Chapter 15 #2
Before I responded to a multi-vehicle accident on the highway where we had seven critical patients and only two ambulances.
Before I had to decide who got transported first based on who had the best chance of survival instead of who needed help most urgently.
Before I watched a nineteen-year-old girl die because we made the call to take the middle-aged man with better vitals first.
Before I realized that triage protocols and survival statistics don't account for the weight of those choices. For the nightmares. For the way you start seeing every car ride as a potential disaster and every person as a collection of vital signs that could fail at any moment.
So I decided that maybe ranching and writing romance novels was a safer way to spend my life. Safer for me. Safer for the people who might have depended on me making clear-headed decisions in crisis situations when I was barely holding it together.
Sure, I help out here and there when the local ambulance service is truly short-staffed and desperate enough to call me.
But never again as a career. Never again putting myself in situations where I have to play god and decide who lives and who dies based on training that can't account for humanity.
But the training never leaves. The muscle memory. The clinical assessment skills. The ability to shut down emotion and just do what needs to be done. It's both a blessing and a curse.
"Can you get her some pajamas or something?" I ask Nash, refocusing. "So we can change her out of this wet towel. Check her closet or dresser."
He nods, moving immediately toward what I assume is her sleeping area in this tiny studio apartment.
I take the opportunity to remove the wet towel. Try very, very hard not to look. Not to admire. Not to let my eyes linger on curves and soft skin and everything my hindbrain is screaming about with increasing urgency.
She's beautiful. Objectively, undeniably, breathtakingly beautiful in a way that makes my chest tight and my hands shake.
Soft everywhere—curves that beg to be touched, skin that looks like cream and honey mixed together with starlight.
Her scent without the towel barrier is overwhelming, filling my nose and lungs until I can barely think straight.
Vanilla buttercream and caramel and citrus so bright and cheerful it makes my mouth water and my cock twitch inappropriately.
Her breasts are perfect. Her waist dips in just right. Her hips flare in a way that screams Omega, screams fertile, screams mine in a voice so primal I almost don't recognize it as my own thought.
I grab one of the dry towels Nash brought and quickly cover her. Wrap it around her body like armor. Protection from the cold apartment air and from my own wandering eyes that have no business looking at an unconscious woman like she's a feast spread out for my consumption.
Don't blush. You're thirty years old and you've seen naked Omegas before. You've written detailed love scenes in your novels that would make most people blush. This is medical. Professional. You're helping her because she's hurt and vulnerable, not because you're hoping for anything in return.
But this is different. This isn't some casual encounter or a scene I'm writing from the safety of my laptop.
This is Reverie—the Omega who smiled at me in the bookstore, who lit up when I bought her those extra books, who seemed genuinely grateful instead of entitled.
The Omega Nash signed us up to be a temporary pack for.
The Omega who might actually be ours, even if just for a little while.
How do circumstances work like this? One day you're alone, settled into your routine of ranching and writing and existing alongside your packmates.
The next day there's an Omega unconscious on her couch and you're holding her in nothing but a towel wondering how your life got so complicated so fast.
But I care more about her being okay than anything else right now. More than the contract. More than the arrangement. More than the fact that she's gorgeous and smells like every fantasy I've ever had. I need her to wake up. I need her to be okay. I need to know I didn't fail someone else.
Nash returns with pajamas. Christmas-themed—pink fabric covered in candy canes and lollipops in cheerful reds and greens and whites, looking brand new with the tags still attached and the crisp fold lines from packaging visible.
Perfect. He probably found them in a drawer still in their original wrapping, didn't have to scrounge through worn clothes or invade her privacy more than necessary.
She probably bought them for herself as a little treat. Something festive and fun for the holidays. Maybe on sale somewhere because she's clearly on a tight budget. And now here we are using them in an emergency instead of her wearing them for a cozy Christmas morning.
"These work?" he asks, holding them up.
"Perfect. I'll change her." I take the pajamas, their fabric soft against my hands.
"Can you work on the flooding situation?
See if you can minimize damage to the apartment below?
Last thing she needs is angry neighbors or a lawsuit from the shop owner downstairs.
Check if there's a mop or towels we can use. "
Nash nods, already moving with that focused energy he gets when he has a problem to solve. "On it. I'll see what I can do."
I get to work dressing her. It's significantly harder than it should be—trying to maintain some semblance of modesty while getting unconscious limbs into clothing that doesn't want to cooperate.
Trying not to jostle her head because you're never supposed to move someone with a head injury unnecessarily.
Trying to keep that towel positioned strategically while also needing to remove it to get the pajamas on.
Romance novels make this look easy and even sexy.
The hero dressing the unconscious heroine with one hand while fighting off bad guys with the other, all smooth competence and smoldering looks.
Reality is awkward and clumsy and I'm pretty sure I'm doing this wrong but she's decent and warm and that's what matters.
Her arms are limp when I try to thread them through sleeves.
Her body is completely dead weight, making everything exponentially harder.
I have to support her head with one hand while maneuvering fabric with the other, all while trying not to think about how soft her skin is or how she fits against me or how protective I feel right now.
The pajamas fit well once I finally get them on—soft cotton that looks warm and comfortable. The candy cane pattern is cheerful and innocent and somehow makes her look even more vulnerable. She looks younger like this. Smaller. Like someone who needs protecting more than she'd ever admit.
I wonder if she bought these pajamas hoping to share Christmas with someone.
If she imagined wearing them Christmas morning with a pack, making breakfast together, exchanging gifts.
If she's been alone too long and these bright, cheerful pajamas are her way of trying to create holiday magic in a life that's been pretty devoid of it.
I retrieve an ice pack from her freezer—a small one that looks like it's been used before, wrapped in a thin dishtowel. Then I grab a clean washcloth, run it under cold water, wring it out.
I lay the cold cloth over her forehead carefully, avoiding the bump on the back of her head. Position the ice pack under her head where the swelling is worst.
Her temperature is up. I can feel it in the heat radiating from her skin, see it in the flush spreading across her cheeks. Not good. She's either having a stress response to the trauma or she's developing a fever.
Please don't get a fever. Please don't let this turn into something worse. Please let her wake up soon so I can check her pupil response and make sure there's no brain injury.
Without thinking, I scoop her up into my arms again. Settle onto the couch with her cradled against my chest, her head resting over my heart where she can hear the steady thump-thump that says safe, that says protected, that says pack.
She fits perfectly. Like she was made to be held exactly like this. My maple-honey scent mixes with her vanilla-caramel-citrus in a way that feels right. Natural. Like chemistry that can't be denied.
I adjust my hold, making sure her head is elevated slightly. Making sure she's warm but not too warm. Making sure I can monitor her breathing.
Please be okay. Please wake up soon. Please don't let me fail someone else.
Nash appears in the doorway, wet and bedraggled. "Bathroom's under control. Turned off the water, mopped up what I could. The apartment below got some water damage but nothing catastrophic. I left a note under their door apologizing."
He looks at me holding Reverie. His expression softens.
"She's going to be okay," I tell him. Tell myself. Tell the universe.
"Yeah," Nash says quietly. He comes closer, perches on the arm of the couch. Reaches out to brush a strand of wet hair off her face with surprising gentleness.
We sit there in silence. Waiting. Watching. Hoping.
With how Theo looked earlier—that blank mask that means trauma flashback—and Nash's worried expression that he can't quite hide, and my own rapidly beating heart that won't slow down even though the immediate crisis is over...
This Omega, Reverie Bell, might just be our kryptonite.