Radclyffe - Passion's Bright Fury Read online

  "No," Jude said, uncomfortable under the scrutiny of those penetrating eyes. At least not for so long I thought it was over.

  "We should get an EKG. One of the nurses can do one right down here."

  "I feel fine now." To prove it, Jude stood and walked a few feet away, needing to escape the other woman's searching gaze. She needed to walk off the anxiety that clung to her like a bad dream and she needed to forget the swift surge of desire she had experienced in Sinclair's innocent embrace. This is not a good start.

  Jude cleared her throat and asked, "How many patients do you see through here every year?"

  "Fifteen hundred, approximately," Sax replied, watching Jude pace around the forty-foot square space. The abrupt change in subject hadn't escaped her notice, but she understood the need for privacy. She understood secrets. "When we have a trauma alert, there's not much room in here. There will be EMTs, nurses, radiology techs, respiratory therapists, anesthesiologists, at least three surgeons, and assorted consultants."

  "The families?"

  Sax shook her head. "Not in here. There's a waiting room just down the hall where they can stay. They usually can't see the patient until after they're transferred to the ICU or finished in the OR, depending on the severity of their injuries. This is a modern day MASH unit-we evaluate and ship as fast as possible."

  "But sometimes you operate down here?" Jude asked, forgetting her own discomfort as they talked. She'd drifted back to where Sax still sat, and sat down opposite her again.

  "Only in case of a life-threatening emergency."

  "Which would be what?" Jude questioned. "Can I record this, by the way?"

  Sax realized that she had been deftly maneuvered into giving an interview, and she nodded her assent with a grudging grin of defeat. "A number of things. Anything that impairs breathing - a fractured larynx, for example-could require a tracheostomy. Sometimes in the face of major blood loss from the pelvis or ruptured internal organs we cross-clamp the aorta to send what blood there is to the brain."

  As she listened, Jude continued to study the physical layout of the room as well as its contents. This was her set; this room would be the backdrop for most of the action she filmed. She would be spending a great deal of time in this room in the next year.

  "What do you do between trauma alerts?"

  "I'm usually in my office, taking care of administrative things, or at committee meetings, or making rounds in the unit. On a busy day when things are jumping down here, I work in my on call room down the hall."

  "Or," a male voice interjected from behind Jude, "she tries to sucker someone into playing chess with her."

  Jude swung around on her chair and stared at the man in the pale blue scrubs, a color she was sure he had chosen to match his eyes if his hundred-dollar haircut and startling good looks were any indication of the care he took with his appearance. He might have been a male model posing for a uniform catalog.

  "Jude Castle, meet Aaron Townsend, the head trauma nurse," Sax said.

  Aaron gave Jude a friendly smile and a frankly appraising look as he took her hand. "Nice to meet you. I've heard rumors that we are going to be immortalized on film."

  "I certainly hope so," Jude replied with a laugh. She was careful not to let her gaze linger too long on his face. She did not want to give him any ideas if he didn't have them already.

  "Excellent," the handsome blond said enthusiastically. "And I was serious about the chess thing. When the good doctor gets bored she likes to humiliate people at games."

  Jude shrugged, hoping that she appeared more nonchalant than she felt. "Don't worry, chess is not my game."

  Sax regarded the redhead silently, wondering why for the second time in less than an hour, Jude Castle was lying.

  *****

  Chapter Four

  "You'll need to work with the bare minimum of people in here," Sax said after Aaron Townsend left to give lunch relief in the TICU, which was short a nurse on the day shift. "Space is at a premium."

  "I'll want at least two camera people, a sound tech and an assistant besides myself," Jude responded immediately. She was still thinking about the nurse's comments about Sinclair being a chess player. Great--one more complication.

  "Not a chance."

  Jude glared at her from a foot away, irritated by the uncompromising tone in her voice. Under other circumstances she might have handled things a little more diplomatically, but she was still shaken by her near fainting spell and off her stride. She spoke without thinking. "I don't need you permission, you know. I'm just trying to be polite here."

  "You don't need to be polite, Ms. Castle," Sax said as she stood up, never raising her voice, but her blue eyes were glacially cold. "What you have to do is be careful not to interfere with the work that needs to be done down here or I'll have you thrown out on your ass."

  Of all the arrogant, dictatorial … Jude fumed as she watched Sinclair stride swiftly from the room. She rubbed her temples and tried not to curse out loud. Lovely, just lovely.

  *****

  July 1 - 4:42 p.m.

  "Why did you decide to do your fellowship with Saxon Sinclair?" Jude asked, placing the small recorder between them on the table in the conference room.

  "Because she's the best," Deb Stein answered with a look that said Jude should know the answer to that silly question.

  "Define best ," Jude probed, wanting to get a feel for her 'star' and to lay the foundation for what was to come in the weeks ahead. "What makes her different than any number of other trauma surgeons?"

  "On the record?" Deb asked, nodding toward the recorder. "Because her unit has the best survival statistics in the state, and I've seen her in the operating room. I rotated here as a junior general surgery resident, and she's amazing. She's got hands like lightning. Awesome."

  Jude had a feeling that there was something else, because Deb had a little grin on her face. She reached to push the off button on her dictaphone. "What about off the record? Come on, Deb. I can tell you're holding back on me."

  "Well," Deb conceded, her eyes twinkling, "she's so god awful hot. Every dyke resident I know wanted to work with her."

  "Ah ha," Jude replied, hoping that she wasn't blushing. "Okay - we'll keep that off the record." What in hell is the matter with me? It's not as if I didn't think practically the same thing the minute I saw her. So what if she's hot. She's a royal pain in the…

  Deb Stein jumped up as the pager at her waist beeped, and without another word, she charged from the room. Overhead the intercom blared, Trauma alert STAT…trauma admitting. Trauma alert STAT…

  Jude grabbed her dictaphone and ran.

  *****

  Sax stood gowned and gloved as the double doors to the trauma admitting area slid open and a stretcher bearing a mound of equipment, blood-soaked clothing and an EMT straddling a human body rolled in. The female EMT kneeling astride the man was counting aloud as she rhythmically compressed his chest. One, two, three, four, five … one, two, three, four, five… slowing at the end of each sequence so her partner could deliver a breath through the inflatable Ambu bag attached to the endotracheal tube protruding from the man's mouth.

  "GSW to the left chest," her partner called to no one in particular, his voice shrill with the adrenaline rush as he ran beside the stretcher, squeezing air into the unresponsive patient's lungs. "Intubated in the field. He's had five liters of ringer's solution. Initial BP eighty palpable. We lost the pulse and pressure about three minutes ago."

  "Exit wound?" Sax called as she and several nurses slide the large man from the gurney onto the treatment table. She quickly assessed his pupils. Unresponsive to light. If he isn't brain dead already he will be in two minutes if we don't get some oxygen to his brain.

  "None that we saw, Doc. The bullet went in but it didn't come out."

  Swiftly, she moved her stethoscope from one side of his chest to the other, listening for air movement as she watched the paramedic ventilate the patient. Deb Stein, followed closely by
Jude Castle, ran in as Sax straightened up. "No air flow on either side. Stein, put a chest tube in on the right. Nancy, open the thoracotomy tray."

  Nurses worked efficiently, nearly silently, repeating a drill they had performed hundreds of times. One cut off the remnants of the patient's clothing; another slipped a sterile catheter into his penis and attached it to a urine collection bag; still another drew half a dozen vials of blood for laboratory analysis. A surgical intern pulled a tall metal stand up to the bedside and began folding open the layers of sterile linen covering a vast array of surgical instruments. A radiology technician arrived pushing a huge portable xRay machine and stood waiting, calmly labeling individual film plates with the date and the letters 'UWM', which is what the patient would remain until someone had time to identify him. Unidentified White Male.

  All the while, Aaron Townsend continued chest compressions, having relieved the exhausted EMT. It was fatiguing work pushing the chest hard enough so that the force was transmitted to the heart, and harder still to get the heart to squeeze out blood with enough pressure to travel to the brain and other vital organs when it was almost empty. And this man's heart had to be almost empty. Most of his blood volume had poured out the two-inch hole in his chest.

  Jude pressed along the wall and maneuvered as close to the action as she could get. No one paid her the slightest attention. She glanced at the clock. Forty-five seconds had elapsed since the stretcher was wheeled in. Peering around the anesthesiologist at the head of the table she watched Sinclair. The surgeon's gaze as she studied the patient was hard and unwavering, her eyes nearly purple with intensity. Everything about her was penetratingly, ferociously focused. Had Jude been aware of her own body, she would have realized she was holding her breath, but she was too absorbed by the trauma chief to notice.

  "Hang that blood and squeeze it in by hand," Sax said sharply. She glanced quickly across the man's body at Deb. "Have you got that tube in, Stein?"

  "Almost," Deb grunted, forcing an oversized clamp between the fifth and sixth ribs with one hand while holding a clear plastic tube a half inch in diameter in the other, ready to guide it through the tunnel she was creating into the chest cavity.

  "Push it in-you're not going to hurt him," Sax said while pouring Betadiene directly from a bottle onto the man's torso. "As soon as you've got it in, get over here and give me a hand cracking his chest."

  Even as she spoke, she was slashing a ten-inch curve between the ribs on the left side. "Rib spreader," she said tersely as a flood of dark congealed blood cascaded out onto her. She held out her right hand and a nurse passed her a ratcheted double-bladed retractor. Sax forced it between the ribs and cranked it open, exposing a deflated lung and a flaccid heart. Deb stepped up next to her, breathing hard, but her hands were steady.

  "Open the pericardium and massage the heart manually," Sax instructed. She leaned away slightly so Deb could move closer, bending a bit to watch as her fellow made a slit in the protective covering enclosing the heart. "Not too deep now-stay away from the coronaries. That's it …nice. Get your hand around it."

  Without raising her head, Sax announced, "The heart's still empty. Come on, people, pump the blood." Quietly, she encouraged, "That's it, Stein. Hold it in the palm of your hand and keep the pressure even."

  "We're getting something on the EKG," Aaron announced.

  "Rate?" Sax asked without looking away from the gaping hole in the man's body.

  "Still only 40."

  "Push some atropine," Sax instructed. She and Deb Stein were so close their bodies were practically fused. "Keep going, Deb. You've got it."

  Jude tore her gaze from Sax's face and looked at the clock. Two minutes and ten seconds.

  "I've got a blood pressure," one of the nurses called.

  "The heart's beating," Deb murmured, almost as if she didn't believe it."

  "Stop the compression and see if he flies," Sax ordered.

  For a minute no one breathed. The EKG beeped steadily, the arterial line read a blood pressure of one hundred, and the blood flow from the chest wound slowed to a trickle.

  "Tell the OR we're coming up," Sax said, a victorious note in her voice. She glanced up then, her gaze meeting Jude's. A grin flickered at the corner of her expressive mouth.

  Jude saw the triumph dance in Sinclair's blue eyes. It was one of the sexiest things she'd ever seen.

  *****

  July 1 - 7:35 p.m.

  Sax raised an eyebrow in surprise as she walked through the surgeon's lounge toward the door leading into the women's locker room. The common space between the locker rooms and the operating room proper was empty save for Jude Castle, who sat writing in a notebook at the long wooden table that held remnants of a pizza and a white layer cake.

  "You're here late," Sax remarked, stopping opposite the filmmaker, who glanced up and smiled.

  "I was waiting for you." Jude pushed her work away and studied the surgeon, noting the dark patch on her thigh that could only be blood and the sweat dampening the shirt between her breasts. She looks tired , Jude thought, and the thought surprised her. She realized that she hadn't imagined the formidable trauma chief being vulnerable to something so common, and then wondered where that idea had come from.

  "Really," Sax remarked, her tone curious. "Why?"

  "Because I owe you an apology."

  Sax rubbed her face briefly, blew out a breath, and pulled out a chair opposite the redhead. She recalled their last heated exchange now, although it seemed longer than just a few hours ago. She remembered being angry, but certainly couldn't remember anything that required an apology. And somehow the idea of this woman apologizing to her seemed wrong. They'd both been rather hot. "Look, Ms. Castle-"

  "No, let me finish," Jude interjected, amused to see a quick flash of annoyance in the other woman's eyes. Not used to being interrupted, are you? "You were right about limiting my crew in the admitting area. It's a zoo in there during a trauma alert. I should have waited to assess things myself before I told you what I needed. I'll work something out."

  "Okay, I appreciate you making the adjustments. Thanks," Sax said. Then she added, "I notice you're not apologizing for threatening to pull rank on me."

  "No, I'm not."

  Sax stood. "Fair enough. Deb Stein is on call tomorrow night. You'd better get some rest if you're going to start keeping surgeon's hours."

  "Are you done for the day?" Jude called as Sax walked away.

  "Soon," Sax said as she pushed open the door to the locker room. She knew that she'd probably spend the night on the narrow bed in her on call quarters, because it was somehow less impersonal there than the space she called home, but that wasn't something she wanted to share.

  Chapter Five

  Jude sighed and tried to stop thinking about Saxon Sinclair. She couldn't decide if the woman annoyed or fascinated her more. She has to be one of the most infuriating people I've ever met. She's rigid and inflexible and arrogant, and if that weren't bad enough-she's-she' accomplished and talented and driven. And-oh, hell-so damned attractive.

  "Aren't you hungry?" Lori Brewster asked with concern.

  "What?" Jude replied, startled. She glanced at her plate and the half-eaten entrée and realized that she had forgotten about it. "Oh, no. I mean…I was, but I'm not now." Seeing the look of concern on her companion's face, she hurriedly added, "I'm just distracted. It probably wasn't very smart of me to make a date for the first day of this new project."

  The attractive dark-haired attorney frowned, reaching across the immaculate linen tablecloth to take Jude's hand. "We didn't need to go out. I haven't seen you in two weeks." She brushed her thumb over Jude's palm. "We could have just gotten take-out and spent the evening in bed."

  "I'm sorry," Jude replied, squeezing Lori's hand. "I'm lousy company tonight." She hoped the fact that she had sidestepped the overture to sex wasn't as obvious to her dinner companion as it felt to her. She wasn't even sure herself why she wasn't that interested. They'd been dating
for more than six months, casually, whenever they could find time, which was how they'd both agreed they wanted it. Lori was busy establishing herself in a competitive law firm where she intended to make partner before anyone else her age, and she worked ninety-hour weeks to prove it. Jude traveled frequently for shoots and promotional meetings and didn't feel she could give a serious relationship the attention it required. So far their arrangement had been mutually satisfying. Jude smiled at Lori, appreciating the appraising look in her eyes and remembering how much she liked her trim, athletic body. We've got similar interests, we want the same things professionally, and we're good together in bed. What more could I want?

  She shook off the odd sense of disquiet she'd had ever since leaving St. Michael's and tried not to think any more about Sinclair or why she even cared if the irritating trauma surgeon liked her or not. Jude smiled at the waiting woman, then said quietly, "Let's skip dessert."

  *****

  The glass door on the shower slid open and Jude felt a soft, smooth body press close against her back. Arms slipped around her waist, lips trailed across her shoulder. A voice, husky and intimate, whispered in her ear.

  "Hey, I missed you. The bed is cold without you."

  "I tried not to wake you," Jude responded, leaning back into the embrace, turning her head to brush her mouth over a damp cheek. "Sorry."

  "You okay?" Lori asked.

  "Yes." But she didn't feel quite okay, and she wasn't sure why. Nothing had changed. They had shared themselves with each other as they had in the past, enjoyably and with an easy familiarity that came from mutual caring. It was nice to feel the heat of another body, and to touch flesh other than one's own. It was nice to be physically satisfied. It had been every bit as nice as it had been the first time they'd slept together. Nothing had changed.

  "Do you need to go?"

  "Mmm, yeah. I've got an early meeting with my photography director in the morning. And early by surgeons' standards means six-thirty," Jude explained, turning in the mist and water to face her companion.