Read Changed by His Son's Smile for Free Online

like it might have been the boy’s shirt lay soaked with blood on the floor next to her, which, at a guess, she’d used to try to stop the bleeding. The mother’s clothes were covered in blood too, and Dani’s throat tightened in sympathy. The poor woman had sure been through one terrible morning.
    “Where are the IVs kept? And the irrigation and suture kits?” If only she’d had just an hour to get acquainted with the layout of the place. Right now, she felt like the newbie she was, and hated her inadequacy when both patients needed help fast.
    “IVs are in the top right cupboard. The key to the drug drawer is in my scrub pocket.”
    She stepped over to Chase, and he straightened to give her access to his chest pocket. As she slipped her hand inside, feeling his hard pectoral through the fabric, their eyes met. The moment took her rushing back to Honduras, to all the times just like these, as though they had been yesterday instead of three years ago. To all the memories of working together as a team. To all the times he’d proved what an accomplished surgeon he was.
    Heart fluttering a little, she slipped the key from his pocket, trying to focus on the present situation and not his hunkiness quotient. She turned and gathered the morphine and IV materials and came back to the whimpering boy, wanting to ease his pain quickly.
    “Tell him he’ll feel a little pinch then I’m going to put a straw in his hand that’ll make his leg hurt less,” she said, concentrating on getting the IV going fast.
    “Damn,” Chase said.
    She looked up and saw him shaking his head. “What?”
    “I’d forgotten how good you are at that. One stick and, bam , the IV’s in. I don’t think he even felt it.”
    His voice and expression were filled with admiration, which made her feel absurdly pleased. “Thanks.”
    He leaned closer. “He’s lucky you’re here.”
    “And he’s lucky to have you to put his leg back together.”
    He smiled and she smiled back, her breath catching at how ridiculously handsome the man looked when his eyes were all fudgy brown and warm and his lips teasingly curved.
    “The little girl’s going to get the world’s most meticulous stitcher-upper, too,” Chase said, still smiling as he tweezed out lingering pieces of gravel from Apollo’s wound. “I remember a button you sewed so tightly on my shirt I couldn’t get it through the little hole any more.”
    “Well, I only did it for you because, considering you’re a surgeon, you’re really bad at sewing on buttons.”
    His eyes crinkled at the corners as they met hers again, and her heart skipped a beat, darn it all. With the IV in place, the boy’s eyes drooped as the morphine took effect. Chase placed an X-ray plate under the boy’s calf, then rolled a machine across the room, positioning its C-arm over his shin, obviously suspecting, as she did, that it also might be broken.
    “Is the X-ray tech coming soon?”
    “No X-ray tech. Honduras was loaded with staff compared to this place. I’ll get this film developing before I work on the compound fracture.”
    Wow. Hard to believe they had to take and develop the X-rays. “I’ll get started with the girl. Where’s irrigation?”
    He nodded toward the wide, low sink. “Faucet. The secret to pollution is dilution. It’s the best we have.”
    Her eyes widened. “Seriously? I stick her wounds under the faucet?”
    “Attach the hose. We’ve found it provides more force than the turkey basters we use on less polluted wounds. It’s how I’m going to get him cleaned up now that he’s had pain meds. You’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. Be right back.” With a wink, he left with the X-ray cartridge in his hand.
    Dani grabbed a pair of sterile gloves from a box attached to the wall and rolled a stool from under the counter to sit next to the gurney. She smiled at the wide-eyed girl and her mother.
    If only she spoke their language, or even a little French. The girl looked scared but