After the Christmas Party(122)

He glanced over at the angel monitoring Mr. Ryker’s vital signs.

She caught him looking. Instant hot pink tinged what he could see of her upper cheeks peeking out from behind her surgical face mask. He winked and her color deepened.

Something warm and fuzzy, like the smell of cookies baking, filled him. Something that just made him feel…happy.

Odd that the feeling felt strange, because he couldn’t think of anyone he’d label as happier than him. He was totally happy go lucky. Yet he couldn’t deny that the feeling felt alien.

And addictive because already he knew he’d want more when the feeling waned.

Maybe everything would go well with Mr. Ryker’s arteriogram and the man wouldn’t need anything beyond a few stents. Then, Lord willing, Riley would ask Trinity to go to a late lunch.

“Vitals are good,” she said, probably more just to say something rather than to actually inform him.

After she’d prepped Mr. Ryker’s groin, Riley numbed the area with an anesthetic and made a penciltip-sized incision. Carefully, he threaded the cardiac catheter through the femoral artery and up into Mr. Ryker’s heart.

Mr. Ryker’s elevated enzymes had already conveyed that there was cardiac tissue not getting proper perfusion. Riley had hoped he’d find a single small blockage that could be fixed easily with a stent to restore blood flow. He found much more than that. Unfortunately.

Mr. Ryker’s mammary artery had a large area of calcification and stenosis. Plus, there were other areas of calcification scattered throughout the arteries. Riley carefully positioned the catheter tip and placed a stent, then another, corrected the blockages that he could via an artificial material holding the artery open. Unfortunately, the stents weren’t nearly enough to restore blood flow to the tissue. He withdrew the catheter.

“He’s going to need a coronary artery bypass graft,” he told another nurse, while Trinity applied pressure to where the catheter had been withdrawn. “Find an available vascular surgeon stat and let’s get Mr. Ryker into the operating room.”

So much for taking Trinity out to eat any time soon. They’d be here for several hours yet.

Trinity wasn’t sure how she’d gone from being in the catheter lab to the operating room as that wasn’t usual protocol. At least, it hadn’t been standard at the hospital where she’d worked in Memphis, but there she was. In the operating room. With Riley.

She was working as his assistant and blowing CO2 into Mr. Ryker’s open chest. That helped keep blood from interfering with Riley being able to readily see where he was making the anastomosis in the mammary artery to loop the vessel into the right coronary artery. While keeping the CO2 blowing at just the correct angle, she watched him carefully cut away a pedicule and reroute the artery. Painstakingly, he sutured the arteries together, making sure not to damage the vessels.

Another nurse dabbed at his forehead. Trinity found herself wishing she was the one touching him. Silly really. They were at the hospital. Working to save a man’s life. Touching the cardiac surgeon while he performed a procedure should be the absolute last thing on her mind.

She’d touched him the night before.

On the lips under the mistletoe and again on the dance floor and again this morning when she’d reached out to touch his magnificent chest. Who knew where else she’d touched him during the night? After all, she’d woken up spooned against that long, lean body of his.

She swallowed back the knot forming in her throat and refocused her attention on the CO2.

After what seemed like hours she snuck a peek. His blue eyes, which were normally so full of mischief, were focused intently on the job at hand, on how he meticulously placed sutures, making sure the vessel remained patent, that every movement of his hands were precise.

He’d been full of fun and teasing The night before, and even this morning. Now he was as serious as serious could be. Which one was the real him? The mischievous player who’d stolen a kiss from her under the mistletoe or the brilliant, intense heart surgeon attempting to save his patient’s life?

“How late do you have to stay?” Riley asked Trinity later that day, hoping she wouldn’t have to pull a full shift.

“I’m not sure. If nothing else has come into the emergency room, I expect the charge nurse will let me go soon.” She gave him a suspicious look. “Why? Do you need me to help you with something? Another procedure?”

“I do need your help with something. Have dinner with me.”

Her brow lifted. “You need help with dinner?”

“I’ll be lonely if you don’t join me.”

“I seriously doubt you’re ever lonely.”