Mac's Bedside Manner. Marie Ferrarella

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      For the following three and a half hours, Mac found himself hip deep in sutures, X rays, blood and chaos. There was no time to think, only to react and pray that responses—correct responses—were ingrained. Several times during the frenetic dance from patient to patient, Mac had looked up to see the new nurse close by, ministering to the wounded.

      Twice they found themselves working over the same injured victim.

      She worked well, he noted. And quickly, as if she’d been in these situations countless times before. He’d known new nurses to buckle under pressure. But then, he remembered, Jorge had said she was a transfer from San Francisco General. That made her somewhat seasoned.

      He couldn’t help wondering why she’d transferred. She was obviously good at her job, The brittle voice she’d directed at him was nowhere in evidence when she spoke to a terrified woman, who was afraid she was going to lose her leg. Jolene stood, holding the woman’s hand as he worked feverishly to stabilize the woman in order to rush her into surgery.

      “Okay,” Mac announced the moment Wanda told him there was an O.R. free, “she’s ready to go up.”

      Frightened brown eyes shifted toward him. “Am I going to lose it?” the woman cried, hysteria barely contained in her voice.

      “Not a chance,” he told her, smiling. “You’ll be dancing in three months.”

      His words earned him another cool look from Jolene as she helped push the gurney out into the hall and toward the elevator. Now what had he said?

      He had no time to ponder on it. Someone else was calling for him. Stripping off the yellow paper gown, he slipped into the one that Martha Hayes was holding out for him.

      “Let’s roll,” he said to the young nurse.

      Eventually, just as Mac’s back was beginning to ache in fierce protest—reminding him of the strain he’d received over a dozen years ago on the football field—the chaos receded as abruptly as it had begun.

      He glanced over toward the rear doors, holding his breath, unwilling to release his hold on the adrenaline that was keeping him going.

      The doors remained closed.

      “That’s the last of them, Dr. Mac,” Wanda told him wearily.

      Mac rotated his neck, trying to reduce the tension that had knotted itself there. “Gee, just when we were beginning to have fun,” he muttered.

      With relief, he shed the last of an endless series of yellow paper gowns he’d hastily put on these last few hours and then glanced at his watch. The balcony collapse had eaten away his time.

      So 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.

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