But Lina, our anesthesiologist, was no help. She just solemnly nodded from behind her monitor. A six-foot, imposing blonde from Austria, she almost never speaks during operations, just sits there watching over the patient, a silent guardian.
And now Adele, our junior nurse, joined in. “A nurse from pediatrics knows a nurse who knows a doctor who knows another nurse who worked with Corrigan in LA.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “They had a thing.”
“I don’t want to know,” I lied.
“I do,” said Krista quickly.
Adele’s eyes went big. She’s so young and innocent, sometimes she looks half kitten. “They have this swimming pool in the basement, for physiotherapy, and someone came in and they were—”
“No—” said Krista.
“Yes! In the shallow end, with her legs wrapped around him.”
Krista squealed with delight.
“Can we just focus on the patient?” I pleaded. I knew it was useless. They were like a couple of teenage girls squee-ing over the hot new exchange student. Who was also the star quarterback and was in a band. The more they talked, the more I could feel Corrigan’s muscled hip pressing against mine. I started to think about that stubbled jaw and how it would rasp gently against my cheek as he moved in for a kiss. This is crazy! I never got like this about a guy. And guys never look at me the way he had.
“Dominic. Even his first name’s sexy,” said Krista.
I shook my head. “No it isn’t.” Yes it is.
“He’s like some muscley, Irish doctor of lurvvv,” said Krista with relish.
“No nurse can resist him?” I asked sarcastically.
“Not just nurses,” said Krista. “Doctors. Surgeons....” She looked at me. I appeared completely disinterested... I hoped. “Anyone female,” Krista continued. “The man gets around. I heard that when he was in Detroit, someone walked into an office, looking for the hospital’s head of legal, but Corrigan was sitting in her chair. And then they see her heels, sticking out from under the desk.”
Blood was welling up in the wound. “Could I get some suction, please?” I asked.
Krista dutifully vacuumed the blood away. But then, “That’s what he said.”
She and Adele doubled over, giggling uncontrollably behind their masks. I swear I even heard a snort from Lina. Goddamn that man! He was three floors away and he was still managing to disrupt my neat, ordered little world.
I closed the hole in his chest, then started stitching him up. There. Finished. The guy would heal up just fine.
And staring at the wound, I had to admit something. The bleeding had been bad, but, with some fast work downstairs, I’d handled it. His heart, though, had been about to stop. If we’d left the knife in as I’d wanted, this guy probably wouldn’t have made it.
Corrigan was a cocky, risk-taking womanizer. But he’d been right.
When I’d closed up and finished, I went out into the hallway and leaned my head against the window that looks out over the town. It was March and so far it had been a mild winter with only an inch of snow on the ground.
Mount Mercy, named for the mountain that rises above it, is really too small to need a hospital, but they had to build one somewhere to serve all the villages around the area. Most of the staff don’t even live here. They commute from one of the other towns, where there are movie theaters and more than one restaurant. But I love this place. I love the way it looks in the summer, with wildflowers turning the fields into a blaze of color and—even though I hate the cold—I love how it looks now, in winter, with the snow dusting the rooftops.
I love that most of the buildings date back to the Gold Rush, and that a lot of the locals have roots here going back that far. Even the police feel old-fashioned. Looking down Main Street, I could pick out the well-cushioned body of Earl, the head of our tiny police force, as he patrolled on foot, the sun glinting off his silver walrus mustache. Beside him was Lloyd, the young cop he was training. The hospital was a regular stop for them on their beat. In fact, Earl seemed to hang around the hospital much more than he needed to, as if he liked spending time here. None of us could figure out why. But he brought in boxes of his homemade apple and caramel donuts, so no one argued. It’s a cozy nest of a town.
The mountain freaks a lot of people out. It’s beautiful, with thick pine forests and a gorgeous white snowcap, but on the side closest to the town there’s a huge outcropping that looms over us. It literally casts a shadow over the town each morning. If all that rock ever broke loose, it’d slide straight down the mountain and bury us, but nature has smiled on us ever since the town was formed a hundred years ago: hence Mount Mercy. And I like it. It’s a reassuring sign that nothing ever changes here.