Page 4
***
“We can only have tonight,” she’d whispered against my lips that last night.
She’d invited me up to her hotel room, and we’d both known what was going to happen. It had been inevitable really, the only surprise was that we’d been able to wait that long. I’d wanted nothing more than to strip her naked from the minute I set eyes on her.
“There’s always a long distance relationship,” I’d said. “Lots of couples do that. Or we could do something like in this movie my mama used to watch, where we plan to meet at the top of the Empire State Building some day.”
She’d shaken her head.
“This is real life Jeffers. There’s no happily ever after in real life.”
It was the most disillusioned thing I’d ever heard her say. When she was working on a patient, Clara was always deadly serious. But between patients, she was a ray of sunshine. A jokester. The person who cheered everyone else up in a difficult situation. I’d wondered at the time if all that sunshine was an act she put on to cover the darkness within. Then she’d reached down and wrapped her hand around my dick, and I’d forgotten all about anything but making the most of the one night we had together.
***
To this day, that one night with Clara remained the hottest and most memorable experience I’d ever had. We’d squeezed a lot into that one night, enough that I was sore the next day and she’d been walking a little funny when she kissed me goodbye and walked off into the sunset. Or onto the plane anyway.
“Jeffers?” she asked, a little crease forming between her eyebrows. “What are you doing in Houston?”
“I live here. And you?”
“Same.”
Noticing that people were watching our exchange with interest, she took a deep breath. I watched all the expression leave her face, her doctor’s mask fully in place. It wasn’t the warm welcome I would have imagined.
“How do you know the patient?”
“He’s my partner,” I explained, opening my jacket to show her the badge affixed to my belt. “We’re both with the Houston PD.”
She nodded.
“Your partner can’t wear a gun in my ER,” she said firmly. “I don’t care if he’s a cop, he’s too incapacitated to think clearly.”
“I’m not incapacitated,” Harrison protested.
“You just tried to choke me,” she said dryly. “I hope you wouldn’t do that if you were in your right mind.”
“Funny how that keeps happening to you,” I teased. “People choking you, I mean.”
Clara ignored me, turning instead to the nurse.
“Set up an IV and send for a neuro consult.”
She looked at Harrison, meeting his gaze squarely.
“I’m going to need to check your bullet wound. Do you want me to knock you out or can you take a local?”
“It’s fine Doc,” Harrison assured her. “It went clean through.”
Her expression didn’t change. “How about you let me decide that? Given that I’m the doctor and all.”
She walked a few feet away and returned pulling a cart. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, she grabbed a pair of scissors from a drawer in the cart.
“Let’s get you out of these pants.”
I cleared my throat. Clara’s eyes rose to mine and a slight flush rose on her cheeks, telling me that her thoughts had gone in the same direction as mine, the night she’d said those exact same words to me.
***
