Florida Fling with the Single Dad, page 9
“Never?” she asked, teasing her father, who had been seeing a woman, Ms. Elizabeth from dispatch, since Katie was a teenager.
“I’m not joking. You’ve had a hard year. The last thing you need is to come back here with some heartache over one of them beach boys down there.”
Her father had no idea just how hard the last months had been on her, but he was right. She didn’t need to lose her heart to Dylan.
“It’s not like that, Daddy. Don’t you have enough to worry about with my brothers right now? You know I can take care of myself,” she said, hoping this wasn’t just another lie she was telling the two of them.
“I don’t doubt that a bit, Katie dear, but...”
Her hands tightened on her phone as her father hesitated. This was what she had feared. As always the man somehow knew there was something she was hiding. It was a gift that made him a good detective.
“I know it’s been hard on you, not having a mother to talk to you while you were growing up. But you know I’m always here if you need me, right?”
Her big strong father sounded so vulnerable that tears flooded her eyes. She wiped them with her free hand. She’d cried more in the last few months than she’d cried her whole life. “I know, Daddy. It’s been good for me here. Really good.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” her father said, sounding more like the man in charge that she was used to.
By the time she hung up with her father she’d somehow managed to reassure him that things were going to be okay and that soon she’d be on her way home to New York, ready to get back to her life in the big city, flying wherever she was needed and helping to save lives. Now all she had to do was to convince herself.
* * *
It had been a week of doing nothing but transfers that had Katie seeing red. Dylan had asked her to take some twelve-hour shifts working days and since she was the new person and only temporary she had agreed. She hadn’t known the motive behind his request. She hadn’t shared her experiences getting shot or the problems she was still learning to deal with just so Dylan could take her off the trauma calls. She’d assumed he understood what she needed was to get out there and function as a full-fledged flight nurse. Why couldn’t he see that she needed to be treated like everyone else?
Or did he think, after hearing her story, that she couldn’t do her job? There was only one way to handle this. She would have this out with him face-to-face as she’d been brought up to do.
A twinge of guilt hit her with the memory of the way she’d brushed off her father’s concerns earlier in the week instead of facing her troubles. But this wasn’t her father. This was business. This was her job. The one she was ready to fight for if it was necessary.
She knocked on the office door where she’d seen Dylan headed after the crew finished their last transfer from the Key West hospital to Miami. It had been an easy flight. They’d all been easy flights the last three shifts. She’d ended up the third wheel on the crew and been forced to take all the transfers. It wasn’t that she minded helping out. It was the fact that she wasn’t being trusted with the other calls.
Except for work, she and Dylan had rarely seen each other. She didn’t need a flashing neon sign to tell her why he was keeping his distance. He’d been very plain that he wasn’t interested in becoming involved with her. It hurt. She’d have to admit that, but she understood his reasons. She couldn’t undo a past that had caused him to shy from short-term relationships and hurting Violet was the last thing she wanted. The little girl had quickly taken residence in Katie’s heart and she knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to leave her when the time came to return to New York. Confusing Dylan’s daughter with a relationship that had no future wouldn’t be fair.
She could hear that he was on a phone call and had turned to leave when the office door opened.
“Hey. Sorry I had a call I needed to take. What’s up?” Dylan said. His eyes looked tired and his hair was once more rumpled as if his hands had pulled at it too long.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, watching him closely. If he’d been speaking to the NYC office he would tell her, wouldn’t he?
“Nothing for you to worry about,” he said.
“What does that mean?” Had he told the New York office about the anxiety she was dealing with? The fact that she was suffering from what could only be PTSD? Had they decided to offer her another one of those desk jobs that she had already turned down after the shooting? Or were they working together to get her off the regular flight crew and only allow her to do transfers, just like he was doing here? Was that the plan? That once she returned to New York she’d be shuffled into some position where she’d transfer patients from one hospital to the other, never getting to see what was really going on in the city? Never getting to do the job of saving lives that she had been trained to do?
“It’s nothing. Just some changes that are coming. I wish Alex was here to deal with it all,” Dylan said. “Would you like something to drink? I really need a water.”
Moving back, she watched as he walked down the hall to the kitchen. He came back with two bottles of water and handed her one of them. Sitting down at the desk, she glanced at the piece of paper in front of him where someone had been doodling stick figures. Was that a crown sitting on one of their heads?
It was plain to see that he wasn’t going to tell her who he’d been talking to. She decided on the up-front method of interrogation that her father had taught her.
“Was it the New York office? Are they going to fire me? Is that why I haven’t been on the trauma calls?”
There was no way to tell if the surprise in Dylan’s eyes was due to her discovering the truth or her being way off the mark.
“Why would they fire you?” Dylan asked. He took a deep breath and then motioned to the chair.
“Because you told them I couldn’t do my job. Isn’t that why you only have me doing the transfers? Because you don’t trust me?” she asked. She felt all the fight leave her as she voiced her greatest fear. By opening up to Dylan she had laid herself open for this, but she’d thought she could trust him to understand that she would never let her own problems affect her job or the safety of her patients. Had she been wrong?
“Maybe you should start from the beginning because nothing you’ve said since you walked into this room makes sense.”
“Neither does anything you’ve said. You’re holding something back and if it isn’t that I’m going to get fired, what is it?” For a moment she thought he was going to tell her what had upset him so much, but then he shook his head.
“It’s nothing to do with you. That I can tell you. And as far as you taking the transfers, that’s a lot of what we do. As the fill-in you’ve ended up with a lot of those calls because the regular team has been busy during the night and I thought you could give them a break,” he explained. “And if I have a problem with any of the staff that would require me to discipline or change their duties I would talk to them. You can trust me, Katie. I thought you knew that.”
Their radios went off and they both stood. “Stat STEMI transfer to Miami,” Katie read as she headed out to the hall to join the rest of the crew. Doors opened up down the hall and they both met the crew.
“I’ve got this one,” Dylan said to Max as he was zipping up his flight suit. She turned, surprised to see that Dylan had grabbed his own suit. They were buckled in their seats and in the air in less than four minutes.
“What brings you out of the office, boss? Getting bored?” Jackie asked.
“I just needed some flight time. You know how it is. And how many times do I need to tell you not to call me ‘boss.’ Alex is still the boss here,” Dylan said, his voice over the headsets carried an edge she hadn’t heard before.
They worked quietly together as she prepared the IV fluids and he readied the monitors they would need to transport someone who was having an acute heart attack.
“Don’t they have a cath lab at the hospital?” she asked. She was pretty sure she had seen that they did some cardiac procedures.
“Only for diagnostic testing. The cardiologist in Miami must have determined that this guy needed immediate intervention,” Dylan said.
Landing at the hospital, she was glad to see that the nurses on duty had their patient ready to go with an IV line running in each forearm.
“What’s the story?” she asked as she switched the man’s oxygen tubing over to their portable tank while Dylan transferred him over to their portable monitors.
“Here’s the twelve lead,” a nurse said as she handed Katie a copy of an EKG, which showed a textbook-perfect elevation of the man’s ST segment.
“Mr. Singh, I’m Katie, a flight nurse with Heli-Care. We’re going to take a fast trip up north to Miami where there’s a cardiologist who can take care of your heart. Is that okay with you?”
The man nodded his head and they finished packing him up. They left the hospital with his family standing at the entrance waving their goodbyes. It was only when their headsets were on and the skids had left the grown that Katie exchanged a look with Dylan.
“I don’t like the way this guy looks,” she said, turning her head away from the patient. The dusky blue of the man’s lips told her there was not a lot of time before he would be in trouble.
“I’m increasing his oxygen,” Dylan said as he switched the oxygen tubing from the portable tank to the oxygen inside the cab. “I’ve got him up to fifteen liters. Do you see any change?”
“SaO2 is eighty-eight, respirations shallow at thirty. BP is falling too...eighty-eight over fifty-three,” she responded. “I’m opening up the fluids to see if it will help with the hypotension. And I’m going to prepare for intubation.”
“I’m radioing ahead. They need to be ready to take this guy straight into the cath lab.” As Dylan started the process with dispatch to get in touch with the receiving hospital, she did a quick neuro check, noticing that the patient was harder to arouse. “Hey, Dylan. He’s less responsive. It might be the morphine they gave him, but it’s a definite change. I’m going to go ahead and intubate.”
“Do it. This guy is going bad fast. I’m worried about that blood pressure too,” Dylan said as he pushed the button on the monitor to recycle. The new reading wasn’t any better than the earlier one.
“Interior wall ST elevation? Cardiogenic shock?” she asked as she pushed the medications she had drawn up for intubation. His head on the stretcher resting between her knees, she positioned the man’s head and slid the laryngoscope in place, visualized the vocal cords and inserted the endotracheal tube. With the Ambu bag connected, she started ventilating the patient as Dylan leaned over and checked for placement.
“Good breath sounds. I’m waiting for an order from the doctor for a vasopressor. I wouldn’t have this problem if Alex was here. I’d have an order by now,” Dylan said.
She had so many questions concerning Alex’s location and when he’d be returning. But they’d have to wait until they weren’t fifteen hundred feet in the air.
“Going in for final approach,” Jackie said through the headsets.
“Thank goodness,” Katie said. “I want to hand over this guy before he deteriorates anymore.”
“See, not all transfers are boring,” Dylan said as the skids touched the ground. They hit the ground running as soon as the stretcher was unloaded.
Katie had thought that she would have a chance to talk to Dylan when they arrived back at the hangar, but she was quickly sent off on another flight with Max. And while her grumpy coworker was growing on her, she missed having Dylan by her side.
And that was a problem, wasn’t it? She’d be leaving in a few weeks. There’d be no more flights with Dylan. No more crab boils or late-night talks. And no more kisses that set her body on fire with a longing that she had never felt before.
But she hadn’t come here for a temporary hookup. She’d come here to heal and she knew that she was making progress.
She was just now accepting that some parts of her life had changed forever. Seeing that the changes could be dealt with, that she could learn ways to deal with the anxiety when it was triggered, was a good start.
She’d do her job and when her time was over here she would be ready to return to her real life, her life in New York where her family was waiting for her.
That was what she needed to concentrate on instead of some kisses that she’d shared with a man that could never be hers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DYLAN WASN’T SURE what drove him to Katie’s door. Maybe it was the pacing he’d been doing back and forth in his bedroom while remembering the way Katie had felt in his arms, so soft and warm. Maybe it was his cold and lonely bed that made him question all his cautious rules meant to protect him and his daughter?
With Violet at a sleepover, he’d had the whole night to himself. But the light coming from Katie’s cottage had kept him from settling down. Knowing she was awake, like him, was having the same effect as if he’d drank a whole pot of coffee by himself.
He’d opened a book, read a few words and shut it. He’d turned on the sports channel and turned it off.
What was she doing over there? Was she thinking of him like he was thinking of her? Was she reliving the kiss they’d shared like he was?
Or was it her worry for her job that was keeping her up tonight? Their conversation had been interrupted by dispatch earlier that day. It wouldn’t be right to let her continue to question her place on the flight team without him reassuring her that she was wanted and needed there.
He needed to convince her that he had total faith in her abilities. He couldn’t understand why she worried about her future with Heli-Care. He’d worked with her enough now to know that she was much more than a capable flight nurse. And her employee file had been filled with excellent reviews.
He knocked on the door and waited. And waited. Had she fallen asleep with all the lights on? He started to leave.
“Dylan, what are you doing here?” Katie asked as she opened the door. While she wasn’t in the tank top and shorts he’d been fantasizing about on his walk to her cottage, the long white T-shirt that barely covered the top of her thighs was enough to create new fantasies that would definitely be keeping him up again that night.
“You busy?” he asked. “We were interrupted this afternoon so I thought maybe we could talk.”
His excuse for seeing her sounded weak even to his own ears. Their conversation could have waited until the next day. But his need to see her, to talk to her and, yes, the hope of more kisses like they’d shared before, wouldn’t wait.
“Okay. Come on in. Is Violet asleep?” Katie said, though she didn’t sound as if she was as excited about seeing him as he was to see her. Instead she appeared distracted.
“No, I’m on my own tonight. She’s spending the night with a friend.”
“I was just finishing up my paintings,” she said as she led the way through the cottage to the small open living room where he could see an easel had been set on the dining room tabletop.
He walked around where he could see a canvas watercolor painting of a white heron. He recognized the setting as the one from her back deck. Picking up the canvas, he studied the details of the large bird. Its head was cocked up and its eyes, piercing, seemed to stare out at him. This wasn’t the work of a hobbyist.
“You’re good. Real good. Did you ever consider going into art in college?” he asked.
“And give my dad a heart attack? No, that was one profession I never considered.” She said as she moved around the room putting her supplies away.
“So what were some of the professions you considered?” he asked, leaning back against the island that separated the room from the kitchen.
“Well, when I first got out of high school I considered following my other family members into the NYPD, but I’ve always liked the sciences. Especially my anatomy and physiology classes. They were my favorite. I thought about medical school, but I didn’t feel that I had the patience I’d need to commit to that many years of school. A nursing degree gave me so many options. What about you? What made you decide to become a paramedic?”
“I’d had a lot of jobs since high school. Most were things I learned working with my dad growing up on the marina. A little construction work, some boat engine work, lots of general handyman jobs. But it was when I heard the community was in need of more first responders that I decided to look into becoming a paramedic. It was quite an adventure and I loved every minute of it. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
“That’s why you get it. Get me. Isn’t it? You understand how I feel about my job. It’s my life,” Katie said as she took a step closer to him.
“I can’t pretend to understand what you’ve been going through. Being shot while just trying to do your job? That’s a deep betrayal after everything you’ve done to help others. But yes, I understand the fear of not being able to do the job you feel you were born to do.” He started to make a move toward her. He only needed to touch her.
She took a step back confusing him. Hadn’t he just read that same need in her own eyes? Or was it just his imagination?
“Want something to eat?” Katie turned her back to him as she opened the refrigerator. “Or drink?”
He placed the canvas back on the table, then saw that there was another one that had been laid beside it.
There was no Florida sunshine or bright colored blooms in this one. Where the other painting had been light and cheerful, this one was dark and menacing with the only light coming from a few lit buildings in the dark background. A street of dark blues and browns was empty and lonely.
It was hard to believe the same artist could have painted them both.
