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“Okay. Guess so. Add this to my list of everything else and I’ll be okay. Just fine.” I tried to wipe the tears off my cheeks, but I had a gazillion tubes and wires hooked up to me that my hands couldn’t get there. My arms screamed with pain, which further impeded any movement. He took care of it for me as he took the corner of my blanket and gently dabbed my face with it.
“I’ll be in there with you. I’ll be holding your hand. The one that’s not injured.” He smiled then.
I don’t know if it was the morphine or the shock but me and my big sappy mouth blurted out, “Your smile.”
“Yeah? What about it?” he wanted to know.
“Amazing. Never seen anything like it in my life. Do me a favor?”
He laughed and said, “Sure, what is it?”
“Smile for me right before they turn my lights off, will you?”
“Um yeah, but, Alexia, since I’ll be wearing a mask, you won’t see it.”
“Oh. Didn’t think of that.” I tried to laugh it off, but I ended up making a weird sound instead.
Right then the team of nurses entered the bay and said, “Are you ready, Ms. Hammond?”
“Do I even have a choice?”
Pearce added, “No, you don’t. I promise I’ll be holding your hand.”
“Swear?” I blurted out.
“I swear.” And then he kissed me, a sweet gentle kiss on my forehead.
“Thanks, Doc,” I whispered as they wheeled me out.
PEARCE
When I got the call, I went to the hospital as usual, never expecting it to be her. And to see her like that. Bloody, beaten, stabbed. I almost tore the place up. How? Why? What the hell had happened?
My emotions ran wild. I immediately pulled myself off her case and called in one of my partners. Then I went into the locker room and punched and kicked in a wall. I’d be hearing from the administration over that one, but I didn’t give a shit. My girl out there was hurting. Someone had beaten and stabbed her, for fuck’s sake.
Wait, what was this my girl thing? She wouldn’t give me the time of day. I couldn’t even get her to go to goddamn dinner with me. The mystery surrounding this woman was baffling. I didn’t know where to begin with her or how to get her to let me in. And now here she was at the trauma center, injured, and me not knowing what happened. EMS brought her in after getting a call and that’s all I knew. I was headed to scrub in but stopped to see the patient on my way to the OR. When I saw it was her, I didn’t think I could hold it together. The staff stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
God, even as bruised and battered as she was, she was still perfect in my eyes. There was something about her that I couldn’t get out of my mind. The way she walked, talked, moved, everything. I just wish she’d give me a fucking chance and I’d show her the world.
Something had her scared, though. I don’t know what, but I was not going to give up on her. My goal was to break through her walls and find out because I absolutely had to get to know her. There was something between us that demanded exploring, whether she wanted it or not. I was not going to give up.
The team had to get her patched up first and then I was going to discover the mystery of Alexia. I wouldn’t leave her side tonight. No way would she go through this alone. In a way, I was glad I was on call because that meant I would only be a few steps away from her at any given time. The nurses were good too. They’d call me if anything came up.
My gut churned when she started crying and then told me my smile was amazing. That she could even think about that at a time like this. I wanted to take her into my arms and protect her with everything I had.
I kept my promise to her too. I stood by as they patched her up, holding on to her hand the whole time. I knew she couldn’t feel me, but the thought of her being all alone here just didn’t sit well with me. My partner who was doing the surgery, Jeremy Johnson, kept throwing me glances every now and then and I’d have to remind him to keep his eye on the patient.
“I’ve got this, Middleton,” he told me more than once.
“Yeah, well, you better have,” I growled back at him.
All the nurses sort of looked at me and the other techs in the OR were giving me strange looks too, but I could care less.
“Hey, watch that! You’re getting a little sloppy there, Johnson.”
He gave me a get screwed look but, again, it didn’t have the least bit effect on me.
“Middleton, if you don’t put a clamp on it, I’m having your rear end carted out of here. You got that? This is a routine procedure. You’re acting like … hey, wait a minute. What’s going on with you two anyway?”
