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The entire day has been a circus. I hit the ground running from the beginning. My first patient was a three-year-old boy who had fallen in his hotel room and hit his forehead on the side of a coffee table. If you’ve never had the pleasure of suturing a three-year-old child … avoid it at all costs. They don’t understand that you’re trying to help them, and they are all terrified of needles and medical facilities. He was just strong enough to put up a solid fight the entire time. We had to roll him up like a burrito, restraining his arms and legs, while his mom laid on his body. Jane held his head as still as she could while I cleaned and stitched his wound. It was like chasing a moving target.
And that little boy was probably one of my easier patients of the day. We’re approaching closing time, and I’m exhausted. Twelve hours of mayhem is enough.
I finish documenting on the cardiac patient and look up as Jane brings the next patient back. I blink twice when I see Zane come into view, a bloody rag wrapped around his left hand.
“What happened to you?” I ask, rising from my chair. I grab a pair of gloves and slide them onto my hands as I follow both into the treatment room.
“I got into a fight with Wyatt. Finally laid his ass out.” His back is to me as he talks.
My lips thin into a straight, unhappy line, and my eyes narrow. “What?”
He has a blank expression on his face when he turns around and sits down. But when he sees my concern, a smirk breaks out across his face. “Kidding.”
I glare at him as Jane closes the door behind her and leaves. “That isn’t funny.” I open the cabinet door and remove a basin, along with some sterile water and Betadine antiseptic.
“It’s a little funny,” he murmurs, completely unbothered.
“Just so you know … I lost my sense of humor about eleven hours ago.”
I pour a dash of the Betadine into the container and combine it with the water. Then, I unwrap his hand and examine the cut. It’s a relatively clean, horizontal wound along his skin with one jagged edge on the lateral aspect. I toss his bloody makeshift bandage and tell him to dip his hand in the solution I just poured. He winces when the Betadine hits the wound.
It’s my turn to smirk. “Serves you right for lying to me.”
He chuckles.
“What really happened?”
“Snowboarding hazard. I had to swerve on the slopes to avoid hitting someone who had lost control. Hit my hand on a rock when I went down,” he explains.
“Ouch,” I say, pulling up a syringe full of lidocaine and opening more supplies on a mayo stand. “We should X-ray this, too, and make sure you didn’t break anything.”
“It isn’t broken,” he insists. “I’ve busted enough bones through the years to know what that feels like.”
“Humor me,” I say.
“Yes, Doctor,” he murmurs, saluting me with his other hand.
I stop what I’m doing to glance over at him. He’s watching me with a small smile, that mischievous twinkle in his dark blue eyes. My heart rate ratchets up as I notice how gorgeous he is. His skin in tan from him being on the slopes so much, and there’s stubble across his jawline from not shaving. He’s wearing a navy-blue ski suit this time, which looks a lot like overalls. He has a long-sleeved off-white thermal shirt beneath it, now dotted with blood on the sleeve. His coat is lying in the seat next to him.
“I’m not a doctor,” I correct. “I’m a PA.”
“Hottest PA I know,” he says thickly.
“I’m probably theonlyPA you know,” I joke.
“Okay …” he acquiesces, but I don’t miss the challenge in his expression. “HottestwomanI know then.”
I roll my eyes and huff out a laugh while my attention goes back to arranging the suture set.
Zane agrees to an X-ray to soothe my mind, but he’s right. There is no fracture. So, I meet him back inside the room to suture his laceration. My stool rolls to a stop across from him, a metal mayo stand situated between us.
The room seems tiny with him in it. And it’s not just his size, though his six-foot-two-inch frame is broad. But it’s his presence that shrinks the space. Zane is charming and larger than life, even when he’s brooding or silently sitting there. I can feel him studying the features of my face as I’m examining his wound.
My gloved hands lift his and shift it closer to me. The warmth of his skin seeps through the plastic barrier covering mine. I reposition the spotlight above me so that the cut is illuminated. The rest of the room is dim in comparison. The space feels intimate with just Zane and me in here.
“There will be a small sting and then a burn when I numb you up,” I say. My voice is low as I recite the same spiel that I give to everyone I suture. But somehow, it feels different with Zane.Everythingfeels different with Zane.
Our eyes connect when I glance up at him, the needle and syringe perched above his wound. He nods, but doesn’t say anything. From the scars that I’ve seen at various places on his body, I know these won’t be his first sutures. But they’re the first ones I’m giving him.
