Navy Doc On Her Christmas List. Amy Ruttan

      Zac looked uncomfortable.

      Good.

      “Shouldn’t you two be out on the floor?” Zac asked, trying to untangle himself from the onslaught of nurses. Ella felt a small amount of pity for them.

      “Yes, you two should be out on the floor. There are patients waiting,” Ella said stiffly, trying not to make eye contact with Zac.

      “Of course, Dr. Lockwood,” Carol said. “We’ll just take our decorations and go.”

      Stacey nodded and picked up the dilapidated box where they’d got the fake mistletoe from and left the staffroom.

      “Thanks,” Zac said. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of that.”

      “No problem,” Ella replied, but she didn’t look at him. It was better that way.

      “Isn’t your shift over?” he asked, as he approached the coffee pot where she’d retreated to after he’d walked into the room. In effect, cornering her.

      “Yes, but if you haven’t heard, most of the next shift is unable to make it in and Manhattan has shut down.”

      “You worked a full shift, you can just walk home.”

      “It’s not safe,” Ella snapped, annoyed that he wanted to get rid of her so badly.

      Wouldn’t you be pestering him the same way too?

      “I’m just worried that you’re too tired to work another shift.”

      She glared at him. “Really? You’re concerned about my well-being?”

      “You’re tired,” he said.

      “You don’t look so hot yourself. You have dark circles under your eyes.”

      Zac’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “I didn’t sleep well.”

      “Then maybe you should go home and rest.”

      Zac’s eyebrows shot up. “What is wrong with you?”

      “What is wrong with me?” Her voice rose an octave and she was annoyed with herself for engaging in conversation with Zac. She’d promised herself when she’d heard that Zac Davenport had been discharged from the navy and was coming to work at Manhattan Mercy that she would keep her distance from him. That she wouldn’t let him bait her.

      She’d worked hard here to build a reputation for herself, and just because Zac had come waltzing back to Manhattan and had immediately got an attending position in Trauma because he was a Davenport, it didn’t mean that she was going to run away with her tail between her legs.

      No way. Not this time.

      “You’ve been acting weird lately. I mean, I tried to speak to you at Charles’s wedding and you said nothing to me, and then fighting over that patient? We haven’t exactly worked well together.”

      “Actually, I said hello and goodbye, if I remember correctly, at the wedding. As for the working situation, well, the trauma floor is tense and that was my patient.”

      Those brilliant blue eyes darkened with annoyance. That mouth, which she was all too familiar with, frowned and he crossed his arms.

      “Ella, what is wrong?”

      You were my best friend, my first kiss, and then publicly dismissed me in front of our peers. You broke my heart.

      “Nothing is wrong.” She set down the plastic cup that was half-filled with now-tepid coffee. “You know what? You’re right. I’m tired and maybe I should head out in the whiteout conditions and go home.”

      She turned on her heel and stormed out of the staffroom, clenching her fists to keep herself from shaking.

      There was no way she was actually going to head out into that storm. The ER was short-staffed and whiteout conditions didn’t make it exactly safe to navigate the streets tonight. It was safer in the hospital.

      As long as she could get away from Zac.

      She was going to stay, but she just couldn’t stay in the same room as Zac Davenport. Not for one more second.

      “Ella!”

      She heard him shout her name from behind her.

      Why is he following me?

      “Ella!”

      She ignored him and quickened her pace, but she was no match for Zac, who gripped her by the arm and pulled her down a side hallway.

      “What?” she demanded as he spun her around to face him.

      “Look, I didn’t mean it. You can’t go out in that storm.”

      She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t going out in the storm. You really don’t think much of me, do you?”

      He cursed under his breath, running his hands through his short brown hair in frustration. “What did I do, Ella? Seriously?”

      She was going to open her mouth to say something when there was an unmistakable sound of a power surge. An electric hum and suddenly they were cast into darkness.

      “What the heck?” she asked. “I thought the new system was supposed to control these brownouts.”

      There were murmurs and shouts of shock.

      “No,” Zac whispered. “No.”

      Ella was surprised by the sound of panic in Zac’s voice, the terror etched on his face under the emergency lights. “It’s probably just a brownout. Like before. The generator will kick—”

      “Son of a...” was shouted as someone further down the darkened hall knocked over a tray of metallic instruments. Followed by the clang of metal echoing and bouncing off the hospital walls.

      Zac froze. His eyes were wide with terror as he backed against the wall, trembling. Ella was shocked, because he didn’t even seem to know that she was there. His body was rigid in terror. Just like after the corks at the wedding. When the pops had sounded, she’d seen him freeze, then duck under the table. He’d seemed to recover quickly, but afterwards he’d left the room, looking pale. No one had noticed in the confusion of the wedding, but she’d seen it.

      “Zac?” she asked softly, reaching out to touch him, but he pushed her hand away, as if her touch would harm him.

      A couple of porters who were making their way down the darkened hallway stopped and stared at Zac, who was breathing deeply but clinging to the wall like he was on the edge of a precipice and was about to fall.

      And she recognized the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. No one had said anything to her about Zac having post-traumatic stress disorder. That would be something they would disclose about a new doctor working at the hospital to the head of that surgeon’s respective departments.

      I don’t think anyone knows.

      One thing she did know, she had to get him out of there and calmed down.

      “Come on, Zac. Let’s go.” She took his hand and this time he didn’t fight her off. She pulled him into the nearest empty on-call room and shut the door. She led him to the cot and made him sit down. “Breathe, it’s okay. It was just a porter knocking over some instruments.”

      Zac nodded, but didn’t look at her. He just took deep, calming breaths.

      What had happened to him during his tour of duty?

      “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”

      “You sure?” she asked, not wholly convinced that he was all right.

      “I’m fine,” he snapped.

      Of course, he was back to normal. The ungrateful jerk that he always was. Not even thanking her for taking him somewhere quiet where he could center himself.

      “I’m