Undone: A New Adult College Bad Boy Romance (Mature Young Adult Fun Contemporary Romance) (5 page)

“You don’t mind if I have a seat, do you?”

Kasie looked up at Dr. Jackson, known as JJ to most of the hospital, and wanted to say, “of course I mind you idiot go sit with your adoring fans and leave me the hell alone.” But he was her boss and saying something like that was guaranteed to put her on his shit list. So instead she shrugged and returned her attention to the cardboard sandwich in her hand and the journal resting on the table in front of her. This was how she spent most of her time eating, reading articles that would make her a better trauma surgeon.

“So what are you reading?”

She looked up at Dr. Jackson with a blank stare and pressed her teeth into her tongue to stop the words that threatened to spill out. “A journal article.”

He rolled those moss colored eyes and gifted her with a smile that made most women blush. “Obviously. What is the article
about
?”

Kasie sighed heavily wishing he would just go away. It was bad enough she spent as much as eighteen hours a day with the good looking egomaniac, now he was invading her precious alone time. “Ways to reduce radiation when screening for blunt abdominal trauma.”
Leave now, please.

Dr. Jackson leaned over to look at the journal and his smile brightened. “I co-wrote the article.” When her blank stare didn’t show surprise or admiration he went on, “You can just ask me if you have questions, you know.”

The problem was she didn’t want to ask him. Anything. Ever. “I’d rather just read the article.”

His smile dimmed a bit but he was not deterred. “You know Dr. Fulgram, I get the feeling you don’t like me much.”

Gee what gave you that idea, Einstein?
“You are a great trauma surgeon and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from you.”
If I don’t stab you with a scalpel first.

He sat back in his chair with his hand clutched at his heart. “
Great
trauma surgeon? You wound me Kasie Fulgram.” At her blank stare he straightened up and told her, “I am an
incredible
surgeon and you’d do well to remember just how much you could learn from me.”

Kasie stared at him until he began to shift uncomfortably. She finished chewing and looked him right in the eye. “That’s your job, isn’t it, to teach me?”

JJ sighed heavily. He had no idea why she disliked him so much or why it bothered him as much as it did, but dammit it
did
. “It
is
my job Kasie but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t learn more if our relationship wasn’t so…contentious.”

Kasie slid the elastic band off her wrist and began to tie her thick red waves into a knot on top of her head and took in his features. Jase Jackson was a drop dead gorgeous man. His moss green eyes sparkled with humor or mischief when they weren’t serious and focused on surgery. He had a great smile bracketed by signs that he laughed a lot and his blond hair gave him boyish charm despite the streaks of grey throughout, that made all the women in his life fall at his feet.
Except for Kasie, of course.

She wasn’t blind, she could see how quantitatively attractive he was on the outside but his arrogance was the only thing she seemed to truly notice about him. And the way everyone fawned all over him. He was an amazing surgeon but he was still just a man. When he became restless she finally responded. “I don’t find our relationship contentious in the least. I’m just not a member of your fan club. I am your resident and here to learn from you. Do we need to be more than that?”

JJ’s shoulders drooped with disappointment. “I guess not. I’m just not used to people not liking me, especially for no reason.”

Kasie sighed, her patience just about out for the day after the morning she had. “Dr. Jackson it isn’t that I don’t like you, I just don’t adore you like the rest of the world. You’re fine, good.”

Before he could respond the mostly quiet cafeteria filled with emergency sirens and notifications. Two seconds later doctors, nurses, specialists and interns left their food, magazines and books where they were and headed for the ER.

Good riddance!

~

Jase Jackson had no idea what he’d ever done to Kasie Fulgram to make her hate him so, but man did she really seem to dislike him. He hadn’t seen her smile at him in the nine months they’d been working together but she was quick with a smile for nurses, patients, hell even the janitor got a smile every time she saw him.

He’d been a medic in the Army for four years and performed more emergency surgeries in deadly conditions than one person ever should. He’d done a stint at the Cook County ER during the height of gang violence in Chicago so he knew how to quickly locate a bullet, pull it out and stitch a wound without leaving a scar. He could stop a patient with multiple wounds from bleeding to death without breaking a sweat and repair a mangled body until it was nearly as good as new. But what he couldn’t do was make Kasie like him. Dammit.

She would though. They worked well together in the ER and she was intelligent, hardworking and intuitive in her application of emergency medicine. Eventually she would see he wasn’t a bad guy, but for now he had a GSW to attend to. “Fulgram you’re with me on this one,” he yelled over the chaos of the emergency room. Apparently a motorcycle gang decided to shoot at each other in a mall parking lot so there would be at least a dozen of the walking wounded trailing in, along with those with more critical concerns.

Despite her obvious dislike of him she gave a curt nod and changed directions to follow him into the scrub room. Kasie was silent as she soaped up and rinsed off with hot water. Her emerald green eyes cut to him briefly when she stepped into the operating room and JJ gave her the patient stats and they both got to work. They were like a well-oiled machine working together. He reached inside for bullet fragments and she used water to give him a better visual, he repaired internal damage and she sutured the bullet riddled body. It was, in his opinion, like poetry.

“Great job Dr. Fulgram.”

Kasie was tired and her defenses were down, it was the only explanation why she returned his enticing smile with one of her own. “Thanks Dr. Jackson. Your work was brilliant in there.” He really was a fantastic surgeon and even the past two hours had taught her plenty about technique and quick thinking.

Jase watched her walk away and wondered, not for the first time, if she would ever call him JJ like the rest of the hospital staff. She was always so stiff and formal with him, referring to him as ‘Doctor’ as though that was his first name, not Jase. “I’m leaving in an hour Dr.Fulgram so I’ll need you to keep an eye on this patient, monitoring vitals every hour. Call me if they elevate to the red zone.” She nodded and he watched her walk away, posture straight even after the long day that wasn’t over for her. He knew she’d already been at the hospital for twenty four hours and would be here for another twelve, but he’d put in his time as a resident so he got to sleep in his own bed.

Watching her walk away Jase suspected his pathological desire to get her to like him had more to do with her skills as a doctor and the way she filled out a pair of scrubs. Kasie Fulgram was a beautiful woman, no matter how hard she tried to hide her firm round ass, plump over-sized breasts and a waist so small she used rubber bands to hold her scrub pants up. He’d spent more than a few nights imagining how she would look
out
of her scrubs. Were her nipples strawberry red or were they pink like raspberries? Were they large and eye catching? Were her breasts covered in freckles like the bridge of her nose? Was her pussy bare or did she have a strip or a triangle decorating it?

JJ shook off those thoughts and turned his attention back to the tablet in his hand. Kasie had long disappeared down the hall anyway and he was ready to go home.

~

It was after midnight when Kasie finally woke up, or rather when a terrified first year resident woke her up. She stretched her tired and aching body in the chair meant for a munchkin and swiped a chunk of hair from her eyes. “What is it?”

“Female. Multiple stab wounds with internal bleeding. They’re paging you.”

The way the first year took several large steps back would have been funny if Kasie were at all awake. “Okay, I’ll be down in a minute.” She was already out of the chair and splashing water on her face. She grabbed a small paper cup and filled it with hours old coffee and chugged it as she made her way to the ER. “Okay what do we have here?” She snapped on a pair of gloves and strode confidently toward the patient.

Donna, the best ER nurse around, summed it up succinctly and for that Kasie was grateful. “Multiple stab wounds, low blood pressure and blood loss for starters. We’ll know more once
you
get in there.”

She nodded and got to work. The woman appeared to be in her late thirties and she was underweight with stringy dark red hair. But what Kasie noticed most was the more than two dozen stab wounds covering her abdomen, breasts, arms and thighs. But she began with the large scar curving from her eyebrow, arching over her cheek and down her jaw before it ended at her jawline. It was deep and red and throbbing. “Is she sedated?” When she got confirmation, Kasie got to work, opening her up and fixing internal damage before getting to the surface wounds. Several hours later Kasie was finally ready to close her up. She allowed the first year who woke her to do the sutures.

She looked all around for the chart and found the name blank. “Why is the name blank on this chart?” That’s the quickest way to lose patient information and the blame would fall to her even though nurses to intake information.

“She had no identification at all but instead of listing her as Jane Doe I figured she could tell us who she is once she’s awake.”

“And if she sneaks off before we can get that information are you going to explain that to the Chief?”

She watched the nurse shrink away from her and she wanted to cringe. She hated the stupid hospital policy that they were to turn away anyone without identification or insurance and send them to County General. It was cruel and heartless and she was sure it would cost lives. “Look I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”
Even though one of us is going to be in big trouble if she skips out or doesn’t have insurance.

When Kasie returned an hour later to check patient vitals she was shocked to see the woman’s face clean and free of makeup and blood. Her hair was dry and no longer caked in blood, a smattering of freckles were visible across her nose and cheeks. Kasie gasped, “Holly?” The woman looked so much like the older sister she hadn’t seen since she was fourteen and Holly was nineteen and ran away. That was twelve years ago and this woman, this Jane Doe could be Holly.

She shook off the thought, unwilling to get her hopes up. Chances were that Holly was dead or a long way from here. “We’ll find out who you are either way.” She patted her leg and crept out of the room, where she ran straight into a tall, hard brick wall.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Kasie blinked and looked up as she registered the voice. “What exactly is the problem Dr. Jackson?”

What is the problem?
“The problem,
Dr. Fulgram
, is that you worked on this woman without finding out her insurance status or hell, even her name.” Arms crossed over her ample bosom, she was the very picture of defiance.

“Then maybe you should take that up with one of the nurses in your fan club because
they
admitted her. Not me. I was called to work on her and I’m a surgeon so that’s what I did.”

He wanted to smile at the way she poked her tiny little finger into his chest but he was so damned turned on he hardly heard a word she said. “Yeah well you’re the doctor, I expect more from you.” She rolled her mossy eyes, but they were gorgeous all alight with anger.

“Then maybe you should go in there and check out my work because it was excellent and
that
,” she punctuated the word with another finger to his—rock hard—chest, “is what I do. Not paperwork and not asking if the patient has been identified and checked for insurance.”

JJ stepped in closer, invading her space until she was between a wall and his hard muscular body. “You knew afterwards, didn’t you
Kasie
? Didn’t you?”

The way her name rolled of his tongue caused an unexpected quiver in parts she’d long ago forgotten but apparently Dr. Ego could wake up with just a breathy whisper. She was even more determined to steel herself—and her body—against its reaction to him. “I did.”

Jase came closer until they were nose to nose, fighting between wanting to wring her neck and rip her clothes off. “So why I ask, is she still here?”

“Why? You want to know why?” She looked up and down the empty hallway. “He wants to know why! Well I’ll tell you,
Jase
,” she sneered his name, “it’s because she’s barely an hour post-op with a low blood pressure and a low grade fever. Under those circumstances I don’t think even the
great Dr. Jackson
would have her moved to County General!” Before she could storm away he had closed the small gap between them, hands pressed into the wall on either side of her head and captured her lips in a surprise kiss that was as seductive as it was sweet.