Happy Thanksgiving, all! I hope you're enjoying your turkey day and recovering from the feast. My teenagers are somehow STILL eating. Personally, I think I'm good until sometime next week!
I promised you guys Thursdays, so here we are with chapter three! Thank you all for following along!
BPOV
It's amazing what a whole night's sleep and a few healthy meals can do for a person. By the time I get ready for my next stint at the hospital, I'm refreshed.
I've got a bounce to my step as I hop out of my car. Nothing is going to bring me down today. I am calm and collected, level-headed. I've put everything to do with Tony Masen and Jacob Black behind me. At least, that's what I tell myself.
I reach for my Mercy Hospital badge as I near the entrance, but it's not connected to my jacket. Cursing, I shift all my bags onto one arm so I can dig through my purse. I had the freaking thing when I walked out the door. It's got to be in here somewhere. My fingers locate the plastic clasp just as I trip over a crack in the sidewalk. I brace myself for impact- serves me right for not watching where I was going.
"Whoa!" I recognize the voice that calls out as a strong arm reaches around my waist and steadies me. I gasp, and the intoxicating scent of cologne surrounds me. Dior, I think. "You alright?"
"Mr. Masen!" I let my hair hang in front of me as I scramble to my feet. I know my cheeks are beet red.
"Tony," he reminds me, holding my shoulder until I'm steady.
"What are you doing here?" I struggle to untangle my bags, my badge finally in hand.
"Taking a stroll?" He glances down the street like he's not sure how he ended up in front of the employee entrance to the emergency department.
"Is that a question?"
"Uh, no," he chuckles. The side of his mouth quirks up, making me melt a little inside. Damnit. "I'm here to see you."
"Me? Why? Is everything okay with your stitches?" I glance at the bandaid on his forehead.
"Yeah. They're fine," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You want the truth?"
"I'd prefer that, yeah."
"Since the other night, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you."
"Oh." I forget to breathe when his gaze locks on mine. The intensity in his gaze is more than I can handle, so I take a step back. My instincts scream that his man is complicated- no good for me.
"I came here to ask if you'd have dinner with me sometime." He gives me the lopsided grin again, and caution be damned, I want to run off into the sunset with him.
"Excuse me?" I remind myself I'm not supposed to date patients. Although, I'm not sure if he's still considered my patient.
"Shit," he mutters. "I felt like we had a connection. If I'm wrong, I apologize. I'll get out of your hair." He raises his hands, putting a blockade between us, and backs away. "God, this was a stupid idea. Uh, pretend this never happened."
"No! Wait!" I lunge forward, my bags nearly knocking me off balance again. He's poised to turn away, waiting for me to decide. "I- just- I don't know you."
"Isn't that the point of going out? Getting to know each other?" His eyes dance as he laughs off my reasoning.
"Where would we go?"
"I was thinking dinner," he says, stepping closer.
"Just dinner?"
"We can start with that."
I force myself to stop debating, and before I know it, I'm mumbling, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay."
"Give me your number." My heart beats a mile a minute as he holds out his phone, and I program in my contact information. "I'll send you a text. Does Friday work?"
"Yeah." I'm fighting to keep my composure. Inside I'm giddy like a little girl who found out her secret admirer is the boy she's crushing on.
"Alright, Doctor Swan. Until Friday." He reaches for my hand, lifting it and placing a kiss against my skin. Who the hell is this guy, and what voodoo magic is he conducting on me?
"It's Bella." Is the only coherent thing I have to say.
"Bella." He winks, and I giggle in response, watching him as he walks away. I wait in the cold until he crosses the street, disappearing from view.
I'm in a daze all the way to the breakroom. I think I'm in shock.
"I'm telling you, Ange, this guy was like Adonis level. I didn't know men like him existed in the real world." Jessica is rambling by the water filter when I walk in, holding our charge nurse hostage. "Oh, hey, Bella! I'm filling Angela in on our hottie from the other night."
"Jess, don't you have a boyfriend?" Angela asks.
"Doesn't mean I'm blind," she says, rolling her eyes.
"Actually, I just ran into him outside." I bite my lip to hide a grin as I stuff my cooler into a locker.
"Wait, what?" I've got Jessica's full attention now.
"Yeah, he wanted to know if he could take me out sometime. Can you believe that?" I'm smiling like a fool as they gawk at me. That's right, ladies, Mr. Adonis wants to go out with me.
"For the love of all that is holy, please tell me you said yes!" Jessica squeals.
"I said yes."
"Dear Christ on a cracker! Thank you! You have to tell us everything! I'm going to live vicariously through you!"
"Please don't tell us everything." Angela winces and sets her hands on Jessica's shoulders to rein her in.
"I promise I'll give you a recap afterward," I laugh. "But right now, I've got to clock in."
Our shift starts off easy. I'm only assigned three patients in the first hour- a kid with a buckle fracture in his wrist and a couple of nursing home residents with cardiac histories. I'm getting ready to send the fracture home when our new patient care tech comes in and curses us all.
"It's quiet in here tonight," Riley announces before chugging back his energy drink.
"What is wrong with you?" Angela spins around a la Linda Blair in the exorcist and glares.
"Riley! You can't say the Q word!" Jessica groans.
"What? Why? I'm just pointing it out. It's nice to get a break every once in a while."
"Yeah, and now you've ruined that break for all of us," Angela scolds. "Mark my word. We'll be drowning in stab wounds and heart attacks within thirty minutes."
Angela's wrong. It takes forty minutes.
"Bella, there's another ambulance headed in, five minutes out. Eighty-five-year-old male in respiratory distress," Jessica rattles off, following me between bedsides.
"Can't Doctor Greene take him? I've got a lac, two fractures, and a heart failure!"
"He's in the trauma bay with the car accident, and Doctor Marks is dealing with the cops on that psych patient."
"Damnit! Fine. Find me when they arrive."
She splits off for the med room while I work to pull up X-rays on my tablet.
"Hey, your phone's been buzzing non-stop." Angela runs past with a basin and a bunch of towels.
I'm irrationally annoyed at the prospect of someone trying to get a hold of me in the middle of a shift until I remember that I gave Tony-GQ-Masen my phone number this afternoon. My patient's radiology reading isn't back yet, so I indulge in a quick stop at my desk, hoping to find a text- or multiple texts- from my new, maybe, love interest.
Sure enough, I've got six missed texts and two calls from a new number. I bite my lip as I open my phone to read the messages. A silly little flutter erupts in my stomach from the excitement.
Hey B, I got a new number. Had to ditch the old one.
Oh yeah, this is Jake BTW.
"Oh, for fucks sake!" I mumble, scrolling down.
My man Quil is still hurting. He wants to know if he should ice or heat his face.
He also wants to know if weed works as a painkiller.
Never mind, he says it worked.
Hey, why aren't you answering your phone?
My phone buzzes in my hands as another text comes through.
So, this weekend. You and me, Frankie's restaurant on Ninth St. It's real upscale. Only the best for the beautiful Bella.
I don't have time for this. I mute Jake's texts and spend the next few minutes debating about blocking his number while I prepare for the ambulance's arrival.
We're understaffed and running in circles, doing a terrifying balancing act. Jessica forgets to discharge one of our patients, and I find them wandering the halls an hour after I thought they'd left. I eventually throw my phone in a drawer because Jake won't stop calling.
By midnight I'm back in the break room glaring at the Keurig and regretting all my life choices.
"Another ambulance is inbound." Jessica joins me with her "We can't fix stupid, but we can sedate it!" coffee mug in hand.
"I'm going to murder Riley," I grumble.
"Get in line. Angela put him on bedpan duty."
"Not harsh enough punishment."
"We've got a gunshot wound headed our way."
"Fabulous."
"Don't worry, Greene already took it. He asked if you can keep an eye on his patients."
"Sure." I'll do anything to avoid taking on a trauma patient.
We pop the tops on our travel mugs and venture back into the chaos of the emergency department. We get stopped at the ambulance bay by the paramedics rolling in with Greene's gunshot victim.
From a glance, I can tell the patient's condition is grim. The guy was hit twice in the abdomen and has lost a lot of blood. His hand is mangled, and I know that if he walks out of here, it won't be with all five fingers. He's not responding to Angela as she talks to him. Instead, he lets out a series of incoherent moans.
"The ER has a way of putting life into perspective, doesn't it?" Jessica mutters.
"Yeah. The life lesson of 'don't get into gun fights' is a valuable one," I snark.
"It wasn't so much a fight as a driveby." I look behind me to find a couple of detectives watching the scene.
"Um, are you two-"
"Investigating the case. Detective Randall." He reaches out to shake my hand.
"What happened?" Jessica asks.
"Mob hit. He was leaving dinner with his girl, and a couple of guys were across the street waiting for him. They took off as soon as shots were fired."
"Do you think you'll catch them?" Jessica gasps.
"Doubt it. Witnesses in mob-controlled Chicago rarely talk."
A shriek from down the hall puts a halt to our conversation. A woman, not much older than me, is running toward us, sobbing. She's got dark makeup smeared around her puffy eyes, and her excessive gold jewelry jingles as she walks.
"The girlfriend," Officer Randall says.
"Jamie!" She's hysterical as Angela and the hospital Chaplin rush over to play interference.
I shake my head, disgusted by the entire situation. "Come on, Jess. We've got patients."
Jessica doesn't take her eyes off the commotion in the trauma bay as she follows me. Even after years of medical experience, a sick fascination draws staff into cases like this. I'm not like Jessica, though. I'm grateful that the patient wasn't assigned to me because all I can think is- serves him right.
I swap my coffee for my tablet and duck in to check on Doctor Green's chest pain patient. I let him and his wife know that we'd like to admit him for observation and spend fifteen minutes answering their questions. The following hour I'm running from room to room ordering labs and X-rays.
"Bella, I got it from here." I'm relieved when Greene stops me as I head toward his pediatric pancreatitis case.
"Oh, thank God." I happily hand the reins back to him. "How's the gunshot victim doing?"
"He's in surgery. Hit twice in the abdomen, once in the hand. I don't know the complete scope of the damage. But it wasn't pretty."
I hum in response and peel away at the end of the hallway. When I return to my desk, my coffee is lukewarm, but I chug it down anyway.
"Did you hear the gossip about the mafia guy?" Jessica accosts me before I've finished swallowing. "I mean- the update on the case," she whispers.
"No. I've been a little busy, if you haven't noticed."
"So, word is the hit didn't take place outside a restaurant. The guy was shot somewhere else and left for dead. The girlfriend found out and picked him up, then drove him to the restaurant to make it look like he was innocent in the whole thing. Can you believe that?"
"I don't understand it," I scoff. "Why would any self-respecting woman get involved with a guy like that? Does she think he's going to change? That there was any chance he wouldn't end up in the emergency room with a gunshot wound?"
"I don't know that it's 'self-respecting' women that end up with these guys."
"I guess you have a point. All I know is I would run screaming in the opposite direction if I found out my boyfriend was in the mob."
"I guess I'm lucky then. My guy is on the right side of the law." She winks.
"Yeah, does he have any single friends?"
"Hey, you've already got a guy, Tony, remember?"
"God, I hope he's one of the good ones."
"I've got a hunch about him. He reminds me of my Mike," she says. "I can't put my finger on it, but I bet he's on the up and up."
"I'll find out soon enough." I shrug. "But for now, we've got a patient that needs an IV." I point Jessica in the direction of room two. Break time is over.
I remember my phone in my desk drawer and decide to check it before I'm sucked back into work. I've got another missed call from Jake, which I ignore, and a text from a number I don't know.
Hi Dr. Bella, it's Tony Masen. Hope you're having a good night. I can't wait for Friday. I'll be thinking of you until then. -T
Tony's text gives me a better boost than caffeine ever could. With a renewed pep to my step, I put a smile on my face and return to work. Despite Riley's curse, I categorize the night as one of my better shifts.
A/N: Hmm... so what's Bella going to think when she finds out about Tony? Or will she figure out Mr. GQ's real identity?
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