Page 13 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)

Reggie

I could still feel the cold press of the gun against my temple, even though it was gone—even though the prisoner had collapsed and security had stormed the room—I could still feel it.

Phantom pressure.

A ghost of fear.

Everything had happened fast after the shot. The bullet hadn’t hit me—it had struck the wall, fired wild as Hauser dropped. He passed out mid-threat, bleeding out on the floor. The gun clattered beside him.

Then, officers secured the room. Nina was rushed out. I stayed because Hauser was my patient, and he was crashing, and I was the only one in the room who knew what to do.

But I wasn’t alone for long.

“ Move !” Elias’s voice cut through the chaos as he burst through the OR doors .

Someone shouted that he wasn’t cleared yet, but he didn’t stop. He shoved through the cluster of trauma nurses and corrections officers like they were made of air to reach me.

His eyes scanned me first—head to toe, frantic. He was looking for blood, for wounds, for…

“I’m okay,” I said gently.

“Gigi, you’re bleeding.” His voice was raw, tinged with hysteria.

I softened with understanding. “The blood is not mine, Eli.”

He exhaled hard, shaky—then turned to the patient.

“He’s tamponading.” I kneeled beside Hauser’s body on the floor. “I can’t get a pulse.”

“He’s coding,” Elias confirmed, already snapping on gloves. “We’re opening him up. Now.”

“Get him up on the table,” I shouted.

The trauma team was with us, and Hauser was back on the table. As a nurse hooked the instruments to him, I grabbed the trauma tray.

Elias used shears to open the gown, then made a clean incision from the sternum to the abdomen. I retracted the tissue and exposed the ribs. He cracked the chest open with the rib spreader, fast and brutal.

Blood surged out.

“Pericardial sac is distended.” I watched it balloon.

He sliced it open with a gloved hand, blood pouring out under pressure. “Right ventricle’s ruptured.”

“Suction,” I called.

A nurse handed it off. I took it and cleared the field while Elias applied pressure directly to the heart.

“Get me the epi,” he ordered.

I handed him the syringe. He injected it straight into the myocardium.

“Manual compressions,” he ordered, and I complied. “Right there. You’ve got it.”

I nodded, locking in. “Sinus rhythm returning on the monitor. Carotid’s back. Weak, but there.”

“Keep pressure on the ventricle,” he instructed.

We moved fluidly, synchronized, and as we did, there was no past, no Boston, and no betrayal—just the rhythm of a heart we refused to let stop.

An hour later, I sat on the edge of a gurney in the hallway, hands finally clean, adrenaline fading into a bone-deep ache. Cindy had forced me to take a break, and someone had shoved a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar into my hand that I didn’t remember asking for.

I was eating the chocolate without tasting it when Luther sat down beside me.

“You wanna bite?” I held the bar of Vosges up. Someone had given me the good stuff .

He dutifully broke a piece and stuffed it into his mouth. We ate quietly.

“You okay?” he finally asked.

I took a sip of coffee, which was lukewarm and tasted awful. “Yeah.”

“You scared the hell out of all of us, Reggie.”

“I scared me,” I admitted. My voice sounded hollow. My ears were still ringing from the gunshot.

He nudged me with his shoulder. “Elias got to you before security gave the all-clear. They tried to stop him. He pushed through. I think one of the guys he pushed was a cop.”

I looked over at him.

He grinned. “Full-on surgeon mode. Barking orders. Looked like he was going to throw a punch if anyone tried to slow him down.”

I pursed my lips.

“He was losing it in the control room. We all were,” Luther added. “Thought you were for sure dead.”

A strange tightness wrapped around my heart—not painful, just…intense. I didn’t know what to do with what Luther was telling me.

“Gigi, you’re bleeding.”

“The blood is not mine, Eli.”

I had felt his terror, and we’d been, for those few seconds, as intimate as we were when he was inside me.

Gigi and Eli .

“He saved the guy.” I bit into more chocolate; it felt good to get some sugar in my system.

“Yeah,” Luther agreed. “ But he came for you.”

Yeah, he did. I’d seen it. I’d felt it. I knew it.

I found Elias in the on-call room, which was off the cardiology wing. It had a creaky door and bad lighting. He was still in scrubs, one of those lousy hospital pillows folded under his head, and his arm flung over his face like he was trying to block out the entire world.

I stood in the doorway for a second, uncertain. Then I made up my mind and stepped inside, closing the door behind me. He sat up as soon as he heard it latch, blinking at me like he wasn’t sure I was real.

“I just wanted to say thank you.” I leaned against the closed door.

“You don’t have to?—”

“No, I do.” I straightened. “You came for me.” I stepped closer. “You pushed past everyone, broke protocol, and walked straight into an active Code Silver. You didn’t have to.”

His blue eyes held mine. “I did.”

We weren’t in the OR now. We weren’t hiding behind instruments, sterile gloves, and egos.

“You okay?” His eyes scanned me like I was a patient on a table.

“No,” I replied honestly. “But I will be.”

He nodded. And for a second, neither of us said anything.

“I saw you.” He lowered his gaze, his shoulders relaxing. “On the screen. You were calm. Controlled. You were trying to save him, even when he had a gun to your head.”

“It’s what we do, right?”

His voice was rough when he raised his eyes to look into mine. “Not everyone could’ve or would’ve done what you did. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you froze.”

“Anyway,” I shrugged and stood still, “that’s all. I just wanted to say thank you.”