Page 7 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

His eyes come up. Gray. Irritated. Something underneath the irritation that I decline to examine. "Are you always like this?"

"Only on days ending in Y." I draw up the lidocaine. "Small stick. Then pressure, no pain. If you feel sharp, tell me. Don't tough it out to impress me, it wastes both our time."

"Wasn't planning on impressing you."

"Good news. It's working."

I numb him and start irrigating, and he watches everything I do like he's grading it. When I set up my suture tray, he leans over to inspect it.

"You want to double-check my knots too?"

"Depends. Are they good?"

"Better than yours."

"You've never seen mine."

"I've seen your dressing." I nod at the soaked wad of gauze in the basin. "Field wrap, done one-handed, probably while yelling at somebody. C-minus."

"I was busy."

"You were bossy. There's a difference, and the difference is the C-minus."

Mr. Kessler laughs from across the ER, which turns into coughing, which puts the firefighter half off the bed before I put a hand flat on his chest and push him back down.

"He coughs, that's his job right now. Your job is to hold still and bleed less. Everybody in this room has a job. Stop applying for other people's."

His jaw works. "You're a real know-it-all with a stethoscope, you know that?"

"And you're a Labrador who thinks he's a doctor. Big, loud, no impulse control, convinced everyone needs fetching." I set the first stitch. "Hold still."

He holds still. He's good at it once he surrenders, which annoys me. His forearm is warm under my glove, corded, a burn scar near the wrist that's years old. He smells like smoke and something under the smoke, cedar maybe, and I focus on my knots because my knots are excellent and because there is no third reason.

"You're not from here," he says.

"Says the man in Chicago gear."

"I grew up here." Like that settles it. Like the Chicago stamped all over his gear is somebody else's problem.

"Well, congratulations. I'm a locum NP. Thirteen weeks, then the next town."

"Then what? Then thirteen weeks somewhere else."

He's quiet a beat. "So you pass through."

"I'm sorry, was that a question or a review?"

"An observation."

"Observe less. Bleed less. That's the whole program." Another stitch. My hands are steady. My hands are always steady. It's the rest of me I keep on a schedule.

"What about you?" I ask, because silence with this man has weight and I'd rather not carry it. "So, what's Chicago doing bleeding in my ER?"

The forearm under my hands goes to stone. Not a flinch. A door closing.

"Visiting," he says.

That's all. One word, sealed at the edges. Fine. I don't do backstories anyway. Backstories are how people get sticky.