Page 12 of Forbidden Romeo

Lucky for Kyle, our patient arrives before we can harass him anymore. He’s a sturdy-looking man in his middle years, blood smeared across his clothes. The medics drop him on the bed, relaying his condition and treatments so far.

“We’ve cleaned it already, but we can’t stick around, I’m afraid. There’s been a shoot-out,” one of the medics says to me apologetically.

I wave him off. “We can handle it, thanks.”

The man in front of us is holding on to consciousness like a trooper. From a distance, it’s hard to imagine him in a gunfight. His expensive, dark suit trousers suggest that, at one point, there was a matching jacket and tie. The bullet probably ripped through it like it was nothing.

“Kyle, double-check for an entry wound or shrapnel. Aisha—”

But the nurse is already approaching the patient, anesthetic in hand. I recite her pager number in my head—we need to be friends.

“W-what? What is that?” The man stirs as Aisha lowers the needle.

“It’s just local anesthetic,” she replies, administering it quickly before he has a chance to protest.

To his credit, the man doesn’t flinch. “I don’t want to fall asleep.”

“You won’t,” I confirm. “Kyle?”

“Looks clean,” he replies and moves over for me to check.

It’s a nasty graze, but the man was lucky that whoever it was missed. A couple inches lower, and he’d be in real trouble.

“Good job, Kyle,” I offer the praise sincerely, and I can tell he’s grinning behind his mask.

My pager goes off again, and I glance at it. Another 922—the medics must be bringing in the next patients from the shoot-out.

“You know, about your sister…”

I smack his shoulder. “There’s another nine-two-two coming in. Go bother someone else.”

“But—”

“You must have sutured a graze a dozen times. Make yourself useful and actually learn something new,” I snap. Aisha stifles a laugh next to me as she hands me the needle, ready for stitching. “Aisha and I have got this.”

Kyle groans but thankfully does as he’s told, leaving the room without another comment.

I turn my attention back to my patient to find him examining me curiously. I raise an eyebrow at him as I prod around the graze site. “You feel anything?”

“I thought he was the doctor,” he says.

Great, he’s one ofthose.

“Surprise,” I say sarcastically, prodding a little harder. “Any pain?”

He shakes his head, and I get to work stitching him up. There’s something quite soothing about the process—if Kyle has done this a dozen times, I must have done it a hundred. I take pride in my steady hand and neat stitches; it was one of the first medical procedures I ever learned.

Even if I wasn’t strictly speaking a medical professional at that point. I mean, who is at fifteen? I knew what a bullet graze like this looked like before I went to medical school.

The one thing about Maguires is that we know what we want.

Roisin was always going to be an actress, Connor was always going to be… well… But me? I was always going to work in the ER. After all the pain and suffering my family has caused, being able to treat and heal people feels right.

I get about halfway through when I feel Aisha hovering behind me. “You okay?” I ask.

Just as I say this, there’s a yell from down the corridor. Shit, it must be a bigger situation than we thought.

“Go,” I dismiss her. “Sounds like someone else could use you.”

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