Protecting What's Mine(40)

She bit off a sigh. “A fair assessment.”

“It’s something to be improved, not embarrassed about.”

“I shouldn’t be this bad at something.”

Russell placed his chopsticks just so in the folded napkin.

“There’s no shame in not knowing how to do something. There’s no shame in learning and trying. Shame never works as a motivator.”

She wanted to argue. Shame had been a constant motivating factor in her life. She’d worked hard to distance herself from the things that needed distancing, to prove herself over and over again to be good enough.

“By all accounts, Mackenzie, you are one of the most technically proficient doctors this county has ever seen. That’s a huge compliment. But it doesn’t excuse you from having to learn how to relate to patients. We both know you can be a hell of a lot more than just a competent set of hands in an emergency.”

She wasn’t so sure she knew that.

He waited a beat.

“I’m processing,” she said. “I suppose your theory means that shame doesn’t work on patients either.”

He clapped his hands—manicured nails, smooth palms—together. “Exactly.”

“I can’t get Leroy Mahoney to return my calls,” she said. She thought of the messages she’d left. An urgent medical matter, she’d said. So it wasn’t necessarily calling him out for being negligent with his health, but it wasn’t a friendly open approach either.

“His grandson plays Little League in the park by the high school a couple of nights a week. He’ll be there.”

The personal touch. Ugh.

She wished she’d picked up a few extra air shifts with the hospital. At least there she didn’t have to chase patients down for routine information. There she was in charge, in her element. Confident.

“Things happen for a reason, Mackenzie,” Russell insisted. “You’re here for a reason.”

Yeah, to babysit patients and kiss firefighters.

“I guess we’ll see,” she said.

“Now, tell me about slow dancing with the fire chief at Remo’s last night.”

Mack’s fork hit the table.

Freida and Tuesday poked their heads into the doorway. “About time you asked her,” Freida said.





19





The chopper rose smoothly into the early evening air at Sally’s behest, and Mack’s stomach gave its customary dip. Nerves and excitement hummed in her veins. Things had been too quiet the past few days, giving her entirely too much time to think about that kiss.

Which led to her thinking about all of the other things that kiss could lead to. Which led to her making the effort to dig her vibrator out of a moving box.

A good trauma patient was exactly what she needed to clear her head and stop thinking about Chief Reed…and his very talented mouth. And his equally impressive cock.

But now she had a life to save. Female. Mid-twenties. Backroad altercation with a tree. Head trauma. They’d be there in two minutes, landing in a cow pasture with permission from the farmer.

While her fingers worked their way through supplies and equipment—checking and double-checking—Mack let her mind settle. It ran through scenarios and protocols. Training, education, and experience molded together into instinct.

Here, eighteen hundred feet in the air, she was confident in her abilities and herself. Much more so than in the little exam room staring down a case of sinusitis and getting-to-know-yous.

“EMTs say there’s some trouble on the ground. Belligerent, drunk passenger. They’re trying to get the patient on a spine board,” Sally warned matter-of-factly through the headset.

Mack glanced at Bubba. His hulking frame was crammed in the corner, triple-checking the plasma inventory. “You ever work as a bouncer, Bubba?” she asked him.

“Always wanted to.”

“This might be your chance if the guys on the ground need a hand.”

“Yippie-ki-yay.”





They were on the ground less than a minute later in a grassy green pasture. The land’s inhabitants, a dozen cows, crowded against the pretty-as-a-picture white fence several hundred yards away from the flying invader.

Mack could see the rescue vehicles and mangled wreckage of a pickup truck wrapped around the stalwart base of an oak tree on the other side of the country road.

“Let’s give ’em a hand,” she said, grabbing her med kit.

She and Bubba climbed down and ran low across the grass. They took the four feet of fence in stride. Mack scrambled over it like she was back in basic training. Bubba hopped it like a cowboy. Together, they made a beeline for the crowd of paramedics crouched around a prone victim.

Almost every accident scene had the same players. The fire department was there working on clean-up. Witnesses, most likely the farmer’s family, clustered around a big, dusty truck in the field near the scene. A handful of other spectators out for an evening cruise were pulled off on the side of the road watching. A police cruiser was just pulling up to the scene.

And there was Linc. He was in gear and set up as incident command, throwing her a smug smile and a little salute.

She nodded her acknowledgement and elbowed her way into the circle. They were up against a low guard rail. On the other side, the road gave way to a steep, ten-foot drop-off down to a creek.