Following the Doctor's Orders. Caro Carson

The offer still stands.

      Or maybe, things weren’t the same as always.

      * * *

      An hour later, Brooke was making decisions in that quick yet methodical state of mind, going down the logical checklists ingrained in her brain regarding the injuries and complications of accident victims. She had no time to wonder where Zach was.

      She wondered, anyway, during those moments when she transitioned from one patient to another. She’d worked a hundred shifts not caring who pushed the gurney as patients arrived. She’d worked a hundred more without replaying the last words a man had said to her. Yet tonight, she kept remembering the way Zach had said Brooklyn Brown. The way he’d told her the offer still stood.

      Each time she walked into a treatment room, she noticed that Zach wasn’t there. Each time the sliding glass doors opened and paramedics wheeled in a patient, she noticed that Zach wasn’t there. When Loretta stopped to let her know that Harold Allman was doing well after his heart procedure, Brooke made a mental note to be sure to pass on the good news to Zach—later, because he wasn’t there.

      Still, Harold’s recovery was a useful thing to have ready to discuss, because she wasn’t sure what else she would say the next time she saw Zach. Whenever that would be.

      It wasn’t that day. When she took her purse out of the gym locker for the second time, it was after midnight, and she was so tired, the cot in the physician’s lounge was starting to look inviting. She wondered if Zach felt the same, wherever he was.

      No fire engines had arrived from the crash scene. Fire engines didn’t transport patients; ambulances did. But if a fire engine was first on the scene and its paramedic was the first to begin a victim’s medical treatment, then that paramedic would stay with the patient, continuing medical care in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The fire engine followed the ambulance, staying with its paramedic, ready for him to rejoin the engine’s crew once the handoff to the hospital had taken place.

      Any time an ambulance pulled up to the hospital doors and Zach Bishop emerged with a patient, that big red Engine Thirty-Seven pulled in right behind him, like Zach was some kind of superhero with a red fire truck instead of a red cape sailing behind him.

      Not tonight. Brooke assumed that meant Zach was working as less of a paramedic and more of a firefighter. Was he still on the scene, putting out a fire or cutting open a crumpled car? Or was he, like she, dragging himself home, staying awake through sheer willpower long enough to take a shower and then falling into bed with hair still wet, sleeping like the dead until it was time to wake for the next shift?

      As Brooke’s own wet head hit her pillow, her last thought of the day was a vision of Zach, his hair dark and damp from a shower, smiling at her from the empty white pillow next to hers.

       Shall I call you for breakfast, or just nudge you?

      Brooke didn’t swoon for superheroes. She didn’t date eye candy.

      But if she wanted to, she could, because the offer still stood.

      In the last unguarded moment of a long day, Brooke fell asleep with a smile on her lips.

       Chapter Four

      She heard him before she saw him. Tom Bamber’s voice was as distinctive as Zach Bishop’s, but not in a sexy way. He sounded more like—well, he sounded like a radiologist giving a report, which he was.

      He wasn’t giving the report to Brooke. He was speaking to Jamie. It was odd that Tom had emerged from his basement office and walked to the emergency room instead of just picking up the phone.

      She had a hunch that he’d done so in order to see her. Brooke considered sneaking past the nurses’ station to the kitchen in order to avoid Tom. If he was planning on asking her out again, discretion would be the better part of valor.

      Okay, she was feeling cowardly. She didn’t want to face the awkwardness of an offer she didn’t want but shouldn’t refuse. She started down the hall with careful steps, trying to minimize the sound of her heels on the tile.

      Tom was exactly the kind of guy she ought to date. Her mother would approve. Nothing could be safer and more secure than a radiologist. Mom was big into security. Predictability.

       Imagine taking firefighter Zach home to meet Mother.

      First, the man would have to be crazy about her to want to set foot in the mausoleum that was her mother’s house. Second, although women loved Zach, her mother would be the exception. Even Zach couldn’t charm her from her permanent frown.

      But what if he could? That would really be something.

      “Overactive imagination in room two.”

      Brooke stopped in midstep and turned to face the nurse. Loretta might as well have been diagnosing her as the next patient.

      “Sorry, Dr. Brown. Did I startle you?”

      “No, not at all.”

      Was she blushing? She couldn’t be. Dr. Brooke Brown did not blush. She also did not daydream about firemen who were so madly in love with her that they wanted to even meet her mother. Where was her logic, her order, her checklists? First, long before the man was crazy in love with her, she’d have to actually see the man again, maybe even call him by his first name.

       First, the man would have to make an effort to see me.

      It had been three days since he’d said the offer still stood and then left for the accident scene. Zach didn’t have her phone number. He didn’t know where she lived. He was leaving it up to chance for their paths to cross, as always. They would both have to just happen to be ending shifts at the same time for that after-work drink to become reality.

      In other words, he was an easy-go-lucky, flirtatious guy, and she was an idiot for mistaking his casual invitation for anything more. Had she really thought their relationship was going to move to another level? She was a fool for daydreaming that a handsome playboy was anything but a handsome playboy.

      Loretta handed her the clipboard for room two. “Four-year-old female, two hovering parents who brought their own thermometer.”

      Well, there was nothing like work to wake Brooke up from her daydreams. “Fever?”

      “Barely one hundred degrees, the third time they asked me to verify their thermometer’s readings with our thermometer. Runny nose. They printed out a list from their internet search. Could be the first signs of a cancerous tumor, you know.”

      “First things first. We’ll have to consider the common cold.”

      “Good luck. Those parents are already in a temper because the urgent cases were seen first. They got here at six-thirty this morning, because their regular pediatrician’s office didn’t open until eight. It’s nine now, so...you get the picture.”

      Twenty minutes later, Brooke was in a temper herself. She understood anxious parents—she’d been raised by one—so Brooke had been very thorough in her exam of the child. There was no indication whatsoever of anything more serious than the common cold in the little girl. Nothing in her medical history, nothing in her family history, nothing to warrant even a basic antibiotic prescription.

      Brooke had explained her reasoning. She’d answered every question the parents had. But when the parents had questioned her qualifications as a physician, when the accusations had started flying that Brooke must be unduly influenced by insurance companies, drug companies or hospital profits, her own patience had run out.

      They’d asked to see another doctor.

      Jamie MacDowell was in there now. Brooke stood at the nurses’ station, empty-handed, denied even the patient chart that she could have slapped onto the counter in a satisfying smack.

      She