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McKenzie asking Ryder to be her pretend boyfriend had morphed him into the friendly man she’d met initially.
Okay, not quite that friendly, but he at least didn’t run in the opposite direction anymore when he spotted her.
Whether at the clinic or at the hospital, he’d smile when their paths crossed, had even stopped to chat when he’d come into the break room and found McKenzie and her nurse there, having coffee while discussing phone calls from patients’ parents.
He’d stuck around only long enough to refill his reusable water bottle, but his smile had stuck with her for the remainder of the day.
As long as he was smiling, that meant he hadn’t changed his mind, right?
Regardless, his avoidance of her seemed to be a thing of the past.
Such as now with Sawyer Little’s case.
McKenzie had been doing her one day a week on call at the hospital when she’d been consulted for the newborn who’d been okay for the first few hours of life but had started having a grayish-blue tinge to her skin—thankfully her mother had noticed and called for the nurse.
The nurse noted a decreased oxygen level and mild dyspnea and contacted the pediatrician. The pediatrician had checked the baby, ordered an oxygen tent and consulted McKenzie as he suspected a cardiac issue in the newborn.
McKenzie was just getting ready to do a crib-side echocardiogram when Ryder had walked into the neonatal cardiac intensive care unit.
Meeting her gaze, his eyes darkened, but then, the corners of his mouth lifted.
Heaven help her, the man had an amazing smile.
That had to be why her breath hitched up a few notches.
An alarm dinged from the next bay over and it took McKenzie a moment to realize it hadn’t been a warning bell sounding in her own head.
She really needed to keep Ryder in proper perspective. She was just getting out of her relationship with Paul. The last thing she needed was to confuse Ryder’s kindness with the possibility of something more happening between them.
She didn’t want anything more to happen between them.
The nurse who was assisting McKenzie with Sawyer glanced up. “That’s my other patient. I need to change an intravenous medication bag.”
“Go,” McKenzie told the woman. Each NICU nurse was assigned two patients, typically. “I’m good and will call out if I need you for anything.”
The nurse took off for the next bay. Their unit was designed with an open hallway with each baby in their own semiprivate three-sided bay. The nurse’s station was on the opposite side of the hallway and faced the open bays.
Ryder had stopped at the nurses’ station and was pulling up a chart on the computer system. He wore dark navy scrubs and she doubted anyone would be surprised if a camera crew walked in and started filming his every move for some medical drama. He looked as if he should be gracing the big screen and tugging on hearts by resolving one medical drama after another.
McKenzie pulled her attention back to the sweet little girl, took warmed gel, tested the temperature on the back of her hand, then applied some to Sawyer’s chest.
She ran the conducer over the baby’s left ribs, checking the heart chambers, walls, valves and vessels.
She grimaced at what she found.
Sawyer’s left ventricle and aorta were too small. There was very little blood flow through the underdeveloped l
eft side of the heart, which explained the faint bluish tinge to the baby’s skin despite the oxygen her pediatrician had started.
“You have a minute?” she called over to where Ryder stood fifteen or so feet away.
“Sure.” First making a couple of clicks to close out whatever he’d been looking at on the screen, he came into the bay and stood by Sawyer’s hospital bed. “Everything okay?”
“Not for this little one. She was born during the night. Mom attempted her first breastfeeding and thought her color looked off. Her pediatrician consulted me. Unfortunately, I’m going to be consulting a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon and you just happened to be standing nearby.”
Ryder glanced down at the almost seven-pound baby with various tubes and monitors attached. McKenzie moved the conducer back over the baby’s chest to show Ryder the undersized ventricle and vessel and the lack of blood flow on the left side of Sawyer’s heart.
“Hypoplastic left heart syndrome,” Ryder said, giving voice to McKenzie’s thoughts.
