“That’s not really our remit,” he said. “We just patch people up.”
“Yes, well,” Not-Santa muttered. “I’m just saying. This is nothing to do with us, and you can tell the Pole that from me.”
Dylan stumbled. He caught himself and gave Not-Santa a quick, searching look as he tried to work out if he’d misheard or not. Maybe he had. Not-Santa didn’t look as if he knew he’d said anything out of the ordinary. In fact, he didn’t even look at Dylan as he stopped at the door to an office and rapped his knuckles pointedly on it.
“The paramedics are here,” he said. “Can we come in?”
There was a loud groan that sounded like a sheet of linen being ripped and a muffled answer. It must have sounded like “Yes” to Not-Santa, because he pushed the door open and gestured dramatically at the room on the other side.
Dylan stepped forward and cocked his head to look in.
A stocky man in a torn shirt stood awkwardly in the middle of the room next to the heavily pregnant woman slumped in what looked like a designer chair someone had dragged in from another room. She clutched one of his hands in hers, his fingers cramped and white-looking, while she held her belly with the other. Her head was hung forward, brown hair swung in a curtain to hide her face, as she panted raggedly.
”About time,” the stocky man grumbled as he looked up. “We could have had the babe named already—“
“No!” the woman blurted out. She tightened her grip on the man’s hand, her nails dug into his skin. “She’s not coming. I’m not ready. We were supposed to have another week.”
“Christmas baby,” Alice said as she started into the room. “That’s so cool.”
“Everyone thinks that,” Dylan said. “Trust me, it’s notalways.”
Alice gave him a startled look. Before she could say anything, the woman took a ragged breath as the spasm passed. She loosened her grip on the man’s fingers and looked up. Festive silver makeup was smudged around her eyes, and there was a bruise on her cheek, that precise shade of livid blue that would darken to purple in the next few hours.
“You!” the woman blurted out. Her face twisted with anger as she let go of the man’s hand and tried to push herself up out of the chair. It was a thickly cushioned, slanted cube that didn’t lend itself to easy exit. so she struggled. “What areyoudoing here?”
Dylan stretched his legs to get her to sit back down. As he reached her she freed one hand from the arm of the chair and slapped him across the face. Her palm hit his cheek hard enough to jerk Dylan’s head to the side and grate the inside of his cheek against his teeth. He tasted blood—hot and salt-fresh—before he felt the sharp itch of pain.
“This isyourfault!” the woman said furiously. Her body shook with a mixture of adrenaline and temper as she jabbed a finger at him. “This isallyour fault.”
The man in the torn shirt got over his surprise at the outburst and stepped in front of the woman. He glared at Dylan and raised his hand to ward him off.
“Back off,” he ordered, his brow furrowed in a scowl.
Dylan fell back a step and let Alice jump in instead. Whatever was going on, it wouldn’t help to escalate the tension. As Alice helped the woman back down into the chair and distracted the protective friend with a request for water, Dylan turned to Not-Santa, who gave him a judgmental look over his beard.
Yeah, Dylan supposed he could guess why. The “your fault” statement was suggestive, and some people didn’t have gaydar. Understandable or not, though, he didn’t appreciate the attitude from a hypocrite in a Santa suit.
“So, you said that this woman crashed your Christmas party?” he asked in a deliberately mild voice.
Not-Santa flushed and yanked his beard off.
Alice gave the woman’s knee a reassuring pat and then pushed herself to her feet. She jerked her head for Dylan to follow her out of the room.
“She really doesn’t want you there,” she said apologetically as she pulled her gloves off with a snap. The blue nitrile dangled from one hand as she used the other to smooth her hair back from her face, strands of blond stuck to her sweaty forehead. “It’s nothing to do with you, not really, but she’s adamant.”
Dylan took the gloves from her. He absently tied them into a ball and stuck them into his pocket to dispose of when they got outside.
“She doesn’t like men?” he guessed.
He wouldn’t have said it was common. Emergency medicine wasn’t like obstetrics, where the patient usually had the opportunity to vet their doctor. By the time EMS turned up at a scene, the patients usually only cared about getting whatever was happening to them tostophappening to them. It did happen sometimes, but it wasn’t personal.
Alice wrinkled her nose in a worried expression and then shook her head.
“No,” she said and tapped her finger against his chest. “She just…doesn’t likeyou.”
“Oh,” Dylan said, taken aback. He rubbed the back of his neck as he took that in. “I mean, OK. I suppose it doesn’t change anything, but…why? Do I smell weird to her or something?”
”No,” Alice said quickly. “The cookie cologne is a bit weird, but it’s nice.”
