A Firefighter in Her Stocking

But for the past few weeks she’d felt...alive. Wonderfully, femininely alive.

The night before she’d felt amazingly alive in Jude’s arms. Then, poof, he’d transformed into someone totally inconsistent with who she’d believed him to be.

Because he’d gotten what he’d wanted and was ready to move on?

He was usually a one-night-stand man, but maybe he’d given her a few weeks because she’d been a virgin?

He probably had treated her more delicately because of her inexperience, but she believed his reasons for his bad behavior. He’d been in love with Nina and had shut off a part of himself when she’d died, had shut himself off from his family.

On autopilot, Sarah treated another patient, deeming the young man’s severe abdominal pain to be a renal stone.

Sending over a prescription to manage his pain until he could be seen by Nephrology in clinic, Sarah typed in discharge orders and stepped out of the bay.

The emergency department was crazily busy. People, both patients and hospital personnel, were everywhere. In addition to the usual influx of patients, an apartment building filled mainly with low-income elderly had caught fire. Two people were confirmed dead. Dozens more had been rescued and brought in for smoke inhalation and minor burns. The hospital was still on standby as more were trapped inside the building.

Last she’d heard the fire was running rampant and out of control.

Was Jude there?

Of course he was.

That had to be the emergency call he’d gotten right before he’d left her apartment.

He was there. Probably inside that burning building, risking everything for strangers.

Because that’s what he did.

Risked everything for strangers.

That’s why he had the steady flow of different women.

Because he wouldn’t let anyone get close.

Why he had invested more time with her than he generally gave, she wasn’t sure. No doubt he regretted having done so, regretted having admitted the truth.

Not that he had to worry that she’d tell Charles. Jude’s secret was safe with her. It wasn’t her place to try to heal the rift between the two cousins, or to try to get Jude the counseling he so obviously needed that he couldn’t let go of a dead woman’s memory.

He’d put Sarah in her place tonight.

Her place wasn’t to interfere in his life in any shape, form, or fashion.

He didn’t let anyone interfere in his life, not friends or family or women. He kept them all at a distance and preferred it that way.

“You okay?”

Sarah blinked at her nurse. “Fine.”

“You zoned out on me for a few seconds. You’ve been running since you got here. You need a short break or a drink or something?”

Sarah shook her head. “Sorry. Got lost in my thoughts, but I’m fine. Who’s next?”

Every bay was full of smoke inhalation victims. Some with burns, some not. Every respiratory therapist in the hospital was administering oxygen and nebulizer treatments and whatever else was needed to keep airways open. Fortunately, so far only a few had had to be intubated, but from the calls they were getting from EMS, more victims were on their way.

Other hospital personnel were talking to family members and less critical patients who they’d stuck in the waiting area, offering drinks, blankets, and just a comforting pat on the hand in some cases.

All the acutely critical had been seen to and were being appropriately cared for. Now Sarah and the other providers would start chipping away at the overflow of minor injuries and other anomalies that had sent folks into the emergency room on a Saturday night.

Or so she’d thought.