Intensive Care. Jessica Andersen

a man had thought to rescue her from anything.

      Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, “Mr. Harris needs compassion more than he needs jail time.” She nodded toward the new widower, who was sobbing brokenly into his hands as a white-coated ER attending crouched down beside him and officers hovered above.

      She could barely make out Harris’s words over the growing din. “Ida Mae. The phone call. Dr. Davis killed Ida Mae.”

      Ripley closed her eyes. These things happen, she’d said over the phone when she told him his wife’s heart had stopped without warning. Cheap words. The disbelief in his voice had wounded her, because she had barely believed it herself. His sobs tore at her now.

      She had failed her patient. Her department.

      Herself.

      The stranger spat a curse. “He could have killed you! What kind of hospital policy is that? What kind of safety do you people have here? The guy’s a nut. He should be punished!”

      “He’s already been punished,” Ripley snapped over Harris’s rising howls. “He’s lost his wife.” Though she didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it worked for some. It had worked for the Harrises. She thought of the rose stem in her pocket. He’d bought Ida Mae a glass flower to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. Now he’d spend it alone.

      The sting of guilt pierced like a thorn.

      The stranger snarled, “That’s bull and you know it. Grief doesn’t give a man the right to hurt other people.”

      “Give it up, pal,” the officer suggested. “We get these calls every few months. Boston General won’t press charges and we’ve never had anyone seriously hurt. For better or worse, their system seems to work. Now, if I could have your names for my report, I’ll get out of your hair.”

      Ripley gave her name and department. The stranger clenched his jaw when she mentioned Radiation Oncology, but he merely glared at the officer. “My name is Zachary Cage. I think this is bull, I’m soaking wet and I’m late for a meeting.” With a final glance at Ripley, he stalked away, dripping.

      That was the new Radiation Safety Officer? Ripley stared at him in disbelief. The rumors had been right on about his attitude, but they hadn’t said he was gorgeous.

      “Hell,” she muttered, and lifted a hand to brush the hair away from her face. That was when she noticed the hand was still shaking. Her whole body was shaking. And she was going to throw up.

      If you must fall apart, do it someplace private, Howard Davis’s stern voice said in her mind. Davises must never be weak in public. Never.

      She was halfway across the atrium on her way to the ladies’ room when she saw the ER attending give Harris a sedative jab in the upper arm. The weeping man’s voice abruptly rose above the atrium din. “The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife!” Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

      Ripley made it to the bathroom, barely. But it was a long time before she stopped shaking.

      “JUST WHAT I NEED. Another damn doctor trying to save her own hide. Typical. Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Cage yanked the warm-up pants out of his gym bag and dragged them over his clammy legs. He cursed when his bad shoulder protested. The surgeons had repaired the joint as well as they could, but the ligaments just weren’t strong enough for underwater wrestling matches.

      “What’s that, boss?” Whistler stuck his head around the corner but kept his butt firmly planted in the computer chair lest he lose the rhythm of his solitaire game.

      “Nothing. Come on, we’re late for the meeting.”

      “You wearing that?”

      Cage scowled down at the faded baseball jersey, warm-up pants and scuffed sneakers. “Not much choice, is there? My work clothes are soaked. Come on.”

      His nominal assistant obediently tagged along to the meeting Head Administrator Leo Gabney had set up.

      “Why the hell won’t the hospital prosecute that guy?” Cage snarled. “He attacked one of your doctors with broken glass, for God’s sake.” He had told Whistler the bare bones of the story. The radiation tech, twentyish and faintly geeky, had barely batted an eyelash. Then again, Whistler hadn’t reacted to much yet, except to offer a small grin when Leo Gabney had announced that Cage was replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.

      The other five members of the team hadn’t been as kind. Two had rolled their eyes, one had made a pointed reference to the failed Albany Memorial lawsuit, and the others hadn’t bothered to look up from their card game. Cage had considered firing all of them on the spot.

      The day had gone downhill from there, culminating in him stumbling upon a woman being held at knifepoint in the hospital lobby. He could still feel the echo of rage. Though Cage knew exactly how the widower felt, there was no excuse for physically harming a woman.

      Even if she was a doctor.

      “If the guy freaked out because his wife died unexpectedly, they’ll hush it up,” Whistler said with a sidelong glance.

      “Why is that?”

      “The administration doesn’t want a malpractice suit. They’re bad for business and for BoGen’s chances at Hospital of the Year.”

      Cage stiffened, and when the memory tried to come, he stuffed it deep down, hidden where it belonged. He growled, “Malpractice my ass. Doctors shouldn’t ‘practice’ on anyone. They should know what the hell they’re doing before they start mucking around.”

      Whistler shrugged. “Don’t see much of it here. Boston General has an excellent record. The administration has seen to it, one way or another.” He pushed open the door to the Radiation Oncology conference room and gestured Cage through.

      “You’re late.” Head Administrator Leo Gabney pounced just inside the conference room. His scowl lacked some of its intended punch because he barely topped five-foot-six. “And what the hell are you wearing?”

      Cage brushed past him. “Long story. But for the record, your security sucks.”

      “Lucky for you, our security isn’t your problem. You’ll adjust to the way we do things here soon enough.” Gabney shooed Cage up to the front of the room. “Let’s get on with it, the natives are restless.”

      That was an understatement, Cage decided as he took the podium. Fifty or so faces stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance, anger and downright hostility. Nothing unexpected. A few coffee-shop conversations and a scan of the files had shown him that his predecessor had been neither well liked nor particularly effective. It seemed that George Dixon had been more interested in women than radiation safety—whether or not the women returned his affections.

      Well, Cage thought, the female population at Boston General was in no danger from him. His priority was the job. Period.

      But as he adjusted the microphone to chin height and scanned the room, an unfamiliar tingling skittered through Cage’s chest, and he couldn’t help glancing at the only face that reflected something other than hostility.

      She was here.

      The woman hadn’t been far from his mind, he realized, since the incident in the atrium. She’d brushed it off and hidden behind hospital policy, but he had saved her life and they both knew it. The adrenaline still thrummed through his veins as he peered past the podium and focused on her face.

      Dr. Ripley Davis. The statistics in her personnel file hadn’t prepared him for that first meeting. Hadn’t prepared him to see her as a woman instead of a doctor. A suspect.

      In those first few seconds, he’d seen only a beautiful woman with dark, springy curls fastened behind her head, a few left free to brush her jaw and long, elegant neck. The moment their eyes had met, the water he’d been standing in hadn’t felt cold anymore. Neither had his body.

      It