looked to be about eight years old. Her wounds would need suturing, too, and before that a thorough cleaning. A woman, presumably her mother, sat with her, tenderly wiping her scrapes and cuts with damp cotton pads.
“What do you need me to do first?” Dani asked. She’d probably be stitching up the girl but, as bad as the boy’s injuries looked, Chase might need her help first.
“Get a peripheral IV going in the boy. His name’s Apollo. Give him morphine so I can irrigate and set the leg. Then you can wash out his sister’s cuts, scrub with soap and stitch her up. I have her mom putting a lidocaine-epinephrine cocktail on her to numb the skin.”
Dani noted how worried the mother looked, and had to applaud her for her calm and efficient ministrations. A cloth that looked like it might have been the boy’s shirt lay soaked with blood on the floor next to her, which, at a guess, she’d used to try to stop the bleeding. The mother’s clothes were covered in blood too, and Dani’s throat tightened in sympathy. The poor woman had sure been through one terrible morning.
“Where are the IVs kept? And the irrigation and suture kits?” If only she’d had just an hour to get acquainted with the layout of the place. Right now, she felt like the newbie she was, and hated her inadequacy when both patients needed help fast.
“IVs are in the top right cupboard. The key to the drug drawer is in my scrub pocket.”
She stepped over to Chase, and he straightened to give her access to his chest pocket. As she slipped her hand inside, feeling his hard pectoral through the fabric, their eyes met. The moment took her rushing back to Honduras, to all the times just like these, as though they had been yesterday instead of three years ago. To all the memories of working together as a team. To all the times he’d proved what an accomplished surgeon he was.
Heart fluttering a little, she slipped the key from his pocket, trying to focus on the present situation and not his hunkiness quotient. She turned and gathered the morphine and IV materials and came back to the whimpering boy, wanting to ease his pain quickly.
“Tell him he’ll feel a little pinch then I’m going to put a straw in his hand that’ll make his leg hurt less,” she said, concentrating on getting the IV going fast.
“Damn,” Chase said.
She looked up and saw him shaking his head.
“What?”
“I’d forgotten how good you are at that. One stick and, bam, the IV’s in. I don’t think he even felt it.”
His voice and expression were filled with admiration, which made her feel absurdly pleased. “Thanks.”
He leaned closer. “He’s lucky you’re here.”
“And he’s lucky to have you to put his leg back together.”
He smiled and she smiled back, her breath catching at how ridiculously handsome the man looked when his eyes were all fudgy brown and warm and his lips teasingly curved.
“The little girl’s going to get the world’s most meticulous stitcher-upper, too,” Chase said, still smiling as he tweezed out lingering pieces of gravel from Apollo’s wound. “I remember a button you sewed so tightly on my shirt I couldn’t get it through the little hole any more.”
“Well, I only did it for you because, considering you’re a surgeon, you’re really bad at sewing on buttons.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as they met hers again, and her heart skipped a beat, darn it all. With the IV in place, the boy’s eyes drooped as the morphine took effect. Chase placed an X-ray plate under the boy’s calf, then rolled a machine across the room, positioning its C-arm over his shin, obviously suspecting, as she did, that it also might be broken.
“Is the X-ray tech coming soon?”
“No X-ray tech. Honduras was loaded with staff compared to this place. I’ll get this film developing before I work on the compound fracture.”
Wow. Hard to believe they had to take and develop the X-rays. “I’ll get started with the girl. Where’s irrigation?”
He nodded toward the wide, low sink. “Faucet. The secret to pollution is dilution. It’s the best we have.”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? I stick her wounds under the faucet?”
“Attach the hose. We’ve found it provides more force than the turkey basters we use on less polluted wounds. It’s how I’m going to get him cleaned up now that he’s had pain meds. You’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. Be right back.” With a wink, he left with the X-ray cartridge in his hand.
Dani grabbed a pair of sterile gloves from a box attached to the wall and rolled a stool from under the counter to sit next to the gurney. She smiled at the wide-eyed girl and her mother.
If only she spoke their language, or even a little French. The girl looked scared but wasn’t shedding a single tear. Hopefully, when the local nurse arrived, she could interpret for Dani. Or Chase would. One of the many amazing things about the darned man was all the languages he could speak fluently or partially. He had a true gift for it, while Dani hated the fact that it had never come easily to her.
“I’m going to wash—laver—her cuts to get all the gravel and nasty stuff out of there.” Lord, was that the only French word she could come up with?
The mother seemed to understand, though, nodding gravely. Dani rolled the gurney to the low sink and couldn’t believe she had to stick the child’s various extremities practically inside it, scrubbing with good old antiseptic soap to clean out the debris. Thank goodness the numbing solution seemed to be working pretty well, as the scrubbing didn’t seem to hurt her patient too badly.
“You’re being very brave,” she told the little girl, who gave her a shy smile in return, though she probably didn’t understand the words.
The mother helped with the washing, and Dani thought about how her own perspective had changed since she’d had Drew. When she had been in med school, and then when she’d become a doctor, she’d thought she’d got it. But now she truly understood how terrifying it must be to have your child seriously injured or ill.
When Chase returned, Dani had finished prepping the girl and helped him get the boy’s wounds washed out. Not an easy task, because tiny bits of gravel seemed determined to stay embedded in his flesh. Thank heavens the morphine made the situation tolerable for the child.
“You want me to stitch this big lac on his head, or do you want to do it after I work on his leg?” Chase asked, then grinned. “Or maybe we should call in the plastic surgeon.”
“Funny. I’m as good as any plastic surgeon anyway. Tell his mom he’ll be as handsome as ever when I’m done.”
Chase chatted with the mother as they laid the boy back on the gurney, and the woman managed a smile, her lips trembling and tears filling her eyes for a moment.
“I haven’t seen anything like this since Honduras,” Dani said quietly to Chase as they got the patient comfortable and increased his morphine drip in preparation for setting the leg. “Been in a suburban practice where the bad stuff goes to the ER. The roughest stuff I dealt with was ear infections.”
“So you’re sorry you came?”
“No.” She shook her head and gave him a crooked smile. “Even though you’re here, I’d almost forgotten how much we’re needed in places like this.”
“Except you shouldn’t have brought Drew. Which we’ll be talking about.” His expression hardened.
Oh, right. Those deep, dark issues they had to deal with separate from what they were doing now.
Yes, Chase was a great surgeon and good man, but she had to remember why she’d left in the first place. Because he didn’t want a child. And she wasn’t about to let him bully her into doing things his way and only his way, without regard for how