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

  “I’m ready to work hard, too,” he said, all manners.

  “Hmmm.” Her tone was laced with doubt. “We’ll see if you can work hard enough.” Stepping back, she looked at each of Parker’s fellow interns before saying, “I’m Dr. Becker. I’m filling in while Dr. Michaelson is on maternity leave for the next ten weeks. Rest assured, we’ll all be doing a lot of work together in that time.” She paused to lock eyes with Parker, and he felt her stare in every single deep-down place he’d boarded up over the last six years. “If you make it that long without quitting, that is. Enjoy the rest of your orientation day. Tomorrow’s going to be a rude awakening.”

  With that, she turned on her heels and walked off.

  “Wow.” Young didn’t even bother to reclaim her jaw from the linoleum. “She’s, um, pretty different from Kendrick, huh?”

  “She seems to have it in for you,” Vasquez said, and funny, she didn’t look unhappy about it. “What’d you do to her?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell the truth, to say, I married her, even though before today, he’d hadn’t spoken Charlie’s name out loud since the morning he’d gotten the papers stating that the divorce was official. But that was in the past, exactly where he’d left it when he’d had no choice to do anything but, so instead, he went with a different fact that was equally true.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  5

  Seven years ago, first internship, day one

  “Whoa. That is a lot of blood.”

  Parker’s gag reflex put a solid jab to his windpipe. It wasn’t the sight of the stuff that threw him, really. He’d done the clinical rotations required by his program, and he’d volunteered at the local blood bank, along with watching dozens of hours of recorded medical procedures—including surgeries—just like his med school professors had all suggested. He’d seen more than his fair share of blood. But in those cases, it was either well-contained or one step removed. Not splattered all over a gurney. And the floor.

  And the wall. God, the smell was so strong, like rust and old pennies, permeating his senses. He wasn’t ever going to get it out of his nose, let alone pry it from his memory.

  “It helps if you look up for a second and count in your head,” the pretty redhead standing next to him said quietly. She’d captured his notice before they’d all been ushered into the trauma room to observe the attending physician, Dr. Fitzpatrick, stabilize a stabbing victim, and now that the patient was safely on his way to surgery and the redhead was smiling, Parker’s first day was looking a whoooooole lot better.

  “Yeah?” he asked. But he didn’t look up. Instead, he looked at her.

  She added a blush to her smile. “Well, it helps me, anyway. Gives me something to focus on other than the smell.”

  “Smart thinking…” He trailed off expectantly, waiting a beat, then another before her face lit with understanding.

  “Oh! Charleston. Becker,” she added. “My friends call me Charlie, though.”

  “Well, I hope I count. Parker Drake.” He extended his hand.

  Charlie slid her palm over his, her fingers warm and capable as they wrapped around the back of his hand, and funny how an innocent, everyday touch could send such a wicked bolt of want all the way to Parker’s gut. “You count.”

  She held on to his gaze for just a beat too long, her tone too teasing for her not to be flirting with him. He wasn’t about to look away, because A) he wasn’t brainless, and B) it was the easiest way to flirt back. Charlie let go of his hand, her smile growing even though she’d pressed it between her lips, and Parker’s heart beat faster in appreciation for a second, then two, and then—

  The female intern standing next to them cleared her throat, snagging both Charlie and Parker’s attention.

  “Oh!” Charlie blinked, but her recovery took less than a second. “Sorry. Parker, this is Tess Jameson.”

  “Like the whiskey,” the woman confirmed. She either hadn’t noticed the flirty tone of Parker and Charlie’s exchange, or had dismissed it in favor of the case they’d just observed. “Did you see how much that guy bled? I bet whoever stabbed him hit his subclavian artery.”

  Charlie nodded in agreement. “With the location of the wound and the nature of the bleeding, that’s not a bad bet.”

  The nature of the bleeding had been how the wall had ended up as a casualty. As soon as Dr. Fitzpatrick had removed the QuikClot pads the paramedics had plastered over the patient’s chest to control the bleeding, the wound had spurted like a theme-park fountain.

  Parker deflected the thought and counted to three in his head, nice and slow, and what do you know. It fucking worked. “Hell of a case for our first day, huh?”

  “I’m betting it’s not something we’ll see as often as appendicitis,” Charlie said. “I guess that makes it a good learning experience, but still. A stab wound like that is a pretty horrible injury.”

  Before Parker could reply, Dr. Fitzpatrick reappeared in the entryway to the trauma room. “Okay, everyone. Our patient is on his way up to surgery. Now let’s talk about his injuries and what the trauma surgeon will need to do to stabilize him and repair them.”

  Dr. Fitzpatrick asked a few questions, with everyone in the group—six, including Parker—calling out answers like carnival barkers on a Friday night. Tess had been right about the guy’s subclavian artery, and Charlie nailed the anatomy questions that followed. She wasn’t bossy or boastful, simply seeming pleased that she’d effectively relied on what she knew. Parker correctly answered a few of Fitzpatrick’s questions, too, having pretty much fallen asleep with the ninth edition of The Textbook of Emergency and Trauma Care on his face for the last two weeks straight. He listened to Charlie’s replies, along with Fitzpatrick’s directives for treating penetrating stab wounds in an emergent setting, carefully categorizing both.

  Despite the blood and his visceral reaction to it, Parker itched for a shot at actually treating a patient the way Fitzpatrick just had. Not that he wanted anyone to get hurt. For Chrissake, he wanted to be—no, wait. He was a doctor now, and regardless of the fact that he’d never wish injury or illness on anyone, he couldn’t stop it from happening. What he could do was help when it did, and in order to make that happen, he needed to treat patients.

  Lots of them. The sooner, the better.

  “Well,” Fitzpatrick said, once they’d completed their Q and A. “Now that we’ve had an exciting and somewhat unexpected start to the day, why don’t we balance things out with some work in the skills lab before you’re all assigned a resident to shadow this afternoon? You’re going to need to learn to work together—good medicine is definitely a team effort. So, let’s have you pair up, since each lab station is built for two people…”

  Parker’s disappointment at not being able to dive right back in to the patient pool was quickly replaced by a quick shot of oh hell yes at the chance to work with Charlie.

  He turned toward her. “I could use a partner, especially one who dispenses great advice. What do you say?”

  Her green eyes widened, her gaze darting from him to Tess, then back again. “Well, I, ah. Promised Tess that if they paired us up on anything, I’d work with her.”

  Although Charlie had answered without hesitation, the way any good friend should, Tess must’ve heard the disappointment Parker had hoped he wasn’t imagining in her voice, because after a heartbeat, she waved Charlie off.

  “That’s okay,” Tess said, gesturing to one of their fellow interns, who was talking to Fitzpatrick over by the door to the trauma room. “If you two want to work together, I can ask Rahul if he wants to partner up. I know him from med school. We did our ambulatory care rotation together. You and I can just share a station next time, Charlie.”

  “Are you sure?” Charlie asked, and Parker gave Tess a small, deferent nod. Yeah, he wanted to team up with Charlie (smart and pretty? Sign his ass up), and no, not a little bit. But he knew far better than to mess with the lady code.

  Tess nodded, her grin big and too knowing as she flashed it at Charlie, along with a wink. “Absolutely. You two kids have fun.”

  “Sorry about that,” Charlie said with a soft laugh as soon as Tess had moved over toward Rahul and they’d all started filtering into the hallway to head in the direction of the skills lab, which Parker was pretty sure was on the third floor. “She’s not exactly subtle.”

  “I don’t mind. To be honest, I’m not either.”

  “Oh?” Her mouth twisted into a smile that delivered no less than a hundred very dirty thoughts directly to Parker’s head. Along with some other, more southerly places he probably shouldn’t think with, but totally was anyway. She said, “Maybe you should partner with Tess, then.”

  “Nope.”

  He declined fast enough—or maybe it was with enough conviction—to make her copper-colored brows travel halfway up her forehead. Funny, he didn’t care that his reply all but put a spotlight on his attraction to her even though they’d just met. He liked her, and he wasn’t exactly the type to fuck around. Especially when it came to a smart, beautiful woman.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure Tess is really great,” Parker said. “But something tells me you and I are going to make an excellent team.”

  She laughed. “Really? And what’s that?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  They all shuffled into the elevator, and Charlie waited until they’d reached the third floor and Dr. Fitzpatrick had led everyone out into the hallway before saying, “A hunch, huh? That doesn’t sound very clinical.”

  It figured she’d go for something that could be quantified, facts in black and white. “Maybe not,” Parker allowed. “But your gut is the most reliable tool you’ve got.”

  “No way,” she said. “Your brain is
the most reliable tool you’ve got. Gut feelings are colored by our experiences and perceptions. Also, our desires.” She paused for a beat to let that one sink in, and yep, still flirting. “There’s no way actual knowledge doesn’t trump that. Proven facts win out, every time.”

  “Facts are important, of course. But I don’t think you’re giving your gut enough credit.”

  Charlie served up a look of doubt. “Why should I give my gut credit if I can’t substantiate everything that comes from it?”

  “Because I’d bet my next rent payment that your gut is what made you decide to become a doctor in the first place.”

  Shock moved over her pretty face. She opened her mouth, probably to protest, if Parker had to guess. But then she closed it, remaining quiet as they walked into the skills lab and listened closely to Dr. Fitzpatrick’s directions on how to practice starting IVs.

  “Okay, fine,” she finally hedged, just when Parker had started to think he might’ve misjudged her personality, after all. “Deciding I wanted to be a doctor wasn’t really a decision. I guess I did just sort of know in my gut that it’s what I wanted to do with my life. But I still had to measure all the variables. Time, money, commitment. All of that matters.”

  Parker nodded. He hadn’t been blowing smoke for the sake of flirting with her—he really did believe that his gut was the most important barometer he owned. But the facts weren’t something to be dismissed entirely, either. “Fair enough.”

  Stepping back, he watched Charlie work on the mannequin, her fingers meticulous and her stare laser-focused as she went through the motions of getting the IV into place.

  “Wow, is there anything you’re bad at?” he asked, only half-joking. He didn’t exactly suck at the procedures he’d been able to practice during his rotations, and starting IVs had been on the list, albeit on a limited basis. But Charlie’s technique was precise. Controlled. Seamless.

  “It’s kind of easy to do it up here in the lab on a mannequin,” she pointed out. “The worst thing that happens if I screw up in this case is that I start over. In a weird way, I think it makes me feel overconfident.”

  Parker creased his brows in confusion. “You say that like confidence is a bad thing.”

  “Too much of it is.”

  “Only if you can’t back it up,” he argued. “And you obviously can.” She’d just quickly and successfully started two—ah, make that three IVs while they’d been standing here, shooting the breeze.

  And yet, she still looked unconvinced. Sliding to one side, Charlie switched places with him to give him a turn. “It’s a totally different story when you’re trying to do a procedure—even a routine one, like this—on a person who’s in pain, or afraid of needles, or already in danger of bleeding out when they’re wheeled through the door. Did you see how fast Fitzpatrick treated that guy who’d been stabbed, and all without the tiniest hesitation? To be honest, the pressure of how fast we’ll have to treat people when their lives are on the line freaks me out a little.”

  “You don’t look freaked out,” Parker said, and her sassy-sweet smile caught him smack in the sternum.

  “Neither do you. You just did half of that without even looking.”

  He looked down at the IV he’d guided into place. For a second, he was tempted to tell her he’d absolutely been looking, just not at the mannequin. But instead, he said, “Ah, that’s a trick I learned from volunteering at the blood bank.”

  “Really?” Her lips parted, head tilting to one side. “The one on Seville Boulevard?”

  Gotta love a girl who knew her blood banks. “Yep. One of the phlebotomists there, Emmaline Foster, was like magic. This woman never had trouble finding a vein, and I do mean, never. Even the jumpy donors and first timers said they barely felt the pinch. People actually requested her by name when they went to donate blood. So, I asked what her secret was.”

  “And?” Mannequin forgotten, Charlie waved him on impatiently. God, her eagerness was the perfect blend of smart and sexy, and it pulled Parker in like a magnet. For a hot, brief second, he wondered if she was this hungry in bed. What would she sound like if he slid his tongue over the hollow at the base of her throat, or up the soft skin of her inner thigh? Would she spill out a breathy sigh? Or would her moans be throaty, more demanding, guiding him to all the sweetest parts of her until those moans turned into his name?

  Sweet Jesus, he was losing it. Parker cleared his throat and commanded himself to focus on something, anything, other than the rampant curiosity lighting Charlie’s eyes.

  Choose the right size needle, turn the bevel up, aim shallow, wait for the flash, thread the catheter. Easy as pie. He repeated the steps Emmaline had gently drilled into him, and okay yeah, that did the trick.

  “Well, Emmaline has twenty-two years’ experience drawing blood, which I’m sure doesn’t hurt,” he said. “But she told me the real trick is to work by feel as much as sight.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a sledgehammer,” Parker promised. “You can go through all the steps and let your eyes be your only guide, sure. But sometimes the veins that look the best are actually superficial. If you want to be sure you’ve got the best site, you’ve got to trust more than just what you see. Here, try it.”

  “You want me to stick you?”

  The little gasp of surprise that crossed her lips made him damn glad she wasn’t checking his vitals. Everything from his pulse to his pupils would’ve betrayed how much he impulsively wanted her.

  “Well, since I don’t need a line, I’d prefer if you didn’t actually stick me. But here”—taking off the nitrile gloves that were standard issue even when they worked in the skills lab, he rolled one of the sleeves of his blue and white dress shirt until it was halfway up his bicep—“let’s give this a try. Go ahead and put the tourniquet in place.”

  Charlie grabbed the length of tubing and wrapped it around his arm, just above the crease in his elbow, the veins in his arm showing like a relief map a few seconds later. “Okay. Now what?” she asked.

  “Going by sight, tell me what you’d pick,” he said.

  Flipping his palm all the way up with one hand and extending his arm for a closer perusal, she pointed to a bluish line running the length of his forearm beneath his skin. “I’d probably go here.”

  “Okay. Now close your eyes.”

  “What?” Her laugh fell somewhere between disbelief and doubt, but nope. No way was he going to let either one claim her.

  “I know it sounds a little weird.” Enough so that if they hadn’t been in the skills lab with five other people, one of whom was a supervising attending physician, Parker probably would’ve hesitated to ask. Just because his intentions were honest didn’t mean she knew that, and the last thing he wanted was for her to be uncomfortable. “You can leave them open and look somewhere other than my arm, if you’d prefer. Closing your eyes just might help you focus a little better on the feel of the veins. Makes it easier to visualize.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Charlie gave up a slow nod and closed her eyes. “Alright. So just go by feel?”

  “Yep.” Parker placed his arm in her outstretched hands. Even through the snug gloves she wore, he could feel the warmth of her fingers as she pressed them over his forearm with a firm yet careful sweep. “You’re looking for a vein that’s sturdy, but a little spongy, too.”

  Her brow furrowed in concentration, her fingers continuing to travel over his arm, and damn it, why hadn’t Parker realized how much she’d be touching him until after he’d shot his mouth off?

  “Ah! There!” she said a second later, her smile becoming shock as she opened her eyes and realized that the vein she’d chosen by feel was not the same one she’d chosen by sight.

  “See?” Reaching across his body, he popped the tourniquet and handed it over to her. “That’s not to say I don’t use sight, too. I mean, you obviously have to look to insert the needle in the right place and see the flash and thread the catheter properly, and sometimes, a patient’s veins are such that you can’t feel a damn thing. But as far as finding the best vein to get the job done in most cases…”