The Queen of Hearts(21)
“He was talking to somebody in the cafeteria. I think the term he used was ‘cerebral jailbait.’”
I beamed, and then bit my lip. “Wait. Is that good?”
Graham grinned at me. “I think it means he—”
I was beginning to inflate with wild, inappropriate hope when Graham was interrupted. Over the years, Georgia had earned the nickname “Princess Spills-a-Lot” by virtue of her perpetual clumsiness, and true to form, she managed to knock over a mug of somebody’s used coffee before Graham could finish his sentence. A cascade of dark liquid went airborne and dumped itself onto my chest. I looked down. I was wearing a pale pink shirt made of fine cotton, which was now translucent and plastered to my breasts.
“Aw, HELL no!” hollered Georgia, aghast. “Dude! I’m sorry.”
A table of raucous undergrad frat guys facing us pointed out the obvious. “Wet T-shirt!” chortled one dolt in delight. Whistling erupted.
I sat frozen. I had on a very thin bra that provided no cover in this spectacle, and since it was summer, no one had a jacket to offer me. I folded my arms across my chest. Across from me, Graham blinked. He fluttered his head violently like a dog shaking off water (Breasts! So mesmerizing!) and stood. The next thing I knew, he had pulled off his own shirt and draped it across me. “Thanks,” I whispered, meeting his warm eyes. “Maybe I’ll duck into the bathroom.”
Graham nodded. “I don’t need that shirt back,” he offered.
Georgia agreed. “Please don’t give it back to him,” she said. “It’s straight-up Flock of Seagulls.”
“Georgia, you’re wearing an orange tuxedo shirt,” Graham pointed out.
Ignoring the banter, I slid out, creating a rustling rearrangement in the booth. Georgia followed me, disregarding the belated arrival of a waitress with some towels. We waded through the catcalling undergrads, not looking back at the table where Hannah was patting Graham on his magnificent bare chest and Emma was staring ahead, an empty look on her pretty face.
Chapter Eight
THE MENTAL FORTRESS
Emma, Present Day
Zadie followed Buzzy’s ambulance so I’d have a way to get home after we turned him over to the surgical team at the hospital. She waited outside, apparently deterred by the thought of entering the ER in her bathing suit cover-up, a worry that also occurred to me. But I had no choice: Buzzy’s makeshift airway was too precarious to leave in the otherwise very capable hands of the EMTs. He regained consciousness in the ambulance as his oxygenation improved, so I made the call to sedate him. God knew what he must have thought, awakening to a searing pain in his throat as I hovered over him, half-naked and bloody.
When we pulled up to the ambulance entrance, I hesitated: Mary Sarah had given me my cover-up, but it was sheer and hot pink, and I was still barefoot. Could I dare hope that no one would recognize me out of context?
Everyone recognized me. I jogged alongside the gurney as the EMTs hustled us into the ER, collecting a crowd of fascinated onlookers as we went. The ER expected us, of course, and they knew the basics, but EMTs don’t give any identifying information when they call in over the radio. Therefore, no one was expecting to see me, one of their busiest trauma surgeons, arriving in a bikini with one of the city’s most prominent citizens who’d just had his throat ripped open with a steak knife.
It takes a lot to break the concentration of ER doctors. But my attire seemed to be doing just that. Everyone’s mouths fell open as they caught sight of me.
“Where’s the trauma team?” I asked the ER attending, who was sponging Betadine over Buzzy’s throat in a belated attempt to sterilize the area before replacing the tube with something more stable.
“Trauma’s not taking him,” she replied, ripping open a cric kit.
“They’re not? Who is?”
“He is,” she said, motioning to a guy who had just entered the room, his back to us as he donned a sterile gown.
“Who’s that?”
“Well, we had quite the discussion about which service should wind up with this patient,” she said. She nodded to a nurse, who began injecting medication into Buzzy’s IV. “There was some disagreement over what kind of patient he is: Trauma? ENT? Internal medicine? We paged trauma, but they refused, on the grounds that an emergency surgical procedure doesn’t constitute a trauma.” She eyed the hole in Buzzy’s throat. “Perhaps arguable, in this case. Then we tried internal medicine, but they declined because everyone always wants them to admit everything, and they’re sick of it, yada, yada. ENT agreed to do the scope—they should be here in a sec—but they refuse to admit because specialty services always refuse to admit. So general surgery’s gonna wind up with him in the SICU.”
“Oh,” I said, starting to add an apology on behalf of my trauma colleagues, when the guy in the yellow gown turned around.
“Have you met Dr. Xenokostas?” asked the ER doc. “He’s new. Hepatobiliary surgeon, but he’s taking general call today. Nick, this is Emma Colley, one of our trauma guys.”
Nick and I stared at each other with identical expressions of shock.
I mumbled something lame about not being dressed for the occasion and bolted from the ER before Nick could say anything, my heart hammering a furious staccato beat. Zadie must’ve attributed my silence to distress about the emergency procedure, because she yammered on and on about my coolness under pressure during the ride home, thankfully sparing me from having to talk. Even though it was barely afternoon, I went to bed as soon as I got home, closing the blackout curtains in my room and pulling the covers over my head.