Mount Mercy

He looked away from the wound as his fingers moved. I do that, too: when you can’t really see what you’re doing, it helps to look at something else and go by feel alone. Except... he looked at me. At the little slice of pale shoulder blade above the neckline of my scrubs. At the copper hair that had slipped free at the side of my cap, a whole lock of it hanging down and grazing my cheek. I felt myself flush.

“There,” said Corrigan. “Got you, you bugger. Clamp.” A nurse handed him a clamp, and he clamped the artery.

Everyone held their breath for a few seconds. Then a nurse said, “Blood pressure’s stabilizing. Rhythm’s healthier, too.” There was a kind of awe in her voice.

“He’s still got a hole in his chest!” My voice was tight with panic.

“Well, feck,” said Corrigan. Not fuck, like before. Feck. It was lighter, gentler and very, very Irish. “If only we had a top surgeon on hand who could fix it.”

As he slid his hands out, his fingers brushed mine. That jolt again, like teenagers holding hands. Get it together, Amy! The guy was still going to die if I didn’t work fast.

I grabbed a suture kit and went to work. But this was nothing like working in the OR. I reached for some gauze but my fingers closed on thin air: I was used to everything being in its place. Then a nurse leaned against the gurney and the patient moved sickeningly under my hands, nearly dislodging a clamp. A supply trolley sped past me, missing me by an inch. An ambulance siren started to wail, just outside, and then there was a blast of freezing wind and loose paperwork blew across the room as the doors opened.

I couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. I could feel the panic rising up inside. I take patients’ lives in my hands every day, but it’s calm and controlled. Every step is planned. This was the opposite: a mad, confusing scramble with a guy’s life on the line. This is why I stay upstairs!

But out of all the eyes watching me, there was one pair that felt gentle. Sympathetic. I glanced up for a split second.

It was Corrigan. Watching, willing me to succeed.

And as I looked down at the wound again, feeling his eyes on me... somehow, I managed to slip into the zone. Everything else fell away and my fingers seemed to move on their own, sure and certain and quick. I heard one of the nurses mutter a curse, impressed.

I sutured the last bleeder and stepped back. “There.”

Corrigan’s gorgeous lips curved into a grin. “I knew you could do it.”

And beneath the teasing, cocky tone, there was genuine admiration. For once, instead of flushing, I stared right back at him, trying to figure him out.

He wasn’t prepared for that. And for an instant, I thought I saw it again: something beneath all that confidence and charm, something painful and deep. Something real.

I was still staring when Krista ran up to us. She looked at me. She looked at Corrigan. “Okay. What did I miss?”

I dropped my gaze. “Nothing. We’re taking this guy upstairs.” I kicked off the gurney’s brakes and heaved it into the elevator. I managed to do it without looking Corrigan in the eye again.

But it didn’t matter. I could feel his gaze following me until the elevator doors closed.

* * *

Upstairs in the sanctuary of my operating theater, with the knife wound guy on the table and Brahms playing on the speakers, I hoped life could get back to normal. But no.

“Corrigan’s been to Libya,” said Krista. “And the Congo. And Uganda. Doctors Without Borders.”

I met Krista two years ago, the day I arrived at Mount Mercy hospital. She’s a frizzy-haired firework of a person, my head theater nurse and my best friend. Normally, I love hearing all the hospital gossip, especially because, as we both agree, I have no life of my own. But today she was talking about Corrigan, the one guy I was trying to forget.

I tried to focus on the lung I was repairing but I couldn’t get into the zone. Playing in a loop in my head was the way he’d dressed me down...and the way he’d smiled at me. I couldn’t work out if I was mad at him or melting at him. Both?

“He’s been shot,” said Krista, awe in her voice. “He has bullet scars. Three of them. And a scar from a machete, right across his chest.”

I tried not to think of hard pecs or the way his body had felt when it pressed against mine. “How would you even know that?” I mumbled.

“Someone saw him in the locker room this morning.” Krista grinned. “The word they used was lickable.”

“Anesthesia still okay?” I asked. I was desperate now to change the subject. Every time I thought of those Irish eyes, a hot ripple went right down my body. If Krista noticed, it would start a conversation I did not want to have.