How was it possible for her stomach to dip yet soar all at once? Her heart thumped wildly. And so loudly she imagined it could be heard on the other side of the hospital.
‘Oh, that’s good.’ Kat had no idea how she sounded so calm and even. ‘We c
an always do with more ER docs, especially at this time of year. So, who’s my first patient?’
‘No one, it’s the usual lull before all hell breaks loose later tonight. But, Kat, did you hear me? Comic Book God. Apparently he’s a former army trauma doctor.’
‘He should be a good addition, then.’ Even to her own ears her voice sounded tighter, squeakier than normal.
Gemma didn’t appear to notice. Not that it mattered, because before either of them could say anything more there was another flurry and the doors behind her hissed open.
‘He’s here,’ Gemma hissed, redundantly as it happened. Because—just like the other night—all the fine hairs stood up on Kat’s arm.
Great, that was all she needed—her own personal Logan Connors radar.
And then she heard the unmistakably smoky tones of his voice, greeting their colleagues and introducing himself. There was no choice but to turn around and look interested. Professional.
Right up to the moment when his gaze snagged hers. And held. She tried to look away, to move, but there was no breaking free. Kat found herself paralysed, and the worst of it was that some perverse part of her seemed to revel in that sensation.
It shouldn’t have been possible for him to look any hotter than he had the other night. Yet here, now, in his scrubs, he had to be the most lethally gorgeous male doctor she’d ever met in her entire life. Judging by the reaction amongst much of the female contingent standing with her, she was evidently not the only one to think so.
Yet even that fact wasn’t enough to set off the alarm bells in her head. Instead, deep inside, her stomach turned and twisted. One knot upon another, upon another.
Still, his gaze held hers.
She still could practically taste his kiss on her mouth and before she could stop herself she snaked her tongue out over the lower lip, as if to check. This time her stomach clenched at the way his eyes darkened. And she couldn’t pretend his undisguised reaction didn’t give her a bit of a thrill.
Right before a disgusted look flitted over his features, and he turned away from her.
At the kiss? Or at the prospect of them having to work together?
As she started her shift, something rolled and turned inside her, like a pit of baby snakes was in her belly. And it didn’t stop.
* * *
For the next couple of hours Kat worked steadily to care for the patients in her allocated rooms. Her heart both leapt with relief and sank with disappointment every time she called for a consult and a doctor other than Logan stepped into the room.
She might have known that luck couldn’t last. It was halfway through her shift when she was called to assist on a major incident only to find that Logan was the doctor running the shout. Her skin felt like it was tightening over her entire body.
All she could do, she decided as the EMTs rushed the patient towards them, was keep her head down, stay focussed, and work her way through it.
‘This is Tom—he’s twenty-nine,’ the emergency responder began. ‘He has a history of complex partial seizures and this seizure started approximately thirty-eight minutes ago. We were called by his girlfriend who said the seizure was different from any other she has seen before.’
Logan nodded his affirmation.
‘We’ve put a line in, and we’ve given him two lots of ten milligrams of diazepam. The last ten milligrams were at eleven-oh-three. He had a previous seizure yesterday that lasted for fourteen minutes and was self-terminating. He has recently had a dosage change in medication and has been having repeated complex partial seizures over the last couple of weeks. We’ve got a bag of his medications here.’
‘Great, thanks.’ Logan took the bag and began reading out the medications before checking the clock on the wall. ‘Let’s push another ten milligrams of diazepam. Can we also get some phenytoin ready, just in case he still doesn’t respond? Let’s also get some bloods.’
As Kat and the rest of the team began to move around the patient, Logan turned back to the emergency responder.
‘When you said the girlfriend said this seizure was different, do you know what she meant?’
‘She said it was just more aggressive. The convulsions were more frequent and more violent than any other time.’
‘Understood.’ He swung back to the team, moving forward to the nurse who was about to draw blood and touching the patient lightly on the shoulder. ‘Tom, we’re just going to put a needle in your arm to draw blood, okay, mate? Kat, can you hold his head? Let’s get him out of that soiled clothing.’
Kat liked it that Logan was caring for his patient, letting Tom know what was going on even though they didn’t know whether the man could hear them.