Christmas Delights 3 (42 page)

Jax anticipated a night filled with the steady flow of
alcohol-induced injuries. The people who went overboard celebrating, as well as
those the holidays reminded they were alone and/or poor as church mice. Too
many people with nowhere to turn found solace in a bottle.  With low
expectations of what laid ahead, Jax opened the door to his car.

He carried the huge box of homemade cookies his best friend
Trent had pressed on him to contribute to the inevitable staff party. Jax
hadn’t told him that he planned to sleep during the festivities. He had no
desire to repeat the argument they’d had when Trent learned the reason Jax had
turned down his invitation to spend Christmas on the farm.  Friends were great
most of the time, but sometimes…well the words pushy and annoying came to mind.

Jax stopped by the locker room where he traded his heavy
Carhartt coat for a white lab jacket. He clipped his badge to the pocket well
below line of sight. He hated his picture on the thing. It made him look like a
kid. Maybe Trent was okay with people thinking he was barely out of his teens,
but Jax had worked hard for too long to be mistaken for an intern. The
Dr.
Jackson
embroidered in blue over the top right pocket was ID enough. He
hung his stethoscope around his neck and headed for the lounge where he could
leave the cookies.

“Hi, Linda.” Armed with most disarming smile, Jax added the
opened box of cookies to the mass of food the middle-aged woman was trying to
arrange on the table. She tossed him a harassed look. Brown scrubs and her
badge identified her as one of the housekeeping staff. They’d met when the
Hospital opened. She was one of the few with a true sense of how important her
job was to the smooth running of the facility. He’d never seen her shun a task
or blink twice at a request. He’d tried more than once to poach her away for
his private practice. “Busy night?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just the usual inability of the staff
to pick up after themselves. Lord knows they must think things clean themselves
around here.” She picked up an empty tray and deftly transferred his box of
cookies onto the bright Santa face. Once they were arranged to her
satisfaction, she set the tray in the middle of the table and stood back, hands
on hips to survey her handiwork. With a nod she turned to face Jax.

“Hello to you too. How did you manage to draw the short straw
for the night?” Linda kept working without waiting for his reply. She rarely
stood still and was already fussing around her cart making sure she had
everything she’d need for the night.

“Volunteered,” Jax laughed. “No point sitting around alone
feeling pitiful when I can be at work treating the truly wretched.”

She tied off a half-full trash bag sitting beside the table
and shoved it into a vacant place on her cart. “You have family, Doc, or same
as anyhow. Trent didn’t invite you over?”

Jax handed her a cookie. It might have been a wreath, except
the icing was blue and the two candy decorations unevenly placed made it look
more like Cookie Monster with his mouth wide open. “I spent the whole day over
there. Here, this one is my favorite, a Kody special.”

The memory of the hours spent with Trent and Gage made him
smile. He had helped them make cookies all morning. Gage’s sons, five-year-old
Nash and two-year-old Kody, had been the decorating committee with Jax as the
supervisor. Nash had favored the realistic approach.

“
Green, Kody, the wreaths are supposed to be green!”

And Kody’s disgusted reply. “Blue. Blue is best.”

Adding the tiny silver ball decorations had opened
another conflict of creativity. “They are decorations, do it like this.” Nash
had helpfully placed the sugar balls as evenly spaced around the cookie as his
pudgy fingers could manage.

Kody had glared and put two at the top of his. “Eyes.”
And then grinned with delight. “Cookie Monster!!” He picked it up to show Nash
and then promptly ate it. Jax remembered how Nash frowned, looking from his
beautiful example of a wreath to the blue smear around Kody’s mouth, all that
remained of his cookie.

Mischief lit eyes as blue as his father’s and dimples
flashed. “Cookie Monster,” he agreed and there had been no more wreaths. When
Gage and Trent had come in with another load of cookies to decorate, they’d
looked from the cookies to the boys and Jax, baffled.

He’d shrugged innocently. “What can I say? It’s a Cookie
Monster Christmas.” Unruffled, they’d each snagged a bright blue cookie,
congratulated the boys on their originality, and headed back for the kitchen
licking icing off each other’s fingers.

“Great imagination.” The sound of Linda’s voice brought Jax
out of his daydream. She didn’t notice his inattention and grinned at her
cookie before she ate it. “Good cookie too. So why are you here instead of
there?” She reached for another blue monster.

Jax shrugged off the question. His temptation to accept the
guys’ invitation hadn’t survived stumbling over Trent and Gage stealing kisses
every chance they had. Not heated, lust-filled exchanges—Jax could have endured
seeing those, maybe volunteered to keep an eye on the boys while the couple had
a special moment in the barn. The kisses he interrupted were slow,
emotion-filled exchanges that made him feel like an intruder and reminded him
of everything missing in his life. “A single guy can only take so much sap,” he
teased Linda. He snagged a couple cookies and made his way to the door.  “Make
sure everyone knows the food is for all the staff, not just med personnel.”

“Oh they know, Doc, why do you think it was such a mess in
here? Second shift had their party just before they went home. Our turn will
come around soon enough.” Linda busied herself starting another pot of coffee.
“Merry Christmas, Jax. I know spending the holidays single isn’t a lot of fun,
but don’t worry, there’s someone out there for everyone. Love will hit when you
least expect. Like a bolt of lightning.”

“Sap-lightning, just what I need,” he teased before heading
out of the lounge for the nurse’s station to see what the staffing situation
looked like for the night. He hoped focusing on the job would chase away the
lingering loneliness roused by the sight of Trent’s fingers on Gage’s jaw,
their clasped hands on the couch between them, and the love Trent showed the
boys. As if they were an extension of Gage, making anything short of total
adoration an impossibility for him.

“Fuck. Get off me! Goddam that hurts!” The shout pulled Jax
out of his thoughts, and he headed for the curtained-off cubicle he’d been
passing. “I don’t know what the hell those fuckers were thinking. I didn’t need
an ambulance, and I don’t need you. I’m fine. Get. The. Fuck. Off.”

Jax pulled back the curtain and all eyes turned to look at
him. The EMTs’ disgruntled frustration was evident on their faces as they tried
to move their patient from the gurney onto the bed. The man stood between them,
wobbly on his legs, refusing help. He staggered to the hospital bed but
couldn’t sit on it because they’d raised it to the height of the gurney for the
transfer, obviously before they’d lost control of the situation.

“Fuck.” He sank down to sit cross-legged on the floor and
stared up at Jax with the brightest green eyes he’d ever seen. The female tech
reached down to help, but he slapped her hand away. “I told ya to stop touching
me. I’ve got this.” He gripped the edge of the bed but, instead of making an
attempt to pull up to his feet, continued to stare at Jax.

“It’s okay, I’ve got this. You guys can go.” He laid a
calming hand on the young woman’s arm, and she flashed him a look of thanks.

“Should I call security?” the male EMT asked as they
prepared to roll the gurney out of the small space.

Jax didn’t take his eyes off the man on the floor. “No, just
fill me in. I’m sure you guys are far from finished for the night.”

The girl, blonde ponytail bobbing, sighed. “I’m sure.” She
grabbed her clipboard and studied it for a minute. “Lane Reed, unconscious upon
our arrival on the scene, regained consciousness upon our arrival at the
hospital.” Jax let the familiar litany of information wash over him, absorbing
anything of importance as he studied the man at his feet. Midtwenties, an abrasion
on his forehead over the left eye. The knot forming under the cut was already
impressive, and the left eye showed signs of bruising and was beginning to
swell shut. Another scrape and bruise marred his cheekbone. He cradled his left
arm, confirming the tech’s information of probable shoulder dislocation. An
injury that hurt like a bitch as Jax knew from experience. There was the
possibility of a concussion as well as neck trauma. He spotted the neck brace
on the floor across the room and shook his head. All topped with the suspicion
of fractured ribs. His temp was normal and his blood pressure only slightly
elevated. 

Jax looked up from his visual exam of the patient to meet
the young woman’s eyes.

“Did he say what happened?”

She didn’t have to check her notes. “He says he fell off a
barstool.” Her tone said exactly what she thought of that claim. “There were
signs of a struggle in the bar where we picked him up, but he was the only one
there. We secured the building on our way out but didn’t see any keys.”

Jax frowned. He stared at the patient, who set his jaw
stubbornly. “Someone called nine-one-one. I think we can feel confident it
wasn’t the patient.”

She sighed. “Obviously, but he’s not talking. Now he’s all
yours.” If her tone held a bit of ‘thank God’ in it, Jax couldn’t blame her.
She turned and quickly followed in the direction her partner had already
disappeared.

Jax sat on the floor to the left of the patient, enabling
him a closer visual check of the damage to the man’s face. “Hello there, Mr.
Reed. I’m Dr. Jackson, but you can call me Jax like just about everyone does.
I’ll be overseeing your care tonight. That bar had pretty hard floors, huh?”

“Really tall barstools,” he countered, his voice flat. “I’m
fine. Let me leave.”

“Actually, Mr. Reed, you are free to go at any time.
Contrary to what they show on TV, I can’t stop you from refusing care and
walking out. I would appreciate if you’d sign a form first so you can’t come
back and sue me later. You might want to consider letting me take a look
though. That’s a nasty bump on your head, and you might have a concussion to go
along with it. Your shoulder needs attention, and even though we don’t wrap
fractured ribs anymore, you need to know what you can’t do until they heal.”

“I can reset my own damn shoulder. Done it plenty a times
before. My head’s fine.” He drew back from Jax a little but didn’t go far. The
slight motion drew a soft hiss from him despite his attempt at control.

“Mr. Reed, you were knocked out cold.” Jax considered the
other man and tried to decide if he could touch him without getting laid out on
the floor himself.

He snorted. “That pansy smack on the head didn’t knock me
out. This put me down.” He turned his head, and for the first time Jax got a
look at the bruising along and under his right jawline. The healer in Jax
kicked in and he didn’t hesitate. His fingers slid along a lean jaw marred by
swelling and round a hard knot right under the hinge. He barely brushed against
it, but Lane gasped and pulled away. He swayed in reaction to the sudden
movement and his eyes unfocused.

“Sorry, doc, guess the damn stool kicked me while I was
down. Never shoulda trusted the fucker.” His words slurred and he passed out,
sagging against Jax. His head settled into the curve of neck and shoulder as if
he’d always been there.

Jax’s heart stuttered and he stared at his fingers as if
they’d betrayed him. He’d felt something more than just the familiar impression
of touch helping diagnose a patient. The sensation had jumped from fingertip to
heart to groin, and in that moment, he’d felt as if his skin no longer fit. He
didn’t know what had happened, but he was positive it felt nothing like jolt of
electricity. Or a lightning strike. Nothing at all.

* * * * *

Lane opened his eyes only to squeeze them shut. The light
wasn’t bright, it barely illuminated the room, but even that small sensory
input made his head throb. He remembered having an argument with a new customer
and one of the regulars with a bit too much shine in his system offering an
unsolicited opinion of Lane’s sexual orientation. Things went downhill fast
after that. The pair had been the only two people in the bar that early and Tim
Calloway was an unlikely source of help when the big guy had grabbed Lane by
the shirt front and dragged him over the top of the bar.

“Fucker.” God knew how much damage had been done to the bar,
expenses he could ill afford. To top it off, some asshole called an ambulance,
and now he could add the hospital cost to the total.

“Good to see you’ve decided to join us again.” The cheerful
voice cut through his head and Lane groaned. He pulled the pillow from under
his head with a hiss of pain when the motion jostled his shoulder and pulled
against his ribs.

“Fuck. Damn. Shit.” He growled into the pillow, holding it
tightly over his head in an attempt to hide from the light and sounds of the
room. He struggled to fit the missing pieces of his day together. He didn’t
remember anything after the boot connected with his jaw until he’d just opened
his eyes. He had the sense he’d been awake before but the only recollection he
could pull from the murky depths of his brain was an impression of deep blue.
“Like the sea.” Muffled though his words were, he sensed the nurse pause.

“I’ll get the doctor, sir.” The sound of her soft-soled
shoes hurrying away didn’t bring him out from under his pillow. Instead he
focused on trying to reconcile the color blue with his doctor. Maybe the guy
had a blue shirt.

The rattle of a curtain being pulled brought him out of his
thoughts, and he listened to the click of the doctor’s shoes coming closer
until the sound stopped and he imagined the man stood beside the bed. Still
unable to pull up any memory of having met him, Lane waited for him to speak.