Page 1 of Worth the Risk

Chapter One: Zoey

“Did you see that woman throw herself at Dr. Smokeshow earlier?”

I paused with my fingers poised over the computer keyboard. There were two other women sitting at the nurse’s station, each of them at other computers. I was on friendly terms with them, just like I was with most people I worked with, but these two were especially close, having gone through nursing school together and been hired at the hospital at the same time. It was no wonder that they were gossiping without noticing that I was nearby to overhear.

The nurse who spoke, Mara, didn’t mention Ford by name, but I knew who she was referring to. He’d gotten that nickname from a patient in her eighties that came in after a fall at a nursing home a couple of months ago. She was so full of life and sass that everyone in the ER grew fond of her during her brief stay with us. One of the nurses thought calling Ford “Dr. Smokeshow” was funny and accurate, so now, half the nursing staff referred to him that way. Never to his face, of course.

Still, he knew about it. I couldn’t resist telling him just to see the way two spots of color appeared on his cheeks while he ducked his head and groaned. The man really was the best-looking doctor in this hospital, but he didn’t revel in it. His focus was medicine, and I always respected that.

I also appreciated the fact that I was the only nurse whose attention he craved.

But no one knew that, so I kept my attention on the computer while I returned to my charting. There was always so damn much charting to do. Half of my day was usually spent sitting at a computer, no matter how busy the hospital was.

“Oh yeah. She was shameless. Giggling and batting her eyelashes,” the other nurse, Annie, said with a chuckle of her own. “I’ve never seen the good doctor look so uncomfortable.”

“You think he’d be used to it.” Mara sounded wistful, and I knew that she was probably wishing she had a shot with Ford. But he was always careful to keep things professional with the hospital staff.

Except me, behind closed doors.

I smiled a little as I typed out some notes on the care of a patient that came in with a severe respiratory infection this afternoon. I understood why Ford was considered the most eligible bachelor of Lakeview Medical Center. When I first met Ford, I had the thought the man looked like he belonged on the cover of a magazine instead of rushing around an emergency room in his navy scrubs.

Then, I worked at his side and realized that the man was great at his job. Smart and decisive and caring enough to never quite forget that he was helping real people, not just solving medical crises.

“Maybe he’s just holding out because of Delilah,” Annie said, wiping the smile right off my face. My shoulders bunched up, and I tapped the computer keys a little harder than necessary.

“She’s his ex,” Mara pointed out. “There’s probably a reason for that.”

“Sure, but they broke up like two years ago and every time she visits the hospital, she’s all over him. As if their relationship never ended.”

Annie had a point, and it drove me crazy. Delilah was here way too often, considering that she wasn’t an employee or patient. Her father was on the board of directors after having retired as a well-respected surgeon years ago, and she found reasons to visit every couple of weeks.

She also found a reason to flirt with Ford whenever she was here.

My jaw clenched as I thought about that. He’d told me over and over again that he had no feelings for Delilah, but he had to play nice with her because of her father’s influence on the board and what it could mean for his career. I believed him, but it wasn’t easy to know that a woman he’d once been engaged to was desperate to get him back. Ford said that she’d dropped hints over the years but seemed to be getting bolder in her pursuit of him recently.

It put me on edge to know that while being unable to stake a claim on him myself. But he had his reasons for wanting to keep us a secret.

I didn’t like it, but I agreed to it from the beginning. Now, I was stuck listening to my coworkers speculate about his feelings for his ex-fiancée while I bit my tongue.

I hurried through the rest of my charting and left the nurse’s station while Mara and Annie were still talking. It wasn’t just to avoid hearing any more about Ford and Delilah. The tracking board hanging above us showed that a fourteen-year-old patient with a head injury was in exam room four, and I didn’t want to keep her waiting for an assessment.

In the room, the girl was sitting on the bed with the back raised. Her face was pale and her mother hovered over her, pressing a thick, blue hospital towel to her forehead. Blood was crusted in the girl’s eyebrow and smeared along her temple, but it had been cleared out of her blue eyes, and they met mine steadily as I walked into the room.

“Oh good, you’re here,” the girl’s mother said, her voice thick with tension. “I think it’s stopped bleeding, but I’m not sure. I think she might’ve lost too much blood. She says she feels light-headed…”

I plastered a smile on my face and moved closer. “No worries. A cut to the head can be scary because of how much it bleeds, but it’s unlikely that this cut has caused a dangerous amount of blood loss. The light-headed feeling is more likely to be from pain and the sight of the blood.”

Going to the sink, I got a towel wet with the cool water and wrung it out until it was damp. Placing it on the back of the patient’s neck, I lowered the bed and urged her to lie flat.

“Focus on breathing and relax a bit,” I instructed, gesturing to her mother to continue applying pressure while I sat at yet another computer in the corner of the room and input information provided by both the patient and her worried mother.

The injury was caused by an unfortunate accident at home. The girl—Grace—tripped over the family cat and bashed her head into the corner of a coffee table. I didn’t tell her that she was lucky the pointed edge didn’t get her eye. There was no need to freak her out. After checking her blood pressure and heart rate, I shined a light in her eyes to confirm that her pupils contracted.

“Everything looks good,” I said, shifting my attention to Grace’s mom. She was worrying her bottom lip so much that I wouldn’t be surprised if she broke the skin. “The pupils are reactive.”

“So… no concussion?” the mom asked.

“The doctor will have to do a screening of his own to confirm that, so let me get a look at the wound, put some numbing gel on it, and I’ll go get him.”