Page 126 of Dirty Pool

“No.”

Because he knew she did.

Simple as that.

She was an adult, and he didn’t need to chase after his wife when she knew very well how to take care of herself. Unfortunately, she was so accustomed to someone checking over her shoulder all the time that they still found themselves like this … her, out of habit, thinking he was going to question her because he didn’t trust she could handle her business.

Michel checked the watch on his wrist, and scowled. “Cazzo. I have to get out of here, or I am going to be late at the hospital.” He didn’t want the lecture for it, either. Moving to his wife in the doorway after discarding his mug to the sink, he pressed a fast kiss to Gabbie’s forehead, murmuring, “It could be anything—a hormonal shift, a developing allergy, or even your cycles changing, right? We’ll figure it out.”

She stiffened.

“What?” he asked.

Just as quickly, Gabbie shook her head and glanced up at him. “Nothing. You should get to the hospital, and I managed to get that appointment with my doctor today.”

“Oh, good. Maybe we’ll get an answer, then.”

“Maybe.”

He kissed her mouth next, giving her a lazy smirk as he said, “And get that fucking sweater off—I love you in my clothes, babe, but not when you’re trying to hide something that looks great in anything.”

Gabbie grinned.

Michel winked.

• • •

“GIVE ME THAT GAUZE!”

With his legs straddling a man on a gurney—who’d been brought into the parking lot by his friends who basically shoved him out of the back of their car with a fucking hole in his chest that looked like a bullet wound—Michel’s hands trembled from the force that he was putting into keeping pressure on the wound.

“The gauze!” he snapped again.

They had four minutes going full speed to get this man from the parking lot, to the trauma bay so that he could get in and figure out what was causing the bleed to be as bad as it was. So bad, in fact, that they were leaving a trail of blood in their wake that looked more like a river than dribbles.

Everybody’s hands were full.

Except the new, and young resident who had apparently never been faced with a trauma quite this violent and serious if her very white face was any indication, was lingering behind. He’d had that moment, too, once. Every trauma surgeon faced their moment. That one split second where everything fucking changed about what they thought regarding this career, and what they could handle. His had come when someone brought in a three-month-old baby that had been badly burned in a house fire and didn’t have a pulse.

It was a burned baby.

A fucking baby.

He had nightmares for weeks.

He didn’t remember snapping out of the moment, either, because the next thing he knew, he was doing chest compressions on the infant. Because that’s what the trauma bay did to a doctor—everything became instinctual. Even if a doctor wasn’t all there because something set them off balance, their brain and body still knew what they had to do. The world might feel like it had stopped, but the doctors kept moving.

They had to.

Or people died.

So, no, he didn’t fault the woman for finally having her moment, he really just wished it wasn’t right now when everyone else’s hands were full, and he needed hers on deck. The doctor in question finally snapped back into reality, and tossed Michel the large roll of gauze to him. He began to stuff as much of the unrolled gauze as he could into the chest wound of the man who was now choking out blood under the mask the nurse was pressing against his face.

Staunching the wound was important, as much as pressure on it was, anyhow. And he just needed to get control of this goddamn bleed as much as possible.

“Three minutes to trauma bay,” Michel snapped, his hands working faster than even his mouth. “Bay three. Call it down!”

“Got it.”