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“Don’t go there,” he told her. “There’s no point in thinking about the worst if you don’t have to.” He stopped walking and gave her a small, formal bow, the way he used to at his mother’s behest when he was a small boy. “My name is Georges—with an S—Armand.”
She shook his hand. “Well, Georges with an S, I won’t think about the worst but only because I know you saved me from it. Saved my grandfather from it.” She paused to take a deep breath. She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t. Tears were for the weak and she was strong. She had to be strong. “My name is Vienna,” she told him, putting out her hand, “Vienna Hollenbeck.”
Her skin felt colder than the last time, Georges thought. “Vienna? Like the city?”
“Like the city.” The smile on her lips was just too much of an effort to retain. It melted as she felt herself turning a ghostly shade of pale. Perspiration suddenly rimmed her forehead and scalp. “Would you—would you mind if we postponed seeing the administrative assistant for a minute?”
“Sure. Are you all right?”
His voice was coming to her from an increasing distance. Vienna felt her knees softening to the consistency of custard. The deep baritone voice had nothing to do with it.
“I’m not… I don’t think…”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. Rather than sit down the way she’d wanted to, Vienna felt herself dissolving into nothingness as the world around her became smaller and smaller until it had shrunk down to the size of a pinhole.
And then disappeared altogether.
Just before it did, she thought she heard the doctor calling to her, but she couldn’t be sure. And she definitely couldn’t answer because her lips no longer had the strength to move.
The darkness that found her was far too oppressive to allow her to say a word. With a last rally of strength, she tried to struggle against it, to keep it at bay.
But in the end, all she could do was surrender.
Chapter Three
Georges managed to catch her just before her body hit the floor.
Scooping Vienna up in his arms, he looked around the immediate area for an open bed. He saw the nurse and the bed at the same time.
“Jill,” he called out to a heavyset woman he’d met during his first day at the E.R., “I’m putting this woman into bed number seven.”
Mother of four boys, grandmother of seven more, Jill Foster liked to think of herself as the earth mother of the E.R. night shift. Pulling her eyebrows together, she looked at the unconscious woman he was holding and gave him a penetrating, no-nonsense look.
“Getting a little brazen with our conquests, aren’t we, Dr. Armand?”
They had an easy, good rapport, although he knew the thirty-two-year hospital veteran wouldn’t hesitate to tell him when she thought he was wrong.
“She fainted,” he told her, crossing over to the empty stall.
“Probably not the first time that’s happened to you, I’d wager,” Jill commented dryly.
On her way to answer a call from another patient, she paused to pull aside the white blanket and sheet on the bed for him. When Georges deposited the unconscious woman on the bed, Jill took off her shoes. After putting them into a plastic bag, the nurse placed it beneath the bed, then pulled the blanket up over the young woman.
“Need anything else?” she asked him. “Other than privacy?”
Sometimes, Georges thought, his reputation kept people from taking him seriously. Usually, it didn’t bother him, but he wanted to make sure that the nurse understood this was on the level. “Jill, the woman’s been in an accident.”
Jill raised her hands to stop him before he could go on. “I know, I know, I saw her grandfather being wheeled out of here to X-ray. Orderly almost popped a wheelie moving by me so fast.” Sympathy crinkled along her all-but-unlined face as she looked down at Vienna. And then the next second, she regained her flippant facade. “Well, you know where all the doctor tools are.” She patted his back. “Call if you need me.” As she began to walk out of the stall, Vienna moaned. Jill paused to wink knowingly at him. “Sounds to me like she’s got the sounds down right. You don’t want people talking. I’d leave the curtain open if I were you.”
Jill left to see about her patient.
Moaning again, Vienna stirred and then opened her eyes. The second after she did, she realized that she was in a horizontal position. She would have bolted upright much too fast, but firm hands on her shoulders pushed her back down onto the mattress.
She blinked and looked up at Georges. Breathing a sigh of relief, she shaded her eyes. “Oh God, what happened?”
“You almost had a close encounter with the hospital floor.” Her eyes widened. He found it incredibly appealing. Innocent and vulnerable and somehow sensuous all at the same time. “I caught you just in time.”
Well, at least she hadn’t made a complete fool of herself, Vienna thought. “That’s twice you’ve come to my rescue.”
He did his best to look serious as he nodded. “Third time and you have to grant me a wish.” Again her eyes widened, but this time, he thought he saw a wariness in them. Was she afraid of him? he suddenly wondered. Or had his teasing words triggered a memory she didn’t welcome? “I’m kidding,” he told her.
“I know that.” Digging her knuckles into the mattress on either side of her, Vienna tried to get up for a second time. With the same outcome. He pushed her gently back on the bed. This time, it required a little more force than before.
She was a stubborn one, he thought. “You’re not going anywhere until I check you over,” he told her.
She began to shake her head, then stopped when tiny little devils with pointy hammers popped up to begin wreaking havoc. Pressing her lips together, willing the pain to go away, she looked up at him. “I’m all right,” she insisted.
His eyes swept over her. Georges couldn’t help smiling in appreciation. Now there’s an understatement.
“Be that as it may, I’d like to make sure for myself.” Reaching for an instrument to check her pupils, he turned on the light and aimed the pinprick directly at her right eye. “Look up, please.”
She resisted, drawing back her head. “This really isn’t necessary.”
He pointed up to a spot on the ceiling and tried again. “Humor me.”
Vienna sighed and stared up at the imaginary spot where he pointed. When he switched eyes and pointed to another area, she complied again.
Georges withdrew the instrument, shutting off the light. “Well?” she asked impatiently.
He returned the instrument to its place. “You don’t appear to have a concussion.”
“That’s because I don’t.”
“But you did faint,” he reminded her. And that could be a symptom of a lot of things—or mean nothing at all. He liked erring on the side of caution when it came to patients. “I could order a set of scans done—”
Vienna cut him off at the pass. “Not on me you can’t.” She said the words with a smile, but her tone was firm. She knew her own body and there was nothing wrong. Besides, if she was in the hospital as a patient, she might not be able to be with her grandfather and he was all that mattered. “I just got a little frazzled, that’s all.” Throwing off the covers from her legs, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. As she slid off the bed, she looked