I frowned. “I realize that Oakley’s surgery is important and all, but obviously a woman pregnant with eight children can’t really help when she goes into labor.”
“No,” Ford agreed. “But Oakley had a setback last night.”
I felt everything inside of me still.
“What happened?” I barked.
Why did this news set my heart to hammering, and my hands to shaking?
Why did I suddenly feel lightheaded?
“Blood pressure tanked.” A third man joined the small huddle. Trance, their father. “Trouble breathing.”
I found myself stepping toward the room before I’d even consciously told myself to do it.
But before I could get to the room, the doctor came sailing out of it, saw me, and then clapped his hands together. “Good, you’re here. Come in here, come in here.”
I followed him into Oakley’s room where a second bed was set up and waiting.
“I wish I could offer you your own room,” Dr. Page apologized. “But the circus has arrived on this floor. This is also going to be quick and dirty. I have two operating rooms scheduled for twenty minutes. Octomom is getting the same emergency rooms in two and a half hours. As soon as all the NICU—neonatal intensive care unit—nurses arrive. We’re getting this done before them.”
My eyes moved from the doctor, who’d been standing in front of Oakley’s bed, blocking her from my view, to Oakley, who leaned over to see around Dr. Page’s body.
I grinned at her. But that grin quickly slid off my face when I saw that she had an oxygen mask covering her face.
“I’m in,” I said. “You just tell me what you need me to do.”
Dr. Page pointed to the bed. “Strip. Lose the legs. Make sure all metal is out of your body…”
“I was hit by a goddamn bomb, Dr. Page. There’s still pieces of shrapnel in me,” I told him, worried now.
He waved his hand through the air. “All removable metal.”
I nodded once.
“Let the nurses, if we can find a goddamn nurse, start your IV,” he continued.
I looked out at the hallway that was still buzzing like a beehive.
“I can do that,” Ford offered. “If you get me the stuff. That way you can go get your shit done.”
Dr. Page looked at Ford questioningly.
“Medic,” he answered the unspoken question.
Dr. Page’s eyes turned toward me. “You’re okay with this?”
I laughed. “I’m fairly sure that Ford’s worn more of my blood than I have, so yeah, I’m okay with that.”
“That’s true,” Ford said, looking down at my prosthetics.
“All right then,” Dr. Page clapped. “Let’s get this party started. Have a seat on this other bed, Mr. Vineyard. We’ll get you the stuff and Ford can get you ready. I’m going to go scrub up, and my nurses will be down to collect y’all momentarily.”
With that, he left the room, finally giving me the chance to look at the woman that I’d been dying to get a good look at.
She smiled at me through her oxygen mask.
“So you’ve gone and taken a turn,” I teased. “Didn’t I tell you last night to watch over yourself when I left?”
Oakley shook her head, but amusement was written all over her face.
“I don’t know what happened. You just took my breath away when you left,” she said through the mask.
That had the entire room chuckling.
“Okay,” Ford said as he came back into the room. “Strip. Lose the legs. Not even underwear. Then get into bed.”
“I won’t be able to stand if I lose the legs first,” I said. “Logistically, getting into bed’s gonna have to come first.”
Ford rolled his eyes. “I’ll hold the sheet up for your delicate sensibilities.”
I shrugged.
I’d gotten over the whole naked phobia a long damn time ago.
Ford had actually started that trend when he’d cut my clothes off of me in the field. From that point on, I’d been naked a lot.
So getting naked in front of a room full of people wasn’t as bad as it would’ve been in the beginning.
Shrugging off my shirt, I tossed it on the end of the bed, then walked behind Ford’s makeshift curtain and shucked my pants before I got in the bed. Moments after that, I was removing my legs.
The sheet slipped, though, and I knew that Oakley got more than an eyeful when she flushed a beautiful bright red and looked away.
Grinning, I took the sheet from Ford and covered my junk—my getting hard in the middle of a crowded room junk—and leaned over to finish removing my sleeve.
Once everything was situated, I swung myself into the bed, covered myself with the sheet fully, and then held my arm out to Ford.
“Do me,” I ordered.
Ford rolled his eyes, but inevitably ‘did me.’
While he started the IV, got me started on a bag of saline, and made sure that everything was ready to go, I watched Oakley.
Who I did not watch was Trance watching me watch Oakley.