I find my clothes in a plastic bag, so I change into them quickly, the best I can with the tubes connected to me. I feel better once I have my shoes on again, and I set off down the hallway, rolling the IV stand with me.
As I make my way down the hall back toward the emergency room, I try to look inconspicuous. Not at all like a woman who’s just broken out of her hospital room. I really should call Ettie, or even Sienna, who’s surely setting up her stall in the market right about now.
Gus must still be in the emergency room. Unless they took him off for a scan, too?
If I didn’t have this damn IV bag, I could just go right up to a counter and ask for him. I pass several other wings and bays, smiling at anyone who passes. Some of the doctors give me an odd look, but nobody stops me.
When I get to the trauma center, I walk right in behind a woman pushing a tall cart full of equipment and come to stand next to the large circular desk in the middle of the room.
Doctors, nurses, and staff move around me, walking at a fast clip, pushing patients in wheelchairs, and wheeling along carts with trays of vials. This area of the hospital is a lot more frantic than the others, and it takes me a moment to gather myself enough to search through the place.
After a quick scan, I see a familiar mop of chocolate brown hair and the green tail of a dinosaur onesie I almost shut in the car door this morning. Both are moving fast, the little hop-hop of Gus’s trot.
“Gus,” I say, turning and walking toward him, but he disappears around the side of a curtain. “Gus!”
I stalk right over to it, heart thudding—if he’s up and moving around, surely he’s fine, right? When I get to the little section and whip the curtain back, I expect to see my son there, staring up at me with his gray-blue eyes.
But he’s not the only one in the room. Next to the bed stands a tall, handsome man with a sharp jaw, wearing a button-down shirt and nice slacks, talking to Gus, saying, “You’ve just got to stay in your bed, and?—”
He cuts off at the sound of the curtain moving and turns to look at me. At first I’m on edge, because he’s not in scrubs or a doctor’s coat, and I have no idea who this strange man is. Then I see the badge clipped to his shirt, bearing the navy-blue Burch Hospitals & Clinics logo.
When he sees me, the side of his mouth curls up in a way that is startlingly familiar. Everything about him feels like deja vu,from the broad shoulders to the way he towers over me, his eyes somehow gentle and cutting, all at once.
Maybe it’s the fact that he looks like every hot actor cast in every action movie I’ve ever seen. Under his shirt, it’s obvious his muscles are obscene—the kind you only get through concerted effort and meticulous dieting.
Never mind the fact that he’s definitely too old for me—my heart jumps at the sight of him there, like I’m actually seeing a famous person in my son’s hospital room.
“Ah,” he says, in a deep, familiar voice that sinks right into my chest. “You must be Mom.”
Chapter 5
Russell
At once, there’s something impossibly familiar about this woman, as she comes pushing into the room and right up to the bed, holding her arms out for the little boy.
She’s at least a full foot shorter than me, with honey brown hair that just brushes the tops of her shoulders. Of course, on my first day here at the hospital, I’d be confronted with a woman that’s just my type—supple and curvy, wide hips framed in tight jeans, a sweater pushed up around her elbow, where an IV drip is taped to her arm.
“Mommy!” the boy cries, throwing himself against her chest with the reckless, loose-limbed abandon that kids use, because they don’t understand how the impact might affect anyone with a body not made out of play dough.
She holds him, rocking him back and forth, and murmuring something to herself as she does. Obviously, the little boy has no concept of how bad their accident could have been, but he lets his mother hold him and sniffle, whispering about how happy she is that he’s okay.
Eventually, clearing her throat and placing another kiss on the top of his head, she pulls back and turns to me, her son still held against her chest. “Who are you?”
I blink at her, then look down at myself and realize I’m not wearing my doctor’s coat. I wasn’t supposed to be on the clock until later today, for a few easy scheduled preliminary appointments with new patients. The hospital’s other cardiologist retired, and I’m taking over all his pediatric cases.
This morning, I’d only come in to take care of some paperwork, but when anall-hands-on-deckcame in from the trauma center, I couldn’t stop myself from coming to the action.
There’s something alluring about the emergency room. Back when I was still trying to decide on a specialty, I’d explored the idea of sticking to the emergency department. The pacing felt good to me. Challenging.
But it’s all high-stress, quick decisions. With my father’s hands, I knew I could do more good as a surgeon. And if I’d actually chosen emergency, I never would have heard the end of it.
And though it’s not technically our family’s motto, it might as well be. Do more good. For Franklin Burch, it was never enough to simply do no harm, and as his son, I knew I would have to be better than that.
But today I came down here for a taste of it, and the first thing I saw when I got down here was a little boy dressed as a dinosaur, trying to climb out of his bed.
“I hafta find my mom,” he’d said, matter-of-fact. Cute and disarming in a way I couldn’t quite figure out. I’d just been about to check his patient chart when the curtain whipped open and she was standing there, the chaos of the trauma center behind her.
“Hello?” she prompts, which would be annoying from anyone else, but from her sends an electric bolt of awareness through my body.
