Second by agonizing second, we started to claw our way back from the brink. The number of patients crashing slowly fell. First we could think, then we could breathe and, finally, I stepped back from one patient and looked around and there wasn’t another one waiting.
My exhausted brain couldn’t wrap itself around that concept. There must be something I needed to do. I hurried off to see who needed help but, as soon as I took a step, I staggered on legs that had become limp noodles. Strong hands caught me under the arms and a solid, warm chest pressed against my back. Lips brushed my ear, Corrigan’s voice a low, silvered rumble I felt as much as heard. “Stop.”
I was so wired on adrenaline, I tried to shake him off. But he wrapped his arms around my waist. “Stop,” he said again.
I stopped. I let my body flop against him and it was the best thing I’d ever felt: a big, warm, vertical mattress. As soon as I stopped, the tiredness soaked in. My arms hung limp and heavy from my shoulders and my fingers were throbbing and aching from clutching a scalpel. I felt used up and wrung out: I’d never been in such a state of tension for so long. I looked up at the clock. That must be wrong. It was eight in the morning when the shooting started. Now it was after three. Seven hours?!
“We did it,” he told me. “We saved them all. You did great, Beckett.” He looked at someone behind me. “You too, Taylor.”
I turned and saw an exhausted Taylor nod in thanks. Then I closed my eyes and the world became a big, warm, dark bath I could sink into. Corrigan’s chest was the most comfortable thing in the world. It occurred to me that I was in the middle of the ER and I wasn’t freaking out. It was still busy, still loud, still chaotic, but compared to the last seven hours it felt like a freakin’ Japanese meditation garden.
Corrigan gently turned me to face him. Warm fingers tilted my chin up—
I realized at the last second what he was going to do and my eyes flew open. For a second, all my shyness came back. This wasn’t like the cafe, this was the hospital, the middle of the freakin’ ER, surrounded by people I knew. I wanted to bolt, but his arms were like iron around my waist.
And then his lips met mine. I sort of squeaked, shrinking under him... and then I just melted and opened. There was a deafening hush as everyone stopped working to stare. I swear even a patient who’d been coughing non-stop went silent. Corrigan’s hand slid onto my cheek, his fingertips sliding into my hair. My surgical cap tumbled off my head and fell to the floor. There was an undercurrent of raw, sexual need: there always was, with Corrigan. But the kiss just throbbed with love. It poured into me, lifting me up right when I was at my lowest. I went giddy and light: my hands grabbed his shoulders and I clung on as if I was on a roller coaster.
I gulped and panted. Opened my eyes and saw Krista staring at me, open-mouthed. Then she grinned, but she gave Corrigan the look. You know the one I mean, the that’s my best friend so you’d better watch it look. I had a feeling that pretty soon they’d have the conversation. I got butterflies. No one had ever had call to have the conversation about me before.
When I looked back to Corrigan, he was staring down into my eyes with such helpless, possessive want, I swallowed and crushed my thighs together. Those eyes that had once been like a frozen sky had thawed completely, but it meant I could see the pain inside him fighting with the love. The more he felt for me, the more he felt he was cheating on Chrissy and Rachel. How do I get him to let go? And then a stab of guilt. Is it wrong to want that? I just wanted him to be happy, to be free!
Krista came over: but not for the conversation. At least, not yet. “I just checked Rebecca’s levels,” she said. “The Sorbitol worked. You could do the pyeloplasty... if you want to.”
I closed my eyes for a second and felt the room tilt around me. I still had no idea which was the right option: operate and risk Rebecca’s life, or play it safe but sentence her to a lifetime on dialysis. What if there was another emergency, while I was operating? What if I messed up? Krista, like Corrigan, was playing it carefully neutral. I understood why but it was maddening. Someone tell me what to do! I’ve never felt so alone.