Free Nerves of Steel by C.J. Lyons

unhurried.  He slouched against the wall as if they were waiting to tee off on the back nine.
    "It's Drake, Mickey Drake."  He mimicked the surgeon's posture, giving the man one of his best eat-shit-and-die smiles.
    "You're new here, Mickey.  So let me fill you in on the situation.  Dr. Hart is my wife, my business.  Understand?"  The surgeon's gray eyes tried to issue a challenge, but it was lost on Drake.  King turned on his Italian leather clad heel and stalked away without waiting for a reply. 
    Leaving Drake more curious than ever about the conversation he'd interrupted.  And Dr. Cassandra Hart.
    CHAPTER 13
    It was five till seven and the ER was empty.  Knowing Ed Castro would be there any minute to relieve her, Cassie erased the last patient's name from the board at the nurses' station with satisfaction.  Nothing like a clean board at the end of a shift.
    "Med Five rolling up with a MVA," the dispatcher's voice sounded from her radio.  "Fifty year old male, unrestrained driver, T-bone collision, they just lost vitals."
    "Level One Trauma, room one," Cassie told her.  The trauma alert began to sound on pagers throughout the ER.  Cassie grabbed her Tyvek gown, mask, and goggles, and raced out to the ambulance bay to meet the medics.  Med Five backed in with a squeal.  She opened the door as soon as it braked to a stop.
    "Fifty year old male, closed head injury, left pneumo needled in the field, dislocated right hip, compound fracture right radius and ulna with arterial bleeding.  No BP in the field, lost his pulse about two minutes ago," the paramedic told her as he performed chest compressions. 
    Cassie and his partner wrestled the gurney out of the ambulance, and together they rushed down the hall to the trauma bay.
    "Get him on the monitor, someone take over CPR, push epi," she called out her orders as she assessed her patient.  "Get me a chest tube tray.  And four units Oneg."  She nodded to the senior resident who quickly placed a chest tube.  Blood poured out of the man's chest and into the waiting pleurovac.  Cassie finished inserting an IV into the man's subclavian vein, and the nurse hooked up the blood. 
    "Pulse is back.  We've got a pressure."
    "Score one for the home team.  Let's get another gas and crit and start our secondary survey."  Cassie began addressing her patient's less life-threatening injuries.  She looked up to find Richard smiling at her from across the man's body. 
    "I forgot how good you are at this," he told her as he examined their patient's open fracture. 
    He reached a hemostat into a pool of blood and deftly snagged a gushing artery.  Cassie wasn't the only one good at her job.
    Once she had the man stabilized, Richard moved to tackle the dislocated hip.  He nodded at her.  "You mind?"
    She hated dislocations, that clunk the bone made when you popped it back into the joint, a feeling that echoed through your body.  It was a two-person job, and in such a critical patient, she didn't want to delegate it to someone else, like Richard's linebacker-sized resident who might cause more harm than good.
    Cassie climbed onto the gurney beside the man's hips and wrapped her hands around his pelvis to stabilize it.  She leaned her weight into the maneuver, bearing down while Richard pulled against her.  Then he flexed the leg, easing the head of the femur back into place.  She gritted her teeth against the clunk, tried to suppress her shudder.  Richard offered her his hand as she scrambled back down.
    "Nice job," he said, his hand squeezing hers.  "I'll meet you up in the OR," he told the trauma surgeons as they wheeled the patient out.  His eyes went wide, and he smiled.  "God, I forgot what a rush this is!"
    It had been a long, long time since she'd seen Richard genuinely excited about anything--her or his work.  Sometimes, she could almost understand why he had turned to drugs and alcohol for stimulation, to escape the life he felt was smothering him.