“Yet,” I said, one corner of my lips tugging into a smirk. “How long do we have before our next victim comes in?”
Hunter’s blue eyes darted toward the plain round clock mounted above the door. “About ten minutes, I’d say. It’s Lizzie’s last session, so we have to go over her maintenance plan before she leaves.”
“I have it ready. I just need to print it out before she gets here.” I sighed, giving my head a shake. “She’s not ready to finish hands-on treatment yet. We’re going to have to find a way to bring her back despite what policy says.”
“We can always go into private practice,” he suggested, not for the first time. “I heard OB/GYN lost another one. The doctor gave notice this morning, and he’s taking two of the nurses with him.”
“Fuck.” Scratching my jaw as I took a sip of coffee, I closed my eyes and wondered if I would be asked to catch babies from now on, too. “Maybe it’s not a bad idea to consider moving out of here. We always said we wanted to go private later on, and as a bonus, we’d get to treat patients for a lifetime.”
He shrugged. “I’m not so worried about that. I just don’t want to be left behind in this miserable place without you. I’d end up looking like her.”
A nurse walked past the physical therapy ward, stomping as she blew her silver hair out of her eyes. “She’s been here twenty years and I think it’s been almost as long since she’s been in a good mood.”
“Why would you get left behind here without me?” I asked as I spun toward the small office we shared with the ward next to ours.
Hunter trailed after me. “Uh, how about because you made a bajillion dollars with that machine of yours? You could retire any minute of any day and live off that money for three lifetimes without having to worry about working again.”
I rolled my eyes as I bent over, leaning with my one palm on the desk and the other on the mouse to click into my folder on the shared computer. I typed in my password as I replied and hit print on Lizzie’s homecare plan.
“If I’ve told you once, I must’ve told you a thousand times by now. I didn’t develop that machine to make money or to retire early. I thought I had an idea that could help people, so I made it come to life.”
“You revolutionized physical therapy for entire groups of patients, dude. You must’ve known you’d make money.”
I lifted my shoulders and grabbed the sheaf of papers, stapling them together in the corner. “I knew I might make some money if it worked, which it did, but only after I put every last cent I had into the prototype. Not that it matters. I’m not about to retire at thirty-two anyway.”
“But you could,” he pointed out again. “Better yet, we could. You could buy us an island and—”
The door to the office banged open and a frazzled-looking nurse I didn’t know rushed in. Her gaze bounced off Hunter and landed on me. “Are you Doctor Matthews?”
“Yes. Why?” I straightened up, instantly alert. “What’s happened?”
“The paramedics just called. They’re on their way to the ER with a nine-year-old girl who had an accident on a motorcycle. She wasn’t wearing a helmet.”
A chill raced down my spine. I crossed the office in only one stride, handed the treatment plan over to her as I passed, and shouted instructions over my shoulder just before I took off running.
“There’s a girl coming in. Her name is Lizzie. Give her that and tell her I’ll be in touch about discussing it.”
She nodded dumbly, but I didn’t have time to make sure she understood the message. Hunter was right behind me, sprinting toward the ambulance bay as fast as our legs could carry us. Treating injured kids was never fun, and motorcycle accidents were never pretty.
Combine the two, subtract the tiny layer of protection provided by a helmet, and we probably weren’t in for a good afternoon. I’d just pulled on my protective gear when the ambulance screeched to a halt.
The tires hadn’t quite stopped moving yet when the doors at the back burst open. “We need help here. She’s having difficulty breathing, and she’s complaining about a headache. Damage to the right arm.”
“We got her,” I barked at the medic, running to get the side of the gurney.