After the Christmas Party...

“You should,” she warned. “I’ve known me a lot longer than you have.”

He laughed then glanced at his watch. “I could never be bored around you, funny girl. Unfortunately, I have to get moving and your car is still at the hotel where the Christmas party was held. You’ll have to ride with me to the hospital so get hopping. We have lives to save.”

“Sure thing, snowflake.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ALTHOUGH RILEY HADN’T been on the schedule, he still spent most of the day at the hospital.

Fortunately, so did Trinity.

He’d been able to easily maneuver her into the cardiac lab with him. Right or wrong, he wanted her near him. The panic he’d seen in her eyes that morning worried him. Plus, she was going to need a ride to pick up her car at the end of her shift. He was way too smart to miss out on the opportunity to play white knight and give her a lift.

Doug Ryker, a fifty-three-year-old, had woken up with chest pain that had increased as the sun had come up. When he’d started clutching his chest, his wife had called 911. An ambulance had brought him to the emergency room. His cardiac enzymes had been elevated and, at the minimum, he’d needed an arteriogram.

That’s where Riley came in.

He’d met the gentleman’s family very briefly while the patient was being prepped. Now Riley was scrubbed and ready to proceed. Trinity was his nurse.

He stole a look at her. If she noticed, she ignored him and focused on their patient.

Too bad there wasn’t a sprig of mistletoe around because he’d love to pull down her mask and kiss those plump lips of hers. Did she remember their kiss beneath the mistletoe or had she blocked it from her mind along with the rest of the night? Just how much did she remember about their evening together?

’Twas the season for good tidings and cheer. Riley couldn’t think of anything that would cheer him more this Christmas than getting to know the lovely woman he’d spent the night holding and had developed a fascination for that he couldn’t quite explain, much less understand. Maybe it really was the season?

He loved Christmas, everything about it. The sounds, the smells, the spirit of giving, all of it. If someone popped a bow on top of Trinity’s head and set her beneath his tree to unwrap, he’d be a very happy man.

He glanced over at the angel monitoring Mr. Ryker’s vital signs.

She caught him looking. Instant hot pink tinged what he could see of her upper cheeks peeking out from behind her surgical face mask. He winked and her color deepened.

Something warm and fuzzy, like the smell of cookies baking, filled him. Something that just made him feel…happy.

Odd that the feeling felt strange, because he couldn’t think of anyone he’d label as happier than him. He was totally happy go lucky. Yet he couldn’t deny that the feeling felt alien.

And addictive because already he knew he’d want more when the feeling waned.

Maybe everything would go well with Mr. Ryker’s arteriogram and the man wouldn’t need anything beyond a few stents. Then, Lord willing, Riley would ask Trinity to go to a late lunch.

“Vitals are good,” she said, probably more just to say something rather than to actually inform him.

After she’d prepped Mr. Ryker’s groin, Riley numbed the area with an anesthetic and made a penciltip-sized incision. Carefully, he threaded the cardiac catheter through the femoral artery and up into Mr. Ryker’s heart.

Mr. Ryker’s elevated enzymes had already conveyed that there was cardiac tissue not getting proper perfusion. Riley had hoped he’d find a single small blockage that could be fixed easily with a stent to restore blood flow. He found much more than that. Unfortunately.

Mr. Ryker’s mammary artery had a large area of calcification and stenosis. Plus, there were other areas of calcification scattered throughout the arteries. Riley carefully positioned the catheter tip and placed a stent, then another, corrected the blockages that he could via an artificial material holding the artery open. Unfortunately, the stents weren’t nearly enough to restore blood flow to the tissue. He withdrew the catheter.

“He’s going to need a coronary artery bypass graft,” he told another nurse, while Trinity applied pressure to where the catheter had been withdrawn. “Find an available vascular surgeon stat and let’s get Mr. Ryker into the operating room.”

So much for taking Trinity out to eat any time soon. They’d be here for several hours yet.

Trinity wasn’t sure how she’d gone from being in the catheter lab to the operating room as that wasn’t usual protocol. At least, it hadn’t been standard at the hospital where she’d worked in Memphis, but there she was. In the operating room. With Riley.

She was working as his assistant and blowing CO2 into Mr. Ryker’s open chest. That helped keep blood from interfering with Riley being able to readily see where he was making the anastomosis in the mammary artery to loop the vessel into the right coronary artery. While keeping the CO2 blowing at just the correct angle, she watched him carefully cut away a pedicule and reroute the artery. Painstakingly, he sutured the arteries together, making sure not to damage the vessels.

Another nurse dabbed at his forehead. Trinity found herself wishing she was the one touching him. Silly really. They were at the hospital. Working to save a man’s life. Touching the cardiac surgeon while he performed a procedure should be the absolute last thing on her mind.

She’d touched him the night before.