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Ashley’s dark eyebrows rose. “You’re not going to die. I won’t let that happen. Sound familiar?”
His restless fingers spun the pencil, and then he used it to tap out his own fast rhythm on his leg. “Vaguely.” He and Ashley had worked a shift together recently, when Beau had needed a desk day due to a concussion. They’d caught a call involving a panicked sixty-two-year-old man with severe chest pain who thought—correctly, as it turned out—he was having a heart attack. “Good patient care involves reassuring—”
“Statements like I won’t let that happen go beyond reassurance. Your ego’s making guarantees you don’t have the power to honor.”
An itch started way down in his arches and slowly worked its way up his spine. It took every bit of control he possessed to remain seated. “The guy was scared, so yeah, I told him he wasn’t going to die, and guess what, Ash, he didn’t die. I didn’t let it happen.”
She jabbed a finger at him. “You were out of line to make that kind of promise. Someday fate’s going to turn you into a liar and you won’t know how
to cope.”
This conversation was going nowhere. He stabbed the pencil into the holder at the edge of her blotter, stood, and braced his palms on her desk. “Let’s cut the bullshit. What do you want from me?”
“I want to see the same emotional maturity in you that I’d expect from any other person here who asked me for a recommendation. Compassion? Yes. A commitment to giving every patient the best care possible? Absolutely. But take your ego out of it, and accept there are limits to your power. Until I see that, I can’t, in good conscience, finish your recommendation letter.”
Was this a test of his emotional fucking maturity? He straightened so he wasn’t looming over her. “You’re telling me no.”
“I’m telling you to convince me I’m wrong.” She shifted her attention to her computer screen. “Good luck.”
…
Oh, please God, could I get a little luck?
Madison needed to get out of this overly warm drugstore. Buy the diapers and wipes, and escape to the cool air outside, but the checkout line stalled while a small, ancient woman in front of her dug a checkbook out of her cavernous purse to pay for Palmolive and trash bags.
So much for the express lane.
The lady found the checkbook, adjusted her glasses, and then her gaze snagged on Madison. Two magnified brown eyes blinked at her. “Oh, my. What a precious baby. How old is your little one?”
“One month and two days.” Her head ached, and her voice sounded far away to her own ears. She tightened Joy’s swaddle and then switched her to the other shoulder. Using her free hand, she swiped her damp forehead.
“Fresh hatched.” A puff of steel-wool hair bobbed as the woman nodded. “Adorable. ’Course, they run you ragged at that age. I oughta know. I had three. I remember being so sleep deprived I couldn’t even tie my shoes.”
Madison wiggled her toes in the cushion-soled black slip-ons that had become her go-to shoes for the last few months. Since about the time reaching past her belly and tying laces had become an exercise in futility.
“Are you breastfeeding? I’m guessing yes, because look at you—just a month out and you’re already skinny as a rail.”
Skinny? Not hardly. Maternity clothes hid the fact that four weeks after giving birth her belly still hadn’t flattened, but she’d been raised to politely acknowledge compliments. “Thank you.”
“Losing the baby weight is the upside. The downside comes later, when your titties look like empty pillowcases”—she pointed in the vicinity of Madison’s chest—“and they hang down to your belly button.”
Dear lord, was everyone within earshot contemplating her tits now? Her already hot face burned like a furnace. She hugged Joy closer and risked a glance around. The forty-something cashier, bearing a better than passing resemblance to Queen Latifah, offered Madison a long-suffering smile, but it quickly morphed into a concerned double-take—one that suggested she looked as terrible as she felt. Her heart raced, she suddenly realized, which made no sense because she was standing still. Her head pounded. Sweat sheened her face, yet her scalp felt frozen. All worrisome, but the ringing in her ears and semi-detached sensation of everything from her neck down worried her most.
From a long distance away she heard the clerk ask, “You okay?”
With all the care she could muster, she laid Joy in the child seat part of her shopping cart. The ringing in her ears turned to a high-pitched buzz. Her mouth might as well have been a desert. “W-water?”
“One sec, hon…”
She didn’t have a second. The world started spinning too fast, and suddenly she was falling into a dark tunnel.
Chapter Four
“Remember our New Year’s Eve call?”
Hunter simply nodded and finished clocking out. His partner knew damn well he remembered. In a moment of weakness, he’d admitted to Beau he’d gone back to the hospital New Year’s Day to check on them, only to discover they’d already been discharged. That had been frustrating, but even more frustrating? They’d been on his mind ever since. Madison’s big gray-blue eyes haunted him, along with the panicked voice begging him not to leave.
“Those girls are back at Mercy General. Richter and Dent took the call yesterday.”
