wasn’t high on her frustrating list of things to do. Coffee had been her go-to for common ground. Who didn’t like coffee?
With a deep breath and after a few seconds to unclench her hands, Imogen turned to face Wyatt, who’d called her new name. He looked smug. He also looked like he needed someone to stomp on his toes. Someone like her. Later. After she played his stupid game.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Next patient.” He could’ve just said that, but that would have deprived him of the perverse pleasure he took in her predicament.
She stepped off the bus and made for the serene little church, today’s waiting room, feeling not at all serene. Red carpet, wooden benches carved on the ends with crosses, an open stage in the front for the kind of preachers who needed room to wander. So quaint and peaceful it almost took the edge off her day. Her little oasis away from Wyatt.
Inside, a handful of people sat—most of whom had spent the day there, chatting while people came and went from the bus. She snagged the sign-in sheet from the table beside the door and called the last name on the check-in sheet. “Mr. Smith?”
Day almost over. Just one more patient.
An older man stood with some effort and as he turned to look back, ice lanced through her middle.
Blue skin.
Oh, no. His skin tone rivaled a blueberry, bluer than anyone she’d ever seen. She’d coded patients in her time, she just hadn’t expected it to happen on this job.
Fear, bright and blistering, sent her running for the man. “Sir, it’s going to be okay. Sit back down. Breathe for me. Sit. Yes.” She urged him back onto the wooden pew, ready to throw him on his back to give CPR.
Assess. Breathing somewhat labored, but he still breathed. He looked a little alarmed but not panicky. Didn’t exactly add up. She needed Wyatt. Blue skin was a bad sign. “Someone get Dr. Beechum.”
Everyone in the room stared at her, shock and horror on their faces—and not one of them equipped to run for Wyatt.
With the man seated, she confirmed his pulse was more or less regular then held up one hand to signal he should stay, and barreled for the bus. The door had barely opened before she started shouting, “Wyatt! A patient inside is cyanotic. I think he’s coding…”
Wyatt grabbed a tank of oxygen and a mask, and ran behind her.
She was nearly at Mr. Smith’s side when Wyatt took her by the elbow and thrust her behind him. “Oh, sir, I’m so sorry. My nurse is new—Emma-Jean, Amanda’s friend. Don’t think she’s ever encountered anyone with methoglobinemia before.”
Her breathing sounded so loud in her ears Imogen couldn’t even be sure she understood what Wyatt was saying. The man wasn’t coding? Blue skin happened when someone was deprived of oxygen. Blue skin was never good.
The two men exchanged a few quiet words and the next thing she knew, Wyatt was peddling her backwards, out of earshot, his big body blocking her view of the bizarrely colorful man. “Take a walk, Emma-Jean.”
“Please tell me what’s going on. That man—”
“He’s descended from the Blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek.” Wyatt leaned close as he spoke, like she knew the people or the creek. It was a hell of a time for him to invade her space and fill her nose with his good smell. It just got warmer and fuller the longer the day wore on. And with her adrenaline surging, her senses only multiplied her reaction to it.
“Take your phone, walk up the hill and run a search on it. Come back in a half hour, I’ll explain if needed.”
“I’m sorry. I thought…”
“I know.” His voice gentled but he still looked grim. “You’re embarrassed, and so is he. Take a walk.”
Imogen nodded, and though she wanted to apologize to the man for causing a scene, she slipped to the exit with as much dignity as she could muster.
She felt the burning in her eyes before she got to the door but managed to hold back a well of frustrated tears—they got no further than her lashes. Horrified didn’t begin to cut it.
Shaking started deep in her shoulders, after-effects of adrenaline. A simple walk up the hill wouldn’t suffice. She had to move.
Once clear of the building, Imogen broke into a jog. For a few minutes the scorching embarrassment from nearly coding poor Mr. Smith deadened the soreness that had racked her body since yesterday.
Wyatt’s repeated warnings that she wouldn’t fit in had sounded like a bunch of excuses before today. All her efforts to engage the patients, all the resisting of correcting the pronunciation of her name, all her good work…gone, in the wake of one well-intentioned mistake.
It figured that he’d be right about her fitting in but wrong about her having cell reception at the top of the hill. No bars again. The mountains rejected both her and her cellphone. What was she even doing here?
The surge of energy left as quickly as it had arrived, and rather than walk back down to the bus and chance an encounter with the blue grandpa, she hopped over the ditch on the shoulder of the road, walked into the trees and sat.
Day One—Epic Failure. Would he even allow her to attempt Day Two? Should she count herself lucky if he went ahead and fired her spectacularly later?
When Mr. Smith had been gone for twenty minutes and Imogen still hadn’t returned, Wyatt stored any loose items and started the bus. Not the greatest day on record, but at least she hadn’t started chest compressions and broken Mr. Smith’s sternum.
Wyatt considered the thought and dismissed it. Imogen might be a little culturally clueless for the region, but she was a good nurse. When the situation had failed to compute for her, she had come for him. It had been the right call.
He found her sitting beside the road, right where he’d told her to go, knees up and hand to forehead, propping it up. With little enough traffic on the country road, he stopped. A few seconds later he heard the bus door open and close, and finally she joined him.
“You all right?” Wyatt asked, not starting the bus again yet—no one waited behind them and he wanted to look at her. No anger, though the set of her shoulders and her refusal to look at him said enough. Dismay. Disappointment. Maybe even defeat.
“I’m fine. Can we go?”
She wasn’t fine, but was obviously not ready to talk about it. When they reached the motel and had settled in, he’d try again.
She buckled in and he got the bus moving, letting her soak up some peace as they made the forty-five-minute drive to the nearest little town and the motel he usually stayed at.
Family-owned motels were what Wyatt preferred. They were tiny, but they were also friendly, not connected to the interstate so they felt safer, and the owners happily learned his route and saved a room for him. The colors the rooms sported had probably been hideous even when new, but for some reason their homeliness tickled him. Something he appreciated after years of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. They were also extremely clean. Another selling point.
Pulling off into the gravel lot of his usual stop, Wyatt realized two things: no Wi-Fi, so he was going to have to get Imogen to talk at least enough to explain what happened with Mr. Smith; and the Trout Derby might have filled his usual room. Ten rooms in the whole building, and by his count there were ten vehicles in the lot.
Shutting off the ignition, he climbed out of his seat and headed for the door. “Wait here. I’ll make sure they still have the room waiting.”
Imogen had given no indication she intended to move, but he said it anyway.
“Okay.”
One-word answers from the talkative woman…From the number of cars, if they had a room saved, it was going to be just that: one room, which was what they always saved.
Imogen