Page 39 of Auctioned to Dr. Daddy

“That’s amazing,” I tell him, getting the kit to clean the wound. A nurse would normally handle this, but we’re too stretched thin. It’s not just all hands on deck, but it’s all hands in the pot. There aren’t enough nurses to do all the prep jobs right now.

The man nods. “Son owns a summer camp down in the keys. Real good kids.”

“They sound amazing. Alright, Mr. Ludwig, we’re going to get this arm taken care of, and then you’ll have an x-ray. If you fell off the ladder, you might have messed up that back of yours.”

“It doesn’t hurt," insists Mr. Ludwig.

“Better safe than sorry,” I tell him. “Right, Demi?”

It’s a slightly pointed jab at the fact that she’s clearly having some sort of a problem and has chosen to ignore it so far.

The smile that she gives me is all sun, though. Brighter than anything in the sky outside right now, that’s for sure. “That’s right!”

She’s good with the patients and doesn't have a problem doing this sort of ‘menial’ work.

I know that some of the specialists do.

There’s a sharp divide between the ER doctors and the rest of the staff. General surgery and the ER work together a lot, but the other departments seldom get a chance to look at the chaos that the ER becomes when there’s an ounce of a problem.

Outside of the room, I can hear footsteps thundering down the hall as Natasha rushes to deal with another patient, or maybe to meet an ambulance. It’s hard to put all my focus on someone like Mr. Ludwig, who seems to be in relatively good health outside of the split on his arm.

Once it’s cleaned up, Demi starts to stitch it up using a topical anesthetic, and I step out of the room to offer my hands elsewhere. Just in time, it seems, because two men have just shown up with a woman draped between them.

They’re clearly line workers. One of them, strong-jawed and dark-eyed, calls out, “We need help over here!”

“For God’s sake—” A nurse rushes over with a wheelchair. “Put her down, right here, right here.”

I hurry over. “What happened?”

“We called the ambulance, but they said that it was going to be fifty minutes,” says the first man, who had called out to me. “Seemed quicker to bring her ourselves. We don’t know what happened. She was halfway up the line, and she just came back down.”

The other man tacked up, “We’re line workers. The power lines in the city. She only got twenty feet up, and we caught her for the most part. Head didn’t touch the concrete.”

I grab her chin. Her bone structure is delicate. I can’t imagine a flighty thing like this going up a power line, but that’s certainly one of the things I don’t know anything about.

I whip the penlight out of my pocket, using one thumb to pull her eyelid back and shine the light into it. Her pupils respond, widening in the light. That’s a good sign.

“Get her in a room,” I tell the nurse.

She shakes her head. “We’re out.”

The first man that had come in with her demands, “What do you mean you’re out? How can you be out of rooms? You’re an ER!”

He has the same blonde hair as the woman, the same scattering of freckles on pale skin. I’m going to assume that they’re family. My lips purse. “Put her up in the cardiac ward, we’ve got empty beds there.” To her possible brother, I promise, “She’ll be taken care of, don’t worry.”

“Zachary,” says the other one. “I’ve got to go back out there. You do too.”

Zachary hesitates.

“I promise,” I tell him, solemnly. “Just get her papers filled out before you go, and things will be fine.”

Zachary doesn’t look overly convinced, but he lets his friend goad him up toward the front counter, and the nurse spirits away with the wheelchair. I let out a heavy breath, pushing the penlight back into my pocket.

When I turn around, the whole of the ER is still waiting for me. But so is Demi, and just the sight of her is enough to make things seem a little bit less overwhelming.

Chapter Eighteen

Demi

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