“This is Mike Smith. Forty-year-old male, was skateboarding with his son when a car slammed into him. He went flying about fifty yards, so we could have some major internal damage,” the paramedic called out as he read the man’s chart to them.
“Got it. Is the OR ready?”
“Yes, Dr. Snyder. Ready to go.”
“Let’s move.”
Sage started to follow when Dr. Snyder turned. “Stay in the ER. There will be more incoming. It’s Friday night.” With that, he was gone.
Sage sagged against the wall and took her first deep breath since the trauma patient had come into the ER. This was an unusually busy night, but at least she wouldn’t be bored.
SAGE’S FEET FELT as if they would just fall off as soon as she undid her laces and removed her shoes. And doing that would take more effort than she had right now. She’d certainly had some long nights when she was in medical school, and whole days without any sleep, but none of it compared to the way she was feeling at this moment.
Add to it all the fact that she was frozen solid—her car had refused to start for a full ten minutes, and once it had started, the blasted heater hadn’t worked, so she had to leave her windows down to keep her windshield from fogging up. In short, she was a broken Popsicle.
Rushing inside the apartment she and Grace shared, Sage moaned loudly as a blast of warm air encircled her. If she even thought about another cup of coffee, she was going to heave. She needed a nice cup of hot chocolate, followed by a steaming hot bath, and topped off by about twenty-four hours of dreamless, blissful sleep. Of course, she wasn’t going to get even six hours. This was the life she’d signed up for. And despite everything, she was still sure she’d made the right career choice.
Her grandmother hadn’t been nearly as upset when Sage had moved in with Grace as Sage had thought she’d be. As a matter of fact, Bethel had practically pushed Sage out the door, making her think her grandmother might be up to something. It was so nice living with Grace, though, that she refused to worry about it. She wished her friend was home. It would be nice to tell her about her hellacious day, and Grace probably had her own stories to share.
Focusing on other people’s problems sometimes helped Sage feel less like a loser. After walking into the small, spotless kitchen and turning on the teakettle, she sat down and rolled her shoulders. The pot finally whistled and she added cocoa mix to her cup, stirred in the hot water, and topped it off with a nice fat dollop of whipped cream. She grabbed a package of cookies to round out her meal, and she soon found herself stretched out on the sofa.
“Mmm, this is exactly what the doctor ordered,” she said with a smile.
But the smile fled when she looked down at her feet. It was past time for the wretched shoes to come off, and Sage didn’t know whether she could bend far enough to undo them.
“I’ll never know if I don’t try. Hey, maybe I should seek psychiatric help for talking to myself. I’d probably get a professional discount.” Her words made her giggle. Maybe it was good Grace wasn’t home.
Suddenly, the lyrics “rub my feet, gimme something good to eat” were running through her head. If she had even an ounce of energy left, she’d get up and put on her Shania Twain CD. Too bad she had no honey to come home to.
Just as she’d finished her hot chocolate and was beginning to nod off on the couch, the doorbell rang, making her sit straight up, then cry out at the kink in her neck. Rubbing her neck, she walked almost in a haze toward the front entry and opened the door like a zombie. Yes, she might have looked through the peephole first, but this was Sterling, Montana, where crime was a foreign word.
Okay, maybe some crime happened. There was the cow tipping, after all.
“Are you Sage Banks?”
“Yes?” She waited.
“I have a delivery for you. Sign here.”
Sage took the clipboard and signed, and the man handed her a long, surprisingly heavy box and told her to have a nice day.
Oooh, she couldn’t remember when she’d last received flowers. Come to think of it, she never had. Smiling, she took the box to the table and grabbed a kitchen knife, cut it open, then gasped at the aroma drifting upward. Inside were a dozen stargazer lilies, a couple of dozen pink roses, and so much greenery that it looked like a nursery was having a going-out-of-business sale.
After taking the flowers out carefully, she opened up the package inside the box and found a stunning crystal vase.
“Grandma?” she thought out loud before picking up the card.
I look forward to working with you. See you tonight.
Spence
Though she struggled valiantly not to be thrilled, she still couldn’t stop the smile from breaking across her face as she filled the vase with water and began arranging the flowers inside it. She’d be sure to have a sore back from lifting the thing, but it was well worth it. She inhaled the fragrance of the flowers as she placed them in the center of the kitchen table.
After admiring them for several minutes, she turned her back and let the smell follow her from the room. The flowers were a welcome surprise, but she was going to have to let Spence know that he was her boss, and nothing more. They would have a strictly professional, working-only relationship. She’d have to discourage him from any further signs of hot pursuit.
A man like him was only out for the challenge, anyway. For probably the first time in his life, a woman wasn’t falling at his feet, and he didn’t know what to do. There were two possible outcomes for her. She could trip over her own feet in gratitude and he’d grow bored in a flash, or she could continue giving him the cold shoulder.