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52
Save the World
Faith
Surrounded by the quiet chaos of the hospital’s intensive care unit, I stood inside the nurses’ station, completely out of my element.
Overlooking Dom and the rest of the team racing to stabilize the patient after getting his pulse back, I silently prayed for them with my hands clasped at my mouth.
Every day, I learned and loved a little more about this grown-up Dom. Though being part of his world was my honor since the day we met, I couldn’t have been prouder than I was at that moment — not only that he was mine, but that someone like him existed.
Despite the madness happening all around him — the alarms, the equipment packages being tossed back and forth, and people rushing in and out of the room — he barked orders without even pausing to think about them.
When I say he was smart, that doesn’t do him justice. I’d met many intelligent doctors in my work life but never spoke with someone with a tenth of Dom’s brainpower and humanity.
Another thought crossed my mind, though, as I watched him monitor the telemetry.
Underneath that beautiful mind that memorized every book he ever read was a fragile psyche that unraveled without someone to cling to. It made me wonder if his illness was some kind of trade-off, a cruel twist of fate like the gods trying to keep the balance in him so he never got too big for his britches.
Snapping me from the inside of my head, Kim collapsed back into her chair, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Thanks so much for being here, Faith.”
I slid a cup of ice water I had waiting for them toward her. “Right. I’m shaking in my boots over here. I’m sorry I can’t be more of a help to you guys.”
She sucked up a long drink and flapped at her face to cool off. “Are you kidding?” Lifting her cup at me, she pointed at it. “Just doing this stuff and fielding phone calls for us is such a big help.”
An alarm in the room started blaring, and Mark and Dom rushed to secure some tube in the patient’s throat. “I couldn’t do what you guys do every day. I’d be a nervous wreck all the time.”
Kim pushed the empty cup away from her. “Yet here you are right now, doing what we do, looking all cool, calm, and collected-like.”
Dom looked up from what he was doing, tilting his head this way and that until he found me. “Dom has always kind of had that effect on me.” I realized what I said sounded so teenage-schoolgirl-crush, and I groaned at myself as she peeked up at me. “I only mean he has enough confidence for all of us. Doesn’t he?”
She smiled and went back to whatever she’d been working on before she had to rush away. “I understand what you’re saying. And yes, when shit hits the fan around here, he’s the doctor you want to look up and see running down the hallway.” Her head tilted back and forth as she typed. “So, that’s why we’re all really happy to hear the scuttlebutt about him and his high school sweetheart moving in together. We think that’s great.”
I smiled at the countertop and nodded because trying to keep a secret in a tiny place like that was pretty much pointless. “He thinks very highly of all of you guys, too. So, I’m glad that you approve.”
The phone rang, but when I reached for it, Kim hit the speaker button instead. “ICU, Kim. You best not have another patient for me after the train wreck you sent us earlier.”
The male nurse on the other end scoffed a laugh back at her. “Sorry about that. No. Unfortunately, I’m calling to let Doctor Vasser know we’re admitting his mother to observation.” Kim cringed as she rushed to turn down the volume when he let out a breath that screamed annoyed. “She’s fine, but she has a little scratch on her head you’d think is about to kill her. So, she insists that her son come save her from all us uneducated knuckle draggers right this second.”
From the eye roll Kim gave me, I understood she’d been on Dom’s mother’s shit list before, too. I didn’t wish that kind of headache on anyone, including myself. But I seemed to be the only one around here not doing something important, so I laid my hand on Kim’s shoulder as she hung up the phone. “I’ll go deal with her. Just avoid telling Dom until everything calms down, if you don’t mind.”
She brought her hands together, “Bless you,” as I went around the corner of the desk. Checking to make sure Dom didn’t duck his head out to figure out where I was going, I crept backward toward the back staircase.
On the opposite wing from my unit downstairs, a tiny four-bed observation area opened up to me when I pushed the double doors back to sneak in. “Which room is Donna Vasser in?”
Staffed with only a single nurse, she widened her eyes and shook her head to warn me of what I was walking into. I smiled back at her. “It’s okay. She’s” — I paused a second before I shrugged — “my soon-to-be mother-in-law, so...”
She shot me a sympathetic smile and pointed her pen at the corner room. “Good luck with that.”
Fluffing her own pillows when I walked through her door, Missus Vasser rolled her eyes closed as she shook her head at me. “Get out.”
I never cared for the woman, anyway. But after that conversation with Dom earlier, I didn’t have an ounce of respect or patience left for her. Not one. Pulling the chair away from the wall, I sat down next to her bed. “Trust me, nothing would make me happier than never seeing your face again.”
I piled my hands on each other over my belly as I slid down a bit, and she arched her brow at me as she spoke loud enough for the nurse to hear. “I demand to see Dominic now.”
Using my foot, I pulled the door toward me until I could reach it, then shut it entirely. “Well, that’s not going to happen because he’s a critical care doctor, and he doesn’t tend to patients on this unit because you are not critically ill.”
I worked my feet out of my shoes a bit to be more comfortable. “What you can have is me taking care of you. Because there’s no way in hell I’m going to let you bother everyone with some frivolous complaints when people are actually hurt and dying right now.” My eyes shut as I took a deep breath, satisfied that I had the upper hand with her for once. But I was mostly happy I could do this one thing for Dom while he saved the world. “So, just sit there and be quiet unless you need something.”
