“And don’t you forget it.” He lowered his head to kiss me, and when I wrapped my arms around him, holding him near, what started out casual and light ramped up quickly to catch us both on fire once more.
“I can’t get enough of you.” He palmed one of my breasts. “What is it that makes me feel like this? We’ve just gone a couple of rounds, but I can’t wait another minute to be inside you again.”
I arched upwards. “So don’t wait. I don’t have anywhere to be until tomorrow morning, and neither do you. I’m yours all night.”
Deacon smoothed my hair back from my face. “I hope you don’t mind working sleep deprived, then, because I don’t think I’m going to be able to let you go any time soon.” He slid down, his mouth covering one nipple while his hand moved languidly between my legs. “If I have all night, I’m going to take you over and over again.”
And he did.
17
Deacon
“Welcome back to the floor, Donnie.” I grinned at Mr. Crew as I strolled into his room. Two weeks after his transfer to ICU, he was back in the oncology ward, dressed in sweat pants and a T-shirt as he sat in a chair watching television. He was a little thinner, maybe a bit pale, but overall, he didn’t look bad.
“Thanks, doc.” His smile was open and relaxed, completely different than the expression of hopelessness I’d seen on his face a few weeks ago. “I can’t believe I made it through, but here I am.”
“You’re strong, and you fought the good fight.” I leaned against a table. “I’m not saying that won’t have any more surprises along the way, but recovering from pneumonia and coming out the other side as well as you did is definitely a positive indication.” I tapped on the tablet. “We’re going to give another week to fully recover, and then we’ll start talking about your transplant. How does that sound?”
“It sounds like a winner of a plan, Deacon.” Donnie nodded. He hesitated a second before going on. “Listen, doc, I really appreciate that you didn’t give up on me. I know I wasn’t in a good place right before I went up to ICU, and you could’ve written me off then—I even asked you to do it—but you stuck by me, and you were right. I’m glad I didn’t die.”
I snorted. “I am, too. Believe me.”
“And that Emma—she’s something else, isn’t she?” He shook his head, his smile growing wider. “You know she came to see me every day that I was up there? And she stayed with me when the pincushion lady came to stick needles in me. After I came off the vent, the respiration therapist told me that he’d never seen anything like the way I’d tolerated the ventilator. I guess I’m some sort of test case now, and they might start using the acupuncture stuff on more patients who have to be intubated.”
I felt a warmth spread through me, the same rush of happiness I got every time I thought about Emma. This time, though, that flare of affection and want was mixed with pride in her accomplishments. She’d worked damn hard to help bring Donnie Crew through his stay in intensive care, and as a result of that, she was joining forces with the RTs and her acupuncturist friend to launch a study of the benefits of the therapy on vented patients. She was not only an asset to our patients; she was poised to bring even more positive attention to our hospital.
“She goes the extra mile,” I agreed with Donnie. I had to tamp down my impulse to sing her praises too loudly—despite taking our relationship to a more serious level, we were still trying to be discreet at work. I had a feeling that the nurses knew more than they were saying, judging by the speculative looks I’d seen whenever Emma and I were together in a professional setting, but I didn’t have any desire to be the subject of hospital gossip. And I sure as hell didn’t want to put Emma in that position either.
I finished chatting with Donnie and was heading back to my office when Jenny stopped me. The grave and worried expression on her face made my stomach clutch.
“It’s Angela Spencer. She was just admitted with a fever, nausea and diarrhea.”
I closed my eyes, all of the euphoria from Donnie’s recovery evaporating. “Fuck.”
“I know.” Jenny shook her head. “I mean, it might be just that she picked up a virus or something. Right?”
“Possibly, but we can’t rule out GVHD.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “We can’t treat it yet, either, though. We’ve got to wait and watch for a little while.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go see her now and check on what’s happening. Where is she?”
“Room eighteen. We’re pretty full right now, and the transplant suites are occupied—Mrs. Olsen was admitted yesterday to begin her transplant.”
I nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Jenny.”
As I walked toward Angela’s room, I steeled myself to be professional, to remember that as her doctor, I needed to maintain distance and boundaries. I could do this. I liked Angela and Noah Spencer, but in the final analysis, she was a patient, and while I would do anything medically possible to help her, I wasn’t solely responsible for her recovery. There were too many factors at play here.
All of those reminders evaporated when I stepped into her room. If Donnie Crew had looked ten times better this morning than he had two weeks ago, Angela looked a hundred times worse than she had when we’d discharged her. She was painfully thin, her face all angles and hollows, and her skin was paler than the white hospital sheets in which she lay. There was a lingering odor in the room that I recognized as an element often found around patients with persistent GI issues.
She turned to look at me, struggling to muster a smile. “Hey . . . Deacon. I missed you.”
“Yeah?” I cleared my throat and approached the bed. “Well, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble to see me. All you had to do was pick up the phone and invite me over. I love an excuse to visit the coast, you know.”
“Sorry. I haven’t been feeling much like socializing, I guess.” Her thin hand moved restlessly over the covers. “I haven’t been very fun to be around. I guess it’s all the bathroom trips and disgusting diarrhea. Not to mention the occasional throwing up.”
“Well, we’re going to take care of that. You came to the right place.” I noted the hanging bag next to the bed, the line going into her arm. “We’re giving you some hydration and working to help rebalance your electrolytes. That’ll help a little.”
“Can you give me something to stop the nausea? And the other aforementioned nasty symptoms?”
I hesitated. “We can help with the nausea, yes. But we can’t give you too much right off the bat, because we have to determine what’s causing all of this. It could be viral, in which case it has to run its course, and we’ll work to keep you as comfortable as we can until it passes. But it could also be graft versus host disease. You remember that we discussed that both before your transplant and again before we discharged you?”
