Chapter 10: Not on Hospital Grounds

The pager was a code blue in bay two.

A man in his fifties had gone down in the parking lot.

For forty minutes Roan and I worked him together, my hands on his chest and Roan's voice calling the numbers.

He came back at ten to five.

When the monitor settled into a steady beat, Roan looked up across the bed and found my eyes.

Neither of us said a word.

At seven I clocked out and found him leaning on his truck in the lot with his coat over his arm.

"Nothing happens on hospital grounds," I said.

"That's what you said."

"This is a hospital parking lot."

"Yes."

"Where do you live?"

His throat moved.

"Eight minutes from here. Above the harbor."

"Technically that's not hospital grounds."

He opened the passenger door.

His apartment was one long room over a marine supply shop, with a bed under a slanted window and a wall of books.

The lake showed grey and gold through the glass.

He shut the door and stood with his back against it.

"Anja. You've had no sleep and the worst week of your life. If you're here because you're sad..."

"I'm not here because I'm sad."

"You don't have to prove anything to me."

"I've wanted your hands for two years," I said. "I wrote it down. Kasper read it to a million people. Do you need me to say it to you?"

He crossed the room in three strides.

His mouth came down on mine and I kissed him back, hard, with my fingers in his hair.

He walked me to the bed.

I pulled my scrub top over my head and dropped it on the floor.

He stopped and looked at me, with his hands hanging at his sides.

"Look at you," he said.

"You can touch."

"I'm going to."

He kissed my collarbone, then lower, and closed his mouth over my breast through the thin cotton of my bra.

I arched into him and gasped.

He unhooked it with one hand, and then his mouth was on my bare skin, hot and slow.

His tongue circled my nipple until I was holding the back of his neck and begging.

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