The Best Medicine Read Free Page A

around here tended to be of the beach resort variety, and the whole department had a polite atmosphere. Not that there weren’t car accidents and heart attacks and dramatic things of that sort, but nobody around here ever got stabbed or shot. There weren’t gang signs spray-painted on the side of the ambulance bay, and I hadn’t seen a strung-out hooker in months.
    I pushed open the metal doors. A nurse in green scrubs seemed to skip a step at my entrance, then she too smiled wide. Her dark, wavy hair was twisted up in a bun, and I was nearly certain her name was Lecia, but since I wasn’t positive, I just smiled back. Nurses really hate it when you call them by the wrong name. I learned that the hard way in medical school.
    “Hi, Dr. Rhoades. You’re fancy today. Are you here for the face lac?”
    “Fancy?”
    She pointed at my head.
    Oh!
    No.
    Really?
    I reached up, and yep, there it was. The tiara. I yanked it from my head, ripping out hair along with it. How could I have forgotten the flippin’ tiara? No wonder everyone kept grinning at me.
    “Sorry. It’s my birthday,” I mumbled and tossed it into the nearby trash can. I brushed my hair back from my face, feeling heat steal over my cheeks. I bet I was turning splotchy too. Oh, the joys of being fair skinned. “And yes, I’m here for the face lac. What’s the story?”
    She led me toward a curtained area. “Twenty-seven-year-old Caucasian male versus a fifth of whiskey and a boat dock.”
    “What?”
    “He ran into a boat dock while drunk driving a Jet Ski. Broke the fall with his face. But according to his story, he did not spill any of his drink.”
    Her brows lifted as she nodded, clearly impressed by the order of his priorities. She pulled his chart from the rack and handed it to me, adding, “But he’s pretty, and he doesn’t want a scar.”
    She shoved the curtain to the side while I looked over his stats.
    Tyler Connelly. Twenty-seven. Good vital signs. No employer listed. I stepped closer to get a better look.
    He was tall and broad. I could tell that much, even as he lay on the stretcher. His eyes were closed, and his hair was messy with the sort of blond highlights that came from spending hours in the sun. That explained the tan too, which covered all that I could see except for his face—which had a slightly ashen pallor and showed signs of bruising on one side. A white section of gauze was taped along his jawline, from under his chin halfway back toward his left ear.
    I tucked the chart under my arm. “Mr. Connelly, I’m Dr. Rhoades.”
    A soft snore came from the bed.
    I looked at the nurse, who was fussing with a blood pressure cuff.
    “Well, you’ve obviously managed his pain well enough,” I said drily.
    She chuckled. “We haven’t given him anything. Whiskey, remember? He was half-anesthetized when he got here.”
    “On a Tuesday afternoon?”
    It wasn’t unusual for emergency department clientele to be drunk, but this patient didn’t look like your average derelict. He was muscular and well fed, and even with the pale hue and gauze stuck to his jaw, that was one aesthetically pleasing face. Rugged model material. Not that I was affected by that sort of thing. But damn, this was a good-looking man.
    I moved right up next to the bed and raised my voice. “Mr. Connelly, wake up.”
    He twitched and opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and a little glassy, but even so, they were still the prettiest, lightest blue I’d ever seen in my life.
    I glanced at his chart once more.
    Twenty-seven.
    Unemployed.
    Intoxicated.
    Damn.
    And damn again.
    He looked at me and blinked—slow—as if his brain was downloading the instructions on how to do that. Then a lazy smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
    “Wow,” he said on a sigh as he closed his eyes again. “Sexiest nurses in this place.”
    The real nurse chuckled again, then leaned in close to his ear and shouted, “Hey! Sleeping Beauty! Wake up. This is the doctor. And she’s