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Prologue—Clara
September 2005
“Dr. Bownton?”
I pressed my palms against my aching lower back, giving myself a little stretch while I waited for the EMTs to give me the status of the man they’d just brought in on a stretcher.
“Rescue crews found him on his roof, where he’d apparently gone to escape the high water. Multiple lacerations including a head wound. Brief bouts of LOC,” the EMT reported, letting me know that the patient had struggled to remain conscious.
“Do we have a name?”
“Just what’s on his shirt,” the EMT reported, nodding to the word ‘Billy’ embroidered on what looked like a mechanic’s shirt.
“Billy! Billy, can you hear me?” I asked, tapping his cheeks lightly.
The patient moaned and moved his head from side to side. Pulling my penlight from a pocket, I shined the light in his eyes, noting that his pupils looked normal. Billy belched, sending a whiff of stale alcohol in my direction, whiskey if I wasn’t mistaken.
“Billy! Have you been drinking?” I asked unnecessarily. The man smelled like a combination of wet dog and distillery.
Suddenly my patient stiffened. Before I could react, he wrapped two beefy hands around my throat, pulling me towards him.
“Who are you?” he slurred. “What have you done to me?”
I pressed my hands against his chest intending to push myself away, but faster than I could blink, Corporal Jeffers flew across the room and managed to both pry the guy’s hands off my throat and press his forearm against my patient’s neck, restraining him.
I stepped back, gasping and rubbing my skin.
“Are you okay, Doctor?” Jeffers asked.
His look of concern warmed me, and I took a deep breath before adopting a sunny smile, my armor in difficult situations.
“Yes I am, Corporal. Thank you for the assist.”
“Restrain him,” Jeffers ordered his teammate who’d been a few steps behind him. The younger man hustled to zip tie my patient’s wrists to the gurney.
“I imagine the trauma of the storm and the alcohol he’s drank have flared his PTSD,” I said as I resumed my examination. “His injuries look minor. He’ll be fine, I expect.”
“How do you know he has PTSD?” Jeffers asked curiously.
I smiled internally at the Texas twang in his voice. It reminded me of being a little girl growing up in Dallas.
“He’s a marine,” I said, pointing to the words ‘Semper Fi’ tattooed on the inside of his left forearm. “I assume anyone who’s spent enough time in the service has at least some residual trauma.”
Jeffers caught my eye for a tad longer than was appropriate, and I felt a tingle between my legs. There was a possibility that I was the tiniest bit obsessed with him. Honestly, I’d been daydreaming about him like a teenager with a crush since I met Jeffers on the first day I’d arrived here in Houston to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Rita.
Rita had only been a category three, but it’d done a lot of damage in Texas and Louisiana. Over a million people had been under evacuation orders and for a while, there’d been concern that the refineries outside of Houston wouldn’t make it through the storm.
I’d been sent here as part of a Doctors in Disasters contingent, which sent doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to the sites of disasters to help supplement the local health system. This was my second big deployment since I’d finished my medical internship in Oregon, and I loved it. I was trained as an Emergency Room Specialist and putting those skills to use in a disaster situation really made me feel like all those years of school were worth it.
My mama would say I was an adrenaline junkie, and maybe she was right. But then again, I’d been born and raised in Texas, and while I’d hightailed it out of the state the minute I graduated high school, I still felt a strong affection for Texas and its people, which is why I’d jumped at the chance to come here and help.
Allen Jeffers was part of an Army team that had been deployed to Texas to help the National Guard with storm response. Anyone trained as a medic was either assigned to the field hospital or sent out to help recover people who were stranded by the storm or debris. Jeffers and I had clicked right away, and he’d served as my nurse, medical assistant and now security guard ever since. Meanwhile I’d taken it upon myself to lighten him up; Jeffers was way too serious for my tastes. Our jobs were hard, we needed to have some fun to let off some steam every now and again.
Jeffers was tall and broad, with brown hair cropped close to his skull, a square jaw, a long straight nose that looked almost regal, and brown eyes that were almost like a mood ring. Those eyes lightened and sparkled when he was amused, turned almost greenish when he was sleepy, and darkened when he was angry...or turned on.
I knew this because Jeffers and I had spent a lot of our down time together, drawn like moths to a flame.
The minute I’d seen him, it was like I’d known him my whole life. I’d been attracted to him, sure, but I’d also felt a connection with him like I’d never felt before. And unless my instincts were totally off, I wasn’t the only one feeling it. At this point both of our teams were teasing us, making kissing noises and chanting childish rhymes about us sitting in a tree and K-I-S-S-I-N-G, which was ironic since, other than accidental contact, we’d never even touched each other.
