“Hand it over.”
He dug the Whataburger out of his backpack and handed it over. It was cold. It was also the best thing I’d eaten in two days, which I wasn’t going to say out loud because it would only encourage him.
“Finish the briefing,” I said.
Cricket finished the briefing. It took eleven more minutes.
The short version: rally was on, three clubs confirmed, Brim wanted me on-site by Saturday noon, and if I wasn’t there Detour was going to volunteer for the ride-out route again and nobody wanted that on their conscience. I ate the last of the burger and handed the wrapper back.
“Tell Brim I’ll have the route to him by morning.”
Cricket’s gaze moved to the IV pole. The monitor. Back to me. “You sure you’re going to be out tomorrow?”
“I’ve been sure since the day I got here.”
“Brim’s going to ask me if—”
“Tell him I’ll be there.”
Cricket opened his mouth, reconsidered, and stood up. He stretched in the way of a man who was about to say one more thing and was heroically choosing not to, and moved toward the door. He got it halfway open and nearly walked into her.
SHE WAS IN THE SAMEnavy scrubs as yesterday, chart tucked under her arm, hair up with a few pieces working loose at her temples from a long shift. She stepped inside and did the thing she did—two seconds, the whole room accounted for, Cricket and the tray table and the IV pole and me, sitting on the bed in Cricket’s tee and sweats like I hadn’t been planning anything—and held the door for Cricket with the kind of smile that thanks you and ends the conversation at the same time.
Cricket, because he was twenty-three years old and had never once encountered a situation he didn’t think he could improve, aimed his full wattage at her anyway.
“Hey, hi—Cricket.” He got it all out at once, the grin going ahead of the words, the easy confidence of a man who’d never once had to work very hard for a good reaction. “I’m with the club. Just came to check on him, make sure he’s good, which he obviously is—you’ve been doing great work in here.” He said the last part with the enthusiasm of a man who believed it.
She looked up from the chart. “Scorch is running a hundred and forty over ninety,” she said, pleasant, eyes moving back down. “Which means his pain level is higher than he’s reported, he’s been upright longer than he should be, or someone’s gotten him worked up. Since he was on his feet when I came on shift and you’ve been here forty-five minutes—”
Cricket’s grin held.
“—I’d call it the company,” she said.
The grin didn’t fall. It just ran out of somewhere to go.
“It was good of you to come,” she said, looking up at him with a smile that meant it and still showed him out. “It matters that he has people here. Twenty minutes next time.”
Cricket looked at me. I didn’t have anything useful for him.
He left without a word. I hadn’t seen him manage that before.
I PUT HER AT FIVE-FIVE, maybe a little under. The scrubs were supposed to be professional, not interesting. Whoever designed them hadn’t accounted for a woman built the way she was built. Full chest, the fabric doing more work than it was designed for, and when she turned to drag the chair around I got a clear read on what she was working with from the waist down and my cock registered it immediately. That was a problem. I had a surgical repair to heal and my cock thickening in a hospitalroom wasn’t going to help any of it. Honey-blonde hair coming loose at her temples and capable hands and she covered the room the way someone covers it when they’ve done the same job long enough that they don’t have to think about it, every step landing where it should. She pulled the chair around and sat down with his file, and I thought about Cricket walking out that door looking like a man whose best play had been called before he ran it.
He’d run his best material. She’d received it like background noise, not rude, not dismissive, just somewhere outside whatever frequency Cricket was broadcasting on. In a year of watching Cricket work a room, I’d never seen that happen.
I’d worked three nurses on this floor since I got here, gotten an orderly to bring me food, and talked my way into getting two attending notes softened before they hit his record. Cricket had watched all of it and taken mental notes like it was a masterclass. She’d walked in for sixty seconds and taken apart everything he’d tried, and she’d done it easy, and she hadn’t even looked at him to do it.
“How’s the pain?” she said, not looking up.
“Zero.”
Her eyes came up. The look she had, level and patient and not especially fooled, held for a moment. Then she wrote it down.
“Dinner plans tonight?” I said.
She moved to the side of the bed. “Arm.”
I held out my right arm. She wrapped the cuff and I watched her work, checking the position, adjusting it, settling back. She kept a neutral expression while she moved around the bed, nothing coming through it, and I’d been watching her since yesterday morning for the moment that expression cracked. She’d given me exactly one—when she’d pulled my name off the chart and used it, and I’d gone still.
