“I’d like to come up,” he told her quietly once he turned off the ignition.

She realized that it was more a question than a statement.

Nika made her choice—as if she could say anything else. “I’d like that.”

Damn? what was he doing, Cole silently demanded, bewildered. He was asking for trouble, for complications, for things he had no time for and didn’t want. Complications that inevitably aroused feelings.

And yet…

And yet there was something about her, something that made him feel alive, that connected him to a world he’d long since walked away from.

He’d forgotten he could actually feel anything.

He’d voluntarily been on the outside for so long, he’d come to believe that was where he belonged. Beyond that, he lived and breathed in a rarified zone that allowed his heart to function, to beat and oversee blood being directed to all his vital organs. But feel? His heart wasn’t capable of doing that.

At least, it couldn’t before.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

And a large part of him resisted things changing, resisted finding out that his heart could do anything beyond beat.

But the temptation of Nika’s mouth drove his resolutions out of his head, propelling them into a zone that was packed away out of the light of day, a darkened no-man’s-land.

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Dear Reader,

Here we are revisiting that excellent New York City hospital, Patience Memorial, and its evergrowing Doctors Pulaski. It’s Veronika’s turn to find love amid the prescription pads. Nika first meets Detective Cole Baker when he rescues her from a trapped elevator. But his motives are not as noble, since she is Cole Baker’s ailing grandmother’s physician.

Their paths cross again when Cole is sent to investigate allegations that an Angel of Death is “helping” senior-citizen patients breathe their last breath. As fate would have it, the first suspect he needs to clear is Nika. What he doesn’t count on is that the soft-spoken, blue-eyed geriatrics specialist finds a chink in the armor he has around his soul and burrows her way in, making him realize that isolating himself is not the best way to go through life.

I hope that you find this latest installment of The Doctors Pulaski enjoyable. If you do and have missed any of the other stories, there are six other books awaiting your reading pleasure.

As ever, I thank you for reading and, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Love,

Marie Ferrarella

The Doctor’s Guardian
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award—winning author has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin Books and Silhouette Books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To Kathleen Creighton,

with deepest sympathies.

The heart recovers,

even when we don’t want it to.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

She didn’t have time for this.

Doctor—she adored the sound of that—Veronika Pulaski, “Nika” to her family and friends, was one of those people who’d been born making lists. Tons of lists. Different lists that were applicable to nearly every aspect of her incredibly fast-paced life. Long lists that helped keep her on track.

Nowhere, not even remotely, on today’s extra long list was the entry: get stuck in the hospital elevator this morning.

Yet here she was.

Stuck.

And getting more frustrated by the minute.

There hadn’t been anyone riding up with her when the elevator car—which was definitely in need of renovations—had come to an abrupt, teeth-jarring halt in between floors. Consequently, there was no one to talk to, no one to help take her mind off the predicament, at least for a few minutes. There wasn’t even annoyingly distracting piped-in music that her cousins had told her there once had been.

Nothing but the ticking of the clock in her head as it waved goodbye to the minutes that were tumbling away one by one. Minutes that she was supposed to be spending in the Geriatrics Unit.

This was actually supposed to be her day off. Her first day off in a little more than two incredibly busy, exhausting weeks. But she had opted to come in. No good deed went unpunished, she thought as she stood there, willing the elevator back to life. It remained frozen in place.

So much for a career in telekinesis.

The hospital’s Pediatric and Geriatric Units were desperately short staffed. They were that way not because the missing staff members were sick, but because they could potentially be sick.

The problem was a new strain of flu that was currently making the rounds, a particularly resilient strain that had already taken quite a toll on the population since its appearance on the scene nearly a month ago, cutting down far more people than was usual in these cases. The vaccine that had been created to prevent it had only met with marginal success. And, as usual, the very young and the very old were particularly susceptible to the illness.

The fear was that any of the staff who hadn’t contracted the flu yet might be on the verge of coming down with it, or could be, at the very least, unwitting carriers. As a result, only those staff members who had already had the flu—dubbed the Doomsday Flu by some supremely insensitive, brain-dead media reporter because of the number of deaths associated with it in a short period of time—were allowed to work in either Pediatrics or Geriatrics.

As luck would have it, she was one of them.

Nika had come down with a rip-roaring case of the flu before any statistics had even been available about the disease. When it had suddenly caused her knees to buckle and her head to spin, sending her falling into her bed, Nika had been miserable, but she really hadn’t thought anything about it. This, to her, was all part of being a doctor who dealt with an entire range of patients every day.

As it turned out, she’d contracted it from one of the patients in the Geriatric Unit. That patient had passed away a little more than twenty-four hours after being admitted into Patience Memorial. But Nika, incredibly healthy and in better than ordinary physical condition, was back on her feet five days after she became ill and back at work in seven.

Her return had almost been hailed with rose petals scattered in her path. Doctor Jorgensen, the head of the Geriatrics Unit, was that happy and that relieved to see her.

“You have no idea how shorthanded we are,” the tall, gaunt specialist told her.

Nika might not have had an inkling then, but she quickly became educated by the end of the first grueling day. The unit was extremely short staffed across the board, and that meant doctors, nurses and even orderlies were in limited supply. Those who were there were stretched almost beyond their endurance level.

Trial by fire, Nika had thought at the time. And that was fine with her. She didn’t mind working hard. Practicing medicine—helping patients, especially senior patients—was what it was all about to her.

What she minded terribly was being stuck in an elevator when she had patients waiting for her. She absolutely hated wasting time and that was what she was being forced to do.

She’d reported an emergency on the dedicated line and pressed the alarm the second it became clear that the elevator wasn’t experiencing a momentary hiccup or temporary glitch in its system but a paralyzing malfunction. One that, left unchecked, could go on indefinitely.

She and her mounting claustrophobia didn’t have “indefinitely.”

Besides, the shrilled alarm was really beginning to get on her nerves. How long could a person go on listening to that kind of loud noise and not go deaf—or slightly crazy? She had no desire to be a test case.

Nika gave it all of almost five minutes and then, with a frustrated, edgy sigh, she picked up the dedicated line and waited for someone to come on the other end of the phone again.

When she heard the line being picked up, she didn’t even wait for them to say anything. Instead, she jumped right in.

“Hello, this is Dr. Veronika Pulaski again. How much longer is it going to be before someone fixes the elevator?” she asked.

“Three minutes less than when you asked the last time,” the weary voice on the other end of the call told her. A little more sympathy was evident as the man went on. “Look, I understand your frustration, but the maintenance guy’s out sick with the flu—”

Nika rolled her eyes. Someone else down with the flu. She was really beginning to hate that word. “And there’s no one else around to fix this? The hospital’s got eight elevators—you can’t tell me that there’s only one maintenance guy.”

She heard another huge sigh. “Yes, I can, Doctor. Cutbacks,” the man explained before she could challenge him on the information. “We’re trying to get someone from the elevator company to come out but it might be a while.”

Terrific. “Define ‘a while,’” Nika requested through clenched teeth.

“Not quick,” was all the weary voice on the other end of the line said.

Superterrific. “Could you at least shut down the alarm?” Nika asked. “I’m going deaf down here.”

“That,” the man told her, brightening a little, “I can do.” Even as he said it, the alarm suddenly stopped blaring. The sound, though, continued to echo in Nika’s head like a phantom bell ringer who had come to life and now refused to die.

“Thank you!” Realizing that she was still shouting to be heard over an alarm that was no longer actually sounding, Nika lowered her voice and repeated, “Thank you.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it. I’ll ring you when the guy gets here,” the man promised.

“Please,” Nika underscored.

But she was talking to a dead line. Annoyed, frustrated, she replaced the receiver in the small, silver space where it ordinarily resided. She left the little cubbyhole door open.

Because there was nothing else she could do, Nika leaned against the elevator wall and slid down onto the floor, resigned to wait for the appearance of the elusive elevator repair man.

Or Armageddon, whichever came first.

“You’re going to be okay, G,” Detective Cole Baker told the woman who was sitting up in the hospital bed, her small hand holding on to his.

Or maybe he was holding on to hers. At this point, he really couldn’t have said with any certainty just who was reassuring whom. What he did know was that being here, in the hospital, with his eighty-four-year-old grandmother made him incredibly and uncomfortably restless.

Cole was accustomed to being around the woman in a completely different setting. One that was filled with energy and action. He was used to seeing his almost athletically trim grandmother bustling about her two-story home, the home she’d taken him into when one tragedy after another had left him homeless, wounded and orphaned.

Ericka Baker had been sixty-seven at the time, a feisty, vital widow preparing to move into a condo with her then-boyfriend, Howie. After a lifetime of hard work, she’d been planning on enjoying herself for a change.

However, the second she’d heard what had happened to him, his grandmother terminated the sale of her house and opened her home and her arms to Cole. Never once in all the seventeen years that followed had she made him feel that he was the reason her boyfriend had left, or that he was a burden.

She’d made him feel, instead, like a prize she’d been awarded in the second half of her life. The second half of her life because Ericka Baker fully expected to live way past a hundred. She’d told him that more than once.

To that end, his grandmother religiously went to yoga classes and watched everything that went into her mouth, referring to it as “fuel” rather than “food.”

Despite her own eating habits, she’d periodically made him cookies. Other times she had the occasional pizza delivered for his enjoyment. She’d encouraged him to be his own person, find his own path.

Throughout what was left of his childhood and then adolescence, Ericka Baker had been an outstanding, dynamic creature—the one constant in his life. The one person he knew he could always come to with anything if he needed to.

She’d wanted him to become a lawyer, like his grandfather had been. But when he joined the police force, there’d been no one prouder or more supportive than his grandmother. He had the feeling, deep down, that his grandmother would have been just as supportive of him if he’d decided to be a beekeeper or a musician. She was supportive of him, the person, not some ongoing plan. For that very reason, he’d allowed himself to love her even while he successfully shut out the rest of the world.

Oh, he functioned and interacted and was the best possible policeman and then police detective that he could be. But he let no one into his inner sanctum. No one had access past the barriers he’d erected long ago. He didn’t want to care about anyone, except for his grandmother.

Cole had lost his father to a roadside bomb in a foreign country, his only brother to a car-versus-bicycle hit-and-run accident, and his mother to a bullet she’d put in her own head—after shooting one at him. Her attempt at a murder/suicide had just missed its mark, but not the lesson that came with it.

All that, especially the last, had forever changed him.

When Cole grew older, he began to understand that his mother’s grief was just too great for her to handle and that she’d shot at him because she hadn’t wanted him to be left behind to face the world on his own.

But the bullet she’d fired at him had bypassed all his vital organs and he had lived, even as she had died. Lived, once he had come out of his coma, with an incredible emptiness and a lack of desire to continue living in this cruel existence that had deprived him of everyone he loved.

That was when he discovered that his grandmother—his father’s mother—had entered his life. She’d flown in from New York to be by his bedside, which was where she’d remained, keeping vigil, until he came out of his coma, both the literal one and then the self-imposed, emotional one that followed.

She’d embraced him, wept over him and then informed him that they would both move on. She made sure that he knew that there was no other option left to him.

In a strange sort of way, his grandmother gave him life. Again. And while he kept the rest of the world at arm’s length, he would have literally given up that life that she’d restored for him years ago in an instant for her without being asked.

It pained Cole to see his grandmother like this. To see her looking so fragile, so pale and all but fading against the white sheets. Lying there, Ericka Baker seemed somehow smaller, even though she wasn’t exactly a large woman by any standard of measurement other than an emotional one.

But G, as she’d instructed him to call her—she hated being referred to as Grandmother, saying it made her feel old—had, in the last few years, developed a heart condition: atrial fibrillation. He’d found out about it quite by accident. In the neighborhood, he’d stopped by for a surprise visit and found her medication on the kitchen counter. She’d forgotten to put it away. Added to that, there were times when she just seemed to drift away, sometimes even right in the middle of a conversation with him.

It wasn’t because she was preoccupied, the way he’d first hoped. She just seemed to be mentally “away.” After conferring with her primary care physician he finally had to admit to himself she was developing Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s, that dreaded disease that ultimately robbed a person of their identity, while the family lost a loved one years before death put in the ultimate claim for them.

But this morning, thank God, the woman’s blue eyes weren’t vacant, they were vividly alive, taking in everything. His grandmother was here, with him, and not overly happy about the location she found herself in. Hospitals, she’d always maintained, were for sick people and she never thought of herself as falling into that category.

“Of course I’m going to be all right, Coleman,” she declared firmly. She knew she had no choice—she needed to have this procedure done to finally put an end to those heart palpitations that she’d been putting up with, the ones that had become all but disabling. “We just need to get this damn thing over with,” she added. “Where’s that doctor they said was coming? The one they promised was going to be here—” she paused to look at the clock on the wall, its numbers purposely oversized to accommodate the patients on this part of the floor “—ten minutes ago?”

It was getting late and he needed to get going. But not before he had a few words with the doctor who, for the most part, would be taking care of his grandmother. G was far too precious a human being for him to leave her welfare in the hands of an unknown stranger.

“I’ll go find out what’s keeping him,” Cole volunteered.

But Ericka’s fingers, still strong, tightened around his hand, keeping him in place. “You’re going to be late for work,” Ericka insisted.

She didn’t like being the cause of that. She’d already told him more than once that she was perfectly capable of getting to the hospital by herself and handling her own admission, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted on coming with her.

Cole was such a good boy, she thought, but she couldn’t be selfish with him. He had a life that went beyond her and she needed him to remember that, just in case…

Well, just in case, she told herself, letting the thought go unfinished.

Cole looked at his grandmother. His mouth curved in an affectionate smile.

“Work’ll keep, G. I took a few personal hours off and I’m not leaving until I get to talk to this doctor, who doesn’t seem to have any sense of time,” he said, ending in a somewhat irritated note.

Cole glanced over his shoulder at the door that wasn’t opening to admit anyone. Nothing got to him more than those who thought their time was more valuable than the people they dealt with.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, taking his grandmother’s hand off his own and gently laying it down on top of her bedclothes.

Striding toward the nurses’ station in the middle of the floor, Cole found only one harried-looking nurse manning the area.

As he approached, one of the phones started ringing. He swallowed a curse as the woman picked up the receiver before he got to her.

“Geriatrics Unit. This is Estelle,” she said in a somewhat hoarse voice.

Masking an exasperated sigh, Cole tried to look patient as he stood on the other side of the desk and waited for the woman to be finished. Judging by the put-upon, distressed look on her face, this was not a personal call. The dialogue bore out his assumption.

“Yes, as soon as I can. Really. No. If you could just send me someone to help out over here, I—hello? Hello?”

With a deep sigh, she hung up the phone, looking even worse for wear.

The second the nurse removed the receiver from her ear, Cole stepped up to lay claim to her attention. “Excuse me, my grandmother’s in room 412. We’ve been waiting for the last two hours for some mythical doctor to materialize. Just how much longer is she supposed to wait for this doctor?” he asked with as much restraint as he could muster.

“Who’s your grandmother?” the woman asked, her voice strained.

“Ericka Baker. She’s in room 412,” he repeated, struggling to rein in his impatience. “I’m Detective Cole Baker with the NYPD and I want to talk to whoever they’ve assigned to her case before I leave,” he told her gruffly. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Now where the hell is he?”

The nurse, he noticed as he grew progressively more irritated, looked uncomfortable. Why? Was she about to snow him, saying something about how busy this missing doctor was or something equally as unacceptable?

“Stuck,” the nurse responded.

“Stuck where? In some paper-pushing meeting?” he asked contemptuously. He was ready either to demand another doctor or ask where the meeting was so that he could go there and speak with this so-called “really excellent physician” as his grandmother’s doctor had called this person. And then carry the man back if need be.

“No, in an elevator,” Estelle corrected. “Maintenance just called to tell me that she had set off an alarm because she was stuck in an elevator.”

So that was what all the noise earlier had been about. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it? “Get her unstuck.”

Estelle shook her head. “Not that simple. They just told me that they can’t get a repairman here for at least another hour. Maybe more.” The answer, she could see, was not the one he wanted. “Between the flu and cutbacks, it’s like the whole world is shorthanded,” she explained, obviously far from happy about the state of affairs herself.

Another hour spent waiting was unacceptable. Especially the “maybe more” part. There had to be something that could be done. It took him less than a minute to think about it. Cole was accustomed to taking matters into his own hands. G had raised him that way.

“Where’s the elevator now?” he asked.

“They said it’s stuck between the third and fourth floor.”

“Show me which one it is,” he instructed. There was no room for argument.

Estelle looked at the police detective uncertainly. Then, compelled by the no-nonsense expression on his face, she rose to her feet. She didn’t have to be told that this was not a man people said no to.

“This way.”

It surprised Nika how fast the temperature could rise within the enclosed elevator car. She’d already taken off her lab coat and unbuttoned her blouse as far as she could and still remain decent for the repairman when—and if—he showed up.

She was grateful that she wasn’t overly claustrophobic, but this little incident could definitely send her in that direction. Growing increasingly restless, Nika raised her eyes to the ceiling. In between the two waning fluorescent lights there was what looked to be a trapdoor.

Was it a way out?

Not that it did her any good, she thought darkly. She had nothing to stand on in order to access it. Not even if she stood up on her toes. At her tallest, she measured five foot six, the ceiling was at least a good foot and a half above her, if not more.

Nika continued looking up at the trapdoor. That had to be what it was. What other use could it have? If she jumped up, she thought, rising to her feet, she just might be able to push it open—provided the door wasn’t bolted down.

Of course it was bolted down, she silently argued, mocking herself. Why wouldn’t it be?

But then, she’d just seen a memo that said the elevators were scheduled to be renovated in another month. The rest of the hospital had already gone through a makeover, but the elevators had been left out of the last two updates. Consequently, they were all incredibly old-fashioned. Maybe the bolts or screws or whatever it was that held that section of the ceiling in place were weak, ready to break.

At the very least, even if she couldn’t get out, if she jarred the trapdoor open she’d be able to get some air into the stifling elevator car.

The promise of that was all the motivation she needed.

Bracing herself, Nika jumped up, her hand outstretched above her head. Missing contact, she jumped again. And then a third time, managing to stretch her fingers up a little farther each time.

On her fourth jump, she screamed. Half in triumph and half in stunned amazement.

The section she was trying to move moved all right. All the way off.

The next second, there was a man hanging upside down in the immobilized elevator car. His dark brown hair flowed away from a chiseled, hard-looking face. It was the kind of expression that inspired instant obedience. Oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid.

“Give me your hand,” he ordered gruffly.

The words, Come with me if you want to live, echoed mockingly in her brain.

This was no time to recall movie trivia, Nika upbraided herself. And yet, there it was.

Because this definitely felt like a scene out of some old action movie.

Chapter 2

Nika snapped out of her semi-dazed state a moment later. “What?” she cried.

She was fairly certain that an elevator repairman would have been trying to do something with the cable’s mechanisms in a far more stable, accessible place, rather than lowering himself into the stalled elevator car like a frustrated trapeze artist trying to make a dramatic comeback.

Blood rushed to Cole’s head. This was not exactly an ideal position to be in and definitely not something he would have chosen to do if there was any other way to go. But according to the nurse he’d talked to on his grandmother’s floor, the company that handled maintaining the elevators wouldn’t have a repairman out for at least another hour. That was completely unacceptable to him. He needed to speed things along and this was the only way open to him: rescuing the trapped doctor.

Stretching his hand out toward the stunned blonde looking up at him, his legs securely wrapped around the cable, which was most likely permanently staining his gray slacks with grease, Cole could only reach down so far. She would have to make up the difference. “I said, give me your hand.”

He had to be kidding, right? “Who are you?”

“The tooth fairy,” Cole growled.

He was in no mood for twenty questions. He wasn’t sure just how much longer he could hang down like this. Each second that passed by made it that much harder. The hastily conceived plan was to pull her up out of the elevator car and get her to stand on top of it. From there, he was fairly sure he could get her out to the fourth floor. Fortunately, the elevator had gotten stuck closer to the fourth floor, rather than right in between the two floors. Every little inch helped.

“Now give me your damn hand,” he demanded. “Unless you want to stay inside this box until that mythical repairman turns up.”

He had a very persuasive argument. There was no way she wanted to stay here a moment longer.

“No!” Nika cried.

She stretched first both hands up, and then leaned into stretching just one. That got her a tiny bit closer, but she still couldn’t reach him. Standing on her toes didn’t help. It was a matter of “almost, but not quite.”

Frustration raked over her, making her thin blouse stick to her skin as perspiration slipped over her. Dropping her hands to her sides, she looked up at him. “How…?”

He anticipated her question. Extending his hands down as far as he could, he ordered, “Jump up! I’ll grab your arms.”

Another question occurred to her but Nika bit it back. There was no point in showering him with queries. Anxious to leave her confinement, she would have been willing to jump up and grab hold of the devil himself if he’d just get her out of here. Even with him hanging upside down, she could tell that this handsome, although unsmiling and gruff, man wasn’t the devil.

At least, not exactly.

Whatever else this man might be as he went about his life, right now, at this moment, this Flying Wallenda wannabe was the answer to her prayers.

Nika squared her shoulders. “Ready?” she asked him, bracing herself.

There was more than a shade of impatience in his stony face. Nika could recognize it even upside down. “Lady—”

“You’re ready,” she pronounced. Blowing out a breath, she gave it her all and sprang up as high as she could, her hands reaching up for the sky.

It amazed her that he caught both of her hands on the first attempt. It also amazed her that her shoulders weren’t pulled out of their sockets. The jolt had her biting down on her lower lip to keep from yelling out in pain.

Holding on to her hands tightly, the knight in tarnished armor raised her up. She could see his forearms straining. They were bulging and looked rock hard as he pulled her to him. He was still hanging upside down, but he raised her up to him until they were all but face-to-face.

He was breathing heavily.

As for her breath, it had gotten completely stuck in her lungs as she found her lips less than an inch away from his mouth.

Was that a heart palpitation? Or just adrenaline rushing through her? For simplicity’s sake, she decided to go with the latter.

“You’re not moving,” she managed to point out. If it wasn’t for the way his forearms were straining, it would seem as if they were frozen in midair.

“I’m not a contortionist,” he retorted. She could feel his forearms working, could feel a tremor begin to rumble through the taut, hard muscles. “Climb up!” he urged her.

“Climb up what?” she cried in complete confusion.

Was she an airhead? Had he just gone through contortions to rescue someone who was just as likely to harm his grandmother as help her?

“Me,” he snapped, “damn it. Climb up me.”

She hadn’t the slightest idea how to do that from this position. “You’re kidding.”

“If I were given to kidding,” he told her tersely, “which I’m not, this wouldn’t be the time for me to do it. Now, get moving,” he ordered sharply, “or we’re both going to fall into the elevator and one of us is going to land headfirst.”

That would be him. Not exactly the best way for this to end. Oh God. She could feel herself weakening.

Not now, Nika. Not now.

“Right.”

Taking a breath, she released his hand and immediately grabbed hold of his torso, holding on tight.

One hand free, Cole reinforced his hold on her other hand, using both of his.

“Keep going!” he shouted at her.

She was just trying to catch her breath. “Give me a minute,” she snapped at him. Her heart really pounded now.

He felt his grasp slipping on her. “We don’t have a minute.”

“Oh God.”

Her heart hammering in her chest, Nika scrambled up her rescuer’s body, acutely aware of its hardness and all the contours she brushed against—both his and hers—in her effort to get out of this dark, confining space.

And then she was out. Out of the car and on top of it, where the cables, the grease and an entire array of uncountable dead insects all came together. Nika huddled on top of the car, pulling her body as far into herself as she could.

Just above her head were the parted elevator doors—and light!

“Move over,” Cole shouted up to her. “I want to come up.”

“Sorry,” she apologized. Still crouching, she tried to make herself even smaller as, attempting to move as little as possible, she shifted away from the opening. To keep from being overwhelmed by this whole ordeal, Nika forced herself not to look down. “Now what?” she asked.

He took a moment to draw in a few breaths. His hand just above her huddled body, her scowling rescuer held on to the cable. He gave her the impression that he could just swing himself off his perch like some modern-day Tarzan whenever the whim hit him.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked her.

“It would be,” she allowed magnanimously. “If my brain worked.”

Fingers lightly encircling the cable, her rescuer rose to his feet, as sure-footed as if he’d been born mid-leap between skyscrapers. How could he do that? she marveled. How could he seem so casual, standing on top of the elevator car? Had he grown up on the side of a mountain?

“Now I get you up to the fourth floor,” he answered glibly.

When she didn’t rise on her own to stand beside him, Cole took her hand and began to tug her up to her feet. When he felt her resistance, he looked down at her expectantly.

“Look, you’ve got to stand up,” he told her gruffly. “I can’t just hurl you out the door like you were some kind of discus.”

“Right.” Nika exhaled, rising shakily to her feet. Her hand was tightly wrapped around his as if he was her lifeline.

It suddenly occurred to him that there might be more at play here than he’d thought. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“I wasn’t when I first got on,” Nika answered honestly. “But now I’m not so sure.”

She was still holding on to his hand as he shifted her around so that they were both facing the parted doors on the next floor. Before she could ask him what he was doing, he’d released her hand and placed both of his on either side of her waist.

“Look up,” he instructed. When she did, he said, “There’s your way out.”

All she could think was, So near and yet so far. Short of him hurling her like that discus he’d mentioned, she couldn’t see how she was going to get out. “Yes, if I was a foot taller.”

His hands tightened around her waist. Something swirled around in her stomach in response. Panic?

“Don’t worry, you will be,” he promised. “Okay, on the count of three.”

“What on the count of three?” She had an uneasy feeling she wasn’t going to like this.

“You jump. I thrust and push.”

“You what?” she demanded, twisting around so that she could look at him. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying.

But apparently he was already counting, albeit quietly, and “three” was on the tip of his tongue. It emerged half a split second later as he shoved her upward with a mighty thrust.

Stunned and caught off guard, Nika hadn’t jumped to give her body the momentum it needed. But the man who had come to her rescue still managed to get her up to the point that she could get her arms and the upper part of her torso out between the parted doors.

Leaning her whole body into it and snaking forward, she managed to keep from sliding back down. She’d gained a hold. Not stopping to celebrate the feat, she pushed and, using her elbows in a back and forth momentum, she scrambled out a little farther.

That was when a passing orderly she was marginally familiar with saw her. Gerald Mayfield came running over to offer his help. Taking both her hands as gently as possible, he succeeded in getting her up to her feet.

The next moment, the man who’d gotten her out in the first place was using his arms to vault himself off the roof of the same elevator car.

She swung around to look at him. There was a half-amused smile on his lips.

“Was it good for you?” he asked. “It was good for me.”

“Getting out was wonderful for me,” she answered, focusing only on the literal interpretation of his question. Nika stopped to take a deep breath before saying anything else. “Who are you?” she asked again, repeating what she’d asked him when he’d burst upside down into the elevator car.

“Are you all right, Doctor Pulaski?” Gerald asked, concerned. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was interrupting her.

“Yes, thank you, I am.” Nika started to brush herself off with the flat of her hand, resigned to the fact that it was futile. “And thanks to you,” she added, turning to look at the man who had gone out of his way to extricate her from the elevator.

“Before you think I’m just some random do-gooder,” he told her, brushing aside her thanks, “I want you to know that I had an ulterior motive for getting you out of there.”

He caught her completely by surprise with that one. Just what kind of an ulterior motive was he talking about? She did her best to seem both game and ever-so-slightly on her guard.

He saw a ray of uncertain suspicion enter her eyes. Good. He didn’t think much of people who were too naive to be suspicious. Better safe than sorry.

“You were on your way to see Ericka Baker when the elevator died on you, right?”

She eyed him quizzically. “How would you know something like that?”

Was this a new doctor on the staff whom she hadn’t met yet? At this point, she had a nodding acquaintance with most of the physicians at Patience Memorial, but a few might have slipped her attention. Although, looking at this one—especially right side up—she couldn’t see how that was possible.

“Did the chief of staff send you to the Geriatric Unit?” she asked.

God knew she could use the help, and it wasn’t because she didn’t know what she was doing. She’d worked summers while attending both undergraduate school and medical school and each position she took involved working with seniors, both veterans and private citizens, in various different hospitals. She had a very soft spot in her heart for the elderly, but there were only so many bedsides she could be at during the course of a single day. Nika was completely overwhelmed by the amount of work there was, and right now there were only two physicians in the unit to shoulder that work.

“No.” Busy trying to remove several grease spots from his slacks with his handkerchief, Cole raised his head in time to see the look of disappointment on her face. “Ericka Baker’s my grandmother.”

Giving his slacks one more pass with the handkerchief, he frowned, gave up and shoved the oil-smudged item back into his pocket again.

“Oh.” She focused on the bright side. He might not be here to help her with the patient load, but he’d come to her aid nonetheless. “I guess it’s lucky for me that you’re so interested in her welfare.”

He nodded his head, dismissing what sounded like the beginning of a thank-you speech.

“So—” He gave her a quick once-over. “Do you need some time to pull yourself together?”

Except for a few smudges here and there, she certainly didn’t look as if she needed to pull herself together, he thought. But he’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t go by appearances when it came to women. They had their own set of unique rules.

She slipped on the lab coat that she’d tied around her waist earlier, hoping she looked presentable. “No, I’m fine,” she assured him. “As long as your grandmother doesn’t scare easily.”

To his recollection, he’d never even seen his grandmother worried, much less scared. “She has nerves of steel.”

Nika laughed shortly. He found the sound had a nice, soothing ring to it.

“That puts your grandmother one up on me,” Nika told him. She glanced down at her hands. There were streaks across the top of each of them. “I just need to wash my hands and I’ll be ready to go.” The orderly retreated back to what he was doing when he’d stopped to help, and Nika paused for a moment as she got a good look at her rescuer’s slacks. She felt instantly guilty. “Oh, your pants.”

Cole looked down at them himself, checking to see if they had somehow gotten worse in the last minute. Sadly, the grease stains on each leg were just as vivid.

“Guess the crease isn’t as sharp as it could be,” he cracked.

“I was looking at the grease,” Nika said before she realized he was being sarcastic. Getting them cleaned was her responsibility, she thought. “Give them to me.”

“My pants?” he questioned, looking at her in surprise. Just what kind of a doctor was going to be treating his grandmother?

“Oh, I don’t mean now,” she explained quickly. Not quickly enough, she gathered, judging by his expression. “I mean, the next time you come back here to see your grandmother. I’ll send them to the cleaners—or you can send them to the cleaners and just give me the bill.”

He waved away her words. He could pay for his own dry cleaning. Or just toss the slacks away if it came down to that. The only thing this woman owed him was taking care of his grandmother.

“That’s all right.”

“No, it’s not,” she insisted firmly. He stopped walking for a moment and looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed or annoyed. Either way, she pressed on. “You wouldn’t have gotten that way if you hadn’t come to my rescue. I believe in paying my debts, Mr. Baker.”

“That’s detective,” he corrected her.

She’s resumed walking and now it was her turn to stop first. “Mr. Detective?” she questioned, her brow furrowing.

“Detective Baker.” Who the hell called anyone “Mr.” Detective? He scrutinized her closely. Had she hit her head when the elevator had initially come to a stop? “You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” She was slightly embarrassed. “I’m just a little out of sync, that’s all. It’s not every day I get to climb up a man’s torso to get out of an elevator car and into an elevator shaft,” she told him in her own defense. “I’ll be at the top of my game in a couple of minutes,” she promised.

His eyes narrowed as he focused on her. “And just exactly what does this ‘game’ involve?” Cole asked.

She really was having trouble putting her thoughts into words this morning. Getting trapped in the elevator didn’t have anything to do with it. Pulling double shifts, however, did. Someday, she would catch up on her rest and sleep for a week.

“Poor choice of words,” she acknowledged. “The only ‘game’ in town, as far as I’m concerned, is making sure that your grandmother leaves the hospital healthier than when she came in.” I might as well make use of this man being here, Nika thought as they turned a corner down the corridor. “Can you tell me briefly what her complaints are?”

She peered at his face as she asked the question and was rewarded to see the corners of his mouth curve ever so slightly.

The word “complaint” triggered memories of the last conversation he’d had with his grandmother before he discovered her neglected medication. “You mean other than the fact that they brought Becky Warren back from the dead?”

Nika stopped abruptly just shy of Ericka Baker’s single care unit and stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“Becky Warren,” he repeated. “The town ‘harlot,’ to quote my grandmother.” And then he filled her in on the joke. “My grandmother watches Living the Good Life faithfully,” he said, naming his grandmother’s favorite soap opera. “Has for the last fifteen years. It’s her only weakness—or vice. That and dark chocolate with coconut,” he added. “Otherwise, she’s a trouper who doesn’t complain. I wouldn’t have known about her heart condition if I hadn’t been there for one of her ‘episodes.’” He vividly remembered fearing the worst as he saw his grandmother clutch her chest, the side of her neck throbbing wildly. “Scared the hell out of me,” he said as he pushed open the door to his grandmother’s room. “I got her to go see Dr. Goodfellow.”

Nika nodded as she walked into Ericka’s room. “Good choice. He’s one of the top cardiologists in the state,” she informed him.

At the sound of their voices, the woman in the hospital bed turned her head toward them. The look on her finely lined face was affectionate disapproval as sharp, sapphire-blue eyes swept over the dirt and grease on Cole’s clothes.

She shook her head. “Have you been making mud pies again, Coleman?” she asked.

Chapter 3

The question his grandmother asked hung in the air, unanswered.

It scraped against Cole’s heart.

G wasn’t teasing him the way she occasionally did, and she wasn’t being witty. She was serious. He’d seen that look enter her eyes several times before. The look that silently announced that she had temporarily slipped away from him and was now off into the past. A past when she had been all things to him, including both mother and father.

Cole slanted a glance at the physician at his side, wondering if anything in his grandmother’s behavior had tipped her off that the woman wasn’t quite lucid.

But since this doctor he’d brought to his grandmother’s bedside didn’t know G, from all appearances, she seemed to be taking the remark at face value as a sign of affection between his grandmother and him.

Good.

Walking over to the older woman’s bedside, Cole leaned over and kissed the weathered yet incredibly soft cheek.

“Not this time, G,” he said quietly in response to her question. When he took a step back, he saw that she’d returned to her old self and he breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“Coleman, how did you manage to get so dirty?” Ericka wanted to know, clearly surprised by his less than neat appearance.

“Rescuing me,” Nika told her, stepping forward.

Instead of picking up the elderly woman’s chart, or accessing Ericka Baker’s records on the portable computer just outside the woman’s room, Nika preferred to go straight to the source and meet her patients first, then look at their records. It helped her form a relationship with the patient, however briefly it might last, and that, she’d always felt, held her in good stead. It also made the patients feel that she viewed them as people first and patients second.

But before Nika could introduce herself, the woman in the bed gave her a quick, albeit penetrating, once-over, Ericka’s very blue eyes sweeping over her.

“And you are?” Ericka asked.

“Dr. Veronika Pulaski,” Nika told her, putting her hand out to the woman.

She found herself on the receiving end of a handshake that was both firm and confident. No matter what the notes on the chart claimed, this was no “little old lady.” This was a force to be reckoned with, Nika thought with a warm smile.

“Dr. Goodfellow asked me to run some tests on you to make sure that the procedure he intends to perform to get your atrial fibrillation under control won’t do you more harm than good.”

Ericka made a small, dismissive sound, accompanying it with a wave of her hand. “He’s just afraid of a lawsuit.”

“No,” Nika contradicted, her smile still warm as she continued focusing on the small woman, “he’s afraid of putting you through something that won’t result in you getting better. He is an excellent cardiovascular surgeon,” she told Ericka. “Patience Memorial wouldn’t give him operating privileges here if he wasn’t.”

“We’ll see,” was all Ericka was willing to concede. She shifted her eyes toward her grandson. “Coleman, you said you had some questions to ask this very young lady,” she reminded him.

Nika picked up on the woman’s inflection. “I’m not as young as I look, Mrs. Baker,” she assured her.

Ericka blew out another breath. “You couldn’t be,” she retorted. “And don’t go dismissing that particular attribute so lightly,” she warned. “Someday, when you’re an old lady like me, looking younger than your years will be something you’ll treasure, not disclaim. Mark my words,” she underscored with a look meant to pin Nika against the wall.

“You’re not an old lady, G,” Cole rebutted affectionately, taking her hand in both of his. “You’re just a little older than I am.”

“This is why I keep him around,” Ericka confided to her new doctor. “He’s very good for my ego. Even if he lies really badly,” she added with a laugh. “Now, ask her what you want to ask her, then go before they realize they can do without you at the precinct.” Her thin lips pulled into a frown as she reviewed his attire again. “And maybe you’d better stop at your place to change,” Ericka added with a shake of her head. “What exactly did you rescue Dr. Pulaski from?” she asked, curious. “A garbage dump?”

When the detective didn’t look as if he would answer right away, Nika was more than happy to fill his grandmother in.

“The elevator I was on got stuck between floors and the repairman wasn’t going to be able to get here for a few hours.” She looked across her patient’s bed at the detective. “Your grandson very kindly shimmied down the elevator cables to get me out of there.”

Ericka nodded, as if there was no other course her grandson could have taken. “He is a good boy,” the elderly woman said proudly, giving his hand a squeeze.

Detective Cole Baker hadn’t been a boy in a very long time, Nika caught herself thinking. What she first saw coming to her rescue, his legs wrapped around the cables as easily as if he was climbing down a rope in gym class, was without question all man.

She noted that he appeared somewhat embarrassed by his grandmother’s simple declaration, even though he was trying not to show it. She decided one good rescue deserved another and came to his—verbally.

“So, what are these questions you want to ask?” Nika prompted.

He seemed surprised at her directness. Did she intend to discuss his grandmother’s case in front of her? “You don’t want to go somewhere private to talk?”

“Why? This is about your grandmother.” Nika nodded at the woman who was listening intently to every word. “She has a right to hear whatever’s said.”

Ericka’s thin lips spread even thinner in a pleased, wide smile.

“I like this girl, Coleman.” She looked at the young woman. “Most doctors treat patients as if their minds had already evaporated. That’s especially true if those patients are my age.”

“I think you have every right to know and understand what’s going on,” Nika told her simply. She knew she would want that in the woman’s place. “Dr. Goodfellow wants me to carry out a series of lab tests, and run an EEG to make sure that you’re strong enough to go through this procedure. By the way, when you do have the ablation procedure,” she continued as if passing the tests was a foregone conclusion, “you will have to remain awake.”

Cole eyed her sharply. “They’re not going to put her out?”

“No, but they will numb the area so that you won’t feel any pain,” she reassured both the patient and her grandson quickly. “They just want to know if something out of the ordinary happens. The best way is to keep you conscious and responsive,” she told Ericka. “You’ll be able to help guide them by saying if you can still feel certain things when they test different areas on your body.”

This was all news to the older woman. “Well, if I’m going to help, then I shouldn’t have to pay them the whole charge—” Ericka declared.

“G,” Cole’s tone cautioned his grandmother not to say something that could be construed argumentative.

“You won’t be paying anything,” Nika pointed out, opening the woman’s chart. “You have Medicare and a supplementary secondary carrier. They’re the ones who’ll take care of the bill.”

“Yes, well, it’s the principle of the thing that matters,” Ericka said, her voice trailing off slightly as she seemed to lose momentum.

“How long will it take?” Cole asked, turning his attention to her.

“The surgery?” Nika repeated, guessing what his question referred to. “Most ablations usually run about—”

“No, the tests,” he interrupted before she could finish. “How long before you know if she can have the surgery? The last attack she had was pretty bad. It lasted over two hours.”

“Tattletale,” Ericka accused with an annoyed pout.

Their roles, it occurred to Cole, had somehow gotten reversed and now he was the parent and she the child. He wasn’t used to this.

Nika glanced toward the woman in the bed. A hundred fifty years ago, Ericka Baker would have been viewed as the perfect prototype for a robust, determined pioneer woman. Pioneer women didn’t have time to be sick. It got in their way and annoyed them.

“She doesn’t like the way those palpitations have been restricting her activities.” It was an educated guess on Nika’s part.

He shook his head. “Not a hell of a whole lot, no. Would you?” he challenged.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said honestly. “We should have everything back tomorrow, noon.”

“That long?”

Gauging the duration was all in the eyes of the beholder. Nika laughed. “There was a time when a simple appendectomy kept a patient in the hospital for two weeks,” she told him. “In comparison, this is pretty fast and streamlined.”

She could see that her answer didn’t satisfy him. Hard man to please, she thought. But he wasn’t her concern. His grandmother was. “I’ll call in a favor and we’ll bump you up to the head of the line,” she promised Ericka. “It’s the least I can do, seeing as how your grandson rescued me.”

Ericka nodded again, somewhat placated. “Sounds only fair,” she agreed, glancing toward Cole.

Time for him to go, Nika thought, even though there was something about his presence that was oddly unsettling and yet exciting at the same time. Neither had a place within the framework of her duties.

“And now, Detective, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to make yourself scarce,” she told him.

Not that he planned on staying any longer—the meeting was swiftly breathing down his neck—but having this snippet of a doctor push him out of the room like this raised red flags for him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m going to have to examine your grandmother now,” she told him patiently, “and I think it would be more comfortable for her if you respectfully waited just outside the door.”

He looked at his grandmother and then quickly looked away. It was hard to say if he was more embarrassed for himself, or for the older woman.

“Oh, yeah, well—” Heat rose up along his neck, causing it to turn an unnatural shade of reddish-pink. He was already at the door, turning the doorknob. “I’ll come by after my shift, G.” He tossed the words over his shoulder, along with one last quick glance.

“Unless some pretty girl nabs you,” Ericka qualified, raising her voice to be heard.

He paused, shaking his head. The woman was always trying to get him to pair up with someone. “Not likely,” he told her. “See you tonight,” he added quickly, stepping outside the room.

And then he turned around to see if his grandmother’s doctor was behind him. She was.

“Doctor, here’s my card.” He thrust the small, white card with its dramatic black lettering at her. “Call me if something goes wrong.” It wasn’t a request but an order. “You can reach me at the last number on the bottom anytime.” He tapped it with his forefinger. “Anytime, night or day,” he emphasized.

Nika slipped out of the room for a moment, easing the door closed behind her. It touched her that he was so concerned. Looking at him, at his chiseled features and the hard set of his mouth, she would have said that he didn’t particularly care deeply about anyone—including himself. There was nothing soft about him, nothing vulnerable to indicate intense concern on any level.

Just went to show that you definitely couldn’t judge a book by its cover, she told herself. Not even after the first few pages were glimpsed.

Her hand closed over the card he’d offered her and she tucked it into her pocket.

“I won’t have to use it,” she assured him kindly. “Your grandmother strikes me as a woman who can more than meet any kind of curve that life has to throw at her and come out smiling.”

“She used to be,” he acknowledged and a strain of sadness, which he couldn’t quite cover, echoed in his voice. “But that was before she got this old.”

Nika had known her patient for a total of less than five minutes so far, but some things she could just instinctively sense from the very beginning.

“I wouldn’t let your grandmother hear you say that if I were you,” Nika advised. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of your life.”

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to sleep lightly, he thought, thinking back to some of the undercover cases he’d worked. But he saw no reason to say anything about that to this woman. This wasn’t about him, it was about his grandmother. About keeping her well and thriving the way she always had been.

“Keep the card anyway,” he told her. “Just in case. It’ll make both of us feel better.”

“Us?” she questioned uncertainly.

“My grandmother and me.”

“Oh. Of course.” What was she thinking? Why in heaven’s name would the man be making a reference to the two of them as “us”? Of course he was referring to himself and his grandmother.

That stretch in the elevator addled you more than you’re willing to admit, Nika, she upbraided herself. Get a grip.

Nika rallied, pushing on, as the detective, satisfied that he’d made himself clear, started to leave. “And don’t forget to give me your bill,” she called after him.

He didn’t bother turning around or answering her. He just kept walking.

“Um, Nika, I don’t know if anyone’s explained this to you, but eventually, we’re supposed to be charging them for our services, not the other way around,” an amused female voice said behind her.

Turning around, Nika saw that she’d guessed right. Her older sister—older only by eleven months—stood behind her. It was amazing, though, how much Alyx sounded like Sasha, her oldest cousin and the very first Dr. Pulaski to come to this hospital.

“Alyx, what are you doing here?” Nika asked. And even as she formed the words, the answer came to her and her whole countenance lit up. “Did they send you here to help me?” She tried to recall if Alyx had mentioned anything about having the flu. She couldn’t remember.

“No, I snuck up here as soon as I heard. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Alyx’s eyes washed over her quickly, taking inventory of every limb.

“Heard? Heard what?”

“Someone in the E.R. told me that there was a resident stuck in an elevator in between floors,” Alyx told her.

Nika looked at her, a little surprised. “And you immediately thought of me?” she questioned, then pointed out the obvious before her sister could answer. “Alyx, I’m not the only resident that this hospital has.”

Alyx raised her slender shoulders. “What can I tell you? Some of Mama’s paranoia rubbed off on me.” She looked down at a particularly dark streak of dirt on her sister’s lab coat. It was all the evidence that was needed. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Busted.” Nika laughed. She was already moving away. “But I don’t have time to talk about it right now. I have a patient to get back to.” One of many, she added silently. Nika nodded toward Ericka’s door. “I’ll tell you all about it tonight, I promise. Call me when you’re free. If you’re free,” she qualified, thinking of the very handsome policeman her sister had introduced her to when she’d arrived. The policeman who had arrested Alyx’s heart and placed it behind bars for all eternity. Alyx was going to be the first of them to get married, Nikka thought, with a little mistiness tugging at her soul.

“And you’ll start by explaining what you’re offering that somber-looking hunk money for?” Alyx asked, still standing where she was.

“A clean breast of everything,” Nika promised, crossing her heart with her forefinger.

Not knowing the whole story immediately, she could see, was all but killing her older sister. Alyx had always been insatiable when it came to her curiosity. She always had to know everything about everything.

“It’s not nearly as exciting as you think,” was the only crumb she had time to toss her sister before she hurried back into Ericka Baker’s room.

“About time you came back,” Ericka said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at her doctor. “I thought maybe you decided to run off with my grandson.”

Nika flashed a smile at the woman as she took her stethoscope out of her pocket. “Sorry to disappoint you, no running off.”

“I’m not the one who’s disappointed,” Ericka informed her with conviction.

“Oh? And just who would be the one who’s disappointed?” Nika asked, humoring the woman.

Ericka didn’t answer her. Instead, the elderly woman merely watched her intently, her message silently conveyed.

And then, sitting up straighter, Ericka announced, “Let’s get this show on the road already,” and began to unbutton the top of her nightgown—she’d brought her own, no doubt refusing to be caught dead in the one that the hospital issued.

“Not so fast, Mrs. Baker,” Nika cautioned, placing her hand over her patient’s to stop the older woman from disrobing. “There’s a little matter of a history and physical to get out of the way first.”

Ericka seemed somewhat annoyed and very impatient. “Nothing’s changed since I saw my doctor two days ago,” the woman told her.

“That might be true,” Nika agreed, humoring her, “but I need to acquaint myself with you and I’ve never taken down your history before.”

Very slowly, a smile of approval slipped over the older woman’s lips. “Believe in crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s, do you?”

“Every time,” Nika told her.

“Not a bad quality, I guess.” She didn’t quite succeed in sounding indifferent. Ericka eyed the physician’s left hand. “You married?”

She thought of her mother, who had been crusading for each of her daughters to get married since Alyx turned twenty. She was desperate to be a grandmother—and have more grandchildren than Uncle Josef and Aunt Magda. “No, I’m not.”

“Planning to be?” Mrs. Baker prodded, watching her carefully as she answered.

“Someday, yes.” But that someday was a long way in the future, Nika added silently. She wanted to get a practice going, wanted to do things that really mattered first. If marriage was in the cards for her, it would happen. But there was enough time to worry about that later.

Ericka cocked her head, still looking at her closely, her expression saying that she was confident she could detect a lie if she heard one. “So there’s no one important in your life right now?”

“You, Mrs. Baker,” Nika told her warmly as she prepared to take the woman’s blood pressure. “You’re important in my life.”

Ericka frowned. “Is that your hokey way of telling me that you’re dedicated?”

“You might say that,” Nika allowed with a laugh. “It’s also a ‘hokey’ way of saying that I care about my patients. Every one of them. And since you’re one of my patients…”

Ericka nodded her head, holding up her hand to keep her doctor from continuing. “I get it. You care about me. Well, if you do, it’s nice to know. Now,” the old woman instructed as she braced herself and raised her chin, “do your worst.”

“What I plan to do, Mrs. Baker,” Nika told her gently, “is my very best.”

Ericka’s head bobbed curtly. “I’ll let you know if you succeed.”

Nika pressed her lips together. She’d come to learn that patients didn’t like it when you laughed at what they said, unless they were intentionally trying to be funny. “I’m counting on it,” she told the woman.

Chapter 4

Nika frowned as she appraised the upper and lower numbers on the blood pressure gauge in her hand. They weren’t what she wanted them to be, especially since the woman in the bed was on blood pressure medication.

“It’s a little high,” she told Ericka as she deflated the cuff. Pausing to make a quick notation of the reading on the woman’s chart, Nika swiftly unwrapped the cuff from the thin arm.

Ericka waved away the note of concern. “Of course it’s high. My new doctor kept me waiting. I got aggravated.”

Nika looked at her. She knew the woman knew better than that. “That wouldn’t have caused your blood pressure to elevate like that unless you were waiting for me in a yard full of pit bulls.” She tucked the cuff away. “I’d like to see that come down a little bit before we finally whisk you off for surgery.”

Ericka made a noise that sounded very much like a snort. “You forfeited the ‘whisking’ part by making me take all these tests you’re talking about first.”

Nika placed a placating hand on top of one of the woman’s blue-veined hands and said gently, “Mrs. Baker, the object here is to make you well, not to see how fast we can get you in and out of the hospital. We don’t take chances with our patients’ lives here.”

Ericka looked at her for a long moment, as if assessing the genuineness of the statement. And then her sharper features melted into a softer expression as she smiled.

“Call me G,” she urged.

Nika cocked her head. She’d heard the detective refer to the woman that way. Was it her middle initial, or the first letter of some kind of nickname?

“G?” Nika repeated, an unspoken question in her voice.

The platinum-blond head nodded. “That’s what I told Coleman to call me when he first came to live with me. I hated the way Grandmother sounded. Still do. Makes me think of some old, bent-over woman, shuffling around in sensible shoes, her white hair pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck.” Finished with her description, Ericka shivered.

“No worries,” Nika told her with a laugh. “That certainly doesn’t begin to describe you. I thought the computer made a mistake when I looked down at your chart earlier. If ever a woman didn’t look anywhere close to eighty-four, it’s you.”

Ericka positively beamed. “You know, you just might have become my new best friend after all,” the older woman told her.

“I’ll settle for being the doctor who makes you feel well enough to go home, Mrs.— G.” About to use the woman’s last name, Nika corrected herself at the last moment.

“Fair enough,” Ericka declared. “Continue,” she urged, indicating that she was ready to endure the rest of the physical.

Nika suppressed her smile and did as she was “bidden.”

She had just finished the feisty woman’s exam and was carefully entering the last of her notes on the chart when the sound jolted her. Piercing the late morning air, the alarm sounded a great deal like an air raid siren used in one of those old movies depicting Europe during World War II.

Except that this wasn’t an air raid. And rather than warning of a possible multitude of deaths, this had to do with only one possible demise. But even one was one too many.

She didn’t want to have another on the books if she could help it.

Nika instantly abandoned the chart, setting it down on a side counter.

“What is that awful noise?” Ericka asked as she put her hands over her ears and tried to press out the sound.

“I’ll put down you have good hearing when I get back,” Nika promised, trying to divert the woman’s curiosity from the reason that the alarm was going off. She didn’t want the woman frightened—and she definitely didn’t want her to start wondering if perhaps that alarm would ever go off for her.

“What’s going on?” Ericka demanded, shouting in order to be heard.

“It’s a code blue,” was all Nika said before she ran out into the hall—making sure she closed the door to Ericka’s room behind her.

The sound that signaled the very real possibility of someone’s life ebbing away filled the hallway, making it momentarily impossible for her to ascertain from which direction the alarm was coming. The next moment, Nika had her answer. Alerted by the monitor at the nurses’ station, the two responding nurses and an orderly were all running toward one room.

A quick scrutiny told Nika that so far, no doctor was coming to the patient’s aid. They were still incredibly shorthanded.

“Crash cart,” she yelled out to the other three. “We’re going to need a crash cart.”

The orderly, Gerald Mayfield, a powerful-looking man who was almost as wide as he was tall and had helped get her out of the elevator earlier, fell back to fetch the lifesaving device.

She knew who the room belonged to a second before she entered. John Kelly. She’d paused to talk to the man this morning just before she’d gone down to the cafeteria. And subsequently gotten stuck in the elevator on her way back, she thought ruefully. Maybe if she’d taken the stairs, she would have gotten back sooner and somehow could have prevented this.

God knew how, she thought now, looking at the painfully thin man whose heart had abruptly stopped beating.

The monitor attached to him, tracking his vital signs, had nothing to show for its efforts but very thin, straight lines. They were accompanied by an eerie, flat note that mournfully announced the end of a life.

“There’s no pulse, Doctor,” Katie O’Connor, one of the two nurses who’d made it to the patient’s room first, told her. The nurse’s long fingers were still pressed against the elderly man’s throat, as if that would somehow make his vital signs magically reappear once again.

But they didn’t. The straight lines on the monitor continued going nowhere.

It couldn’t end this quickly, Nika silently argued in her head.

“He was just talking to me,” she said out loud, addressing her words to Katie. “Telling me how much he was looking forward to going back to the nursing home because he’d figured out a chess move that would confound his roommate. He was positively gleeful about it. He didn’t sound or behave like a man who was about to die,” she added, saying the words more to herself than to the other two women.

Katie, who’d been a nurse more years than she’d willingly admit, looked at her with sympathy. “Can’t always tell by the way they look, Doctor.”

She knew that. And yet…

Behind her, Gerald was coming in, pushing the crash cart before him.

“Charge ’em,” Nika ordered, grabbing the defibrillator paddles. She held them up while Gerald quickly covered both surfaces with a gel. Rubbing them together, Nika called out, “Clear!” before applying both paddles to Kelly’s chest.

His body convulsed in response, clearing the mattress in some places, but ultimately the former police sergeant didn’t awaken from what appeared to be his now permanent sleep.

Nika didn’t want to let him go.

“C’mon, Mr. Kelly, you’ve got a chess game to finish, remember? You wanted to show Don that he couldn’t just come in and be the center of attention, remember? Don’t wimp out on me now,” she pleaded. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked at the nurse who was now at the controls of the defibrillator. “Again!” The next moment, with the amps raised, Nika cried “Clear!” and tried to revive the man again.

With the same results.

Twice more she made the retired police sergeant’s body go through its macabre, lifeless dance and had the exact same results each time.

Holding the paddles, she saw the two nurses and the orderly looking at her, waiting. Silently telling her to do what she knew she had to do.

Call it.

She released the sigh that was rattling around in her chest. “Time of death—eleven twenty-three,” Nika pronounced quietly and then returned the paddles to the cart.

“You did everything you could do, Doctor,” Katie told her sympathetically. “It was just his time to go,” the grandmother of five added softly.

“Besides,” the other nurse, Jenna, chimed in, “where he’s going is a lot better than where he would have gone if you’d brought him back from the brink,” she assured Nika with the confidence of the very young who never doubted themselves. “Have you seen that nursing home he was living in?” Jenna, all of twentysomething, shivered to make her point. “If that’s the way I’m going to end up, shoot me now.”

“Hey, a little respect for the dead,” Gerald chided sharply. Jenna frowned and fell into a brooding silence as she slowly stripped the deceased man of the various tubes and wires that had been connected to him. Gerald spared Nika a compassionate look. “Death’s all part of it, Dr. Pulaski,” he told her philosophically. “You shouldn’t take it so hard.”

The orderly was right. After all, what did she expect, Nika asked herself. She was working in the Geriatrics Unit, for heaven’s sake. These were old people. A lot of them had overtaxed their immune systems and were susceptible to so many different things, things that could fell them without a moment’s notice.

That was why they were running understaffed in this unit, because of the threat of someone unwittingly bringing in the flu. They couldn’t control the visitors who came in—although, sadly, a lot of these patients had no one to visit them—but they could at least control the staff’s interactions with the patients.

Nika nodded in response to what the orderly said. She forced herself to focus on the steps she had to take next, not on what had just happened.

“I guess it just seems like a lot of these old people have been dying lately,” she murmured. And death was not something she would ever get used to.

“That’s because they have,” Katie told her. She went about tidying the man up so that he had a little dignity left, even in death. “They’re old people,” she emphasized, just as Nika had in her mind. “It goes with the territory and is to be expected. It’s a lot harder to handle when you lose a patient in the pediatrics ward,” she pointed out. “At least these people have had relatively full lives.”

Nika nodded, then squared her shoulders, silently telling herself to get over it, to straighten up and fly right. She’d do none of her remaining patients any good if she allowed herself to break down and cry.

“You’re right,” she told Katie.

The woman grinned broadly. “Of course I’m right. It’s in my contract,” Katie told her with a wink. “Go help your living patients. There’s nothing more you can do for Mr. Kelly. We’ll do what needs to be done for him now,” the nurse assured her, taking charge.

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