Page 3 of Heartbeats Amidst Chaos: Part 1

Elio’s eyes drifted to her lips and the full, perfect shape of her mouth and the way she twisted it to the side as she ducked her head, forcing his eyes back to hers. The throbbing of his head felt like a separate heartbeat, and his breathing sounded labored even to his own ears.

“The morphine should start kicking in soon,” she said. “Do you know where you are—and what happened?”

“I’m . . . at the hospital,” he said, his voice rasped through his dry, sore throat. “And there was an explosion.”

“Yes,” she said. “It was a bomb.”

Chapter three

The detective had called him Elio Accardi. Rissa wished he had not. She was still concerned about her patient’s head trauma and would have liked to test him with a basic question like his name, but that was no use now. After confirming that he at least knew where he was and had some memory of what happened, she turned her attention to the gaping wound behind his ear.

“This is going to hurt,” she said as she prepared to douse the jagged flesh with antiseptic. “But probably no more than it already does.”

Elio barely reacted as she cleaned and sutured the edges of the cut together. He fell silent after answering her questions, which worried Rissa slightly. Whatever busted his head could have caused bleeding in the brain as well, but he appearedlucid and no longer seemed to be having trouble maintaining consciousness. That was a good sign.

“Are you doing okay?” she checked in and was rewarded with a quiet, “Mm-hmm.”

Tying off the final suture, she moved on to the abdominal wound. As the first swell of adrenalin receded, she found herself slowing down, becoming less hyper-focused on the injuries her medical training told her were most high risk and more aware of her patient as a whole.

She could feel his hazel eyes on her as she bent her head close, cleaning and then stitching the gash that stretched from low on his left side, up across his sharply defined abs, to just below his left pectoral. The long slash was surrounded by the angry red and purple of rapidly spreading bruising, and she was pretty sure some of his ribs were broken. Various other contusions and lacerations stippled his torso, arms, and legs. Thankfully, none of the wounds penetrated through the muscle to his internal organs.

Maybe because there’s justsomuchdamn muscle,Rissa thought before mentally slapping herself. She never struggled to remain professional with a patient before. But there was something about Elio that was throwing her completely off balance. Maybe it was the way his eyes followed her every movement like she was a light in a dark room, the way they seemed to study every detail of her.

Even now, his intense gaze was causing her heart to beat in her throat, and a thrill of yearning fluttered deep inside her.

Am I turned on by this guy?Rissa wondered in disbelief.A suspected bomber? A patient?The muscled man handcuffed half naked to the bed before her was every NO in the book. And yet…

She knotted off the final suture and sat back, stretching her neck.

“Thirty-seven sutures for one wound,” she said. “That might be a new record for me.”

She met Elio’s eyes and was surprised to encounter a lazy smile. The pain medication she gave him was fully at work now. His eyes were hazy with it, and much of the tension drained from his chiseled face and body. His short hair was thick and dark—and surprisingly soft, she’d learned while caring for the head wound. The contrasting color made his eyes that much more striking.

She noted that he already had some scarring—old, possibly childhood scars that had faded with the years. One was barely discernable below his lower lip, and another ran along his collarbone, slightly raised and ridged like it should have had stitches but hadn’t.

His eyes drifted over her face as she studied him, sliding down her neck, probing lower. Despite being covered neck to toe in loose-fitting scrubs, Rissa blushed as she reached to pull the collar of her top a bit higher. She had no idea how her patient was managing to make her feel so vulnerable withoutmoving a finger, but she was starting to understand the phrase “undressing her with his eyes” in a way she never had before.

She thought of Reagan’s text from earlier that night:Bad boy vibes.BIG bad boy vibes.

He was definitely more Reagan’s type than Rissa’s. But what was she even saying?He might have set off a bomb at a charity event,she reminded herself.He might be the reason all of those other people are out there right now, injured and suffering.

She stood up and stepped away from the bed, putting some distance between them. Maybe it was time to take a short break. He was stable. She would talk to Dr. Bernhard about getting that CT scan, then see to Elio’s more minor injuries.

“Would you like some water?” she asked, moving toward the door.

“Please.” His voice was low and slightly hoarse, likely from all the yelling when he was brought in half out of his mind with pain. Then he added a quiet, “Thank you.” Rissa turned around to find him still watching her with a partial return of the intensity that made his gaze so piercing. Unsure of how else to respond, she nodded and then stepped around the officer stationed at the door and out of the room.

She took a deep breath of the cool, disinfectant-scented hallway air, letting the tension melt from her bones. The chaos that had flooded the ER—just over an hour ago, Rissa realized, glancingat her watch—had subsided to a quieter but equally strained bustle.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket for the umpteenth time since the beginning of this crazy shift, and she finally fished it out to check the texts.

There were three missed calls, and Reagan had reverted to all caps in the latest of fourteen unread messages.

ARE YOU OK?

THE CITY IS IN COMPLETE LOCKDOWN.

This one caught Rissa’s attention. Reaching the end of the hallway, she stepped into the staff break room. Two nurses and another resident were there, looking exhausted. Rissa knew how they felt, although she was probably the only person on the floor attending to just one patient that night.

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