LITMIR.BIZ

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fist through a wall—and his basketball scholarship in jeopardy—with fractures of the fourth and fifth metacarpal bones. A sixty-three-year-old man who had doubled up on Viagra to celebrate the occasion with his thirty-six-year-old wife and ended up in cardiac arrest instead. A seventeen-year-old female who had fallen off her balcony because the Ecstasy slipped into her drink by her boyfriend had made her want to pick the pretty flowers on her neighbor’s terrace—thankfully, she lived on the second floor, although she did sustain a broken clavicle and had required thirty-eight stitches to close the gash on her arm, courtesy of the glass vodka cooler bottle she had been holding when she fell.

      And those were only the ones he’d seen in the past hour. Then there was Nancy Anderson—a woman who claimed she tripped and fell into a door but whom he recognized from her frequent visits to the ER with various and numerous contusions and lacerations. Tonight it was a black eye, swollen jaw and broken wrist. Nancy wasn’t drunk, but Justin would bet that her husband was—not because it was New Year’s Eve but because Ray Anderson always hit the bottle as soon as he got home from work.

      More than once, Justin had tried to help her see that there were other options. She refused to listen to him. Because he understood that a woman who had been abused by her husband might be reluctant to confide in another man, he’d called in a female physician to talk to her, with the same unsatisfactory result. After Thanksgiving, when she’d suffered a miscarriage caused by a “fall down the stairs,” Dr. Wallace had suggested that she talk to a counselor. Nancy Anderson continued to insist that she was just clumsy, that her husband loved her and would never hurt her.

      “What did she say happened this time?” asked Callie Levine, one of his favorite nurses who had drawn the short straw and got stuck working the New Year’s Eve shift beside him.

      “Walked into a door.”

      Callie shook her head. “He’s going to kill her one of these days.”

      “Probably,” Justin admitted grimly. “But it doesn’t matter that you and I see it when she refuses to acknowledge what’s happening.”

      “When she lost the baby, I honestly thought that would do it. That her grief would override her fear and she would finally tell the truth.”

      “She fell down the stairs,” Justin said, reminding her of the explanation Nancy Anderson had given when she was admitted on that previous occasion.

      Then, because talking about the woman’s situation made him feel both frustrated and ineffectual, he opened another chart. “Did you call up to the psych department for a consult?”

      “Victoria Danes said she would be down shortly,” Callie told him. “Did you want her to see Mrs. Anderson?”

      “No point,” he said. “I just need her to talk to Tanner Northrop so we can figure out what to do there.”

      “Is that the little boy in Exam Two with Dr. Wallace?”

      “Dr. Wallace is still here?” He’d crossed paths with Avery Wallace earlier in the evening when he’d sneaked into the doctor’s lounge for a much-needed hit of caffeine and she’d strolled in, wearing a formfitting black dress and mile-high heels, and his eyes had almost popped right out of his head.

      She’d barely glanced in his direction as she’d made her way to the women’s locker room, emerging a few minutes later in faded scrubs and running shoes. It didn’t matter that the more familiar attire disguised her delectable feminine curves—his body was always on full alert whenever she was near.

      She’d moved to Charisma three and a half years earlier and started working at Mercy Hospital. Since then, he’d gotten to know her pretty well—professionally, at least. Personally, she wouldn’t give him the time of day, despite the definite sizzle in the air whenever they were around each other.

      Although she wasn’t on the schedule tonight, she’d assisted him with a procedure earlier in the evening because they were short staffed and she was there. He’d expected that she would have gone home after that—making her escape as soon as possible. Apparently, he was wrong.

      Callie nodded in response to his question. “She’s teaching the kid how to play Go Fish.”

      He smiled at that, grateful Tanner had some kind of distraction. The eight-year-old had dialed 9-1-1 after his mother shot up a little too much of her favorite heroin cocktail and wouldn’t wake up. She still hadn’t woken up, and Tanner didn’t seem to know if he had any other family.

      “Send Victoria in to see Tanner when she comes down,” he said. “I’m going to see how Mrs. Anderson is doing.”

      “Good luck with that.”

      Of course, it was his bad luck that he’d just opened the door to Exam Four when the psychologist appeared.

      “What’s she doing here?” Nancy Anderson demanded.

      “She’s not here to see you,” Justin assured her. Then, to Victoria, “Exam Two.”

      “Thanks.” The psychologist moved on; the patient reapplied the ice pack to her jaw.

      “Are you planning to go home tonight?” Justin asked her.

      “Of course.”

      “Do you need someone to call a cab for you?” he asked.

      Nancy shook her head. “Ray’s waiting for me outside.”

      He scribbled a prescription and handed her the slip. “Pain meds—for the wrist.”

      She had to set down the ice to take it in her uninjured hand. “Thanks.”

      There was so much more he could have said, so much more he wanted to say, but he simply nodded and left the room.

      “Dare I hope that things are finally starting to slow down?” a pretty brunette asked when he returned to the nurses’ station. She’d only been working at Mercy a couple of months and he had to glance at the whiteboard to remind himself of her name: Heather.

      “I wouldn’t,” Justin advised. “It’s early yet—still lots of champagne to be drunk and much idiocy to be demonstrated.”

      She laughed. “How did you get stuck working New Year’s Eve?”

      “Everyone has to take a turn.”

      “Callie said it was Dr. Roberts’s turn.”

      He shrugged. It was true that Greg Roberts had been on the schedule for tonight. It was also true that the other doctor was a newlywed while Justin had no plans for the evening. He’d received a couple of invitations to parties—and a few offers for more personal celebrations—but he’d declined them all without really knowing why. He usually enjoyed going out with friends, but lately he’d found himself tiring of the familiar scene.

      “What’s going on with the guy in Exam Three?” Heather asked. “Are we going to be able to open up that room pretty soon?”

      He shook his head. “Suspected alcohol poisoning. I’m waiting for the results from his blood alcohol and tox screens to confirm the diagnosis.” In the interim, the patient was on a saline drip for hydration.

      “Speaking of alcohol,” Heather said. “I’ve got a bottle of champagne chilling at home to celebrate the New Year whenever I finally get out of here.”

      “You plan on drinking a whole bottle of champagne by yourself?”

      Her lips curved in a slow, seductive smile. “Unless you want to share it with me.”

      What he’d intended as an innocent question had probably sounded to her as if he was angling for an invitation. But honestly, his thoughts had been divided between Nancy Anderson and Tanner Northrop, and Heather’s overture was as unexpected as it was unwanted.

      “I’ve got the rest of the weekend off and my roommate is in Florida for the holidays,” Heather continued.

      “Lucky you,” he noted.

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