The Shy Nurse's Rebel Doc

Sam seemed to have found an interesting oil stain on the asphalt. ‘Something like that.’

It was time for him to move. To wish his new colleague a good evening and then go and get on with what was left of his own.

‘So...do you know what happened? To Jess, I mean. The girl with the long QT syndrome?’

‘She was kept in for some tests but I expect she’s been discharged by now.’

‘I meant her management. Did she get put on beta blockers? Or is an implantable defibrillator on the cards?’

So she’d been waiting for him just because she wanted follow-up on a case they’d both been involved with?

Very professional but a bit odd to be doing it in the car park when she could have approached him at work at any time. Usually, if women went out of their way to talk to him, they had a very different agenda in mind.

Sam didn’t wait for him to respond. ‘I guess it depends on the genotype and the exact QT interval when it’s been corrected for things like gender and age.’

‘Yeah... You got it.’ A warning bell was ringing somewhere in the back of Blake’s mind. Sam clearly wanted to keep this conversation going.

She wanted...something...

He actually took a step forward to suggest that he had someplace else he needed to be. It could go two ways. Either she’d take the hint and give up or she’d reveal what it was that was really on her mind.

It appeared that Sam could ignore hints.

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m friends with Harriet Collins. From ICU?’

‘Yeah... I know Harry.’

‘She’d told me about the Specialist Disaster Response team. I heard all about that last callout you had, to that bushfire?’

Blake waited politely for the question he was supposed to answer but Sam seemed to be searching for what she wanted to say.

‘And?’ he prompted.

The movement of her chest as she took a deep breath caught his eye. That hint of cleavage in the low scoop of her T-shirt was even more eye-catching. He looked away swiftly.

‘And it’s the sort of thing I’d really like to be able to do myself. To be somewhere on the front line, in a crisis. To be part of an emergency response when it really counts. When it can be a matter of life or death.’

If he’d wanted to flirt with her, this was an ideal opportunity. He could make himself look pretty good by sharing a few war stories, too, if it went that far.

But it wasn’t going to go that far.

It wasn’t going to go anywhere at all.

‘You get that yourself. We get plenty of life or death situations in ED.’

‘But it’s not the same. We’ve got any amount of backup and resources in ED. It’s...’

There was a frown line between Sam’s eyes as, again, she tried to find the words that would explain exactly what she meant.

She didn’t need to explain because Blake understood perfectly well. Working in a well-equipped emergency department wasn’t as exciting. Or challenging. You didn’t have to dig deep and find out what you, as an individual, were really made of.