Undeniably Convenient (Boston's Irresistible Billionaires Book 1), page 20
Things I did not tell my best friend Keegan? Bennett is meeting Callan and Layla tonight. It’s not me bringing a guy to meet my guardians. It’s not. It’s me bringing the guy trying to knock me up to meet them. That’s all.
But until then, I should go home, sleep, and not take a test. Night shifts are rough enough, and I’ve been battling a case of food poisoning I got from some bad fish the other night. But if I’m not pregnant this time, I’m going to move out for a bit and maybe only sleep there when we’re actively trying and I’m ovulating.
Living with Bennett—roommates or not—is tempting my heart too much. Plus, it’s risky. We’ve nearly been caught too many times. He had me pinned in an old, unused lab the other day, and a few days before that, he fucked me against the glass of the gallery over an empty OR. And then, just a couple of days ago, he dragged me into an empty patient room and finger-fucked me to orgasm twice.
Plus he watches me constantly. I feel his eyes on me all the time, and eventually someone is going to notice.
Keegan offers me some of her drink and my stomach roils. I shake my head, puffing out my cheeks as if I’m about to boot. “No thanks.”
“Maybe you should eat something. Even just some crackers.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. I seriously can’t. Tonight I’ll eat something at dinner. Some plain pasta, maybe.”
“You’re going to dehydrate.”
I pull up my sleeve and show her the IV I have capped off in my arm. When I first got sick, Bennett slept in my bed with me and took care of me all night. And when I started throwing up water, he panicked and put in an IV, making sure I got glucose and fluids.
“I don’t see fluids in there now.”
“I’ll do another round when I go home,” I promise her because I likely should. My blood sugars have been a mess since I got sick. “I had a few sips of a sports drink not too long ago.”
“Fine. I’ll stop mothering you. How’s it going with your secret lover?”
I roll my eyes and watch as a baby starts to squirm and then cry. One of the nurses comes over and picks him up, cuddling him to her chest. I want one. “How do you not want one of these?”
“Katy,” she demands. “You haven’t said anything about it to any of us. What’s the deal?”
I hitch up one shoulder. “There is no deal other than the deal we already have.”
“Are you still sleeping together?”
Thankfully my phone vibrates with a page, so I don’t have to answer her. I don’t want to hear the lecture. The one where she reminds me how crazy what I’m doing with Bennett is. I like having sex with him. He’s good at it and being with him that way is perfectly and undeniably convenient. It’s like trying to get pregnant with a bonus I never originally anticipated.
And the moment I’m pregnant, it’ll stop. Once that happens, everything will fall in line between us the way we’ve designed it to. We both know that. We both hope this is only borrowed time. So why not take advantage of it while we can?
It’s like Bennett said, he’s fucking me with his dick and not his heart, and every time he’s inside me, I remind myself of that.
“I gotta go,” I tell her, reading the stat page to the OR. “Some kind of construction site accident.”
“But you’re off,” she maintains. “They shouldn’t be paging you.”
I shrug. “They must need me, and I only got off ten minutes ago.” I pull away from the wall and head toward the stairs. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“You will, because tomorrow night we’re taking you out for dinner and you’re having a slumber party at our place,” she calls after me. “No exceptions.”
“Sounds awesome. I might seriously need it. Love you, Keegs!”
“Love you too, bitch.”
Someone nearby hisses at her, and I catch Keegan apologizing for her curse just as I open the door to the stairwell—no more freaking elevators for me—and fly up three flights, panting as I reach the trauma surgical floor. I have a headache and my stomach feels like a sponge someone keeps squeezing, but all that starts to fade as I enter the OR.
Holy hell.
“Great. You’re still here. I’m sorry to call you back, but we need all the hands we can get at the moment. Go get gowned and gloved up, but don’t worry about scrubbing in.”
I blink at Bennett and then over toward the patient who has a rusty metal rod straight through his stomach and some kind of tool stuck in his side. Bolting out of the room, I quickly throw on my scrub cap and booties, wash my hands, and then race back in. A nurse helps me gown up, and I snap on a pair of gloves even though I’m not sterile.
The patient is sitting up and intubated, and I come in beside Cricket, who is not pleased I’m here to help hold the patient upright. “What happened?” I ask. Two nurses are working on draping the patient and making the area as sterile as they can while me and another nurse hold the patient and gurney steady so he doesn’t move or shift even the slightest amount.
“Construction site accident. He wasn’t harnessed in, and he fell. His blood alcohol level is more than twice the legal limit, which only complicates this further.”
“Damn,” I mutter.
“Seriously,” Cricket snarks. “What kind of moron is drunk at seven in the morning on a construction site?”
“Someone with a problem from the sound of it,” I retort. “What’s your plan?”
“Dr. Lawson and I are doing the surgery. You’re just here to help like one of the nurses.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline, and I glance over at the nurses in here who are—rightfully so—pissed at the snotty implication that nurses aren’t just as important as doctors, which is absolute bullshit.
Bennett gives Cricket a hard look for that comment too, but then turns back to me. “Dr. Peterson and I are going to go scrub in, but I want you to stay with the patient and keep him as steady as possible.”
Cricket gives me a bright and shiny smug grin, and I so want to tell Cricket to fuck herself with the rusty pole, but I keep my mouth shut and my jaw clenched.
“What a bitch,” I mutter under my breath the moment they’re gone.
“A serious bitch,” Martha, the nurse helping to hold up the patient, says.
The anesthesiologist snickers. “You need to be careful, Katy. She bashes you every chance she gets and is quick to steal surgeries.”
“She’s like an ambulance chaser,” I drawl. “A surgical bottom feeder. But for real, have you ever seen anything like this? What is that tool in his side?”
“On X-ray, it looks like some kind of pliers.”
I wince. “Ouch.”
The OR doors swing open, and Bennett and Cricket return along with some interns and second-and-third-year residents who are eager to watch since cases like this don’t come along every day and will require a lot of moving parts to make it successful.
“Thank you, Dr. Barrows. I can have one of the interns come and spell you.”
Dr. Fields comes in and takes over holding the patient up for me. “Can I scrub in?”
Bennett gives me a long look as if he’s debating that but then nods. “Yeah. Go ahead, but be quick.”
I catch Cricket complaining about that, but she can eat my ass if she thinks I’m not scrubbing in. I set my phone to vibrate and drop it on the table along with the others before I fly out of the OR to scrub in at light speed. In a flash, I’m back in, getting regowned and gloved up, and then coming in and going exactly where Bennett points me to.
“Katy, I want you on the other side there beside Cricket. We’re going to start with the tool first since the pole is tamponading any bleeders in the chest, and it appears that the pliers are pressing right into his liver, which is bleeding profusely. Let’s move fast, pack off, and cauterize what we can so we can move onto the pole and then open him up.”
An incision is made, and then the three of us get to work, packing off the liver that is not in good shape. I’m shaking from the adrenaline, which is a bit odd since I never shake in situations like this, but then again, this isn’t an everyday trauma.
“It’s sclerosed,” Cricket laments. “I don’t see how we’re going to be able to stop the bleeding like this.”
It’s true. The liver has a lot of damage from what appears to be years of alcohol abuse, and unfortunately, sclerosed livers bleed and don’t clot well. It’s an absolute mess. More blood is hung to transfuse and keep the patient’s vitals stable—which they shockingly are—and we do what we can before the team starts in with the saw to cut the pole. We stand back while they do this, oxygen turned off as sparks fly, which is why the anesthesiologist now has to manually bag the patient to keep him breathing.
I’ve never seen anything like this in my four-going-on-five years as a resident. It’s seriously the coolest and craziest thing ever, and I can’t wait to pick Bennett’s brain about it later. He throws me a side-eye, giving me a sly wink, and I feel my face heating, my skin growing clammy, and my heart beating faster.
Once the pole is cut, we jump back in, sliding it out slowly while working from behind to stop any bleeding. I’m sweating, my muscles are aching, my heart is racing a mile a minute, and… my vision sways.
The hell?
I brush that off and keep going, following Bennett’s directive.
“Someone’s phone is vibrating like crazy over here,” the circulating nurse announces just as we finally manage to remove the pole and lay the patient down so we can open him up and fix his liver and other internal injuries.
“Is it a call or a page?”
“Neither,” she says. “It looks like an app notification.”
“Whatever it is can wait,” Bennett growls, annoyed by the interruption.
“I thought we weren’t allowed to have app notifications going,” Cricket gripes, and she’s right. We’re not. We’re not supposed to get notifications from things like social media, weather, or any other non-essential apps. They’re distracting in the OR. Clearly.
Except suddenly, I think I know what that buzzing is. I think it’s my continuous glucose monitor giving me a warning. Because I’m sweating and my heart is pounding in my chest. I’ve got a headache, my muscles are shaky, and my stomach is still feeling like that sponge.
Shit. My blood sugar is low. Just how low I don’t know—low enough to trigger the alert—but I don’t want to check it in a room full of other doctors, Bennett, and most of all, Cricket.
Only as things continue, it becomes harder and harder to ignore. I can feel that it’s low. Seriously low. And when my vision starts to tilt from side to side, I take a wobbly step back.
“Dr. Barrows?” Bennett questions, only his voice sounds distant. Tinny. And my vision isn’t just swaying now, it’s almost cartoonishly wrong. I need to get out of here. I need some orange juice or one of the glucose tabs I keep in my bag, but I put that back in my locker when I got the page.
“I…” Oh God. “I’m sorry, Dr. Lawson. I’ll be right back.”
I have no idea if he can understand me or if that comes out clear at all. It doesn’t matter. I start to head for the door, willing myself to make it. Only I’m not sure I can.
“Katy?!” his voice calls urgently just as the room crackles and my vision is fuzzy. “Someone help her!” he cries out, but it’s too late, and I feel myself start to fall just as everything goes black.
Chapter Twenty
I’m going out of my mind. The patient on my table is bleeding as fast as we can give him new blood. His surgery is more than just a little complicated and requires my complete attention. But Katy is unconscious on the goddamn OR floor.
Adrenaline shakes me and shortens my breath. I need to get to my girl.
“Dr. Lawson, you’re sterile and your patient is bleeding,” the nurse on my right reminds me as I instinctively go for her. Fuck!
“What’s going on?” I bark, my body and mind screaming at me to run to her and pick her up, but I fucking can’t or my patient will die. “Someone check her vitals. What’s her blood sugar?”
“We’re on it, Dr. Lawson,” one of the circulating nurses tells me as she and an intern are all over Katy, checking her blood pressure and her glucose. I can see from here on the vitals cart screen that her heart rate is one-thirty-eight and her blood pressure is shit at 86/52. No wonder she passed out. She’s been sick with food poisoning, and I should have made her stay home again last night. She was adamant and promised to keep the IV site in her arm in case she needed fluids.
Which she likely did but didn’t take the time to get them.
Goddammit! Why didn’t I make her stay home with me where I could take care of her? Hell, why did I let them page her, and why the fuck did I let her scrub in when she was already on all night? I’m her boss. Her… her… fuck, what am I to her? Not her boyfriend or even her lover. I’m not casual, and I’m not a friend with benefits either. I’m simply the guy she’s living with who is trying to knock her up.
But… she’s more than that to me. So much more.
She always has been and seeing her like this… “I need an update,” rips from my throat.
“Blood sugar is forty-one,” the nurse announces with a grim expression. “We’re going to move her down to the emergency department.”
I nod, even as I grit my teeth behind my mask and clench the instrument in my hand a little too tight. Forty-one?! How long was she feeling that before she tried to step away? Dammit, Katy!
We were going to take another test tonight after dinner with her uncle and stepmother. I haven’t met them yet, and knowing how close they are with Katy, I’ve been nervous about it. I invited them over and offered to cook, but Katy suggested we all go out to Stella’s to make it more casual.
Her uncle is going to kill me for not taking better care of her and I won’t blame him.
“Okay. Take her down and notify them that you’re on your way. Thanks.” I don’t mean it. I’m ready to burn down the world to go with her. “Start some D10 saline. She already has a line in her left arm. She had food poisoning the other day and required some fluids for it.”
One of the nurses gives me an acknowledging wave, and then they transfer a pale and unconscious Katy onto a gurney, lift the side rails up, and wheel her out. Her uncle is working down in the emergency department today. He’ll take care of her. Even if I can’t.
Frustration slams through me, and it’s taking everything I have not to call in another attending to take over so I can go be with Katy and hold her goddamn hand and help fix her.
Except I can’t.
No one knows anything about us or what we’ve been doing, and not only would it ruin my career, but it could be devastating to hers. She wants this fellowship—and she’s earned it—and that could all be ripped away from her in the blink of an eye if I do or say the wrong thing.
Fuck!
I can’t do this anymore. How can I keep her a secret? I want this baby with her, but now… I also want her. I told myself if it took a few months for us to get pregnant, I could fuck her out of my system. But that’s a joke. So laughable I’m almost embarrassed I believed something so ludicrous.
There is no fucking Katy out of my system. She is my system.
Doesn’t she know she has to take care of herself? That I can’t lose her?
I swallow thickly at that.
I walked away from Liz without a second thought or hesitation. But seeing Katy pass out, seeing her on the ground, imagining the worst… I don’t want to lose Katy. Not ever. The thought makes it feel like someone is reaching inside and slicing out my organs one by one. I survived letting Liz go, but I don’t think I’d survive letting Katy go a second time.
It’s been over three weeks since Cayden left. Three goddamn weeks of trying not to think about what he said to me about her. I told myself he was wrong and that he only said that to get a rise out of me and nothing more. That liking Katy as much as I do isn’t the same as loving her. But the truth is, I’ve been lying to myself longer than that. Since Katy and I started this.
Months of pretending I don’t think about her all the time. Months of pretending that she hasn’t just turned my world upside down, she’s become it.
But I can’t pretend anymore. Not as the truth slams into me with the force of a bullet.
I love Katy. I’m totally, wildly, head over heels in love with her. She makes me want things I swore I’d never want again.
I knew Katy would own my ass. I had a suspicion I’d be in trouble if I didn’t lock myself down. But I never expected this. I never expected to feel this way again. I didn’t think I had it in me.
I thought Liz had ruined me, but the truth is, it’s Katy who did that. Long before anyone else came into the picture. Katy, my beautiful, sweet, incredible girl, is on her way to the emergency room with a life-threateningly low blood sugar, and I need to be there with her.
“Wow,” Cricket remarks, snapping me out of my thoughts and back on the patient whose life I’m here to save. “That was unbelievable.”
“Yes,” I say lowly, blowing out a slow, even breath.
“I can’t believe how unprofessional Katy is.”
“What?” I bark as I continue to work on his liver wound.
“Well, you wouldn’t see me passing out from a little food poisoning. A real trauma surgeon doesn’t let things like that stop them from doing their job. I don’t even care that she’s a diabetic. That’s utterly disgraceful.”
“Utterly disgraceful?” I parrot, beyond incredulous—and frankly, fucking furious, to the point where she’s lucky there’s a patient between us saving her ass from me. I finally start to get a good footing on the liver, and the bleeding slows. “Dr. Peterson, what is wrong with you? Are you that nasty and heartless of a person that you have to be disparaging about a fellow doctor and colleague who just passed out from dangerously low blood sugar?”
“It’s not nasty and heartless if it’s the truth,” she defends with an insolent sniff. “Dr. Barrows doesn’t have what it takes the way I do.”
Rage bubbles up inside me, threatening to overtake my better sense, but I cool myself down enough to only scoff derisively at her. “Do you want to know what makes a good trauma surgeon, Dr. Peterson? Having some humanity. Something I’ve seen in spades from Dr. Barrows and completely lacking from you. You think it makes you look better to shit all over Dr. Barrows while attempting to boost yourself up, but it doesn’t. It makes you look catty, resentful, and insecure. Now get out of my OR. Williams and Shefter.” I call over to the two third-year residents who are standing off to the side sporting matching owl eyes. “Please go scrub in. I’m going to need your help.”
