Navy Doc on Her Christmas List
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Amy Ruttan
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15
Chapter One
“NEW YORK IS at a standstill. Bridges and tunnels have been closed. What a great last-minute Christmas gift from old Saint Nick. NYPD are advising if you don’t have to go out, don’t. New York hasn’t seen a blizzard like this since the late seventies...”
Ella shut the radio off. She didn’t know who had left it running on an annoying Christmas music channel, but at least the radio host had it right—there hadn’t been a blizzard in New York City like this in quite some time.
And she knew that without listening to some awful music station, because her aching feet were a grim reminder of what heavy snowfall did to people. She’d just wrapped up eight hours on the ER floor and since Charles Davenport said that everyone was to stay put because of the blizzard, she was stuck here.
At least the hospital was more prepared for a brownout this time. Well, in theory. Ella would believe it when she saw it. Charles had electricians and system specialists working on the new generators to make sure they didn’t fail, like the old ones had.
Still, the storm raging outside was a doozy.
It wasn’t like it was anything new, the storm that was, it felt like it had been storming for months on end, but the meteorologists were calling this storm the worst of them all. Ella was skeptical. How could this storm be worse than the last one? In reality, she thought probably the weatherman was exaggerating and it would be nothing.
But since the new shift couldn’t get in, it meant that she was still on duty, even though she had just worked a long one.
Not that Ella minded in the least bit. It meant she could avoid the obligatory family dinner where her mother would lament her lack of having a husband and providing her with grandchildren.
Which was all her parents ever thought she was good for.
“By the time I was your age, Ella, I was married with three children,” her mother had droned on. “If you’d smiled more during your coming out, you would probably have a husband by now.”
Yeah, because smiling more would have helped the men she’d been forced to smile and flirt with change their minds about a short, awkward, ugly duckling in god-awful designer dresses that her mother had picked out for her.
All those society functions had done was reinforce her desire to stay single and become the best damn trauma surgeon on the eastern seaboard.
Which, working under Charles Davenport’s tutelage, she was fast becoming. Being snowed in and forced to work while her mother’s tedious society Christmas function was taking place was just perfect.
So Ella relished her moment of freedom, far from her mother complaining of her perpetual state of single life, and settled down to enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the empty staff lounge while there was a lull between patients.
Ella sighed as she propped up her aching feet. The lights were off and the heavy snow that was blanketing Manhattan gave a nice calming, glow outside.
And she couldn’t remember the last time that Manhattan had been so completely covered in snow. It was nice. She liked the snow. She liked the magic of Christmas on her own. It was her mother who made Christmas painful.
So she didn’t mind working an extra shift.
This was heaven to her. She’d catch a few winks of sleep before she headed back down to the emergency room.
“There might be some mistletoe in here!” The lights were flicked on and Ella squinted at the blinding light she was not prepared for.
“What in the heck...?” she asked as she sat up.
Two nurses in Santa caps were standing in the doorway of the staff room, blushing.
“Oh, Dr. Lockwood, we’re so sorry, we didn’t know that anyone was in here!”
Ella rubbed her eyes and was still seeing two large spots as she sat up. “It’s okay. I’m just a surgeon, I don’t need my eyes anyway.”
Stacey, one of the trauma nurses, chuckled as she began rooting through a box labeled “Christmas Decorations” in the corner. “Again, sorry.”
“What’re you looking for?” Ella asked, annoyed that her solitude had been broken.
“Mistletoe,” said Carol, the other nurse. “We just have some down time and since we’re stuck here we thought we would have some kind of Christmas fun.”
“Aha!” Stacey shouted, producing a very fake-looking piece of plastic mistletoe. “It’s not real, but it should do the job just the same.”
Ella just shook her head. “You two have fun with that. Who are you going to kiss anyway?”
Carol and Stacey were always scheming to land themselves rich doctors as a potential mates. They were Manhattan Mercy’s version of her mother. They also schemed to set other people up, but mostly themselves. Carol and Stacey’s targets were wealthy doctors, preferably attendings over interns.
“Dr. Zac Davenport!” Carol practically squealed like a schoolgirl. “He said he’s never been kissed under the mistletoe before.”
Ella rolled her eyes and snorted. She could almost guarantee that Zac Davenport had been kissed under the mistletoe before. It was probably just a ruse to get a kiss from a couple of pretty nurses.
Zac Davenport was a playboy, and a handsome one at that. Sure, he’d aged since he’d come home from his last tour of duty, but it had made him even sexier. The boyishness had melted away to a hardened man, one who seemed to hide pain behind those Davenport blue eyes.
Maybe no else saw the pain he was trying to hide, or how jumpy he was, like when the corks were popped at the wedding a couple weeks ago, but she saw it. She saw the change in him, because once upon a time she and Zac had been close.
Although she thought they’d been closer than maybe he did.
Still, she was always a sucker for those blue eyes.
Eyes that had at one time caused her to go weak in the knees and melt. There was a change in his, but Ella seriously doubted there was much of one. Slime was still slime.
You kissed that slime before too.
She’d done more than kiss that slime. She’d given a piece of herself to him, a piece of her heart, and then he’d crushed it with his cruelty.
Ella was going to say something else when Zac entered the staffroom. He didn’t see her as she hurriedly stood up, but her heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. She felt her knees weaken, her pulse start to race and her palms grow sweaty. He’d been here a couple of weeks, but she’d tried to avoid him as much as possible. Not to be on duty when he was.
Apart from the odd blip, it had been working up until now.
Suddenly she felt like that dumpy, awkward girl in the lime-green dress. And she didn’t like that much. It was exactly how she’d felt when he’d spoken to her briefly at Charles’s wedding.
She’d thought he was off duty. He was supposed to be on the next rotation and part of the staff that couldn’t get in. What was he doing here?
“Merry Christmas, Dr. Davenport,” Stacey squealed as she ran up to him, holding the ugly fake mistletoe over her head and kissing him on the cheek. Carol snatched it from Stacey’s hand.
“Merry Christmas.” And Carol kissed him on the other cheek.
“Uh, Merry Christmas...” he said stiffly.
Ella snorted. He didn’t know their names. That wasn’t surprising. They were only two of the trauma nurses in the department he worked in, why should he know their names? Typical spoiled Zac Davenport. Not a care in the world for anyone but himself.
“Stacey,” Stacey said.
“And I’m Carol,” Carol said, stepping in front of Stacey. “We’re on duty tonight.”
Zac looked uncomfortable.
Good.
“Shouldn’t you two be out on the floor?” Zac asked, trying to untangle himself from the onslaught of nurses. Ella felt a small amount of pity for them.
“Yes, you two should be out on the floor. There are patients waiting,” Ella said stiffly, trying not to make eye contact with Zac.
“Of course, Dr. Lockwood,” Carol said. “We’ll just take our decorations and go.”
Stacey nodded and picked up the dilapidated box where they’d got the fake mistletoe from and left the staffroom.
“Thanks,” Zac said. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of that.”
“No problem,” Ella replied, but she didn’t look at him. It was better that way.
“Isn’t your shift over?” he asked, as he approached the coffee pot where she’d retreated to after he’d walked into the room. In effect, cornering her.
“Yes, but if you haven’t heard, most of the next shift is unable to make it in and Manhattan has shut down.”
“You worked a full shift, you can just walk home.”
“It’s not safe,” Ella snapped, annoyed that he wanted to get rid of her so badly.
Wouldn’t you be pestering him the same way too?
“I’m just worried that you’re too tired to work another shift.”
She glared at him. “Really? You’re concerned about my well-being?”
“You’re tired,” he said.
“You don’t look so hot yourself. You have dark circles under your eyes.”
Zac’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Then maybe you should go home and rest.”
Zac’s eyebrows shot up. “What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with me?” Her voice rose an octave and she was annoyed with herself for engaging in conversation with Zac. She’d promised herself when she’d heard that Zac Davenport had been discharged from the navy and was coming to work at Manhattan Mercy that she would keep her distance from him. That she wouldn’t let him bait her.
She’d worked hard here to build a reputation for herself, and just because Zac had come waltzing back to Manhattan and had immediately got an attending position in Trauma because he was a Davenport, it didn’t mean that she was going to run away with her tail between her legs.
No way. Not this time.
“You’ve been acting weird lately. I mean, I tried to speak to you at Charles’s wedding and you said nothing to me, and then fighting over that patient? We haven’t exactly worked well together.”
“Actually, I said hello and goodbye, if I remember correctly, at the wedding. As for the working situation, well, the trauma floor is tense and that was my patient.”
Those brilliant blue eyes darkened with annoyance. That mouth, which she was all too familiar with, frowned and he crossed his arms.
“Ella, what is wrong?”
You were my best friend, my first kiss, and then publicly dismissed me in front of our peers. You broke my heart.
“Nothing is wrong.” She set down the plastic cup that was half-filled with now-tepid coffee. “You know what? You’re right. I’m tired and maybe I should head out in the whiteout conditions and go home.”
She turned on her heel and stormed out of the staffroom, clenching her fists to keep herself from shaking.
There was no way she was actually going to head out into that storm. The ER was short-staffed and whiteout conditions didn’t make it exactly safe to navigate the streets tonight. It was safer in the hospital.
As long as she could get away from Zac.
She was going to stay, but she just couldn’t stay in the same room as Zac Davenport. Not for one more second.
“Ella!”
She heard him shout her name from behind her.
Why is he following me?
“Ella!”
She ignored him and quickened her pace, but she was no match for Zac, who gripped her by the arm and pulled her down a side hallway.
“What?” she demanded as he spun her around to face him.
“Look, I didn’t mean it. You can’t go out in that storm.”
She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t going out in the storm. You really don’t think much of me, do you?”
He cursed under his breath, running his hands through his short brown hair in frustration. “What did I do, Ella? Seriously?”
She was going to open her mouth to say something when there was an unmistakable sound of a power surge. An electric hum and suddenly they were cast into darkness.
“What the heck?” she asked. “I thought the new system was supposed to control these brownouts.”
There were murmurs and shouts of shock.
“No,” Zac whispered. “No.”
Ella was surprised by the sound of panic in Zac’s voice, the terror etched on his face under the emergency lights. “It’s probably just a brownout. Like before. The generator will kick—”
“Son of a...” was shouted as someone further down the darkened hall knocked over a tray of metallic instruments. Followed by the clang of metal echoing and bouncing off the hospital walls.
Zac froze. His eyes were wide with terror as he backed against the wall, trembling. Ella was shocked, because he didn’t even seem to know that she was there. His body was rigid in terror. Just like after the corks at the wedding. When the pops had sounded, she’d seen him freeze, then duck under the table. He’d seemed to recover quickly, but afterwards he’d left the room, looking pale. No one had noticed in the confusion of the wedding, but she’d seen it.
“Zac?” she asked softly, reaching out to touch him, but he pushed her hand away, as if her touch would harm him.
A couple of porters who were making their way down the darkened hallway stopped and stared at Zac, who was breathing deeply but clinging to the wall like he was on the edge of a precipice and was about to fall.
And she recognized the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. No one had said anything to her about Zac having post-traumatic stress disorder. That would be something they would disclose about a new doctor working at the hospital to the head of that surgeon’s respective departments.
I don’t think anyone knows.
One thing she did know, she had to get him out of there and calmed down.
“Come on, Zac. Let’s go.” She took his hand and this time he didn’t fight her off. She pulled him into the nearest empty on-call room and shut the door. She led him to the cot and made him sit down. “Breathe, it’s okay. It was just a porter knocking over some instruments.”
Zac nodded, but didn’t look at her. He just took deep, calming breaths.
What had happened to him during his tour of duty?
“I’m okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?” she asked, not wholly convinced that he was all right.
“I’m fine,” he snapped.
Of course, he was back to normal. The ungrateful jerk that he always was. Not even thanking her for taking him somewhere quiet where he could center himself.
“I’m so glad,” she retorted. She had to put some distance between her and Zac. “Well, I’m just going to head back to the trauma floor and make sure the patients are okay.”
“Sounds good.”
Ella pulled on the doorknob and it popped off. She stared at it in horror.
“Did you just pull the handle off?” Zac asked in horror.
“Yes,” she said, and then it was her turn to curse. There was no way out of the room. She was stuck there with Zac Davenport until someone came to get them out.
