The Passion of Patrick MacNeill (18 page)

She shook her head, dispelling her gloomy thoughts. She didn't get nearly enough sleep last night. Remembering how and why, her heart
stuttered,
and her body clenched deep inside. She could feel the foolish smile that curved her lips.

Maybe she wouldn't sleep tonight, either.

Yawning, Kate propped her feet on one of the lounge's molded plastic chairs and eyed the staff coffeepot. Whoever had poured last had left it to the next shift to brew fresh. The viscous sludge at the bottom looked bad, smelled worse and was nearly undrinkable. Even for her.

That was all right. She didn't need caffeine. Patrick MacNeill was already in her system, pulsing through her blood, waking every fiber and nerve, jolting her heart. Last night she'd taken an irreversible step, an unforgettable lover. A sudden memory shivered through her of his intent blue eyes and fiercely concentrated face as he thrust inside her.

In two and a half hours she would see him again. She wanted to pinch herself, either to keep awake or to make sure she wasn't dreaming. She struggled to review the situation with her usual professional detachment.

The best night of his life, he'd said. Could she believe him?

You deserve more, he'd said. Could she believe that?

No, she decided. No one and nothing in her life had prepared her to accept that a gorgeous flyboy like Patrick MacNeill, with his stormy eyes and lightning grin, his strong sense of honor and his deep love of family, would attach himself permanently to brainy, plain trailer trash Katie Sue Sinclair.

She hadn't been good enough to make her father want to stay. Her mother told her repeatedly she didn't have what it took to hold a man. Even after Kate had clawed her way through medical school, Wade certainly hadn't believed she was deserving of more. But Patrick had made her feel beautiful and wakened a longing as painful as hope in her heart. Lord, how she wanted, just once, to believe she could have more.

"Hi, there, Kate."
Owen Roberts, already in scrubs and white lab coat, bustled into the lounge and made a beeline for the vending machines. "You're here late."

Kate glanced at the clock on the microwave.
Four o'clock
. Rounds didn't start for another half hour. "You're here early."

The burly physician slipped in his change and punched in his selection. The machine whirred and chunked out twin; chocolate pastries.

"Wanted dessert," he explained. "Wanda's got me on a diet. So…" Behind wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes regarded her shrewdly. "How are you? Everything fine at home yesterday?"

Yesterday.
It took a moment for
Owen's
concern to penetrate the fog created in Kate's brain by sex and lack of sleep. He'd covered for her yesterday. Quick, betraying color warmed her face.

"Yes. Thank you.
And here?"

"Fine, fine."
He hesitated. "Gerry was asking for you."

Kate's heart sunk. Gerald Swaim didn't approve of the staff tampering with his precious duty roster. She could just imagine what he'd say if he knew his senior fellow was taking time off to baby-sit one of his patients. Not to mention the night she'd spent practicing her bedside manner on his patient's father. She fought to keep her face neutral.

Owen crinkled up his cellophane wrapper. "I wouldn't have said anything, but I thought you'd want to know. In case he mentions it."

He smiled at her tentatively, and Kate surprised them both by smiling back. For the first time, she wondered if their relationship as not-really-equals and not-quite-friends was as much the result of her own defensive attitude as the hospital's male hierarchy.

"Thanks, Owen. I appreciate it."

"Happy to help.
We're lucky to have you on staff. I told Gerry you deserved a personal day."

She was grateful for the
attending's
unexpected support, but his championship made her nervous. "I don't think Dr. Swaim believes in personal days."

Owen twinkled at her.
"Not for the interns, anyway.
But you're a senior fellow. You've covered for him often enough."

"I'm also a woman. I can't afford to conform to some stereotype by neglecting my duties here for my so-called personal life."

Owen brushed chocolate crumbs from his fingers. "Perhaps it's not having a personal life that's the problem. Perhaps it's the patient you're getting personal with."

Dismay flared. So he'd heard about the MacNeills.
Sharon
had warned her. Gossip multiplied in the corners of the hospital like staphylococcus.

Control kept Kate's face blank, her voice even. If she couldn't compose her emotions any better than some first-year medical student, she deserved the
attending's
censure.

"I do my job."

"Very well, too.
I just want you to have the opportunity to keep on doing it."

He spoke too kindly for her to consider his words a threat. He meant them as a caution, she supposed.

Before she could respond, Sharon Williams burst into the lounge. "Dr. Sinclair? Oh, Dr. Roberts, thank goodness you're here."

"What is it?"

"Apartment fire.
They're coming in now.
Multiple victims."

Kate and Owen were already rushing through the door, down the corridor to the hydrotherapy room.

"How many?"
Kate demanded, tugging a sterile cap over her hair.

Sharon
ran beside her.
"One adult female—the grandmother—and three children."

Children.
Kate's stomach clenched. She hated it when it was children.

"Who've we got?" Owen demanded, scrubbing his hands at the sink.

"Ernie."
Sharon
named the senior resident. "He's meeting the elevator."

Gloving, Kate could hear them coming down the hall, running feet, raised voices. Water hissed into the two huge steel tubs which would receive the burn patients.

"Take a team," Owen ordered. "
Ernie'll
triage."

"Got it," Kate said briefly.

Necessity and training took over. Adrenaline pumped through her, sharpening her mind and senses. Emotions shut down. She could hear her voice and
Owen's
voice weaving through the children's screams, the grandmother's sobs, the nurses' soothing murmurs.

"Run a line."

"Get a heart monitor on her."

"I want a line on this kid. I don't care if you can't find a vein."

"Hold her. Hold her. Get the bench in the tub. The water's too deep."

"Dammit, where's the IV? He's going into shock."

"We've got smoke inhalation. We need to move to ICU."

"Start a
trach
."

Kate watched her own hands, moving with deliberate urgency, fighting slippery bodies and splashing water and death. As she battled, time blurred, each moment, each task, frozen in crystalline precision, whole minutes disappearing in the rush to accomplish it all.

Hours later, they were done, the wounds washed and dressed. Four survivors hooked to fluid lines and pressurized oxygen rested in a double-room suite, to take what comfort they could from each other's presence. The mother had finally arrived from work. Owen was with her now, trying to help her make sense of what had happened to her family.

Kate dropped her mask and stripped off her gloves. The ebbing emergency took all her energy with it, leaving her drained of everything but fatigue. A headache trembled behind her eyes.

"Kate."
Sharon
touched her arm. "You have a visitor in the waiting room."

She nodded, missing the nurse's next sentence in her eagerness to finish up her business here and go home. She regretted her haste a moment later when she thumped through the unit's doors and stumbled unprepared on Patrick MacNeill.

He was too big, too male,
too
healthy.
Too much.
His dark eyebrows lifted, and abruptly she realized how she must appear to him, disheveled, drenched and stinking of scorch and antiseptic soap.

She swore.
"Dinner.
I forgot. Sorry."

It wasn't an apology, Patrick thought, or even an explanation. She looked exhausted, brittle, brilliant, vibrating like a jet propeller blade.
And none too happy to see him.

He stood slowly, spoke quietly, gauging her reaction. "I went to your apartment. When you weren't there, I called here. The desk nurse said you were almost finished up."

She rubbed two fingers just beneath her breastbone in a gesture he was learning to recognize. "We got the call right before I went off shift. I didn't even think… What time is it?"

"A little after six."
It was nearer seven, but he wasn't going to belabor the point, not with her face as pale as a saint's in his mother's missal.

He'd almost called this dinner off. They needed some distance—okay, he needed some space—to figure out where things stood after last night. The only thing he was sure of was that sleeping with Kate hadn't eased his itch for
her,
or his mind at all.

She was a busy professional woman. She didn't need distractions any more than he did. But now all he could see was that she was tired, uptight, and alone.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

This time he heard the regret behind the defensive challenge. Unable to stop himself, he raised his hand to trail one finger down her damp, smooth cheek.

"Stop apologizing. You're not the only one with scheduling conflicts."

Those tiny twin frown lines formed above her nose. He nodded to a corner of the waiting room where Jack scrunched in one of the child-sized chairs, coloring.

She controlled it, but he caught her tiny start of surprise. Well, what woman would expect a lover to bring his kid along on what could be called their first date?

"Do you really think we need a chaperone?"

Damn, she was quick. But he and Jack were a package. The sooner she accepted that, the better.

Patrick shrugged. "I couldn't get a sitter."

She turned those too-observant brown eyes on him. "And you've been gone almost a week. You wouldn't want to leave him your first night back anyway. Hey, Jack." She spoke softly, a measure of tightness easing from her shoulders. "What are you drawing?"

The boy tilted his head and slanted
her a
smile, still half focused on his big white art tablet.
"A get-well card.
For Grandpa."

She strolled over, kneeling beside him to take a look. Their heads were nearly on a level. The sight of those two faces, so dissimilar in features and coloring, so alike in their expressions of assessing interest, jarred something loose in Patrick's chest.

"Great pterodactyl," Kate commented. "
Orange
is a cheerful color. How's your grandfather doing?"

"Okay, I guess." He looked to his father for confirmation. "Better," Patrick said.
"Fighting with the doctors to go home."

Jack
swivelled
in his chair, confiding, "I told Daddy maybe you could go take care of Grandpa, but he said you had people to take care of here. Did you make them better?"

Kate rubbed her face with her hand in the first overtly vulnerable gesture Patrick could remember. "I'm trying."

He remembered their conversation the night of Jack's surgery. Her face bleached under the cafeteria lights, Kate had argued she found her work rewarding. She needed to feel she made a difference in her patients' lives, she'd said. He wondered how it was possible to hold on to that hope in the midst of pain and frantic action. Who soothed her when her work was done? Who healed her?

Admiration for her moved him. Ignoring her slight resistance, he slid his hand under the fall of her hair and massaged her tightly corded neck.

"Sometimes it takes a while to get better," he said.
"Even when the doctor does her job really, really well."

Jack nodded. "Like with my hand."

"Like with your hand," Patrick confirmed. They needed to get out of here. Jack needed dinner, Kate needed a break from the hospital, and he needed to take his hands off her before he embarrassed them both. "Anybody hungry?" he asked heartily.

"I'm starving," Jack said.

Kate pulled away. "I'm not exactly dressed for dining out."

He let her go.
For now.
"Yeah, well, with Jack along that romantic, let's-be-French restaurant I had in mind is out anyway."

She glanced down at her soiled blue scrubs. "I'm not even dressed for burgers."

"We can drive you home if you want. Wait while you change."

"Daddy, I'm starving to
death
."

Patrick suppressed a flicker of irritation at his son's near whine. They were already an hour past Jack's usual dinner time, and the boy had been remarkably patient waiting for Kate. He patted the pockets of his jacket for more snacks. "Have another cracker."