Chapter 2
Six months earlier.
How it all started…
Francesca
“I ncoming G.S.W. to the chest. Estimated time of arrival—” nurse Headly said. “Two minutes. Be ready, Russo. You’re helping on this one.” She stared right at me.
Great.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t assisted on a gunshot wound before. But these people rarely fared all that well. Guns were unforgiving.
Bullets—even less so.
More than likely, this guy would come in barely clinging to life. And nothing we’d do would help the poor sucker out.
But this was a part of my job. Or at least that was what they told me when I started.
Basically, I got shifted around to where they needed me. Mostly to clean up or do other crap the nurses and doctors didn’t want to.
Which was fair enough.
I didn’t have years and years of extra education. All I’d done was some crappy eight-week course.
I nodded at nurse Headly and shut my mouth. I also found that was the best thing to do around my superiors.
Look down.
Shut up.
Don’t ask questions.
Those were the mottos I lived by in the hospital.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I carefully pulled it out. My sister had sent a message. I opened it to see her in a gorgeous white dress.
A wedding dress.
She didn’t even have a boyfriend. But that didn’t matter to Felicia.
Nope.
Her favorite pastime was trying on wedding dresses.
And trying to rope rich guys into dating her.
Except what they typically wanted from Felicia wasn’t a commitment.
But that didn’t stop my sister from giving them whatever the heck they wanted.
My twin sister had much different dreams than I did.
She always had.
For two people who shared the exact same DNA—you couldn’t find two completely different people. The fact that we were mirror images of each other meant absolutely nothing.
One of the residents gowned up and put on a mask and a face shield. Depending on where the patient had been hit, you never knew if he’d be spurting a geyser out of his chest when he arrived. I followed suit and protected myself, too.
I’d barely slipped on a gown when the ER doors burst open. A very bloody, very pale adult male was rolling in on a gurney.
Yeah.
If I had to take a guess, I’d say he already had one foot in the grave. Poor guy.
As they pushed him by me, his eyes landed on mine.
The patient’s eyes—
Gosh.
He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes I’d ever seen.
Even though it had only been for a fleeting moment—it felt like that had somehow changed my life forever.
I hurried behind the hubbub. The paramedics yelled out certain key numbers regarding the patient’s vitals.
And none of them were good.
Gosh.
The poor guy didn’t have a hope.
That made me even sadder than it originally had. Seeing the patients was different than just hearing about them.
But there was something about how this guy stared at me—that I couldn’t explain.
Once he was in a room, the nurses cut his bloodied and stained clothes off. And gosh, the guy was hot. I mean, for an almost dead dude who had about five minutes of life left in him.
He was older. I’d say mid to late thirties. He was lean, but still very muscular.
It was just too bad that he wasn’t going to be around much longer. I bet he was a force to be reckoned with—or was a force to be reckoned with.
The doctor and nurses zoomed around, getting him fluids and trying like heck to stop the bleeding.
So, so, so much blood.
“Multiple casualties incoming. Huge crash on the Kennedy Expressway.” One of the nurses poked his head into our room. “They’ll be here in five minutes.”
The resident peered up at the nurse and said, “We’ll be done in here by then.” From the doctor’s obvious tone, I knew he figured this guy’s case was hopeless.
But those eyes—those dark eyes found mine. And I swore he was begging me to help him. But what could I do? If the doctor had already written him off, then there wasn’t likely anything that I could possibly do.
His hand flexed at his side like he was—asking me to hold it.
Which was pretty stupid.
I mean, I didn’t even know the guy. Why would he want me to hold his hand?
Whatever it was, though, I couldn’t help it. He drew me to him without even saying a thing. I stepped up to the side of the bed and grabbed his wet, cold, clammy hand. It was sticky with blood. But for some reason, I didn’t care.
For a dying guy, he had a really good grip.
I gazed down into his terrified face. And it felt like he’d reached inside and squeezed my heart.
I didn’t know this man, but he had some kind of weird hold over me that I didn’t understand.
“Everyone out of the way. We’re going to take X-rays!” the resident yelled as someone rolled the portable machine into the room.
I tried to remove my hand from his—but he wouldn’t let me. The man stared at me, his eyes open wide—and he slowly shook his head.
He wanted me to stay.
“Francesca, get out so we can take the X-rays!” one of the nurses yelled at me. But the man’s grip increased tenfold on my hand.
I guess I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Just take it. I’ll stay with him.”
The nurse yelled at me some more, but I refused to leave. Then the resident walked up to me. “Let go of him. We need these X-rays now.”
I inhaled deeply. “It’s fine. Take the damn pictures,” I said with no small bit of frustration. They needed to hurry up. If there was something they could do for this guy, they had to do it. And fast.
“Francesca, listen to me. You can’t be in here.
There’ll be radiation. It’ll take us too long to get another lead apron for you.
He doesn’t have that kind of time to waste.
And think about how many X-rays you’ve had in your life.
You don’t need this repeated exposure. It can be dangerous,” he explained point blank.
And I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I’d had exactly zero X-rays in my life. There wasn’t one time that my dad would have taken me down and paid for one. Even when I broke my arm. All he did for that was find a couple of pieces of old baseboard and wrap an elastic bandage around them and my arm.
“I’ll take the risk,” I told the resident.
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Then he lowered his voice. “What if you’re pregnant? It can hurt the baby.”
To that I laughed even louder. “I’m not pregnant.”
He closed his eyes briefly and opened them. “No birth control is one hundred percent, Francesca. You might be pregnant and not know it yet.”
I couldn’t help laughing again. “Unless it’s the immaculate conception, I’m okay. I’ve never had sex before.”
Realization hit him because he backed off. “Fine. But I’m writing you up to the disciplinary committee after this.”
I shrugged and played it off. Even though I was shaking inside. If he wrote me up—I might get canned. And I’d barely even started working here. I needed the money to keep afloat.
“Do what you need to do,” I said, hoping like heck he’d maybe forget all about this, or decide writing me up would be too much work.
After that, he gave up and took the stupid pictures.
The man still held onto my hand. To tell you the truth, it was starting to go a bit numb.
But, gosh.
He looked so freaking scared.
Like he knew exactly what his fate was.
I wondered if I’d know when the moment of my death would be upon me. I wondered if I’d be frightened, too. Or if I’d be grateful. And ready.
For some reason, I pulled my face shield off and tossed it onto the floor. And I took off my mask.
I didn’t want the last thing he saw to be some human covered in P.P.E.
“Don’t be scared. They’ll look at the X-rays and get you up into surgery before you even know it.”
His eyes bounced all over my face, and I was glad he could see me.
“Just hang on a little longer and they’ll fix you right up.”
His eyes burned into mine like—well, I didn’t really know. All I did know was that he wasn’t letting me go.
“What’s your name?” I asked him in a gentle voice. “I’m Francesca. But you heard that already,” I said, remembering that the resident had used my name several times.
His hand moved shakily to his oxygen mask, and he attempted to pull it down.
He was too weak, though, so I helped.
“Stefan,” he said with what looked like a huge amount of effort.
I smiled and put the oxygen mask back on.
“Hi, Stefan,” I said like an idiot.
Stefan didn’t seem to mind, though. Because right at that moment, he smiled and whispered, “Hi, Francesca.”
Something made me want to dive right into his eyes. And then I became even sadder. For him.
For what might have been.
For what should have been.
“Excuse us, Miss. We have some questions to ask the patient.” I looked up to see two police officers walk into the room.
I gazed down at Stefan and he very, very slowly shook his head.
I took the hint and immediately said, “Not a great time right now, guys. Come back later, okay?”
The taller officer stepped forward. “From what we’re told, he doesn’t have a later. We need to ask him some questions about his shooting before—”
I cut him off. Stefan didn’t need to hear any of this.
Even if it was true.
“I said it’s not a good time. I’m in charge of this patient and I’m asking you to leave his room. You’re upsetting him. And that’s not good right before he goes into surgery.”
The officer’s eyebrows rose. “We were told there was nothing more they could do for him.”
Dammit.
That was probably why nobody came back after his X-rays. I’d bet they were all waiting for the new incoming patients.
“Well, you heard wrong, officer. He’s going to be fine. Now, if you’ll get out, that’d be great.” I gave him a nasty scowl.
He and his partner continued to fight with me. But I didn’t care.
Stefan didn’t want to talk to them.
So, I wasn’t going to allow it.
Finally, they gave up and left.
“Francesca.” I heard my name.
I looked down and Stefan had his mask off. And he was—grinning like a fool.
“What? And keep your mask on.”I reached over to set it back over his nose and mouth.
Stefan shook his head. “Come here.”
I leaned down to listen.
“Francesca,” he said, gasping for air, “I think I’m in love with you.”
I laughed and turned my head.
Gosh.
Even covered in buckets of blood, he was still a great-looking guy.
My free hand traveled to the side of his face. I touched him there and whispered, “I think I love you, too, Stefan.” And the really, really weird thing about that was—it didn’t feel like a lie. Which was insane. Because I didn’t even know this man.
And I certainly didn’t love him.
Right?
“What the fuck’s going on in here?” a loud voice shouted into the room.
I bolted up and saw an older man there. He was a doctor. Probably the surgeon on call.
“He’s waiting for surgery. They asked me to stay with him until you came,” I lied my face off. He didn’t have to know that, though.
The doctor huffed and looked at the X-rays in his hands. He held them up and whistled. “Christ. What a fuckin’ mess. A guy would have to be crazy to try to fix that.”
My heart sank, and I immediately started in on him.
“You have to. He has five kids at home,” I lied again.
“Some random shooter got him in a mall. Didn’t you hear about it in the news?
People will go crazy if it gets out that nobody even bothered to try to help him.
” Something else came to me. “Especially since he saved hundreds of people’s lives by disarming the gunman. ”
Gosh.
If lightning suddenly struck me because of all the lies I’d just told the doctor, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The surgeon’s head snapped to me. “All right. Let’s see if we can save this hero’s life, shall we?”