‘Can we keep talking to him, guys? Tell him whatever you’re doing to him, yes? Do we know where the girlfriend is?’
‘She’s on her way in. They have a young toddler, so her father was driving to meet her to give her lift and look after the youngster.’
‘Right, he has been fitting now for forty minutes. Let’s push the phenytoin. If he doesn’t respond, I think we need to get an anaesthetist in here to put him into a medically induced coma.’
The team nodded as they began to cut Tom’s clothes away to clean him up and make him comfortable. They all knew that the longer the seizure continued, the longer Tom’s body was being deprived of oxygen, and so the more likely it was that he could suffer brain damage.
A medically induced coma wasn’t the most desirable option—the anaesthetic would stop the seizure, but Tom would need a tube inserted to enable him to breathe and would have a harder, longer recovery—but it would allow his body to get oxygen, ultimately keeping him alive.
The team worked quickly and smoothly—Logan was already proving a good doctor and leader—and they were soon rewarded by their patient’s seizure finally beginning to slow and then stop. After checking the patient’s obs, Logan moved to the head of the bed.
‘Hello, Tom, mate. Good to have you back. You’re at Seattle General and you’ve been seizing for around fifty-five minutes.’
Kat watched Logan’s interaction with the drained, exhausted patient, checking everything over again as the rest of the team began to disperse now that Tom had finally begun to settle. A whole room of patients was still out there, and it was no surprise when another nurse poked her head around to ask if Logan was free.
He stepped to one side and beckoned Kat.
‘I want to send him for a CT to make sure there’s nothing new going on in his brain that might have caused him to be fitting for so long.’
‘Right.’ She nodded.
‘Can you keep a closer eye on him until he goes up?’
Logically, she knew it didn’t mean anything that he’d chosen to ask her over any of the rest of the team. Yet a tiny part of her wondered if it was because he’d recognised her as a good ER nurse.
She hoped it was.
He was clearly such a skilled, experienced doctor, she could tell that he’d already impressed her colleagues. Was it really such hubris, the idea of equally impressing him?
No, whispered a voice in her head, but what is hubris is the fact that you’re reading so much into everything.
Irritated with herself, Kat straightened her shoulders and glowered.
‘Of course, Doctor,’ she replied professionally, before dropping her voice too low for anyone else but Logan to hear. ‘It is my job after all.’
No one but her could possibly have seen that hint of a surprised flare in his expression. Thankfully her back was to everyone else so no one could see her expression—or the rising flush in her cheeks.
‘I don’t need to be micro-managed,’ she muttered quietly.
It was so unlike her, yet she couldn’t seem to stop it and, for a moment, Logan didn’t respond.
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to let Logan’s reaction go to he
r head and start letting herself believe that he was bothered for personal, rather than professional, reasons. But that was just fanciful. Probably as a result of being unable to stop thinking about him for the past few days.
Then his eyes cleared and he acknowledged her brightly, efficiently. Professionally.
‘Thank you, Kat.’
And as he began to walk away, she berated herself for acting like such an idiot. So much for her earlier self-congratulations on being able to work so seamlessly with the man. Didn’t they always say that pride came before a fall?
‘Okay, Tom,’ Kat announced in her cheeriest voice, even though Tom was drifting into a deep and much-needed sleep. ‘Let’s see how you’re doing.’
With a sinking heart she knew she was going to have to find Logan later and apologise for acting so crazily. And then, just as she reached her patient’s bed, she felt someone take hold of her elbow and steer her down the corridor and into a deserted one.
Even before she swivelled her head to look at him, she knew that it was Logan.
‘What...what are you doing?’