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“Send Victoria in to see Tanner when she comes down,” he said. “I’m going to see how Mrs. Anderson is doing.”

“Good luck with that.”

Of course, it was his bad luck that he’d just opened the door to Exam Four when the psychologist appeared.

“What’s
she
doing here?” Nancy Anderson demanded.

“She’s not here to see you,” Justin assured her. Then, to Victoria, “Exam Two.”

“Thanks.” The psychologist moved on; the patient reapplied the ice pack to her jaw.

“Are you planning to go home tonight?” Justin asked her.

“Of course.”

“Do you need someone to call a cab for you?” he asked.

Nancy shook her head. “Ray’s waiting for me outside.”

He scribbled a prescription and handed her the slip. “Pain meds—for the wrist.”

She had to set down the ice to take it in her uninjured hand. “Thanks.”

There was so much more he could have said, so much more he wanted to say, but he simply nodded and left the room.

“Dare I hope that things are finally starting to slow down?” a pretty brunette asked when he returned to the nurses’ station. She’d only been working at Mercy a couple of months and he had to glance at the whiteboard to remind himself of her name: Heather.

“I wouldn’t,” Justin advised. “It’s early yet—still lots of champagne to be drunk and much idiocy to be demonstrated.”

She laughed. “How did you get stuck working New Year’s Eve?”

“Everyone has to take a turn.”

“Callie said it was Dr. Roberts’s turn.”

He shrugged. It was true that Greg Roberts had been on the schedule for tonight. It was also true that the other doctor was a newlywed while Justin had no plans for the evening. He’d received a couple of invitations to parties—and a few offers for more personal celebrations—but he’d declined them all without really knowing why. He usually enjoyed going out with friends, but lately he’d found himself tiring of the familiar scene.

“What’s going on with the guy in Exam Three?” Heather asked. “Are we going to be able to open up that room pretty soon?”

He shook his head. “Suspected alcohol poisoning. I’m waiting for the results from his blood alcohol and tox screens to confirm the diagnosis.” In the interim, the patient was on a saline drip for hydration.

“Speaking of alcohol,” Heather said. “I’ve got a bottle of champagne chilling at home to celebrate the New Year whenever I finally get out of here.”

“You plan on drinking a whole bottle of champagne by yourself?”

Her lips curved in a slow, seductive smile. “Unless you want to share it with me.”

What he’d intended as an innocent question had probably sounded to her as if he was angling for an invitation. But honestly, his thoughts had been divided between Nancy Anderson and Tanner Northrop, and Heather’s overture was as unexpected as it was unwanted.

“I’ve got the rest of the weekend off and my roommate is in Florida for the holidays,” Heather continued.

“Lucky you,” he noted.

She touched a hand to his arm. “We could be lucky together.”

He stepped back from the counter, so that her hand fell away, and finished making notes in the chart before he passed it to her. “Sorry,” he said, without really meaning it. “I’ve got other plans this weekend.”

“What about tonight?” she pressed. “Surely you’re not expected to be anywhere when we get off shift at two a.m.?”

“No,” he acknowledged. “But it’s been a really long night and I just want to go home to my bed. Alone.”

The hopeful light in her eyes faded. “Callie told me that you always go for the blondes.”

He wasn’t really surprised to hear that he’d been the subject of some conversation. He knew that the nurses often talked about the doctors. He also knew that some of them weren’t as interested in patient care as they were in adding the letters
M-R-S
to their names. But the fact that Callie had been drawn in to the discussion did surprise him, and he made a mental note to talk to her. If he couldn’t stop the gossip, he hoped to at least encourage discretion.

“My response has nothing to do with the color of your hair,” he assured Heather. “I’m just not interested in partying with anyone tonight.”

She pouted but turned her attention back to her work.

As he was walking away from the nurses’ station, a call came in from paramedics at an MVA seeking permission to transport multiple victims to the ER. Justin forgot about the gossip and refocused his mind on real priorities.

* * *

Avery Wallace rolled her shoulders, attempting to loosen the tight muscles that ached and burned. She was an obstetrician, not an ER doctor—and not scheduled to work tonight in any event. But she’d been on her way to a party with friends when she got the call from her answering service about a patient who was in labor and on her way to Mercy. She knew the doctor on call could handle the birth, but the expectant mother—a military wife whose family lived on the West Coast and whose husband was currently out of the country—was on her own and incredibly nervous about the birth of her first child.

Avery hadn’t hesitated to make the detour to the hospital. After texting a quick apology to Amy Seabrook—the friend and colleague who had invited her to the party—she’d exchanged her dress and heels for well-worn scrubs and running shoes.

After Michelle was settled with her new baby, Avery headed back to the locker room with the vague thought of salvaging her plans for the evening. She didn’t make it far before she was nabbed to assist Dr. Romeo—aka Justin Garrett—with a resuscitative thoracotomy in the ER.

While she might disapprove of his blatant flirtations with members of the female staff, she couldn’t deny that he was an exceptional doctor—or that her own heart always beat just a little bit faster whenever he was around. He stood about six feet two inches with a lean but strong build, short dark blond hair and deep green eyes. But it was more than his physical appearance that drew women to him. He was charming and confident, and not just a doctor but also a Garrett—a name with a certain inherent status in Charisma, North Carolina, where Garrett Furniture had been one of the town’s major employers for more than fifty years.

After more than three years of working beside him at the hospital, she would have expected to become inured to his presence. The truth was exactly the opposite—the more time she spent with him, the more appealing she found him. She respected his ability to take control in a crisis situation as much as she admired the compassion he showed to his patients and, as a result, she’d developed a pretty major crush on him—not that she had any intention of letting Dr. Romeo know it.

When the patient had been resuscitated and moved to surgery, he’d simply and sincerely thanked Avery for her help. That was another thing she liked about him—he might be in command of the ER, but he never overlooked the contributions of the rest of the staff.

She’d barely discarded her gown and gloves from that procedure when she was steered to the surgical wing to help Dr. Bristow with a femoral shaft fracture. She passed through the ER again on her way out, and that was when she saw Dr. Garrett hunkered down in conversation with a little boy. The child’s face was streaked with dirt and tears, but it was the abject grief in his eyes that tugged at her heart and had her slipping into the room after the ER physician had gone. She chatted with him and played Go Fish until Victoria Danes arrived. Once she was confident that he was comfortable in the psychologist’s company, she headed back toward the locker room. And ran straight into the one person she always tried to avoid.

“Good—you’re still here.”

Her heart bumped against her ribs as she looked up at Justin, but she kept her tone cool, casual. “Actually, I’m just on my way home.”

“We’ve got two ambulances coming in from an MVA—one carrying an expectant mother.”

“Dr. Terrence can handle it.”

“He can, but Callie asked me to find you.”

“Why?” she wondered.

“The pregnant woman is her sister.”

* * *

According to the report from the paramedics, the taxi in which Callie’s sister and her husband were riding had been broadsided by a pickup truck that had sped through a red light.

Avery watched the clock as she scrubbed, conscious that each one of the five minutes she was required to spend on the procedure was another minute the expectant mother was waiting. Dr. Garrett was already working on the pregnant woman’s husband, who had various contusions and lacerations and a possible concussion.

When Avery finally entered the OR, she was given an immediate update on the patient’s condition.

“Camryn Ritter, thirty-one years old, thirty-eight weeks pregnant. Presenting with moderate bleeding and uterine tenderness, BP one-ten over seventy, pulse rate one-thirty, baby’s rhythm is steady at ninety BPM.”

The numbers, combined with her own observations, supported the diagnosis of placental abruption with evidence of fetal bradycardia, which meant that delivering the baby now was necessary for the welfare of both mother and child. Thankfully, Dr. Terrence had already requested that the anesthesiologist give the patient a spinal block, so she could start surgery almost right away.

She’d lost count of the number of C-sections that she’d performed, but she’d never considered a caesarean to be a routine surgery. Every pregnancy was different and every baby was different, so she was always hypervigilant, never taking anything for granted. But at thirty-eight weeks, both mother and baby had a really good chance as long as she could get in before anything else went wrong.

“Where’s Brad?” the patient asked worriedly.

Avery glanced at Callie, who was holding her sister’s hand. Ordinarily she would have banned the nurse from the operating room because of the personal connection, but in the absence of the woman’s husband, she was counting on Callie to help keep the expectant mother calm.

“Brad’s her husband, my brother-in-law,” Callie explained. Then, to her sister, she said, “He was a little bumped up in the taxi, but Dr. Garrett’s checking him over now and running some tests.”

“He was bleeding,” Camryn said. “There was so much blood.”

“Head injuries bleed a lot,” Callie acknowledged. “Remember when you got hit with a baseball bat in third grade—while you were wearing my pink jean jacket? It took mom three washes to get the blood out.”

Her sister managed a weak smile. “So he’s okay?”

“He’s going to be fine,” Callie promised, more likely to soothe the expectant mother’s worries than from any certainty of the fact. “Dr. Garrett’s one of the best doctors on staff here. Dr. Wallace is another.”

“Brad really wanted to be here when the baby was born.”

“I’m sure neither of you expected that your baby would be born tonight, under these circumstances.”

The anesthesiologist was near the head of the bed, monitoring the mother’s vital signs and intravenous levels. He nodded to Avery and, after confirming that her patient could feel nothing, she drew the scalpel across her swollen abdomen.

A planned caesarean usually took between five and ten minutes from first cut until the baby was lifted out. In an emergency situation like this one, an experienced doctor could perform the procedure in about two minutes.

Dr. Terrence—who had scrubbed in to assist—worked to keep the surgical field clean, swabbing with gauze and holding the incision open while she worked. They were approaching the two-minute mark when she reached into the uterus. Clear fluid gushed around her gloved hand as she cradled the small skull in her palm and carefully guided the head, then the shoulders, out of the opening.

Her hands didn’t shake as she lifted the baby out of the mother’s womb. Her hands never shook when she was under the hot lights of an operating or delivery room. She didn’t let herself feel any pressure or emotion while she was focused on a task. Her unflappable demeanor was, she knew, only one reason some of the staff referred to her as “Wall-ice.”

The baby’s color was good, and when Avery wiped his mouth with gauze and gently squeezed his nostrils, she was immediately rewarded with a soft cry.

“Is that—” Camryn’s voice hitched. “Is that my baby?”

“That’s your baby,” Avery confirmed.

“He’s a boy,” Callie told her sister, watching with misty eyes as the cord was clamped and cut. “You have a beautiful, perfect baby boy.”

“I want to see him,” the new mother said.

“You will—in just a moment.”

“Seven pounds, five ounces, nineteen inches,” another nurse announced from the corner of the operating room, after the newborn had been wiped, weighed and swaddled.

Camryn wiped at a tear that spilled onto her cheek as the baby was placed in her arms. “Where’s Brad? I want to see him. I want him to see our baby.”

“He’ll be here as soon as he can,” Callie soothed.

While the nurse and her sister talked quietly, Avery continued to work, suturing up each layer of abdominal tissue. But even as she focused on her task, she was thinking of the awe and wonder on Camryn’s face when she saw her baby for the first time—and immediately fell in love with him. Avery had seen it happen countless times, but it never failed to tug at her own heart.

Half an hour later, when she finally left the new mom with her baby, she again crossed paths with Dr. Garrett in the hall.

“How’s dad?” she asked, referring to the baby’s father whom he’d been working on in the adjacent room.

“Aside from two broken ribs, a punctured lung, mild concussion and a head laceration that required twenty-two stitches to close, he’s doing just fine.”

“Twenty-two stitches? I just put in more than twice that number
and
delivered a baby.”

“Competitive, aren’t you?” Though his tone was teasing, his smile was weak.

“Maybe a little,” she acknowledged.

“Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

He slung a companionable arm across her shoulders as they headed down the hall. “Good work, Wallace.”

“You, too, Garrett.”

They walked together in silence for a few minutes, until Avery caught him stifling a yawn. “I imagine it’s been a very long night for you,” she said.