started on pain meds.”
Jett stopped what she was doing and raised a very elegant eyebrow. “You’re seriously doing this again?” she asked. “He just got in here. He needs to be checked out thoroughly before he can be operated on.”
Riley was feeling riled again straight away. Something about this paramedic just got right under her skin. “I can see just from looking at the color his fingers are beginning to turn that if we don’t get on with this, he may very well end up losing his arm.”
Jett frowned. “So much could go wrong if you just rush into this,” she said, “and it’s not like you can have a large team with you. Everyone else is focused on other patients.”
“I will most certainly be paging Ortho, but if you’re so worried about my decisions, scrub in then,” Riley said, impulsively.
“What?” Jett asked, shocked.
“I’m serious,” Riley said. “I don’t have time to argue with you, and if you think you can help then by all means, do.”
Riley wasn’t against other people helping her, although she’d known some surgeons to be. And, unlike what Jett had insinuated the last time, she wasn’t a glory chaser. Her life’s goal was to be able to save lives and make lives livable. She cared about her patients, even if she barely knew them, and that’s what frustrated her about Jett. The paramedic didn’t seem to see that.
“Okay,” Jett said, her face suddenly flushed.
“Great.” Riley started to wheel the patient away. Jett joined her, making it a million times easier, and Riley couldn’t help but notice the lovely elegance of Jett’s finely muscled forearms as she bent to push the stretcher.
“Have you ever had surgery before?” Riley asked the patient.
“A couple of times,” Dennis said.
“Great,” Riley said. “I there anything I should know? Are you allergic to anything?”
Riley continued to ask Dennis important questions before they left him with the OR staff and went to the scrub room to scrub in.
She guided Jett through the procedure, watching her long graceful fingers as she scrubbed.
Riley looked up and found Jett’s eyes above her mask. “You ever been in an operating room before?” Riley asked.
“Only as a patient,” Jett said.
Riley nodded. “You’ll do fine,” she said. “If you have any problems or any questions, ask me or one of the nurses.”
Jett’s eyes showed shock at Riley’s words. “Thank you,” Jett said.
Riley might have had personal issues with Jett, but she wasn’t about to have a nervous or unsure paramedic in her operating room.
* * *
Throughout the surgery, Riley maintained her razor focus, but she did notice Jett’s behavior throughout the operation. It might have been Jett’s first time in surgery, but Riley couldn’t tell. She assisted quickly with anything she was asked and her focus was intense and methodical.
She asked questions that were relevant and showed she wanted to learn as she went.
Riley could definitely see where and why they clashed. Riley was good at her job, but she was a risk-taker. She didn’t always like to do things the proper way, and she hated jumping through hoops to do what she knew needed to be done.
Jett was definitely the opposite. Riley could tell that she didn’t like risk, but to Riley, surgery was all risk. She enjoyed the risk, and sometimes she did struggle knowing where to pull back and where to push ahead, but she did care about her patients. More than anything, Riley cared about her patients. But she also knew that sometimes a risky surgery gave them their best shot.
Jett could complain about Riley’s methods all she liked, but Riley listened to her patients and her own observations before she would listen to someone else. But Riley couldn’t deny that Jett’s own methods were admirable. She was definitely passionate about her job and Riley could respect that.
She found herself glancing at Jett’s focussed dark eyes above her mask at breaks in the surgery. Jett’s concentration was intense. It might not have been usual procedure to take a paramedic into the OR, but Jett didn’t care so much as that. She knew she worked in a teaching hospital and Dr. Mars would always support learning opportunities for staff.
When the surgery was done, Riley breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like Dennis would have a full recovery.
Dennis’ wife and kids were in the surgery waiting room, along with a group of other people. Riley knew that some of those people were going to be receiving bad news, but she tried not to focus on that. She decided to focus on the good news that she was going to give.
As expected, Dennis’ family was very grateful, but Riley was ready to get back out of that room. She needed to get back to the Emergency Room to help with more patients, to get more people back to surgery.
However, when Riley walked out of the room and into the hallway, Jett was standing next to the door, staring into space. As Riley walked into the hallway, Jett’s eyes found hers and Jett raised her hand as if to stop her.
“Yes?” Riley asked, noticing how Jett’s short dark hair framed her face and exposed her intense brown eyes, which almost stared into Riley’s soul. Riley felt uncomfortable yet intrigued.
“I think I was wrong about you,” Jett said.
“You think?” Riley asked, crossing her arms and taking a step closer to Jett.
“You did a good job in there,” Jett said, “and I know how much that man needed his arm.”
“Dennis,” Riley said.
“What?” Jett asked.
“His name was Dennis,” Riley said. “Not ‘that man.’ And the thing is, I know that because I care about my patients, and I want what’s best for them. I learn all of their names, and I do my damndest to make sure they make it out of that operating room alive.”
“I care about my patients, too,” Jett said.
“I was never the one who said you didn’t,” Riley said, unable to get Jett’s criticisms out of her head.
“I’m sorry,” Jett said. “I was wrong.”
Riley frowned. She definitely wasn’t expecting the other woman to apologize. Riley expected Jett to be as hard-headed as she was, and hearing that apology shocked her. “Oh,” Riley said, uncrossing her arms.
She felt slightly exposed, but after the apology, she didn’t feel as much of a need to be guarded around Jett.
“You’re a good doctor,” Jett said, staring directly into Riley’s eyes with a heated gaze. “Forgive me?”
“Okay,” Riley said, something that was hard for her. She held grudges like nobody’s business, but there was something about the other woman that made her want to move on. Besides, she was tired of being angry, and there was something about Jett that intrigued her. She was unable to put her finger on what exactly it was, but she didn’t want to move away from Jett.
But she couldn’t let go of what had upset her the most. “I’m not a fame chaser,” Riley said.
Jett looked at her in shock, like she didn’t remember what she said the last time they met.
“You said that I was more concerned with getting fame than caring for my patients,” Riley said, “and I know I have a reputation, but it comes from caring about my patients, not dismissing them or using them as tools to propel my career. I’ve met people like that, and I’m not one of them. I have my reputation because I’m a good surgeon, and doctors who don’t care about their patients aren’t good surgeons.”
Jett nodded and frowned. Riley’s voice showed pain and raw emotion. She didn’t like being vulnerable, but Jett’s accusations struck her right in the heart and she couldn’t shake them.
“Like I said,” Jett said, “I was wrong about you. I couldn’t see past the risk you were taking to see the people you wanted to help. I’m sorry.”
Riley felt immense relief to hear that. She wasn’t sure why Jett’s opinion mattered so much to her, but it did. Usually, Riley was a fuck-it-all kind of woman. She didn’t care what other people thought as long as she knew that she was doing the right thing. But with Jett it was different—and that both thrilled and terrified her.
The two of them stood there for a moment, looking into one another’s eyes. Until Riley’s pager went off.
“Shit,” Riley said, checking her pager, “I have to get going.”
“I should probably get out there and help, too,” Jett said.
“Good idea.” Riley rushed away towards the Emergency Room.
And maybe it was her imagination, but Riley thought she saw Jett smile at her. The action caused shivers to run up her spine and she hurried away even more quickly, not wanting to dwell on what that could mean.