“How’s the shoulder?” he asked cautiously, trying not to overstep.
“Sore,” Dr. Donnelly clipped out, chin down as though not to let Wyatt look too closely at him.
“Do you take anything for the pain?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What do you do to treat it?”
Dr. Donnelly shot him a hard look, despite the smile on his face. “Are you my doctor now, Lawson?”
“No. I’m…” he stopped himself. He wouldn’t apologize. He didn’t want to. “I’m just concerned about my captain, that’s all.”
Dr. Donnelly’s eyes turned to stone, his smile falling. “I’m fine.”
“You say that a lot,” Wyatt murmured and closed his eyes, suddenly wishing he could vanish in his seat.
That was a blatant overstep.
“It’s just a frozen shoulder, Lawson. I can handle it.”
He nodded, returning to his place in the ranking against his captain. And yet, he bristled with irritation. It reminded him briefly of Roxeanne and how she bucked and reared her head when he first attempted to get close while she was on the verge of collapse. Why did this feel so similar?
“Forgive me,” Dr. Donnelly said after a moment. “It’s been a long week.”
Wyatt was fully aware of how awful this week at work had been.
He heard Steph, the head nurse, blame it on the full moon and the Santa Ana winds, saying that city people tend to go a little mad this time of year. Shorter tempers, bad decisions, explosive behavior, and sometimes violence. And it always ended up in the emergency department, his team having to deal with the aftermath. The winds had finally brought in the rain, washing the city clean of the turmoil.
“And, you were right, it doesn’t help that I was stood up on Friday night,” Dr. Donnelly admitted softly.
“She couldn’t make it?” Wyatt asked.
Dr. Donnelly let out a tight laugh, hands clamped firmly around the glass, his gaze locked to the amber liquid rolling inside. “No, he could not.”
He?!
Jealousy, like a fist to the gut, knocked the wind out of him while Wyatt simultaneously rejoiced in the possible fact that Dr. Donnelly was gay or bisexual.
Stop—don’t.
Don’t think about that.
Dr. Donnelly was off-limits. It didn’t matter that he was like him. But it did matter—a lot.
“He was called in,” Dr. Donnelly continued.
“Called in? Is he a doctor?” Wyatt asked, noticing the slight strain in his voice and clearing it quickly. He hoped to hell that his date wasn’t Dr. Samuels, because if it was, Wyatt didn’t stand a chance against that stupidly handsome ED Viking. Or Dr. Walsh, who was handsome in his own pale, scary sort of way, but he didn’t seem to be Dr. Donnelly’s type. He needed someone…
Protective.
Wyatt paused, wondering where that thought had come from.
“Paramedic,” Dr. Donnelly clarified. “He’s young—” he stopped himself abruptly, busily taking a careful sip of whiskey, curtailing his words.
“So, he’s like us,” Wyatt replied. “Makes sense, we have odd hours.”
Dr. Donnelly’s averted gaze flickered to his face. “Right.”
