Chapter 2
Damon
I'm dreaming about the night of the heist again when my phone goes off and drags me straight up from the depths of sleep. One minute I'm jumping into a bank vault while the explosion drops the entire building around me, and the next, my eyes are opening in my posh Chicago penthouse and I'm fine. Except, of course, that my phone woke me up at three in the fucking morning, and who wants to deal with that?
I check the text and immediately sit up. "Shit."
There's a college girl in the ER with some kind of severe heart issue. Her cardiologist isn't returning his calls, and since I'm the cardio man on call tonight, it's time for me to hop to it. I leap out of bed and head for my closet, grumbling curses the whole time, but ready to get my game on.
The new game. The one where I’m saving lives instead of chasing cash and trouble back in London. New game—new name, new identity, new life. And I have work to do.
I text the desk nurse back as I take the elevator down from the penthouse. How are her vitals?
She gets back to me quickly. Rapid, irregular heartbeat, with dizziness and pain in her temples, chest, and the sides of her neck. She's diagnosed with congenital arrhythmia and tachycardia, the latter presumed to be anxiety-related. She's on a calcium blocker and a sedative.
Arrhythmia? There are many kinds of arrhythmia, and it doesn't bode well that her doctor hasn't put an exact diagnosis on her chart. What's her electrophysiology study say about it?
She hasn't had one. Her insurance barely covers the specialist, and her doctor wouldn't do it pro bono. She would have had to pay for it out of pocket.
"Which, of course, she can't fucking do because she's a dirt-poor college student. Fuck," I mumble under my breath. I step out of the elevator into the garage and head for my black Prowler. "I hate for-profit medicine so damned much."
I slide into the driver's seat and text back. All right. Stop the calcium blockers, keep her calm, and introduce the following into her IV cocktail. I give a list of three drugs I know they have on hand. We're going to need to do that study as soon as she is stable enough.
We'll get it done. ETA?
Ten minutes, barring traffic. Whose name is on the chart as her specialist? I have my suspicions, but I still grit my teeth when she confirms them.
Campbell.
"Fuck." Adrian Campbell is the worst, most negligent cardiologist in Chicago. The two of us are colleagues, but every time I run into him at a conference, I want to punch him in the face.
I've never met a man who mixes arrogance with incompetence as thoroughly as Campbell. He always has at least three malpractice cases pending, and he's killed more patients than he's saved. That girl is as good as dead if she stays in his hands.
Going to have to do something about that, I think to myself.
I put my phone down and strap in, then start the engine and go roaring out into the street. It's chilly out; early December hasn't put snow on the ground yet, but I keep an eye on the road, wary of black ice.
Chicago on the cusp of winter reminds me a bit of London, though the streets tend to be wider and more organized, and the weather's more changeable. Bits of rain spatter my windshield, making tiny, distracting taps against the glass. The streets aren't quite deserted, even at this hour; a few people fight the wind in flapping raincoats as I drive by.
It’s Christmas season again, which usually leaves me a bit melancholy. It’s not like I can call my family back in London, let alone see them. The colored lights and the wreaths on the lamp-posts are just another reminder that I’m out on my own here in the States.
I speed where I can on the way to the hospital, but keep it sane. I'm not some twenty-something idiot behind the wheel of my first sports car any longer. I just feel a strange urgency with this particular patient, maybe because she's young.
Nineteen-years-old with heart problems. What a fucking bad hand she has been dealt. Barely old enough to vote and she's dealing with an issue most folks don't have to face until their sixties or beyond.
I make my way into the staff parking section and ease the Prowler into my space, making sure to lock up before hurrying over to the ER. My foot slips slightly on a patch of ice outside the entrance, and I bite back a curse. I rarely swear on hospital grounds.
"Morning, Dr. Chase. You're in early," Tom, the security guard, greets me.
I give him a distracted nod hello. "Emergency. Some nineteen-year-old girl's down with a congenital heart problem. Time to pop in and roll up my sleeves."
"Nineteen? Damn. Well, I'm sure you'll be able to help her." He smiles and buzzes me in, and I hurry through.
It's a slow day in the emergency department. The waiting room, with its slowly blinking lights and silver tinsel tree, only has two people, and though every treatment room is full, only one of them has nurses rushing in and out. I feel my heart sink when I see them scurry. You didn't code while I was on my way, did you, darling?
"Dr. Chase!" One of the senior nurses, a skinny, bespectacled, older woman named Sarah, bustles toward me with an armful of files. "Thanks for coming so quickly. She's down here."
This is the only place in the world where a guy gets thanked for that. I keep my filthy thoughts to myself as I follow her to the curtained-off room for my first look at Samantha North.
“We’ve got her stabilized. She’s been coming in and out of consciousness. We’re prepping for the study now.” We go in past the curtain, and I blink down at my new patient.
Shit. The girl’s half my age, vulnerable, likely terrified, and very much needs for me to focus on my work right now. But as I walk over to the bed and look down at her, I realize that focusing is going to be a bit difficult.
She’s a complete knockout. On the tall side, with milky skin, wavy, red hair, full lips, and a body that looks hot even in a hospital gown. Her breasts are half-uncovered so we can attach the sensors and defibrillate quickly if we must, and I have to tear my eyes away.
For fuck’s sake, Damon, get your mind out of her panties and set to work on saving her fucking life! I look over her vitals, then check her chart once Sarah hands it over. “Question. Is her heart rate going back up no matter what drug is being used?”
“Looks like it, yes.” She looks over my shoulder at the chart, then turns the page and points to the EKG readouts. “Sedatives helped some and beta blockers helped some. The calcium blockers didn’t seem to do anything at all.”
“It could be worse than that. Some arrhythmias respond negatively to calcium blockers. That’s why I had you stop them. The study will show us more of what is going on.”
I purse my lips and then hand the chart back to Sarah as I go on. “It’s possible that she may need laparoscopic surgery before this is over. I’ll drive the scope myself. See if they can keep the operating room on standby after they run the study?”
She smiles and nods, seeming relieved. How many times had she tried to call that damned idiot, Campbell, before she gave up and called me? Not too many, I hope.
The poor girl stays unconscious through the entire test; just as well, since it involves threading a scope into her circulatory system. The procedure will only leave her with some soreness and a small entry wound, but the very thought of it gives a lot of patients the shudders. Still, it will save her from open-heart surgery, unless everything in her heart is completely fucked up.
I look over her chart as we wait for the results and am surprised to see an insert from Family Services from only two years ago. Yet another reminder that I shouldn't be staring at her tits, especially openly.
No family. Grew up in foster care. Started off life as Baby Doe after being found in an auto wreck that destroyed her presumed parents, but somehow left her without a bruise.
No record of any distant relatives or foster parents. The facility she was in sent her to the same pediatrician until she aged out of the system, and to my relief, they've sent a copy of her medical records. Dr. Marsh did a much better job in tracking her health issues than the student clinic or, of course, Dr. Campbell.
Reported incidents of light-headedness back through the age of ten. Believed to be anxiety-related, but she has neither a formal anxiety diagnosis nor a diagnosis of PTSD. And yet doctors keep treating her for anxiety anyway, telling her that what she’s been feeling since she was a kid is all in her head.
If there’s one thing I hate more than incompetent doctors, it’s prejudiced doctors. The sort who go in assuming they know what’s what because their patient is a fat guy, or a smoker, or a young woman. Every body is different, and though certain types tend toward certain conditions, diagnosis and treatment are never one-size-fits-all.
The girl, who’s now resting in a nest of wires, sensors, and tubes, her heart still going too damned fast, needs precision as much as she needs empathy. I can offer both, though I can already tell that this one’s going to wreck me if she passes. Occupational hazard; I accept it just as I once accepted that I wouldn’t live past the age of thirty-five.
Half an hour later, I have my answers. I want to talk to the girl before we actually go in and fix the matter, so she knows what is going on. But I'm determined to do the surgery tonight, before Campbell can make any more of a mess of this.
I have them lower the sedation level so she has a better chance of waking up quickly and then have them watch her until she does.
Not long after, they summon me back to her bedside. I walk in, putting on the best fucking bedside manner I can muster before dawn and my first cup of tea. "Miss North? I'm Dr. Chase, the on-call cardiologist."
Her eyes widen as she takes me in. Even in the midst of her terror, I catch an ember of something I didn't expect in her expression. Time enough to discuss that later, though. "Hi," she manages in a breathless voice.
"Hi there. I'm very sorry about meeting you under these circumstances, but I do have some good news for you, if you feel up to hearing it." I catch myself smiling a bit too much and dial it back, chastising myself.
"Good news is pretty welcome about now. I'm guessing I'm ...out of danger, then?" She forces a tiny, brave smile.
I'm arrested by it briefly, then cough into my fist, trying to cover my lapse. "Yes, well, we performed the test that Campbell neglected to give you, and I can now explain to you what is going on in your heart and how we are going to fix it."
"Oh?" She makes the mistake of trying to sit up and almost immediately stops, wincing in pain at the effort. "Damn."
"Well, we haven't patched you up yet, so don't get too impatient to jump out of bed," I joke with her gently. She offers that brave, charming, little smile again.
"So ...what's wrong with me?" Her voice only shakes a little.
"It's called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. As you told our nurse that you suspected, it is not treated with calcium channel blockers, such as Verapamil. In fact, they're contraindicated. They can make the situation worse."
She's got one hell of a malpractice suit to bring against that bastard Campbell for his misdiagnosis and mistreatment of a life-threatening disease. I am so sick of his shit that I decide to help her if she'll accept the offer. "We took you off the drugs, and I want you to stop taking them when you get home."
She nods quickly. "Yes, doctor. Should I get rid of them?"
"No. Keep them and decide whether you want to take legal action once you are feeling better. You can use them to support your case, since he put you on something that probably made things worse." I look at her and feel a stab of alarm as her eyes tear up.
"I knew it," she said in a shaky voice. "I knew something was wrong. He and his staff weren't listening."
"I'm afraid that Dr. Campbell is somewhat well known for that. Unfortunately, those on campus health insurance don't exactly have their pick of specialists." She nods, still teary-eyed, and before I can stop myself, I reach out and put a hand on her shoulder.
She stops shaking at once and the waterworks slow. She looks up at me and smiles sadly. "So what does this syndrome do, and how do we stop it?"
"Well, the short explanation is that the heart has nodes that send electrical impulses through it and tell it when to contract. You happen to have too many of those nodes. They fire at their own rates, and for much of your life, they were likely firing almost in sync with one another. That means they were telling your heart to contract at the same time.
"That means for most of your life, your heart beat like a normal heart. Sometimes the two signals would get out of sync and you would get dizzy, but they likely always went back into sync with one another.
"But, somehow, this year, the two signals went out of sync, and now each one is telling the heart to beat at different times. And your heart is beating extra fast and unevenly to keep up with what the signals tell it to do."
I watch her face as she struggles to digest what—despite my simplifying it as much as possible—was a standard-issue doctorly info-dump. She looks thoughtful, then raises her head to look at me.
"Okay. Thank you for figuring that out for me. Now ...how do we fix it?"