Second First Kiss

Chapter 2

Jasher

Dr. Jasher Hotchkiss hustled out of the ER, heading back to his office, glad the sutures had gone smoothly and the monkey-loving woman’s bleeding had been stanched. For a few minutes, the woman’s life had looked touch and go. She’d passed out the second the ambulance doors shut. If it hadn’t been for the quick-acting Sage Everton, that lady might have been a goner.

Sage Everton. Wow. Hard to believe perfection could be improved upon, but it had been. Were her eyes a deeper violet? Her figure had certainly filled out in all the right ways since he last saw her. Since I last kissed her.

“Wow, first week in town and you’ve already seen some action.” Dr. McGreeley walked up, interrupting a very intense memory of some very intense action of a different type. “Heard about your heroic rescue at the Raspberry Days festival.” McGreeley was the general practitioner who’d performed any local surgeries until Jasher arrived.

“It wasn’t my heroic rescue.” Jasher emerged from one vein of his thoughts, only to be redirected to an image of Sage Everton, telling him off.

“Heard you got your shirt off to impress the female onlookers.”

“The animal’s bite nicked an artery. We had to apply more pressure and needed cloth. There was no gauze on hand.” And in the process, Sage may or may not have noted the shirtlessness. He’d caught the split second when her glance flicked across his bare chest.

Finally, time in the gym paid off.

“Betcha never had an on-the-scene medical emergency where you got to play Superman back in the big city.”

Wasn’t the guy listening? “Like I said, I wasn’t the one who provided the urgent care.” Sage had been the super one—super competent. But what was she doing back in Mendon? Hadn’t she left town after high school? Married that … who was it?

If she was married, Jasher should not be back-flashing to a kiss that had happened as a matter of commerce and as a dare from Danny Dooley. If she wasn’t married, she wouldn’t remember a one-time incident at a student council fundraiser’s kissing booth from a kid three years behind her in school anyway.

“Heh-heh. Trying to play the hero out in public to rescue that bad reputation of yours, eh?” McGreeley slugged Jasher hard in the back. “I hear whatever you did was a doozy. Half the patients I see tell me they’ll never set foot in a clinic with the name Dr. Jasher Hotchkiss on the door.”

Nice. Thanks for the reminder of what a persona non grata he was around here. And the reason he couldn’t wait to get away.

“In fact, from what I hear, that office nearly had to close down when Dr. Parrish married your mom. Too many cancellations merely by association with you. What did you do, dude? To tick off an entire medical region? Must’ve been awful, like you kicked somebody’s prize cow at the county fair.”

If only Dr. Parrish had shuttered his doctor’s office before dying and willing it to Jasher just because his stepson had a medical degree. It wasn’t Jasher’s idea of fun to be shackled with it now and stuck in Mendon again, Sage or no Sage. Just until I sell it. Then I’m back to the Knighton Knee Clinic where I belong. Sage should get out of this toxic town, too.

“Nah, not at the fair. It was at the rodeo.” Jasher walked faster. Maybe he could ditch McGreeley.

“Oh, good. Dr. Hotchkiss.” A breathless CNA in purple scrubs jogged up to him. At least someone was glad to see him. “You’re needed inside. Emergency appendectomy. Have you seen Dr. Babbage? He’s not answering his phone. Neither were you, for that matter. Come quick, though. It’s dangerously inflamed, the ER doc said. Ready to rupture.”

“No Babbage?” Jasher charged back into the hospital alongside the hapless CNA. “Who else do we have for anesthesia?”

“We have the staff nurse anesthetist.”

There was such a person? “Get hold of him, stat.” Jasher was already shoving his way into the scrubs closet. “I don’t want to perform emergency surgery on a patient who’s awake.” He yanked a pair of clean surgical scrubs from the rack. “Hurry.”

“She’s not a him, she’s a her, Dr. Hotchkiss. And she’s already here, prepping the patient.”

Well, at least there was that. “If it’s on the verge of rupture, we’ll need to be in surgery in a matter of minutes.”

The CNA took off, and Jasher stripped down and shoved his legs into his surgical clothes. Sure, Mendon Regional Medical Center served over fifty thousand people, but it was still rural, and had its serious backward moments. Like when the only anesthesiologist disappeared mid-workday.

Soon in his scrubs and surgical mask, he took off toward the O-R. He scrubbed in at the sink, mentally reviewing the techniques for appendectomy. As an orthopedist, he hadn’t performed one of these surgeries since his residency in Houston. Fortunately for whoever today’s patient was, during that time as a resident, Jasher had done them by the dozens. It should be quick.

“Patient name?” he asked a nearby nurse as he hustled into the operating theater. Lights were being placed, and he picked up the manila file to look it over. The information wasn’t even on a tablet. Country hospitals!

“Daniel Dooley.”

Danny Dooley! His high school friend—and the one who’d dared him to kiss Sage Everton. Too much confluence of past events today.

“And when I told him you’d be performing surgery he asked if he couldn’t have Cade Calhoun instead.”

“Nice. But maybe before Danny Dooley goes all the way under the anesthesia, you can tell him Cade Calhoun probably has spent as much time in surgery as I have, only he’s been the patient instead of the doctor.” Bull riders. Idiots.