Page 14 of Cruising for You

“The more the merrier.” He dipped his chin toward Jenna. “You in?”

“I have plans with my roommate,” she muttered.

“Bring her...” Judd’s voice trailed off as the elevator stopped. It didn’t shudder, or lurch—just stopped.

“No!” Amy yelped. “I’ve never been caught before. It’ll break my record!”

“I don’t have time for this,” Judd groused. “I have patients to see.”

I blinked incredulously. A couple minutes ago he’d been on the way to Wawa.

Jenna’s eyes met mine again, eyebrows raised minutely as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?”

I shook my head slightly in response. No, I could not. But that was how I often felt about Dr. Judd. I was honestly unsure how he managed to keep his job.

Paul the visitor pushed his way forward and started smashing the buttons.

“Don’t do that,” I told him flatly. “It won’t help.” While I hadn’t been officially trapped on the elevator, I had been subjected to its vagrancies plenty of times: stopping on every single floor even when the buttons weren’t pressed, alternating going up and down the same two floors several times before finally taking me to the ground, or once, dropping three floors so suddenly I experienced a feeling of weightlessness. All we could do was wait.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Paul snapped back. “I need to get to my wife!”

“This elevator can be a little unreliable,” Jenna explained. “But I’m sure we’ll be moving along here soon.”

“I can’t be stuck here!” Without warning, Paul slammed his fist into the elevator doors.

Judd nearly flattened Amy against the elevator wall in his haste to get as far away from him as possible.

I lurched forward, ready to restrain Paul, if necessary, but Jenna had already placed a hand on his arm.

“What’s going on with your wife?” she asked in a soothing voice.

Paul’s shoulders dropped, aggression seeping away as quickly as it had flared. “I only went home for a couple of hours to get some sleep, but now she’s worse.”

“I’m so sorry,” she told him. “But I promise you we’ll get there.” As if on cue, the elevator started to move again.

I stared at Jenna in shocked admiration. While I had had the instinct to restrain and Judd to flee, Jenna had compassionately defused a situation that could have escalated quickly. She was incredible.

After the elevator deposited us at the fifth floor, she guided Paul toward the secondary patient sign-in desk outside the secure doors of the ICU while the rest of us walked to the staff doors.

“That was disturbing,” Judd hissed, looking back over his shoulder at Paul and Jenna. “Should we call security?”

I barely hid an eyeroll. “It was a temporary lapse that ended without harm.” No thanks to Judd.

He shook his head and shuffled off in the opposite direction from where he was supposed to be working.

“Can’t tempt you to come to the bar later?” Amy asked me, apparently forgetting the elevator scene without any trouble.

“Sorry, no. Excuse me.” I left to find Dr. Clark, the resident who had called me in to consult about the sepsis. No need to question why Clark didn’t want to trust his patient to Dr. Judd’s ministrations.

My phone vibrated in my pocket with a text.Covering for someone until 7. Still planning to come to your house at 8:30, unless you need to cancel?

I texted Jenna back as I moved down the hall.Doubt it, but I’ll let you know.I started to put my phone away and paused, wondering if she was upset about our run-in.Was that okay? Not too friendly?

Jenna wrote back at once.You were great. Just the right amount of friendly.

My fingers hovered over the text box, hesitating over my reply.Your encouragement always lifts my spirits, I finally wrote.

Jenna replied with a laughing emoji before I could put my phone back in my pocket, and I grinned.

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