“I moved back to Boston for her,” I explain. “We fell in love, and now we’re married.”
I smile down at her while keeping an eye on him.
“You stupid bitch!” he snarls. “How could you do this to me? You’re my girl.” He shakes his head. “No way. This isn’t real. I know it’s not. What the hell is going on?” He goes to grab her, and I knock his hand out of the way before he can touch her.
“Skylar, can you grab our drinks from the café? They’re already ordered and paid for. I’ll see you upstairs. I need a moment alone with my resident.”
Before she can argue or say anything, I grab Josh by the back of his neck and haul him over to the side of the lobby and into the hall that leads to the bathrooms and a storage room beyond it. I slam him into the wall, use my forearm as a band across his neck, and get right up in his face.
I want to punch him. I want to hit him so badly.
But after my ex’s husband sued me for hitting him and given the fact that we’re in the hospital and I’m on duty, I won’t take the risk.
“Listen here,” I seethe, using my extra couple of inches to my advantage. “You will never speak that way to my wife again. She broke up with you nearly two months ago. Get the fuck over it and move on. If you don’t leave her alone, I will destroy you. Not just professionally, which I can do, but physically and personally. I will rip you apart with my bare hands.”
His face is ruddy with anger and the fact that I’m applying some pressure to his trachea.
For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. He glares defiantly up at me, weighing his response because he can tell I’m not fucking around. But he’s also not the sort of guy to have his pride wounded and let it go. I press harder, wanting to kill him. I actually want to kill him for how he mistreated her. I don’t understand men who feel the need to hurt women. Who get off on making them feel small or scared or weak when it’s actually them who are.
Skylar’s sass and confidence are undeniably some of the sexiest things about her. And he tried to steal them. To stifle them. Simply because it made his insecure, pathetic ass feel better. What a fucking loser.
He doesn’t deserve her, and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve her baby.
“Am I understood?”
“Yes,” he rasps hoarsely, but he’s smiling. It’s a cocky as all fuck smile too. It’s one that’s telling me that despite the yes on his lips, this isn’t done for him. He views Skylar as his, and a ring on her hand isn’t going to change that.
I pull back, releasing him, and he sucks in a sharp breath. Before I can do something else that I shouldn’t, I storm away, my fists clenched, my jaw locked, and fire seething from my pores.
I twist my band around my finger as I press the button for the elevator. People surround me, anxious to get where they need to be. Rounds start in about ten minutes, but suddenly my phone goes off. I pull it off my hip and check it.
Trauma surgery to ER stat.
Shit. It’s going to be one of those kinds of days.
I have no idea if they texted Josh too, but I jog away from the lobby, around the corner, and down the hall to the emergency department. My badge swipes along the pad, and the solid double doors open, allowing me to enter the patient area.
The nurse’s station is hopping with the change of shift, but one of the nurses catches my eye, and points down the hall. “Trauma two.”
I throw a hand up to her and move down the hall, grabbing a trauma gown, goggles, and gloves as I go from a tray in the hall, donning them as I walk. Using my back, I enter the room to find an unconscious infant on the table. Jesus. This fucking shift.
Stone is working the case, and he gives me a quick nod, even as he works to intubate. “Eighteen-month-old unconscious and unresponsive on scene. He somehow managed to climb out of his crib this morning and went straight over the edge. He’s hit his head and has a distended abdomen because he bumped the dresser. Vitals are okay but not great, with a heart rate in the one-sixties and blood pressure sixty over forty. We’re trying to stabilize and get him to CT.”
“Fell out of his crib?”
“Yes.”
Fuck. I come over, pulling my stethoscope off and putting the earpieces in so I can listen to his abdomen. Bowel sounds are absent, and as I palpate, his belly is tense with deep purple bruising on his upper right quadrant.
“Parents found him immediately after and called nine-one-one.” Stone finishes the intubation with the meter showing yellow, which means it’s in the right place. “I want a C-spine X-ray and abdominal CT now. We also need a full neuro workup as well.”
“Neuro is on their way to evaluate. Central line is in,” one of the residents tells us.
“Fluids up and onboard,” the nurse announces.
“Abdomen is rigid. He’s bleeding from somewhere. Where are the parents?”
“In the waiting room,” Stone states.
