Terran Times 18 - Emerald Envisage (20 page)

She had a rack that Jorvin would give her front teeth for.

“They are so
hawt.
What I wouldn’t give to ride in the back of their ambulance.”

Jorvin let out a little victory
whoop
because she finally had the IV in place. The gossip twins gave her identical looks of annoyance.

“So I take it you like them, too?” Boobs said.

“Like who?” Jorvin didn’t spare them another glance as she began taping the tubing into place.

“The paramedics from Alpha
421.”
Blondie shared a not-so-secret smile with her buddy.

“I don’t know that I’ve seen them before.” She adjusted the flow of the IV to a steady drip.

“How can you not see them?” Boobs acted aghast. “They’re built like gods.”

“Because Jorvin never sees anything.” Blondie crossed her arms over her chest. “She lives in her own little world and comes out to visit us when she has to take care of her patients.”

Jorvin spun around, her mouth open in shock. “I do not.”

“Really? Then tell me what our names are.”

“They’re…” She squinted at their name badges and they immediately slammed their hands on them so she couldn’t cheat. She strained her brain, tried to remember only to come up with, “Boobs and Blondie?” She covered her mouth in horror as soon as the words slipped out. Her brother Loredean liked to say she had no inner monolog and damned if he wasn’t right. The two nurses laughed and didn’t take offense, thank the Goddess.

“I’m Cindy,” Blondie supplied. She hooked a thumb in her friend’s direction. “This is Debbie.”

“You know, we’ve been watching you.” Cindy leaned against the counter and eyed her speculatively.

“I thought you were watching the
hawt
paramedics,” Jorvin countered, despite the fact her heart thudded in her chest. Damn, they had been noticing her, what might she have done to betray who she really was?

“Yes, you act shy, but it’s all for show. At first, I thought you might be stuck up, but it’s not that either. Then I finally met your brothers the other day and it all became clear to me.”

Clear? What was clear? Oh crap, this is not good. Did they know the family secret?
Jorvin licked her dry lips. “What might that be?”

“Those boys are way too controlling of you. They probably never let you out to have fun.”

Oh that. Well that certainly wasn’t any secret. Her brothers broadcasted their almost suffocating protectiveness whenever they came to pick her up from work. Shoot, they wouldn’t even let her drive herself home, despite the fact she had a car of her own that sat in their garage neglected. So it was true when Cindy said Jorvin’s brothers were too controlling of their sisters. To add to things, a year ago her youngest sister, Korin, had a fling with a strange elf. Now her brothers watched all their sisters even closer, all the while looking over their shoulders because the male had promised to come reclaim Korin someday.

“They just worry too much, our parents died when we were young so they basically raised us,” she automatically defended her brothers. As soon as the damning words left her trap, she grimaced. Damnit, she was revealing way too much info. Next she would be drawing them a family tree.

“That still doesn’t mean they have the right to boss you around and lock you up,” Debbie said. “You have every right to live your own life.”

Jorvin pulled back, stunned by how right the human was. She did have a right to live her own life. All of the sisters did. While her brothers went out playing around with the females, her, Korin and Nivian had been forced to say home
for their own good.
To make things even worse, ever since her brothers had taken Korin away from her male elf, she had been a shell of herself and miserable. So Jorvin had the added burden of peacemaker. She tried everything to bring her once-extroverted sister out of her fun while dealing with Loredean’s mounting aggravation. To him the fact their youngest sister was willing to risk the family all for one mere male was unacceptable.

“Why don’t you go out to the bar with us after work?” Cindy suggested.

Did she dare? It would be so nice to spend a night away from her tension-filled house. To have some time just for herself. “I could call Loredean and tell him I had to work over,” Jorvin mussed. The thought of having a night of fun was so tempting. “He would never be the wiser.”

“Perfect!” Cindy did a little happy dance.

Jorvin couldn’t help but smile at her exuberated response.

“I’ll drive you home after,” Debbie offered.

An alarm shrilled through the speakers, followed by the pre-recorded voice that told them a priority one emergency was coming into the ER. The nurses hurried to a trauma room with the rest of the team and waited. As Jorvin stood in the packed room of doctors, nurses, radiologists and techs, she thought about what her two new friends had said.

Her brothers thought they could rule her life and she was sick of it. Just look at what they had done to poor Korin. Thanks to them, she was miserable without Hunter and she may never be able to find him again. Maybe it was time they learned to stand up to those oafs and take control of their lives. Jorvin decided then enough was enough. She was going to reclaim her independence tonight. When she did call her brother, she wasn’t going to tell him she was working over, she was going to tell him she was going out with some friends and if he had a problem with it, too damn bad.

The doors swung open with a loud bang as the paramedics came rushing in, pushing a cot between them. Jorvin barely gave them a glance because her attention was focused on the patient and the task at hand. They had a young male tied down to the backboard and the human was bleeding and shrieking hysterically.

“We have twenty-year-old male who wrapped his car around a tree about one hour ago,” one of medics recited as they lifted the backboard from their cot and transferred him to the hospital one. His deep voice sounded a bit winded from having to fight with the flailing patient. Despite the straps securing him into place, he was still able to move a lot. A couple of the hospital staff ran over to help. The medic wiped his brow and continued, “According to his girlfriend, he did some LSD. We have C-spine stabilized, one large bore IV in. He has a large laceration to the scalp and we stopped the bleeding and cleaned the wound best we could out in the field.”

“The elves came to save me,” the human screamed. His pupils were so large his eyes looked black, they almost bugged out of pale face. His brown hair was slick with sweat and blood. “They tied me down and brought me here.”

“Oh, and he’s having hallucinations,” the medic finished drolly. A few nervous chuckles met his words.

Jorvin reached in the cabinet to get the four-point restraints when she became aware the paramedic who wasn’t giving the report was studying her closely. A moment of terror visited her heart as she wondered if maybe she was showing some ear or something. After all the talk about elves, the last thing she needed was to prove they really did exist. A nervous pat to her hair reassured her that wasn’t the case. So she started to shoot daggers at him, only to be brought up short by what she saw. The human had been right all along. The medic was a frigging elf, just like her.

She whipped her head around to look at the other medic and saw he was one, too. Not only that, his name tag said
Hunter
. As in Korin’s Hunter. She glanced back over at the first one who was still gawking at her and saw that his badge said
Devin.
Korin had told her Hunter had a brother by that name. Both of them had dark hair, almost obscured by the blue ball caps they wore, and sharp green eyes. With bodies that were the perfect male specimen, they were tall and very muscular, although Devin was the taller of the two by a few inches. Both of them shared the same elf-like facial structure that she did, highly arched cheekbones and the slightest of tilting to their eyes. She tried to see if they had pointed ears, too, but those stupid hats hid them.

“Jorvin, can bring those restraints over?” Cindy asked.

Jorvin moved to the cot, tripping on her way because she couldn’t take her gaze off Devin. A flurry of emotions were racing through her body, fear that they would expose her, anxiety that they came to hurt her family and intrigue because Devin was so good looking.
Hawt
didn’t even begin to do him justice. That was until a knowing smirk came to his face.

You’re an elf,
he mouthed.

Her stomach knotted in terror. As she handed the restraints over, she mouthed back,
Am not.

Are, too.

Am not.
She looked around frantic, afraid someone had seen their exchange, but everyone was too busy to notice. They were all running around, getting blood, setting up the portable x-ray machine and other things that a full-fledged trauma consisted of. The only ones not caught up in a flurry of activity were her and Devin. Jorvin felt her breath hitch as his heated gaze locked onto her. A strange tingle went through her body as she returned his scrutiny. She knew she should turn away and get to the job at hand, yet she couldn’t. For some strange reason, she was drawn to this elf. She even took one step in his direction before she caught herself and stopped.

Thank Goddess the moment was shattered when the patient looked at her and he let out an ear-piercing shriek. “More elves! They are everywhere!”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a good thing the human had intervened.
She shot a pleading look in Devin’s direction and his face softened in understanding.

Don’t worry,
he mouthed.

Now out of her spell, Jorvin noticed Hunter was giving them both shocked looks.

The human added his own special mix by yelling again, “More elves, she’s an elf, too, I tell you!” He bucked against the restraints, the tendons popping up in his neck.

“Sure, buddy,” Devin drawled. “Jorvin, Hunter and I are really elves living amongst humans, hiding who we are. Did you know that Jorvin here is a princess because her father was next in line for the throne before he got exiled?”

A few of the staff snickered at his statement. Jorvin, for her part, froze as she felt the blood drain from her face. Even though it appeared that to everyone he had been playing along with the patient’s hallucinations, she knew every word he’d just spoke was true.

Hunter, for his part, was studying her close, too, and there was no mistaking the determination on his face. Jorvin knew he recognized her as Korin’s sister and there was no way Jorvin was going to slip away from him now. Not when he knew she could lead him to her.

“Don’t you two have to get back on the road?” she asked pointedly.

“This was our last call for the night.” Devin flashed her a cocky grin that made her knees a bit weak. Even though he was annoying as hell, he was still way too attractive for her good. “So we don’t mind staying around to catch up on old times.”

The patient continued to scream about elves and the evil they were capable of, but no one in the room was listening to him. Much to Jorvin’s dismay, they all universally decided that she and Devin were way more interesting than some stupid college kid tripping on drugs.

“You didn’t tell us you knew them?” Cindy accused as she struggled to get one of the patient’s hands tied to the railings.

“I didn’t realize who they were until now.” She smiled as she shot daggers at Devin. Even though she was furious at him, she still couldn’t help but admire how nice he filled out his uniform. Her mouth became suddenly dry as she thought about how it would feel to run her hands over those strong biceps, to trace her fingers over his abs, to…

The human somehow managed to get one hand free and he snagged her wrist in a painful grip. “You stupid elf bitch.”

She let out a gasp of pain when his nails dug into her tender flesh. “Let go,” she commanded in a hard voice. The male just tightened his hold, his filthy, blood-crusted nails going even deeper into her.

Before anyone else could come to her aid, Devin was there. He grabbed the patient’s hand and firmly pried him loose. Once she was free, Devin gently pulled her away into the corner of the room and examined her. There were four deep crescent shaped wounds, which wept blood.

“Do you need treatment?” one of the doctors yelled over the mayhem.

Jorvin and Devin exchanged looks, the wounds were already beginning to heal up at a supernatural rate thanks to her elf biology. The last thing any of them needed was for a human to see that. “She’s fine,” Devin called back. “I’m just going to take her into another room and clean her up.”

“Good idea,” Cindy said. “We don’t know for sure if this guy has anything.”

Another look was exchanged between the elves. There was no way any human diseases would have any effect on her. “I’ll take good care of her.”

His eyes held the same promise as his words and she shivered in response. Before she could argue with him, he took her by the hand and led her out of the room. Once they were out in the hall, she tried to pull her arm back. “I can take care of myself.”

He refused to release her. “I have no doubt of that. Hunter told me your brothers made sure all of you females could fend for themselves. He also told me they were overprotective of you. After what happened with him and Korin last year, I’m surprised they let any of you out of the house.”