The Doctor's Damsel (Men of the Capital Book 3) Read Free

the cut and stop the bleeding. It really hurt. She grabbed one of the rags out of Hannah’s box and wrapped it around her hand. It soaked through very quickly and she grabbed for another thin rag. When she pushed it against her cut, she saw delicate embroidery. For a moment she was puzzled as to why her sister would clean with embroidered rags. Then it dawned on her that these were the special Irish linen napkins and tablecloths that one of Jasper’s associates had sent as an engagement present. And now Becca had bled all over them. They probably cost thousands of dollars, and now stupid Becca had ruined them. She cried all the harder.
    Recalling her first aid course that she’d taken as a teen, she applied pressure with the ruined linen tablecloth and held the arm above her head as she sobbed. She watched the clock. After five minutes, the bleeding hadn’t slowed. She knew she needed to go to the ER, but it seemed like one more indignity. She wouldn’t call Hannah, make her luckier sister stir from her lover’s bed late at night to tend to a bleeding hand. Plus, it wasn’t like a sound engineer had a whole lot of medical training.
    Pushing herself up to her feet, she kicked the box cutter out of spite and stepped into her flip-flops. Grabbing her keys off the counter and picking up a dishtowel to replace the bloody tablecloth she was trailing behind her, Becca set off for the emergency room. As she pulled into the parking lot, she glanced at her reflection in the rear view mirror. Her mascara was smeared under her eyes and she looked puffy from crying. Her hair was sweaty and coming out of its ponytail. She awkwardly wiped her face with a tissue and grabbed a scarf out of the backseat, wrapping it around her neck to make her tank and cutoffs look a little more stylish. She couldn’t fix the ponytail with only one hand so she took it down, letting blond hair fall across her shoulders in unruly waves. Shaking it out, she felt a little more presentable, enough to go face the night receptionist at the ER.
    After the routine questions and forms, she settled in to a plastic chair to watch the news ticker on the TV. Vomiting children and a stabbing victim went in ahead of her. She gritted her teeth against the tears that kept coming, from the pain in her hand, and a whole lot of embarrassment about her overall life situation. She probably hadn’t ever felt this alone: waiting in a hospital by herself, cold in the overzealous air conditioning, thirsty and inexpressibly sad that no one had been there to take care of her. She reminded herself that she was an adult, but it didn’t help much.
    When her name was finally called, she winced at the Abbracciabene and vowed to change it as soon as she could find the forms online. She trailed after the nurse who took her blood pressure and asked her a lot more questions about how she’d been hurt and if she had preexisting conditions. Becca decided at the last minute not to say that ‘Bad Judgment’ was her chronic problem. There probably wasn’t a medication for it anyway.
     

Chapter 2
     
    Becca asked the nurse to turn off the light in her cubicle. She curled up on her side on the short examining table and clutched her bloody dishtowel. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and she indulged in a soft little sob. She was tired, her hand hurt, and she was by herself because she had made mistake after mistake, choice after choice that put her here. And, dammit, she felt sorry for herself. If two a.m. in an emergency room wasn’t an acceptable time for self-pity, she didn’t know what would be, so she let herself cry.
    When the pitiless fluorescent lights flared to life above her, she blinked in dismay. A doctor in blue scrubs was pulling on fresh exam gloves with a stern expression.
    “Chart says it’s your hand. Sit up,” he said perfunctorily.
    “I’m Becca Bennett. I cut my hand unpacking my stuff at my sister’s. My boyfriend kicked me out,” she said a little