Unwrapping Her Perfect Match

Chapter Seven

"Trauma in three!"

Gwen excused herself from the patient in recovery whom she'd been chatting with and rushed to help her colleagues. When she reached the patient's side, her breath fled as if she'd been sucker punched. "John?"

Oh, God. His face was gray, he was strapped to a board and he wasn't conscious. Gwen went into autopilot, following the doctor's orders while she silently pleaded with anyone who would listen. Please let him be okay. Please.

They managed to stabilize him, and Gwen was called away to another patient and then another. Every time she passed his bay, she peeked through the curtain. Color slowly returned to his face, but he wore a cervical neck brace and they awaited his X-ray results to see how bad the damage was.

When she finally had a break, she dragged a chair to his bedside and grabbed his hand. It was warm, and she pressed it between hers as she tried to contain the unexpected panic welling inside her. Every day of her career, she bottled her emotions. Injured patients, grieving families—she coped with them all while she was on the clock, doing her best to maintain that fragile balance between being an effective nurse and an empathetic human being without losing too much of herself.

But she'd never had to treat anyone she knew before. The fact she didn't know John well meant she'd been able to do her job, but that wasn't the only thing causing her blood to rush. It was also the memory of how she'd overreacted when they'd been so close to having sex. Utterly humiliating. When he'd arrived, she'd had no time to process her emotions. Now she had a few moments with nothing to do but think—never a good thing.

"Gwen?" His voice was croaky, and she squeezed his hand. "What are you doing here?"

"I work here." She was surprised her voice wasn't as useless as his.

"Oh." His gaze flicked down toward her uniform. "I'd hoped...Never mind."

His tongue swept over his bottom lip, and she laid his hand down on the bed so she could pour water into a small paper cup for him.

"Drink it slowly," she said as she tipped it against his lips.

When his head relaxed against the pillow again, his forehead crinkled. "What happened?"

"You fell when you were being lifted in the air." Someone had put the video on YouTube before John had even made it to the hospital. The medics who'd brought him in had shown her the video, in case seeing the way he'd landed would help diagnose injuries. It'd made her want to vomit. "You turned your head at the last second, which is probably the only reason you didn't break your neck."

"I didn't—oh, thank God." His whole body seemed to melt into the bed. His feet shifted a bit under the sheet, as if he needed to test whether they moved at his will. "Anything else broken?"

Before she could answer, the curtain around his bay was yanked back, and one of Gwen's favorite colleagues stepped around it with John's folder in her hands. "Mr. Sheldon? I'm Dr. Maya Reynolds. I'm happy to see you're awake."

He gave a pained smile. "Happy to be awake."

Maya's brows drew together and she glanced at the papers again. "John Sheldon...Why does that sound familiar?"

A hint of a smile crossed his lips. "I play for London Legends."

"Oh? And that's..." She paused. "A band?"

Gwen couldn't stop a snort. Quickly, she covered her mouth and pretended to sneeze, but John's scowl told her he wasn't fooled. So she explained to Maya, "It's a rugby team."

"Ah, that makes more sense, given the number of bones it looks like you've broken and healed over the years." Flipping through the folder, Maya quickly scanned his test results. "Well, I overheard Nurse Chambers giving you the good news that you haven't broken your neck. There's more good news—you didn't break any other bones that I can see, though how you managed that I've no idea. You must've drunk a lot of milk when you were a little boy."