After yesterday’s events, I’m actually nervous about work this morning. Things got intense at the ranch really quick, and I’m not sure I’m ready to face him after all of that. During my commute, I think about Evan—about what he said and how his lips felt pressed against mine. My heart rate quickens every time the thought of him consumes my mind, which doesn’t surprise me. He’s sexy, smart, and the way he says my name in that deep, silky smooth Southern drawl makes my traitorous body react. And if I’m truthful, I hate him for it.

I had two rules when I moved here, and I’m pissed at myself that I broke them within the first week. No random hookups and no dating a co-worker—it should’ve been a simple plan.

After finding a parking spot, I grab my duffel bag, then get out of the car and walk toward the employee entrance of the hospital. Once I’ve changed into my scrubs, I realize I left my phone in the passenger seat. Damn. Oh well. I’ll go out and grab it on my break because while I don’t use it during work hours, I somewhat feel lost without it.

As I’m walking down the hall that leads to the nurses’ station, I see Evan chatting with Veronica. When he looks over at me, he slowly lifts one eyebrow, and the ghost of a smile lingers on his lips. The memories of yesterday cause heat to course through my body, and I try to push them away, but they’re running on repeat in my head.

Fuck, I’m doomed, I really am, and all it took was one look.

I grab my pager, clip it onto my lab coat pocket, and smile at Veronica. Evan’s expression hardens, and he’s instantly back to his cold, hardass self, but he’s not fooling me anymore. Yesterday I found the chink in his armor, and it’s cowboy boots and cutoff shorts.

“Dr. Bell. Nice of you to join us this morning.” He glances down at his watch.

“I’m not late,” I defend, knowing I left home with plenty of time to spare.

Veronica pinches her lips together and looks at Evan and me.

“Ten minutes early is being on time. If you arrive when your shift starts, you’re late. And if you’re late again, you’re fired. Please make sure you’re taking this seriously, Dr. Bell. You’re not an intern anymore, right? We have a job to do, so it’s important you’re punctual.”

I let out a frustrated huff because he’s a bigger dick than usual. I didn’t imagine yesterday, right? Pretty sure I was kissed like I was his lifeline and now today… this. I roll my eyes at him. “Whatever you say, Dr. Bishop.”

“Now back to what I was saying,” Veronica interrupts before we can continue. Over the last week, she’s become immune to our constant bickering and has found ways to veer the conversation away from the jabs we instinctively throw at each other. When we’re wearing our lab coats, it’s as if there’s no history between us. The secret moments we shared are just that.

I don’t expect him to hold my hand at work or announce to the whole world what we’ve done behind closed doors, but damn, a little respect would be appreciated. The tone he set for the day puts me in an irritable mood. I don’t know what I expected, honestly, but I hoped it wouldn’t be a repeat of last week. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to be so lucky.

The morning seems to go by so fucking slow. It gives plenty of opportunity for Evan to ride my ass on every little thing, and by the time I take my break, I’m so annoyed that I need to walk away. Remembering my phone in the car, I walk outside to grab it and see if I have any messages from Kiera. It’s one of the only things I look forward to lately. I might as well adopt five cats and learn to knit because I’m so single that becoming a cat lady is in my future. The weekly engagements and pregnancy announcements on my friend’s list drive that fact home.

Before I open the door to my car, I see a bouquet of colorful tulips lying on the hood. A smile hits my lips, and I look for a card or something that says who they’re from, but I don’t find anything. I hurry and unlock my car then grab my phone and take a picture. Of course, Kiera had already sent me at least ten text messages telling me all about her lunch date with Trent and how much she likes him. I send the photo to her and instantly see her text bubble pop up.

I actually laugh out loud at that one.

I’m five seconds away from telling her to stop sending me smiling and winking face emojis, but then I contemplate the thought of these actually being from Evan.

I don’t need to go into detail for Kiera to know about the magnitude of his mood swings, and after telling her all about our encounter at the ranch yesterday, she’s just as confused about him as I am. Men say women should come with a manual. Pfft. Men are the ones who can turn off their emotional radar and go from hot to cold in point five seconds.

Hmm. The thought of Evan not dating in a while pleases me, but I wouldn’t admit something like that to him.

Maybe she’s right. It makes sense now that I’m thinking it over. And if she is, I probably shouldn’t bring these flowers back to the ER, but I do anyway because I want to see the look on his face and gauge his reaction. He’ll either pretend they don’t exist or he’ll ask about them, and then I’ll have my answer.

I lock my car and head back inside, then grab my sandwich and bag of black licorice from my locker. As I’m on my way to the break room, I pass Evan with the flowers in my hand and a smug smile on my face. Of course, he turns around, and I feel him walking behind me.

Showtime.

I sit at a small table and take my sandwich out of the Ziploc bag, remaining silent. He stands next to me, looks at the flowers, then back at me. His lips in a firm line as he places his hands on his hips and glares. “Who the fuck are those from?”

I actually laugh out loud again. “None of your damn business,” I say around a bite of my sandwich, pretending I’m already bored with this conversation.

Tilting his head, he searches my face before lowering his palms to the table and drops his voice low enough for only me to hear. “Emily.” His tone is a warning, but I’m not taking the bait.

“It’s Dr. Bell,” I say, amused by his irritation.

He grunts. “Don’t push me.”

Rolling my eyes, I grab a piece of licorice and take a bite. “Quit playing, Evan. I know they’re from you.”

He narrows his eyes, studying me, and stands up straight with his arms crossed over his chest. “Those aren’t from me.”

I swallow hard and can tell he’s serious. My mind goes down the list of everyone who could possibly send me flowers, and I come up with nothing. If it were my skeezy ass ex, he’d send a stupid note with something he plagiarized from the internet and would make sure they were delivered where an audience could see what he had done. Egotistical asshole. If it were my parents, they’d leave a note and have it delivered to the hospital too. The fact they were just left on my car is strange, but I try to blow it off for now. Perhaps someone put them on my car by accident, thinking it was someone else’s, but I don’t say that aloud. He doesn’t need to know that’s probably the best-case scenario since my life revolves around working and very little social interaction outside the hospital and Kiera.

“I guess I have a secret admirer then. I wonder who it could be?” I tease, knowing it’s eating at him by the way his jaw clenches. “Maybe Matthew, the surgical assistant?” I smile, taking another obnoxious bite of licorice. With each ticking second, his stare becomes lethal. All these damn Bishop boys are exactly the same. Yesterday, Jackson acted the same way—possessive and pissed off—but the difference is he and Kiera actually have some sort of friendship and history. What Evan and I have is…honestly, I don’t know what it is. Complicated?

I notice he’s staring at me, so I continue taunting him. “Maybe it’s Jeffery. The cardiologist. He was really flirty the other day,” I add in my best serious tone, glancing back at him.

“He’s fucking married,” Evan says between gritted teeth. His eyes darken, and I know he’s seconds away from snapping.

Damn.

“Oh. Hmm.” I tap my finger on my lips and think of all the people who’ve been overly nice since I’ve arrived. Shrugging, I go back to eating my lunch as if it’s no concern. Evan groans, looking like he might actually implode, then walks out of the break room shaking his head. This reaction makes me want to order myself flowers once a week just so I can get under his skin, but I’m not an asshole. The thought makes me laugh though.

As I’m finishing my sandwich, I look back at the flowers. The sweet smell of them fills the small room, and when I inhale deeply, the scent brings up a moment in my life I haven’t thought about in over a year.

It was raining hard as I drove to the funeral home. I’ll never forget how much water was on the road as I traveled across town to pay my respects to my deceased patient, Susan, and her family. I should’ve let it go. I shouldn’t have shown up, because there’s a fine line I should walk as a professional, but this felt different. It felt personal. When I walked inside, the room was filled with tulips, and the scent, to this day, has always reminded me of her.

If I could go back to that day and change what happened, I would go in a heartbeat. It all boiled down to miscommunication from the doctor on the previous shift, but since she didn’t die on his watch, he wiped his hands clean of it. I was told her diagnosis was nothing more than flu-like symptoms with a rash, and her condition wasn’t life-threatening at the moment. She wasn’t a top priority since we had a room full of patients waiting to be seen.

I was instructed to monitor Susan’s fever due to it being too high, and she wasn’t to be discharged until it went down, and she was stable. She was given fluids to keep her hydrated and medication to help with her symptoms. The flu was spreading like wildfire, and we’d had a record number of patients come to the ER with it. After I did my rounds, the day transformed into a complete clusterfuck due to a seven-car pileup. Sixteen people were admitted, which kept us busier than usual.

Richard, the patient’s husband, was determined that something else was wrong with his wife. Her rash had spread, but I was told by the previous doctor that he had done a full exam on her along with collecting all of her medical history. She had no known reason to have a bacterial infection, so I had nothing else to go on. Richard insisted we do more tests, and though I tried to explain this strain of the flu was one of the worst we’d seen in years, he was adamant we do more. The signs were clear, or so I thought, that it was just a bad virus. My supervisor denied any further testing, considering we were already tackling extra patients and were short staffed due to other doctors and nurses having the flu.

Susan’s husband became irate, but nothing more could be done. My hands were tied, and we couldn’t do anything except monitor her stats. The virus had to work its way out, and she needed a few days to recover. I made sure she was comfortable before checking on my other patients, and by the time I made it back to her room, she was weak and noticeably worse. Her fever had risen, and her stats had all fallen. By the time I realized what was happening, that she was showing symptoms of toxic shock syndrome, her blood pressure had dropped so low that she went into cardiac arrest. I immediately hit the code and lowered the head of her bed. A nurse brought in the crash cart, and I attempted to resuscitate her four times… but it was too late.

Richard became hysterical. Nurses had to remove him from the room as we called her time of death. He started spewing threats at me and fighting the nurses who tried to block him from me. I sympathized with him, realizing his grief, but I never expected the levels he’d take it.

Knowing he’d just lost his wife, I understood his anger but was completely taken off guard when he made a huge scene at the funeral home. He blamed me; he still blames me. Things got out of hand quickly, and he threatened me every chance he could. It got to the point where I had to get a restraining order on him, so if he went the hospital or near my home, I could call the police, and he’d be arrested. Since the day he got served with the paperwork, he’s left me alone, thank God. But that doesn’t help the memories of losing Susan go away. I was angry, too, hurt, and confused. The doctor who admitted her had lied about doing a full exam and had I known she had symptoms for the past seventy-two hours and a preexisting skin infection, I would’ve ordered more tests to check for bacteria in the blood. But it was never in her chart when he passed it on to me.

I think back to that day and wished I would’ve asked more questions. I should’ve asked more questions and not rushed to conclusions, but I trusted that doctor. I blindly trusted all of the staff and ended up learning a very hard lesson.

I close my eyes tightly and try to push the thoughts away and actually become repulsed by the smell of the tulips lying on the table because it brings too many bad memories to the surface. Just as I stand to throw them in the trash, my pager goes off, and my head is instantly back in the game. I run down the hallway and see all the triage nurses getting into position. Finding Evan, he gives me a quick rundown of the situation.

“House fire. The entire family is badly burned, but the father is the worst. Possible smoke inhalation. Two adults and three children,” he says, before quickly turning to one of the triage nurses.

“I need scrub techs, plastics, anesthesiologists, and I need a burn care nurse down here immediately. Everyone needs to be lined up because time will be limited once they arrive.”

Evan stays calm, and every move he makes is calculated. Within minutes, two ambulances pull up, and I make eye contact with one of the paramedics as she speaks with Missy, one of the triage nurses. By the look on her face, I know this isn’t good. As they’re unloaded, it takes Missy less than thirty seconds before she’s calling red tags for each family member, which means they can’t survive without immediate assistance. Gurneys are swiftly pushed through the hallway, and Evan is directing nurses and interns to trauma rooms. The ER is in calm chaos, running like a fine-tuned machine, but I can’t deny the worry I feel when I take one look at the father. I’ve barely dealt with burn victims. We had a renowned burn center in Houston where patients with severe burns went. I’m so out of my element that I start to internally panic as I understand the severity of their condition.

“We’re going to need advanced life support; he’s having trouble breathing. Massive swelling. Intubation is needed, or his airway will close,” Evan demands as the gurney is wheeled into a trauma room. The nurses move in place, taking his direction. I open my mouth and close it, not able to find my words after witnessing how charred and melted the man’s skin is. Sure, I did case studies on burn victims in med school but never witnessed anything of this magnitude. His legs are covered in blood, soaking the fabric of what’s left of his jeans. The sounds that rip from his throat are ear-piercing. I’m sure it hurts him more than anything, but that’s the body’s natural response.

“Dr. Bell. Get your head out of your ass! You need to move,” he snaps, and I pick up my pace and follow closely behind him.

Once inside the room, one nurse hooks up an IV to give massive amounts of fluids to help save his kidneys. Pain medication is administered to keep him comfortable. Seconds later, Evan is standing over the patient and gently places the tube down his throat. The ventilator kicks on and helps him breathe. Oxygen levels rise almost immediately.

Nurses move around Evan and begin measuring the percentage of burns on the body. I stand to the side, not wanting to interrupt their flow, but I feel so useless.

“Dr. Bell, get over here,” Evan demands. It feels like all hell is breaking loose around me, and I have to remind my feet to move.

I walk closer, really getting a look at the skin and how bad the burns are. As I look down his body, I see the lower half of his leg’s severed. The heat of the fire burned right through his skin.

“There’s nasal singeing,” Veronica adds. “Sixty-five percent burns, lower half of the body is the worst. Epidermis and dermis are badly damaged. Severe blistering. We actually have both second and third degree.”

“Page Dr. Dursley and get trauma surgery down here,” Evan tells another nurse. Everything happens so fast, yet it all feels like we’re moving in slow motion. The patient is sedated, but his legs worry me the most. The way they’re bleeding and exposed places him at a higher risk of infection and amputation.

“You should page the orthopedic surgeon,” I suggest, looking up at Evan’s hard stare. The patient’s leg is in bad shape, and without a doubt, he’ll need surgery.

“I need sterile sheets, saline bottles, and blankets NOW!” Evan yells, ignoring my words completely. Within minutes, all the items he requested are being handed over.

“He’s going into shock. Blood pressure is dropping,” Evan explains in a rushed tone.

“Hypovolemic shock?” I question. He just rolls his eyes at me and continues giving orders. “We have to get started on a transfusion right away. He’s lost too much already. I need O negative blood stat!”

Claire rushes out of the room to retrieve the blood.

After he’s finished giving instructions, I add my suggestion. “We need a dopamine drip.” This time, he nods in agreement, and Fiona rushes around to grab the supplies just as Claire returns. Another line is started for the blood transfusion, and once that’s inserted, Fiona begins administering the medicine while Dr. Dursley, the burn victim specialist, enters and starts assessing his burns. Dr. Vance, the trauma surgeon, enters next to help. The burns are extensive, and once all the supplies are in place, they begin debriding the burnt skin tissue. I swallow hard as I watch him peel layers off his body like shaved meat. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I swallow down the bile that threatens to surface and try to get my head back in the game.

The patient’s heartrate begins to increase steadily and so does his blood pressure. I consider it a small win, but there’s so much more that still needs to be done for his recovery.

Lines and tubes are all over the place. The man is hanging on by a thread, but at least he’s more stable now.

“His right foot is ghost white,” Dr. Dursley says softly to Evan, but since I’m standing next to him, I hear the sadness in his tone.

“No blood flow,” Evan confirms, shaking his head. “Shit.”

“I’m concerned about his exposure to infection if we don’t get the blood flowing. The longer his foot goes without it, the higher the chance an infection will get into his blood,” Dr. Vance adds.

“He might already have an infection,” Evan states. “Still waiting on the blood test results.”

“My guess you could be right. After assessing how bad his burns are and how much skin is gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d need an amputation of this leg. The damage is so extensive. Even if we could repair it, he’d have lifelong pain. The nerves are all shot, and he’d continue to struggle to walk. At least with an amputation, he could wear a prosthesis and learn to walk again with therapy,” Dr. Vance says.

“I’d recommend an above-the-knee amputation to avoid further complications of needing skin grafts, but I’ll let the orthopedic surgeon make the final call,” Dr. Dursley adds.

My heart sinks, and I release a loud gasp without meaning to.

“You have something to add, Dr. Bell?” Evan asks, but not in his normal condescending tone. “I’d love to hear about your expertise on the matter.”

Oh, there it is. Asshole.