LITMIR.BIZ

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      Running hard, zigging and zagging in and out of the other passengers on their way to locate cabins, she did make it to the elevator and managed to squeeze in just as the doors were about to shut. “Excuse me,” she gasped, wedging her way between a buxom older lady smelling of gardenias and wearing a large purple hat that took up enough space for two people and a hard body in a white uniform she didn’t care to investigate. “Could I just have a little more room?”

      Too many people crammed in, too many different cloying perfumes, too many voices… “More room, please,” she begged again, just as the elevator started to spin. Not literally. She knew that. It was her head spinning. Damn, she’d meant to eat something this morning…last night.

      Stupid! She was a doctor. She knew better. But she recognized a good case of low blood sugar when she felt it, and she felt it. As soon as I get off the ship, she promised herself. She’d go and find the closest little café to the dock and have herself a decent meal. Except the claustrophobia left over from her panic attack combined with the wooziness of her hypoglycemia were conspiring to bring her to her knees. As the elevator dinged its way from deck to deck, without anyone getting off, she was glad for the crowded conditions now as there was no way she could make it to her knees.

      But her body was trying to make her collapse. Voices getting louder…smells stronger…ringing in her ears. Head spinning…no place to fall except into the immense bosom of the purple hat lady or into the hard body behind her.

      In the end, the decision wasn’t Sarah’s to make. As the elevator jolted to a stop on yet another deck, her head took its last spin and she sank directly into the arms of the hard body, who had the good sense to hold her up until everybody was off the elevator. Then he scooped her up into his arms and carried her out.

      She was vaguely aware of him, vaguely aware that she was babbling something incoherent. She knew that she wanted to get off the ship and go someplace where she could be alone again. But all the vagueness lasted mere seconds, then nothing. Sarah had passed out in the arms of a stranger.

      “Everybody, out at the next stop,” Dr Michael Sloan ordered, as the dark-haired woman slumped against his chest. She wasn’t unconscious yet, but he’d bet his medical license that would be the next thing to happen.

      He’d noticed her when she’d got on. Pale, nervous. Panicked look on her face. Or maybe frightened. Whichever it was, she’d squeezed in and the instant the doors had shut he’d noticed her breathing. Shallow, rapid. All indicators of someone who didn’t want to be there. Panic attack, maybe. Or someone in some kind of real physical distress. Then she’d gone and slumped into him, right into his arms, like she’d had it planned, and now the only thing he could do was hold onto her until they could get off. Then he’d take a look, see what the problem was.

      As the doors parted, the dozen or so people crammed into the elevator started to file out while he kept a tight hold on his new patient. He’d never before had one drop into his arms the way this one had. In fact, he couldn’t recall that he’d ever had any woman swoon like this, whether or not she had been sick. Too bad this one was sick, because he liked the way she smelled. Fresh, something fruity, he thought as the last three people left, leaving him enough room to lead her through the doors.

      Yes, he definitely liked her scent. It wasn’t the heavy, sickly sweet scent of expensive perfume he smelled so often on the ship. Turning in the direction of the doors, he prepared to exit. “Now, somebody, please hold the door open for me.”

      The woman with the monster purple hat wedged her ample body in the door opening to prevent it from closing as Michael started to assist his patient through the elevator doors, but after two steps her full weight sagged against him and he had no other recourse but to pick her up and carry her out.

      “Get off,” she mumbled at him. “Want off…now. Have to…off…”

      “We are. Right now,” he replied. “We’re getting off right now.”

      “Got to go… Can’t stay…”

      “That’s right. We’re going to my office,” he replied, as she tucked her head against his chest. “I’m the ship’s doctor and I think I need to have a little look at you to see what’s going on.”

      “Want to go…please, let me…”

      “Don’t worry. I’ll get you back to your cabin once I’ve given you an exam,” he said, already deciding she might be in the throes of hypoglycemia. That happened a lot. People got excited about the cruise, then forgot to eat. The next thing that happened was their blood sugar whacking out. It wasn’t uncommon and usually very easy to fix. “When was the last time you ate something? Do you remember?” She looked particularly frail, he thought, and a good several pounds under her ideal weight. Pretty, though. Add another ten pounds and she’d be voluptuous. For a moment he envisioned her looking vibrant—her face with some color in it to better contrast with the raven black of her hair, her dark brown eyes filled with something other than anguish. The more he studied her, the more he was taken by her beauty.

      Then she shifted in his arms, laid her hand on his chest and for an instant he felt a tingle, which immediately snapped his attention back to his professional assessment of her. Without a test, hypoglycemia was still his first call. That’s what he had to keep his mind on, that he was carrying a patient to his office, not a beautiful woman to his bed.

      Although it had been a long time since he’d had a woman there, no matter how she got there—walking on her own, carried in his arms, or somersaulting.

      “Too loud. So many people…” she mumbled, snapping him back once again. “Don’t want to—”

      “Can you tell me if you have low blood sugar?” he interrupted, his voice rather stiff and husky. “Have you ever been diagnosed with a condition called hypoglycemia?”

      Instead of answering, she merely sighed, then snuggled in a little more. And snaked her arm up around his neck, causing another tingle to skitter off the tips of her fingers and run down the full length of his back.

      Michael cleared his throat heavily, like that would clear away the tingle. “Have you been diagnosed with…” He tried again, but her other arm went up, and now what should have been a simple hold on a patient looked more like a lover’s embrace. But only for a moment, then both her arms went limp and her hold on him vanished.

      His patient had fainted again.

      Sarah finally opened her eyes, squinting into the overhead exam light, before she twisted her head to the side and opened them fully. Where was she? Why was she here? “What’s that?” she asked, spotting the IV stand with its bag hanging next to the bed, not yet realizing that it was anchored into her arm.

      “Sugar water,” came a voice from the other side of a blue-and-green-striped curtain. “Your blood sugar was low so we’re giving you something to bring it back up to normal.”

      Curtain, hard bed… She glanced around as the surroundings started making sense to her. Medical equipment. Now it was all coming back. Panic attack, hypoglycemic episode. She’d gotten into the elevator. It had been crowded…she did remember that much. The perfume, the large woman with the purple hat. Then she’d keeled over, hadn’t she?

      An involuntary moan slipped through Sarah’s lips as her recall returned in full and she remembered collapsing straight into the hard body’s arms. Now here she was in the ship’s hospital. As a patient, though. Not as a doctor.

      “We did a little test,” he continued.

      Well, of course he would, she thought, not too surprised by his verdict. This was the hospital and he was a medic of some sort. “How low was it? My blood sugar?”

      “Forty-two when I brought you in. Normal values start at eighty, and run all the way up to one-twenty. But you were well under the norm, which was why you passed out.”

      She knew all that. Her days as a practicing physician might be over, but her medical knowledge was certainly as good as ever. It had been

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