Back To You (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance) Read online

  “This isn’t on you, Parker. We were both hurting so much more than we realized, and neither of us knew how to cope with that. You say you should’ve stayed, but I shouldn’t have pushed you away. It’s easier to realize what we should’ve done now, in hindsight,” she said softly. So much of it made sense now, as much as it also still ached. “But the truth is, I don’t think either one of us could’ve done those things at the time. You were too mad and hurt to push past your feelings, and I was too sad to open up to you, or anyone.”

  Parker sat silently for a minute before turning to look at her, his shoulders firm against the gym wall. “I guess we both hurt each other, then, huh? Both of us wrong, and both of us right.”

  “Yeah,” Charleston whispered.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  She looked back at him and gave up the truth. “I don’t know.”

  She hadn’t thought she’d even see Parker again, let alone have a conversation with him about how their marriage had ended. To say that this was unchartered territory was a massive understatement.

  And to say that she didn’t feel the way he was looking at her right now, his stare so full of hot intensity that she felt it under her skin, was a massive lie.

  “We could start over,” he suggested, and Charleston couldn’t help it. She huffed out a laugh.

  “What, like we just met?”

  “Sure.” Parker bent his knees, propping his forearms over his thighs with a shrug. “Why not?”

  “Beeeeecause I slept with you the night we first met.” Her cheeks flamed at the way the words had barged right out of her, but then Parker laughed, too, and God, they were a hell of a pair.

  “I’m not saying we have to repeat history,” he said. “Just re-write it the right way, as friends.”

  “Okay, but things are different now. I’m kind of your teacher,” she pointed out. Just because it was temporary didn’t make it any less true.

  Not that Parker didn’t counter, and counter well. “You might kind of be my teacher, but I kind of have a lot to learn. Plus, just because we’re working together doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, too.”

  “You really want to be friends?” The question damn near stuck in her throat. Their history was a giant bag full of love at first sight, excruciating loss, and a metric ton of anger and resentment. Could moving past that once and for all really be as simple as a reboot?

  “Sure,” Parker said, all ease. “I mean, yeah, it might take a little time to process all of this, but we’ve always been compatible, Charlie. We liked each other once. Remember?”

  He nudged her shoulder with his, prompting her to laugh. “We did,” she said.

  “Look, I don’t know if starting over will be easy.” His expression backed up the words by sobering a notch. “I don’t even know for sure if it’ll work. But I do think it’s worth it to at least give it a try. We’re here together for the next nine weeks no matter what.”

  Realization hit Charleston like a delayed reaction, springing her chin upward. She was here to do a job, and she had to finish it. “We’ll still need to keep our past on the down-low. If Langston found out—”

  “If Langston found out, it would be bad for both of us,” Parker said. “I’m not interested in being on his shit list any more than you are.”

  “I need to make sure Tess’s job stays safe. I promised her I would.”

  “Guess that means we’ll be spending a lot of time together. I’m okay with that if you are.”

  Parker’s smile was contagious—he’d always known exactly how to temper her seriousness in a way that balanced her out instead of canceling her out—but she raised a brow in an effort to at least keep some of her composure intact.

  “I have very high standards for my students, Dr. Drake. You might want to be careful what you wish for.”

  His smile became something else altogether, some cross between a promise and a deep, dark dare, and Charleston felt the full force of it as it sailed right into her.

  “I have very high standards for myself, Dr. Becker. I know exactly what I’m wishing for, and I’m not going to stop until I get it.”

  13

  Parker reached into his locker and grabbed his doctor’s coat, wishing like mad that the IV coffee drip was a real thing. He’d finally given up on sleep that didn’t involve tossing, turning, or some combination thereof at about three AM. But his brain had been too restless to study, his body too tired to hit the 24-hour gym to finish his missed workout, so he’d opted to lie awake and give in to reliving the conversation he’d had with Charlie in vivid, gut-punching detail.

  God, hindsight was a nasty bitch. Parker had been so sure Charlie had wanted to move on without him six years ago, so certain he’d tried every way he’d known how to reach her, to get her to open up. Yet she’d been there, hurting, and he hadn’t been able to help her. Fuck, he hadn’t even been able to see the depth of her pain.

  Shifting back from his locker, he anchored himself back in the here and now. As much as it stung to replay it all now, Charlie was right. He had been too mad and hurt to push back then, and she’d been too sad to let him in. They couldn’t change what was done, no matter how much either of them might want to. The only thing they could do now was move forward.

  Even if, despite every common-sense bone in his body, Parker wanted her now more than ever.

  “Can an intern die from doing too many rectal exams? Because I really feel like legitimately, that’s a thing I might die of today.”

  Annnnd segue into reality. Parker bit back his laugh, clanging his locker closed and turning to look at the bench where Boldin had sprawled out.

  “Let me guess. You’re on Higgins’s service?”

  “I heard the man hasn’t actually done a full workup of his own in like, a decade,” Boldin said on a groan. “He always has the interns do them, unless the patient is bleeding out all over the floor. Then, he gives the case to a resident, and half the time, he hands off the surgeries, too.”

  Vasquez scowled into her coffee cup and leaned against her own locker a few feet away. “How are you complaining about that?”

  “Did you not hear the part about the rectal exams?” Boldin asked, as if she’d lost all her faculties.

  Funny, she looked back at him with the exact same expression. “Okay, but at least you have a shot at seeing the inside of an OR.”

  “Right. The only thing harder than getting an attending to let you scrub in on a surgery is getting a resident to let you scrub in on a surgery. They need someone to pass all the rectal exams to when they’re doing all the cutting. Which is exactly how I know what I’ll be doing all day, because—spoiler alert—it’s exactly what I did the last two times I was on Higgins’s service.”

  Having been on Higgins’s service recently himself, Parker couldn’t argue the validity of anything Boldin had said. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m with Kendrick today,” he said. “Which pretty much guarantees there’s going to be a whole lot of crying and puking in my future, and only most of it will be done by the kids we see.”

  “Oh, that does make me feel better,” Boldin said, brightening as he pushed up and looked at Vasquez. “Whose service are you on?”

  “Sheridan. He’s arrogant—”

  “And gorgeous”, Young interrupted, coming around the corner from the section of the intern’s locker room that housed the bathroom stalls and sinks. “Just saying. The man is delicious enough to eat with a spoon.”

  Vasquez rolled her eyes, capping the move with a snort. Damn, girlfriend was tough. “Please. Do you honestly think I’d be willing to risk something as important as my internship over some casual sex? Even with a guy who looks like Sheridan?”

  “I don’t know,” Young said thoughtfully. “He’s pretty much a legend. I know a woman from med school who knows an ICU nurse over at Northside who swears he’s the orgasm whisperer. She said the sex was so mind-scrambling, she almost passed out. Literally.”

  Parker’s brows popped. “That is pretty mind-scrambling.”

  “And not a blow to a regular guy’s ego at all,” Boldin grumbled, and both Parker and Young laughed.

  “You’re just grouchy that lady cop—what was her name? Allison?—”

  “Addison,” Parker interjected. He’d known Addison Hale for pretty much the duration of his time at Station Seventeen.

  Young snapped her fingers. “Addison, yes! You’re just grouchy because she shot you down last night at The Crooked Angel,” she said to Boldin, who continued to grumble, but didn’t argue outright. “Anyway, it’s not as if doctors never fraternize. With how much time we all spend together, it happens a lot.”

  Parker’s pulse kicked, then kicked again when Vasquez answered. “Not if Langston is your chief, it doesn’t. He probably wallpapered his bedroom with the hospital’s employee code of conduct. If two of his employees were doing the no-pants-dance—and an attending and an intern, no less? He’d probably pink-slip them both into next month.”

  “You may have a point,” Young conceded.

  All business, Vasquez shifted the topic. “So, if Drake is with Kendrick and Boldin’s with Higgins, and I’ve got the Orgasm Whisperer, that leaves you with Becker today, huh? Good luck with that.”

  “Really,” Boldin nodded, turning back toward Parker, whose pulse was still having a field day in his veins. Damn it. “You took off last night after shift. I thought you of all people would want to come out for a beer.”

  Parker dialed his expression to its most easygoing setting, as if the last thing in the universe he could or would have done last night was have a highly emotional come to Jesus conversation with his ex-wife, who just so happened to be A) their attending, and B) still wildly beautiful. “Oh, yeah, no, I hit the gym and went home.
” Mostly true. “Wait, why me ‘of all people’?”

  “Because you were on Becker’s service yesterday. I heard she had you captaining the barfmobile down in the ED.”

  Before Parker could reply (and that was probably a good thing), Young said, “That’s no different than Higgins having you do all those rectal exams. For Chrissake, we’re interns. At least now, we get to treat some of the patients. Even if it does feel like the nurses get to do cooler procedures than we do most of the time.”

  The ominous sound of a throat being cleared sounded off from behind them, freezing Parker—and all three of his colleagues—to the floor tiles of the locker room.

  “So glad to see you’ve all got spare time this morning,” Dr. Kendrick said, and whoa. For such a petite woman, her stink-eye was pretty goddamned spectacular.

  “Dr. Kendrick! I, um—”

  “Save it, Young. Although a word of advice? Don’t begrudge the nurses anything. They bust their butts, and as of right now, they have a hell of a lot more experience than you. Now, get to work. All of you.”

  Vasquez, Young, and Boldin darted for the door. Since Parker was on Kendrick’s service and he couldn’t get to work without her, he simply stood in place, waiting for her to level him with nine kinds of orders to start his day.

  But instead, she turned toward him, and wait, was she…beaming? “That was my Mean Attending face,” she said, straightening her doctor’s coat with pride. “How was it?”

  Parker fought with his shock and went down in flames. “Pretty good, actually.”

  “Oh, yay! Going all iron fisted isn’t usually my jam, but Dr. Michaelson made me promise I would strike fear into all of your little intern hearts while she’s on leave. Speaking of which”—Kendrick gestured to the door, but didn’t wait for Parker before she started moving toward it—“you’re on my service today, and we have a VIP patient to round on.”

  She handed over a chart, which Parker caught mid-stride. He scanned the thing, his heart thwacking against his sternum as the medical facts began to line up in his head. Fourteen hour-old baby boy, delivered via emergency Caesarean section due to full placental abruption… “The patient is T—Dr. Michaelson?” he asked.

  “Specifically, her baby, but yes. I’m the peds attending, so it’s my job to check the little gremlin out and make sure he’s perfect. And, while I’m at it, I get to see Dr. Michaelson, and give you a lesson on peds to boot. It’s like one great, big win.”

  “Okay by me.” While he’d rather tend to a trauma than anything else, sometimes those happened to the knee-high set. Parker had treated scores of kids as a paramedic; hell, he and Quinn had delivered babies on living room couches, in the backseats of cars, and, in one very weird turn of events, in a dressing room at the mall. He could handle this, no problem.

  Reviewing the chart closely, Parker processed the details, and by the time the trip in the elevator was past tense and Kendrick had made it into the maternity wing (God damn she was fast), he felt confident that he could take whatever she was going to dish up regarding the case…

  Right up until he saw Charlie, sitting smack dab in the middle of Tess’s room and looking as gorgeous as he’d ever seen her.

  Somewhere, in the hinterlands of his brain, Parker was aware that there were other things happening. Tess working up a smile for Kendrick. Kendrick leaning in to give her a huge but gentle hug as pleasantries were exchanged between all three women. But all he could see with any clarity was Charlie, sitting on the edge of Tess’s bed, holding the baby. Her face was relaxed, her smile completely unmanufactured as she cooed to the sleeping infant, and a pang unfolded, low in Parker’s gut. When she’d said she’d healed as much as anyone does from losing a pregnancy, she’d meant it.

  And sweet Jesus, she was the most breathtaking woman he’d ever seen.

  “…Dr. Drake?”

  Ah, shit. Of course, Dr. Kendrick had been talking to him, and—great—all three sets of eyes were squarely on him.

  He cleared his throat. “Oh, right. Sorry. Jackson Michaelson, fourteen hours old, born at forty weeks via emergency C-section.”

  Parker presented the rest of the case, letting the facts steady his focus. Kendrick nodded, asking him a few questions about the diagnosis and treatment of placental abruption and what to look for in infants born via emergency Caesarian.

  “Nice. Someone’s been studying,” she said, seemingly impressed with his answers.

  Tess? Not so much. “You’re not doing a very good job at that whole striking-fear thing,” she told Kendrick, one brow arched up.

  But Kendrick just laughed. “I told you I’d suck at it. Anyway, I can’t help it that Drake’s a smart cookie.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Turning toward him, Tess said, “Okay, Dr. Smartypants. What if I’d been thirty-three weeks pregnant and presented with high blood pressure and swelling in my hands and feet?”

  “Tess,” Charlie said over a soft laugh. “You just had emergency surgery and gave birth to an eight-pound baby. A day off is warranted, I can assure you.”

  Parker remembered her ambition, though, and God, he knew what it was like to want to eat, sleep, and breathe the job. So he didn’t skip a beat before asking, “How high is your blood pressure in this scenario?”

  “One fifty-two over ninety-six.”

  His brain swiftly eliminated a few conditions, but not enough for a clear diagnosis. “Any pain or bleeding?”

  “No bleeding. Intermittent shoulder pain. But I might have overdone it in my prenatal yoga class,” she said with a shrug.

  Yeah, or Tess might be doing her best to try and throw him. “Yoga, huh? Good for you that you’re committed to a healthy hypothetical pregnancy,” Parker said, tacking on his very best smile. “Nausea, vomiting, or sudden weight gain?”

  “Yes, no, and come on, Dr. Drake. I’m thirty-three weeks pregnant. Of course I’ve had sudden weight gain.”

  Nope. Still not buying the distraction. “I’d have your urine tested for protein and run labs on your kidney and liver functions to be sure, but based on the BP, swelling, and weight gain in particular? I’m thinking you’ve got pre-eclampsia.”

  Now it was Kendrick’s turn to laugh. “See? Told you. Now, can we get to the good stuff, please?”

  Tess sighed, although her expression brightened considerably as she looked at the baby, still nestled happily in Charlie’s arms. “Okay. He is kind of the good stuff, too.”

  “I bet, Momma.” Pulling a pair of nitrile gloves from the dispenser on the wall, Kendrick slid them into place and turned toward Charlie, who was already passing Jackson over with care. “Come here, you little butter bean!” she murmured. “Let me take a look at you.”

  But before Kendrick could get all the way to the bassinet, a throat cleared from the doorway. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” Langston said, and surprise tripped through Parker at the sight of the chief giving Tess a polite smile. “I just wanted to stop by to check on you and the baby.”

  Tess managed a smile back. “We’re okay. Come on in.”

  “Ah. Dr. Drake,” Langston said, his expression serious and seriously unreadable as he gave Parker a careful glance. “You’ve been staying out of trouble, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir.” Parker nodded, but Langston looked first to Kendrick, then to Charlie for confirmation, anyway.

  Kendrick replied first. “Drake’s been great. As a matter of fact, I was about to show him how to do a newborn infant well-check.”

  And that was his cue. Parker double-dosed himself with hand sanitizing gel before gloving up, even though he didn’t have high hopes of doing anything other than observing. It was a routine wellness exam, after all, and considering the expertise, knowledge, and skill of the four doctors in the room, he was the least likely candidate for doing so much as a check of the baby’s vitals. But Langston was watching with not a small amount of interest, so he’d observe like a fucking boss if that was what it took to prove himself to the guy.

  Parker arrived beside the portable bassinet just in time for Kendrick to get the baby situated directly in the center of the thing.

  “Okee dokee, cute-face,” she said, unbundling the infant with one deft move. He began to squirm, but Kendrick kept murmuring to him, her voice almost hypnotic. She listed the baby’s vitals loud enough for Tess and Charlie to hear, but not so much as to break with her soothing tone, examining him from head to heels and telling Parker what she saw, heard, and felt, every step of the way.