The Doctor's Damsel (Men of the Capital Book 3) (2 page)

Back at Hannah’s apartment—
my apartment
, Becca corrected herself—she dragged the boxes up the steps one at a time and then had to go move her car before it got towed. Chris would be getting home about this time, she mused. He and Aria would eat dinner and they’d watch whatever he’d DVR’d that evening. Probably some crime drama. Then they’d make love and go to sleep. It made Becca feel impossibly lonely to know that routine but no longer to be a part of it.

Every time she ended up alone, it was worse. She knew it was because she was getting older, but she was afraid that she’d stop believing one day, that she’d become like everyone else who thought men were just cheaters who couldn’t be trusted. Someone who didn’t think love could conquer anything at all.

She sank down onto the bed for a minute, wishing she’d had the nerve to take the magazine out of Aria’s hand and make some great soap opera speech about how Aria had taken away her man, but she’d never take her love of fashion and celebrity. Or that she could have her leftovers, both male and magazine...she wasn’t sure which was the better speech, but she felt certain she ought to have ranted about something to show off her self-respect.

She looked around the room: front door, bed, couch, refrigerator, oven, and kitchen cabinets all in one room. Hannah had exiled the bed to the front room so she could convert the one bedroom into a soundproof studio for her sound engineering and voiceover work, in her trademark reclusive style. Now Becca had to sleep in the living room/kitchen. She sighed. She was lucky to have a place to live. She just wasn’t thrilled with the furniture placement.

Instead of moping, she decided to unpack her stuff. If she didn’t do it now, she might never empty the boxes and get rid of the cardboard. She could totally see herself just picking her clothes out of the pile and leaving the rest there. She felt sad and slovenly, so the only thing to do was be industrious and put things in order. Becca couldn’t pick the tape off the boxes because it would ruin her nails. She dug around in the kitchen drawers until she found a box cutter. She sliced the blade along the box, taking out her shoes and arranging them in the bottom of the coat closet. Since the real closet had become part of the recording studio, the narrow coat closet was it for clothing storage. She had to move a box of material out of the closet to fit her shoes in. It looked like white rags stuffed in a fancy box. Her sister was sort of strange, she reasoned, so maybe she kept her cleaning stuff in a pretty gift box for aesthetic purposes.

Turning back to her boxes, she decided to see what exactly she’d kept in the back of Chris’s closet. She set the blade of the utility knife to the tape, but it stuck halfway across the box. She picked the tape stuck around the blade off in exasperation and pushed it back into the box lid. It stuck again and she yanked, dragging the diagonal blade across her own hand in the process.

She let out a yelp, tears springing to her eyes as she saw blood well from the deep cut. She threw the box cutter down and dropped down onto her knees, discouraged. First, the play she was understudying had closed. Then she hadn’t even gotten a callback for the toothpaste commercial. Her boyfriend had dumped her for a younger model, and now she’d cut her hand with the damned box cutter while she was unpacking her stuff. It felt distressingly like she was doomed.

She felt the heat of blood running down her arm and she groped for something to press against 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 pitifully, annoyed that he seemed so unsympathetic.

“Fine. Let’s see it.” He said, peeling the dishcloth away from the wound and dumping the towel in the trash beside him.

“That’s my sister’s!” She protested.

“She won’t want it with your blood all over it. Trust me. Now, what’d you do this with?”

“A box cutter. I was trying to get my stuff unpacked—”

“Were you high?”

“What? NO!”

“Drunk?”

“No.”

“Were you by yourself or did the boyfriend do this to you?”

“I’m alone. I was alone. He kicked me out, moved a younger girl in before I even got my clothes out of his closet.”

“Well, as tragic as that sounds, I have an OD in six and a woman whose husband just broke her jaw for her again in five, so let’s make this quick. If you’re clumsy, keep a jar of liquid bandage at the house so you don’t have to—”
“Wait, am I, like,
disturbing
you? I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. I figured if I left it too long, it would get infected and I’d go into septic shock or something. I came to the ER, which is where you’re supposed to go for medical attention. If I’m bothering you, just give me a fucking Barbie Band-Aid and I’ll leave.”

“Calm down. I’ll stitch you up. It’ll take five minutes. There are a lot more serious cases than this in the ER tonight. This is something you could handle yourself if you’re in the habit of—”

“In the habit of cutting myself with a utility knife? No. And I resent the implication that I’m clumsy and useless and should just fix this myself. If you can’t be compassionate, just shut up and do your damn job,” she huffed, tears threatening to fall again.

The doctor put down the gauze he’d been using to clean her cut, stripped off the gloves, and handed her a tissue. He dropped down on the stool, looking impossibly exhausted, and waited for her to calm down. She pulled off her scarf impatiently and dumped it on the table behind her, mopping her eyes with the thin hospital Kleenex and blowing her nose. She tried to smooth her hair back, a little embarrassed now.

“I’m okay now,” she said sheepishly.

“I’m sure I can find you a Barbie Band-Aid if it’s what you really want.” He offered with a small smile.

“How long have you been here?”

“What time is it? Two thirty...that puts me at about seventeen hours, then,” he said.

Becca noticed his bloodshot eyes, the tired slump of his broad shoulders, and she wanted to hug him. Three seconds ago he was being egotistical and hateful. Now she saw the strength, the exhaustion in every line of his lean body, and her heart went out to him.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ve had kind of a rough day.”

“I’m sure you have. Let’s see the hand,” he said, vaulting resolutely off the stool and donning fresh gloves. “I’m Doctor Abrahemson. I can stitch up your hand. The nurse will give you some ibuprofen for the pain and a page of instructions on wound care.” He said with a sigh, trying to be patient, but the effort showed.

As he finished cleaning the deep cut, she winced and made a mewing sound that she tried to stifle. He paused.

“Hey,” he said, his voice softer now. “It’s going to be okay. I have to sew it up. Talk to me. It’ll help distract you.”

“Well, Dr. Abraham…”

“Abrahemson.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“It’s German. And your name was something long and Italian, if I remember correctly.”

“It’s about to be Bennett.”

“Getting married?”

“No, but my sister is. I’m just changing my name because I’m an actress and I’m never going to get any really serious work with a long, unpronounceable name like Abbracciabene. I’m changing it to Bennett. This, week probably,” she told him, warming to the topic. “It’s time for a change. I was in this play, well, I was understudy, but then it flopped. I didn’t get the commercial I auditioned for. My boyfriend, who’s also my boss at Caliccio’s, the restaurant where I work, dumped me for a new waitress. So I’m moving into my sister’s place because fortunately she’s moving in with her fiancé. And then I nearly chopped off my hand trying to unpack my dishes.”

“So now you have to work for the ex-boyfriend and the new girlfriend?” he asked as he finished the stitches.

“Yeah. I’d like to quit because it’s going to be so awkward and miserable, but it’s not like I have all this acting work to fall back on or anything. So basically, everything just sucks right now,” she finished up.

“No, trust me, of everyone I’ve seen tonight, you have the good situation. Meth addicts, battered wives, abused kids. You see a lot in this job, and none of it’s good.”

“Your version of a pep talk makes me want to cut my wrists, doc,” she said wryly.

“Don’t. I’d just have to stitch them up again.” He had a dimple, she noticed.

“Don’t bother. I’ll just get my stuff and check out,” she said glumly, grabbing her purse. “Skip the ibuprofen. I’m clearly just a klutzy whiny nuisance to the medical field.”

“Stay there,” he barked. “The nurse will be with you shortly. There’s a procedure to these things.”

Becca sighed, about to protest, but didn’t budge. He yanked the curtain around her and turned around, working his way down.

After the nurse came, reeling off instructions, she grabbed her purse and prepared to head out. People around her were crying and groaning, and her nerves and heart were already frayed as it was.

“Doctor!” yelped a tiny voice.

Becca halted at her cubicle curtain, stopped in her tracks. She peeked around the curtain, not wanting to disrupt someone, but was startled by the scene before her.

Dr. Abrahemson knelt down beside a sobbing little girl whose arm was bandaged from fingers to shoulder. It made Becca’s stomach hurt to think what must have happened to her. Here he was, the man who had been so curt and derisive to her, deftly wrapping an identical gauze bandage around a baby doll’s right arm to match the patient’s.

“There. She’ll be good as new in a few weeks. You take good care of this baby.” He handed the doll back to the wide-eyed child, who sniffed and nodded solemnly.

“Th-thank you,” she whispered at a nudge from the stern woman behind her. “I love you, Dr. Abe!” she burst out, hugging his neck with her one good arm, the doll crushed between them as the doctor embraced her. Becca saw his eyes squeeze tight shut, the muscle at his jaw tense for a moment before he released her.

“Now, Dana, I trust you’ll keep this child from having any more accidents,” he said to the woman as he stood up, iron in his voice. The woman nodded.

“Sure, doc. She’s just a clumsy one. I got six to keep an eye on, you know.” The woman shuffled out with the child.

Just like that, Becca plummeted into love. This time, with a doctor who thought she was a spoiled princess whining over a paper cut. A man who’d take time in the eighteenth hour of his ER shift to bend down and make a bandage for a baby doll to soothe a crying child. Tears pricked her eyes again: not an impatient, cocky doctor, but a downtrodden hero, a knight.