Chapter 20

Josie

“Code blue. Room 4304. Code blue. Room 4304.”

I lurch out of my chair where I’d been doing some charting and check the pager at my hip, which is also showing a code blue, or in other words, cardiopulmonary arrest.

I’m on the code team today, which consists of multiple nurses and doctors to respond to such an emergency and to have a redundancy system in case some on the team are stuck in another emergency. I take off out of the emergency department because my patients are all stable and there are plenty of others to cover the load. I hit the transport elevators, which aren’t slowed down by visitors to the hospital, and make it to the fourth floor in under a minute.

I’ve perfected the brisk walk, which is almost a run in these emergency situations. Turning a corner around the nurse’s station of the cardiac unit, which comprises the fourth floor, I run smack into a solid wall of muscle. Before I can fully bounce back, a pair of large hands grab my shoulders and I’m blinking up into the face of Reed.

He smiles at me in pure delight to have me in his arms, but I don’t have time. “Not now. Gotta go.”

Reed immediately releases me, concern washing over his face. I have no time to wonder why he’s here in the cardiac unit because I’ve got more important things to do. I brush past him and jog the rest of the way to room 4304, but I can feel Reed’s eyes on my back the entire way.

When I arrive, I see a nurse already doing compressions on an elderly man with snowy white hair and a gray complexion. He’s completely flat lined on the monitor.

“Where are you at?” I ask her as I hit the antiseptic dispenser on the wall and coat my hands quickly.

“Second cycle,” she says, indicating she’s in the second round of thirty chest compressions with two breaths.

Another nurse bursts into the room pushing a crash cart. Without any need to exchange words, I smoothly take over the chest compressions while the nurses get ready to intubate the patient.

My pager starts vibrating on my hip but I ignore it. Nothing takes precedence over a code blue. At the end of the thirty compressions, I do two one-second breaths into the patient, and when I pull back, the nurses start to insert the breathing tube.

Before I can make it halfway through the next round, Dr. Levenson—a cardiothoracic surgeon on the code team—comes into the room with another nurse with an IV setup. I update him on where we stand, and he takes my place while the nurses work the airway bag compressions. Dr. Billroy, an internist, also slides in with a tight smile. She hates being on the code team because she doesn’t like people dying, but she’s very good at her job.

I take a moment and look down to my pager. Multiple GSVs. ETA 5 minutes.

Multiple gunshot victims heading into the Emergency Department.

“You got this?” I ask Levenson and Billroy.

Levenson says, “Go,” in response, and that’s all I need. They know that I would be the first release from the code, since emergency medicine is my game and I easily could be needed elsewhere.

I rush out the door and immediately see Reed standing in the hallway outside a patient’s room four doors down. His worried eyes are pinned on me as if he had been waiting for me to come out.

Approaching Reed, I glance at my watch. I can spare thirty seconds. When I look back up, Reed is nodding at the patient’s room I just left. “Is everything okay?”

“They’re working on him now,” I say briskly, but there’s no hiding the affection I have for him that comes through in my tone. “What are you doing here?”

He smiles and nods over his shoulder toward the room behind him. I lean to the left and peek in to see Marek standing there with the Stanley Cup and the Cup attendant who accompanies it wherever it goes. A man in his fifties is talking to Marek from his bed.

“I was going to tell you, then thought I’d keep it a surprise,” Reed says, and I lean back to look up at him. “I decided to use my day with the Cup here at the hospital taking it to all the patients who want to see it and have some pictures taken. I plan on being down in the ER a little later. The hospital administrator coordinated everything.”

There should be no time for it, but my stomach flutters as if a thousand butterflies have taken up residence in there and my entire body flushes warm with adoration for Reed. God, this man. That he would do that for his day with the Cup. We hadn’t even talked about it other than I knew each player got the Cup, but because he hadn’t said anything about it, I’d assumed perhaps he had his day before we became an item.

“You’re unbelievable,” I say as I go to my tiptoes to kiss him. It’s a fast kiss that doesn’t touch his lips but grazes his chin. He doesn’t even have time to touch me or move his face, so our mouths connect before I’m pulling back and heading down the hall.

I call out over my shoulder, “Got to go. Come see me later.”

And then I put Reed out of my mind, because right now there are more important things. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m not excited to see him later once things calm down.

The Stanley Cup sits in the middle of the hub and everything seems to be getting back to normal. The Emergency Department was the last stop, but not everyone got a turn with it. Anyone who was potentially contagious was off the list, and there was no way they could bring it into the waiting room, so that meant a select few patients got to see it and have photos taken, as well as all of the emergency staff.

Marek is leaning over the low counter that runs halfway around the hub, flirting with one of the nurses. He’s shameless, but I’ve learned over the weeks that’s just Marek. He’s got boyish good looks with dark curly hair and intense blue eyes that are completely mesmerizing. He’s a player for sure, but he’s not a douche bag. Of course he wouldn’t be a douche bag, though, because he’s good friends with Reed, and Reed isn’t a douche bag either.

Reed is chatting with Kevin and they have a few pics snapped together by the Cup keeper, a really cool guy I got to chat with at Alex and Sutton’s party before she went into labor. The winning team gets the Cup for a hundred days during the summer, and it’s his job to care for it during its travels. He was able to quote funny stuff to me, like the fact that the Cup can hold seven bottles of champagne in it and that he’s traveled to twenty-four different countries with it.

Kevin and Reed shake hands and Kevin disappears into an exam room. I’ve still got three hours until my shift is over, but all my current patients are waiting on tests or for discharge.

I saunter over to Reed and his grin back at me tells me he’s well pleased with his day with the Cup.

“So, what did you think?” he asks as I reach him.

“I think you made a lot of damn people in this hospital happy, Mr. Olson,” I say, and I don’t give a crap who’s watching or that I’m on duty. I put my hands to the side of his neck and pull him down for a quick kiss.

“That’s all well and good,” he says casually. “But did I make you happy?”

I give him a coy smile. “I’ll admit, having you around during my workday was definitely awesome.”

I expect him to laugh or smile or even give me a kiss in return, but instead his eyes turn sober. He leans toward me and asks in a low voice, “The patient that you were working on when I first got here? Did he make it?”

My smile to Reed is sad and tender as I give a small shake of my head. “He didn’t.”

“That fucking sucks,” he mutters, then pulls me in for a hard hug. “I know that’s tough on you.”

I nod into his chest and let him console me for a moment. I try not to dwell on these things, and thankfully, my days are weighed heavily in favor of saving lives versus losing them, but they still leave a mark on me.

The wall I put in place while in the hospital start to crack a little and a wave of vulnerability hits me. Tears start to sting my eyes, something I never let happen. I push out of Reed’s arms and raise the wall again. He studies my face for a second and I get an almost imperceptible nod from him that he understands what I’m doing.

That I can’t afford to be anything other than cool, calm, and collected Dr. Ives while I’m in this hospital.

“So, what do you want to do tonight?” he asks me casually, even taking a step back and tucking his hands into his pocket casually.

“Anything else you want to do with the Cup?”

“Nope,” he says resoundingly. “It’s just you and me tonight, since I’ve got to relinquish you to Aiden for the next few days to work on your project.”

God, I want to throw my arms around him and hug the crap out of him. He said that without a trace of bitterness or disappointment. In fact, he said it in such an easygoing way that I know he’s all right with this.

A heavy arm drapes around my shoulders and I turn to see Marek has come up to stand casually beside me. “Let’s take your girl out and go paint the town red tonight.”

Reed cocks an eyebrow at his friend, and damn, that’s sexy. Even sexier when he tells Marek, “I suggest you get your arm off my girl before I break it.”

Marek, of course, just laughs and pulls me into his side. “She wouldn’t be your girl if I put the slightest bit of effort into her. I could take her away from you in a heartbeat.”

A tiny flash of heat mixed with amusement flickers in Reed’s eyes. But he doesn’t challenge Marek with any return ribbing. Instead, he says, “You couldn’t handle Josie. She’d turn you inside out and twist you all around. I know this for a fact, and it takes a real man to accept and appreciate that.”

Wow. Just wow. I do that to Reed?

Before Marek can respond, someone’s calling my name.

I pull out of Marek’s grasp and lean to look past Reed to the hub. It’s one of the nurses. “X rays are complete on exam room four.”

“Be right there,” I tell him. I reach a hand out and touch Reed’s forearm. “Let’s just stay in tonight, okay? Pizza and beer.”

“And bed,” he adds with a wink.

“Pizza and beer in the bed,” I clarify with a grin as I walk toward the exam room.

“Sounds perfect.”

Yes, it does.