Her Family For Keeps

“Sure.”

Duncan observed the interaction between the two nurses who couldn’t possibly be more different in looks. Though Becky was certainly attractive, his gaze kept returning to Rebel. What an unusual woman she was. Of course, he’d run across unusual women before, but there was something about Rebel that kept taking his mind down a path he’d sworn never to go down again. Romance and dating was something he’d thought had died when his fiancée had been killed. His interest in sex had been on hiatus, but now was beginning to return as he watched Rebel beside him.

“Excuse me. I want to go see him first.” He stepped forward, leaving the two nurses to do the paperwork.

Rebel watched as he placed a hand on Amanda’s back, startling her from sleep in the chair. He exuded compassion and Rebel swallowed hard, crushing down the memory of being on the receiving end of such a gesture some years ago.

In a few minutes, Duncan returned, the lines in his face serious. “Can you tell me where your intensivist is? I’d like to speak to him or her.”

“Her. Dr. Barb Simmons. She’s in the charting room behind the nurses’ station. Drop-dead gorgeous blonde. Can’t miss her.”

With only a nod and no lingering glances of interest, Duncan left them.

“Let’s see your paperwork. I can help you fill it out,” Becky said.

As Rebel stretched out her arm to hand the paperwork to Becky, her arm seemed to go numb, and she lost her grip on the pages. They fluttered to the floor. “Oh, rats!” Hastily, she grabbed them and shuffled them back together. “Sorry about that. Lost my grip for some reason.” She knew the likely reason and it frightened her more than anything in the world. She was starting to show symptoms of the disease.

“That’s okay,” Becky said, and opened her bedside computer chart, distracting Rebel from her self-focus. Becky’s fingers flew over the keyboard and pulled up the data on Eric’s case.

“Any sense of how he’s doing overall?” Rebel asked, nurse to nurse. Experienced nurses developed senses that couldn’t be learned in a classroom or in books.

“Well, he’s deeply sedated right now.” She gave another sympathetic look. “I hate to even give you a guess because patients surprise me all the time. These little ones are so amazing. They spring back when you least expect it.” She sighed. “Then again, they take a downturn just as fast.” She gave that pout again. Once, Rebel got, twice was just unattractive.

“Thanks.” She looked behind Becky. “Can I go in and see him?”

“Absolutely. Just let me know if you need anything.”

Rebel could see Amanda half sitting on a chair, half lying on the bed beside Eric. Across the room a man sat with a computer on his lap, leaning back in his chair, fast asleep. “Amanda?”

The mother turned to Rebel, her face splotchy and swollen. “Yes?”

“It’s Rebel, the nurse from the ER.” She knelt beside the bed and placed her hand on Amanda’s back, the same way Duncan had. “I came to see how you and Eric are doing.” The words sounded trite. After all, how could any of them be doing after such a life-altering event?

“He’s going to die. I know it.” Her voice was just a whisper that spoke to Rebel’s soul, which had seen so much pain in her own family. Somehow, there had to be hope, even if it was just a little.

Trying to be encouraging without giving false hope was a tricky dance. “I just reviewed his chart with Nurse Becky and things look pretty stable right now.” That was the truth. At least for the moment.

“Then why hasn’t he opened his eyes? Why doesn’t he respond to me?” Frustration shot out of her like electricity.

“He’s being heavily sedated. When kids are on the respirator they get wiggly and won’t let the machine do the work.” That was true, too.

“Why didn’t anyone explain this to me?” She raked a hand through her hair in frustration then clenched her fists in her lap. She looked as if she wanted to hit something.

Rebel knew this information had likely been explained more than once, but due to stress of the event she hadn’t remembered it.

“Just keep talking to him. He can hear you.” Hearing was the last sense to leave before death. People who returned from seemingly unrecoverable events often did, and were able to relate stories of hearing everything going on around them but being unable to respond at the time.

“I didn’t know whether he could hear me or not.”

“He does. Just give him your love. Just let him hear your voice.” That was the one hope she’d held on to when her brothers had died, that they had heard her voice and had known she loved them. “He may not respond to you right now, but he will hear you. It will be your voice he recognizes and responds to. If anything is going to pull him out of this, it will be you.”

“Really?” Shocked, Amanda looked at her child, then back at Rebel, trying to determine the truth.

“I’ve worked with many patients who have awakened from comas, and that’s the thing they all had in common. They heard their families and knew there was someone with them.”

“Do you think he can…make it?” She pushed her hair out of her face.

“I don’t know, but for me to go on as a nurse I need to have some hope.” Rebel squeezed Amanda’s hands as she echoed Duncan’s sentiment and choked down her own emotion that wanted to swallow her whole. This moment was not about her own grief and loss but about the recovery of Amanda’s child. “It’s never easy, but don’t give up.”

“I don’t want to…but I’m not getting much support…” she glanced at her husband “.from anyone.”

“Men like to fix things and feel powerless when they can’t.” She thought about Duncan. He was definitely a fixer.

“You are observant.” Amanda offered a smile at that bit of wisdom.

She leaned over and spoke into Eric’s ear, then gave him a kiss on the forehead, careful not to bump any of his tubes. “Just remember, there is always hope.”

Eagerness and a little hope now showed on Amanda’s face.

“I will.” She stroked Eric’s forehead. “I’ll talk to him all the time now. Thank you.” Tears welled again in Amanda’s eyes. “Thank you. You’ve given me more hope than I’ve had since this all happened.”

Unable to bear the onslaught of emotions dredged to the surface by this situation, Rebel pushed them aside. She backed away before she lost control and turned to dash out the door.

And ran right into Duncan’s arms.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_e7e2e402-aa1c-57de-8bf7-a9afc067f8ad)

DUNCAN REACHED OUT just as Rebel crashed into him. The only way he would not bowl her over was to grab hold of her hips and bring her close against him. The papers in her hands flew into the air and seemed to drift in slow motion to the floor.

He pulled her against his hips with one arm and braced them against the doorframe with the other. Eyes wide in shock, she clutched his upper arms with both hands and caught her breath with a squeal.

With her trim frame and lower body weight, she would certainly have bounced off of him and landed on the floor had he not caught her. Now that he had caught her, he found himself in a very interesting position. Holding her was inappropriate, yet letting go of her seemed equally so. She was tiny beneath the figure-erasing scrubs. It was a crime against man to cover up such a beautiful body. He looked down at her and realized that if he’d wanted to kiss her, she was in the perfect position to do so.

He watched as she licked her lips and pressed them together. What an enticing mouth she had. Unfortunately, he had to release her before any opportunity to taste those lips occurred. As a man experienced in the ways of romantic coworker relationships, that was a treat best left unsavored. “Sorry about that. Are you okay?” Reluctantly, he released her. With some amusement he watched a vivid blush cruise up to her neck and into her cheeks. She was not as unaffected as she pretended to be. Interesting. Off limits, but very interesting.

“Yes, sorry about that.”

They retrieved her paperwork, and she shuffled it back in place. They left the room with a respectable two-foot distance between them. Duncan had had enough of losing the women in his life. His mother, a sister and his fiancée. The last one had about killed him, and he’d sworn off of emotional relationships for a while to rest his heart and soul. Rebel was the most interesting woman he’d run across in a long time and, still, he hesitated. That last relationship had burned him to the core, and he hadn’t really recovered from it. She’d been a colleague, too. He paused, thinking. Perhaps it was time he at least tested the waters again.

“It’s Duncan, please. And it was just a little accident of timing. No fault.”

She cleared her throat, focusing on the tile pattern on the floor. “So are you going to help me cheat on this scavenger hunt, or what?” She quickly diverted the conversation.

“No.” He snorted. As if. But he did like a challenge.

Her gaze flashed to him. “No? So how am I going to get through all of this without dying of hunger or thirst? We are in a desert, you know.”

He gave a quick laugh. He liked humor in his coworkers. Made shifts a lot more interesting. And it was safer than where his thoughts had been going. “Isn’t there a map on there?”