Mac's Bedside Manner. Marie Ferrarella

much for a leisurely pace, he thought. If he was particularly quick about it, he had just enough time to go home, shower and change before he had to leave again.

      As he turned to throw away the last gown, Jolene passed him on her way to the other end of the E.R. She spared him a look that could have served as the standard for temperatures used in cryogenic refrigeration.

      Mac looked at Wanda. “Are there icicles on me?”

      Wanda laughed, pouring herself a mug of coffee that had to be thicker than plasma by now. “She doesn’t care for doctors.”

      He watched the way Jolene’s trim figure moved as she walked. Somewhere, there had to be a mold in God’s supply closet marked Perfect. “So I’ve heard.”

      Wanda noted the way he looked after the other woman. She knew that look. It had interest written all over it. “But she’s a damn good nurse.”

      “Looks it,” he agreed. He wasn’t thinking about the woman tending to his fevered brow. Not in that context, anyway.

      Wanda chuckled and shook her head. “You’re wasting your time, Dr. Mac. That’s one lady who isn’t interested in you playing doctor.”

      He grinned. “Yet,” he corrected.

      Wanda counted herself among the number who formed Harrison MacKenzie’s fan club. Not because of his male appeal or the sexy way he could look at a woman—Wanda had been happily married to the same man now for thirty-two years—but because Dr. Mac was good people. The best. And excellent at what he did. She’d seen him walk that extra mile or so on more than one occasion. For that reason, she didn’t want to see his ego bruised.

      “Dr. Mac, I wouldn’t want to see you fall flat on your—” Tilting her head, her eyes washed over his slim hips and taut posterior. She grinned broadly as she concluded. “Face.”

      He patted her arm, still watching Jolene as she disappeared behind a curtained area. “Not to worry, Wanda. I have no intentions of doing that.”

      “To stay on the safe side, I won’t watch.” Wanda laughed, turning back to her work.

      Mac, on the other hand, had never played it safe. Not on this playing field at any rate. He didn’t intend to start now.

      Chapter Two

      Mac had almost missed him.

      In a hurry to get back into his civilian attire so he could get home in time for his date, Mac had walked right by the supply closet and almost missed the sound entirely.

      It wasn’t as if there was no other noise within the area. Even an E.R. at rest still hummed with the regular sounds of human activity.

      But this sound was different.

      This was whimpering—like a small, wounded animal that was afraid of being found.

      Mac stopped, listening for a direction, a source to the sound and abruptly realized that he had walked right by it without knowing it.

      Backtracking, he paused before the supply door, listening more closely.

      Debating.

      If he was wrong, if the sound he heard wasn’t the kind caused by fear but instead a little squeal of pleasure escaping, then he would be intruding on territory he himself had traversed more than once. Within each hospital there were little out of the way pockets to which members of the staff occasionally escaped whenever they found themselves being drawn together by feelings that couldn’t be put on hold.

      He listened intently. No noise. Maybe he’d been mistaken after all.

      Mac was all set to chalk the whole thing up to his imagination when the sound came again, this time even more muffled than before. Even more distressed.

      Not his imagination, he thought. He just hoped he wasn’t about to walk in on something he shouldn’t.

      Holding his breath, Mac slowly eased the door open and took a quick look inside the unlit, almost airless enclosure.

      At first glance, there appeared to be no one there. Only shelves of neatly stacked bed linens and blankets crowding against one another.

      And then he saw him. A little boy of no more than about five. If he was six, it was a particularly small six.

      The boy was huddled on the floor in the far corner of the closet, his head buried in a towel, the towel firmly pressed against his knees.

      Well, that would explain the muffled sound, Mac thought. But not what the boy was doing there in the first place.

      Mac glanced again at his watch. Minutes were melting away and so was his safety margin. At this rate, there wasn’t going to be time for a shower. Probably the only thing he could manage would be to change his shirt. If he left now.

      The debate whether to leave or to linger a few more minutes was over with in less than a heartbeat. There were more important things right now than getting a clean shirt.

      “Hey partner,” Mac said softly, edging his way into the small area, “trying out our towels to see if they’re soft?”

      The small, dark head jerked up, then down again, as if the boy had remembered something and pressed his face against the towel again. He said nothing. Mac could have sworn the boy was trying to disappear into the very weave.

      Feeling the wall, Mac found the light and flipped it on, then closed the door behind him. He took a couple of more steps toward the boy, approaching him the way he might a frightened, wounded animal he didn’t want to scare away.

      “Oh, I get it. You’re the strong, silent type.” Standing in front of him now, Mac crouched down before the boy, who seemed to physically shrink away even further. “You know, you’re going to suffocate if you burrow any further into that towel.” Mac addressed his words to the top of the boy’s dark head. “I’m Dr. Mac. They let me play here sometimes. What’s your name?”

      There was no response.

      Mac took it in stride. Shyness was not something new to him.

      “Nameless, huh? Okay, Nameless, I know there’s got to be someone looking for you so why don’t we blow this Popsicle stand and get out where they’ve got a better chance of seeing you?”

      Still holding the towel to part of his face, the boy raised his head, allowing one dark eye to warily look up at Mac.

      There was a bloodstain slowly coming through the corner of the towel closest to the boy’s face. The boy was hurt. Had he come in with the balcony victims and had somehow been missed?

      Mac didn’t think that very likely. The youngest person treated from the party had been a nineteen-year-old. This one didn’t look old enough to spell “balcony,” much less be on one while a bunch of so-called adults did their best to emulate a frat house prank.

      Mac deliberately kept his voice calm, cheery, knowing that anything less would send the boy withdrawing even further into himself. A traumatized patient was just that much harder to deal with.

      He thought about his nephew and pretended he was talking to Kirby. His sister’s youngest had always been more than a handful.

      “Ah, I see an eye. Is there another one on the other side?”

      Gently Mac began to coax the towel away from the boy’s face. The bandage that was barely resting against the little boy’s cheek had been applied by an amateur, very possibly the boy himself, and was about to come off any second. There was blood, both dried and fresh all along the small face.

      Whatever had happened, Mac judged, had happened fairly recently.

      When he reached for the bandage, the boy pulled back, his eyes wide, frightened. Mac waited a beat.

      “C’mon, Nameless, let me see. I’m a better doctor than I look.” His eyes met the boy’s and his tone softened even more. It was soft,