Sam was still in shock as she led Paul down to Trauma one where the young man was in desperate need of a surgeon – student or not. Passing by the terminals and cupboards in a blur, she couldn't comprehend the words that he was saying to her.
Was he really here? The guy that she had been out on 'dates' with? He was a medical student?
Christ, she realised, he was only two years younger than she was.
"Where's that surgical consult?" She heard from the other end of the corridor and recognised Luka's heavily accented voice.
Stepping up her pace, she barrelled through the double doors pushing them with her back, her bloody hands still held in front of her the way they had been the whole time. The site that greeted her was familiar but still unexpected: wads of surgical gauze and cloths were scattered around the floor at everyone's feet; Luka's hands were deep inside the boy's abdomen, his glasses falling down his nose, his hair matted against his forehead. Abby was leaning over the other side of the gurney, her hands occupied with equipment for a chest tube.
"Somebody called for a surgical consult?"
Sam snapped out of her state of shock and rushed to Luka's side, holding back the folds of skin so he could have better access to the young man's internal workings.
"Sam?" She almost didn't hear him over the chaos of the trauma room and turned towards him with a questioning look on her face. "Could you push my glasses up for me?"
Across from her, she could hear Haleh rattle off a list of the man's injuries and symptoms while Malik called out to anyone who was listening the man's SAT's were dropping. Sam pulled her hands away and, without thinking, raised her hand and pushed her fingers onto the plastic of Luka's glasses and slid them up his nose before turning away and pulling back the flaps of skin.
"Thanks," he replied dryly and Sam turned to him with a frown on her face and saw two red smudge marks across his field of vision.
"Sorry," she mumbled and looked up when she felt hands on her wrist, lifting them out of the way.
"Need a look-see, Sam," Paul told her as he held her wrists and smirked at her slightly.
Sam could feel Luka's interest pique at Beckett's use of her name. Turning towards him, she saw his jaw firmly set, his eyes cast towards Beckett as he manoeuvred Luka's hands out of the way.
"Okay, chest tube is in!" Abby called and Luka looked up at her, nodding and withdrew his hands.
"SAT's increasing," Malik told them and Luka nodded again.
"There's massive internal bleeding and-"
"Someone called for a consult?" Corday asked as she breezed through the double doors, her blue scrubs billowing around her. "Doctor Beckett, what's your report?"
Sam bustled about the room, fixing the patients mask and marking up his chart as she listened to Beckett, Corday, Luka and Abby discussing the best needs for the patient.
"SAT's are dropping fast!"
"Okay, move him up to six litres, Sam I want two more bags of O-neg and a round of epi just in case," she nodded to Luka and left the room.
"Oxygen is at one hundred percent!"
Sam rushed around into Trauma two and raided their cupboards – someone had yet to stock up Trauma one after that morning onslaught of traumas and they were running low on supplies.
"Sam we could use your help in here!" Susan called as Sam almost ran out of trauma two and into trauma one.
She paused at the doorway and turned back to Susan, shaking her head.
"Try Lydia, it's messy in here!"
She pivoted on her heel and rushed back into the chaos of her first trauma. She saw Corday and Beckett on one side and Luka towering over them both on the opposite side. She rushed around the bottom of the gurney and felt her footing slide out from under her as she stood on a soggy piece of gauze. She caught herself before she fell completely, but jarred her knee on the hard tile floor.
"Sam! Are you okay?" Luka asked as he stepped towards her but she waved him off, feeling her cheeks burn slightly in embarrassment.
"I'm fine, got the o-neg and the epi."
She stepped up beside Luka and saw Abby raise her eyebrow at her from the head of the gurney where she was revising her nursing years as she watched over the man's vitals as Malik disappeared into trauma two to help Susan. Sam simply shook her head and tried to ignore the throbbing in her knee.
"And if you just feel around… what do you feel?" Corday spoke in a lecture-ly tone to Beckett as he moved his hands about inside the man's abdomen, his tongue sitting on his teeth.
"I think I feel… I'm not sure, I think you should take a look Doctor Corday," he said as he began pulling his hands out.
"No, trust your gut instincts. Feel from your gut," Luka stated and Sam smiled at him as he switched from doctor to teacher.
After a few moments of silence, penetrated only by Abby calling out the vitals, Beckett spoke:
"Now that you mention it," he began and glanced up at Sam as she hung the second bag of blood, then to Luka. "There is a feeling in my gut."
Sam looked to Luka to see him remove his steely glare only to raise his eyebrow in a "so-follow-it" gesture and then turned back to Beckett.
"But then…" he paused and looked back to Sam before turning back to Luka. "It could be lunch related."
Sam tried to smother the grin that appeared on her face while Abby snorted in laughter. Sam could barely bring herself to look at Luka's face but when she did, she saw a blank wall, his jaw jutted out, moving from side to side.
He turned his upper body to her and pulled his jaw back in, and Sam could imagine the way he would be rubbing his tongue against the back of his bottom teeth in frustration.
"Put Corday down as the attending. I'm going to see if Susan needs any help."
Then he left, walking in the complete opposite direction of trauma two.
"Did I say something wrong?" Beckett asked and Sam glared at him.
"Okay, we're ready to take him up," Corday announced and Abby nodded, looking at Sam with an amused raised eyebrow.
--
Sam sat in the cage and looked through the plastic partition that separated her from the feeding sharks.
She had been put in triage for the last three hours of her shift after Susan learned of her fall in the trauma room and, if she was honest, she was glad. Her leg ached in a way it hadn't for a good month now and her knee was swollen, with a large black bruise gathering around the cap.
"Yo, chick." Sam looked up to the woman and raised her eyebrow at the greeting. "Look, I know you told me to wait but see, the thing is, I didn't want to tell you this before, ya know?"
Sam observed the tall, rather attractive brown-haired woman as she swayed her thick, long hair over her shoulder. Her brown eyes were deep set and ringed with dark circles. She coughed and Sam winced at the wheeze that escaped with it.
"Didn't tell me what?"
"I got lung cancer. Smoked sixty of these babies," she held up a pack of Marlboro reds and Sam frowned at the packet, "a day since I was fourteen."
Smiling forlornly and barely refraining from telling her to read the "Smoking Kills" advert on the packet, picked up the patient list and scanned through it.
"Please, chicka, you have no idea how much this hurts. Right here." As she said 'here', she grabbed onto her breast and squeezed it hard. Sam raised her eyebrows and let out an airy laugh.
"Okay, I'll see who's free to have a quick look at you." Sam spun around on her swivelling chair and saw Luka leave the bay at admit. "Doctor Kovac!" She called in an innocent voice and saw him turn towards her as he sorted his stethoscope around his neck.
He wasn't wearing his usual shirt and tie but a black roll neck sweater that Sam found very, very delectable to her eye. He moved towards her as she summoned him with her hand and he raised his eyebrow playfully as he neared her.
"Are you free to take a look at this patient, Doctor Kovac?"
Luka glanced away from her face to the beautiful woman standing on the opposite side and she watched as he did a double take and then fix his gaze back on Sam.
"Of course I am. Curtain two is open."
Sam nodded as he walked away in the direction of curtain two and turned back to the patient.
"And by free, I hope you mean in more ways than to take a look at me."
Sam simply smiled and stood up, allowing her eyes to roam over to Luka as he sat on the edge of the bed, his hands resting on his knees, smiling at her invitingly. She had to look away.
"Man, all he'd have to do is look at me and my top would be off," Sam heard Hathor (doubtful that that was her real name but Sam was never one to judge) mutter under her breath and Sam nodded in agreement.
Just wait until he speaks… she thought as she stared back at him and intentionally licked her lips.
--
"Okay, what we're going to do is give you a breast exam, just to make sure the cancer hasn't spread that way. This is just routine but, if you'd rather wait for the x-rays to come back, or get a female doctor to do your breast exam then I understand," Luka spoke quietly and softly and Sam tried to smother the smile that threatened when she saw the pout Hathor was sending Luka.
"Hell, if there's gonna be anyone in this hospital examining my breasts I'd complain if it wasn't you, handsome."
Sam snorted and looked up to see Luka biting his lips, a reddish hue spreading across his face. From her place behind Hathor's head, Sam winked at Luka and saw his blush deepen.
"Whenever you're ready," Luka stated after clearing his throat and stepped up to the side of her bed, and Sam stepped to the opposite side to observe.
"For you, I'll always be ready."
Sam rolled her eyes and wondered if this was a result of the dose of morphine Luka had told her to issue, or if 'Hathor' was always like this. Hoping for the former, she knew it was more likely the latter.
A silence ensued in which Luka kept his eyes concentrated on Sam as she fiddled about with the different instruments on the table.
"Do you know who Hathor was, Doctor Kovac? Do you mind if I call you Doctor Kovac?"
Luka pursed his lips as he glanced at her face and shook his head.
"She was the Egyptian Goddess of fertility, music and drugs."
Sam laughed lightly as she nodded.
"Sex, drugs and rock and roll," she teased as Luka glared pointedly at her. "You almost done in here, Doctor Kovac?" She asked innocently and smiled.
"There are a few lumps," he stated as he pulled his hands away from her body and looked back to Hathor as she slowly, almost sensually, pulled her gown back over her body. "But we'll wait until we get the x-rays before we say anything conclusive."
With that, he nodded to Sam and Hathor and left. Both women watched him leave, both remembering the feel of his hands on their bodies.
"How can you work with him?"
"Who, Doctor Kovac?"
"Hell, more like Doctor Love!" She swooned theatrically and Sam wondered again if this was a morphine-induced high or a Luka-induced high that she knew she had experience way too many times. "Those hands…! God… has he ever given you a breast exam?"
Sam scoffed in the back of her throat, remembering the many, many breast exams Luka had given her.
"Uh… no…" she lied, breathlessly and clenched her teeth as she remembered his lips on her body, tasting her, teasing her the previous night.
"Well, I strongly suggest that you get one… that man could charm the pants off a Nun – if they didn't burn a hole through them first."
Sam scoffed aloud and guffawed at Hathor before, grinning in shock and shaking her head.
"That was new…" She muttered through her laughter.
"It's true though."
Sam agreed internally and nodded externally.
"We'll be back with your x-rays soon," she said as she hung an IV bag and pulled the curtain around Hathor.
Walking up to the nurses' station, she flopped onto the counter top and rested her eyes, her hands in fists under her chin.
She felt him before she heard him. Pressing his back against hers, he wrapped his arms around her waist, under her scrub top and ran his thumb across her waistband, tickling her sensitive skin.
"I thought you only called me Doctor Kovac in bed?" He muttered into her hair as she pulled her body into a standing position and manoeuvred them further into the corner.
Squirming against him, she attempted to turn around, but he didn't allow her to move.
"Maybe I was thinking about how much I wanted you in bed that I was subconsciously trying to let you know…" she muttered seductively and felt his groan on her back and she grinned. "Either your stethoscope has fallen, Doctor Kovac, or someone else wants to go to bed too."
Grabbing onto her hand, he pulled her out of the nurses' station and called a quick "We're going for lunch!" over his shoulder to whoever was at admit, ignoring Frank's:
"But it's already three o'clock!"
TBC