Lone Survivor (Crescent City Kings Book 1) Read online

  “So you can keep tabs on me? But you’re only here two days a week. The rest of the time, you’re at your private practice.” She sighed. This just kept getting better and better.

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t have any gravitas with personnel or can’t tell when one of my nurses needs the break. I promise you this is not a punishment, even though it might seem like it to you. And I’m here, if you need to talk. You have my number. Call me if you need help. You’re not alone; you have friends here who care. Now, go home. Get some rest. And call Ram when you get up,” he commanded in an almost imperial tone. Luc was usually one of the more congenial, mild-mannered doctors whom everyone loved. But in this instance, he had turned into a mulish overlord who wouldn’t be satisfied until he bent her to his will.

  “Fine.” Sadie rose and headed toward the lockers to grab her things.

  “Good. Oh, and Sadie. Don’t beat yourself up over this. We all have things that break us. Our job isn’t easy. There’s no shame in needing time away and asking for help,” Luc said, before leaving her alone with her thoughts as she gathered her things out of her locker.

  But that was what he didn’t get. Her past kept breaking her, time and time again. She had thought a location change would stop it, would help her heal, but she was finding that none of it mattered. She could have gone to colonize Mars and there would still be this aching regret and sorrow.

  No one knew the truth. No one could know what she’d said to her husband that day not an hour before he died. Then they would know what a horrible person she was—and a fraud, to boot. There was nothing she could say or do to make amends to her dead husband. That was what kept her up at night.

  She stared down at the card in her hand listing a Doctor Ramsey O’Malley, PsyD. She could do this, continue to act like she wasn’t drowning. None of the doctors she had seen in Seattle had been able to fix her. She doubted this new guy could help.

  Sadie was what happened when Humpty Dumpty wasn’t put back together again.

  Chapter 2

  Ramsey O’Malley sat back in his seat, observing the petite blonde with the haunted hazel eyes across the expanse of his desk. The thick strands of her hair were pulled back into a ponytail, with tendrils lying over her delicate shoulders. The way it was styled made her angular, pixie-ish face more prominent, and an inherent sorrow riddled her form. It was in the lines of her body, the way she held herself up straight in the chair, her hands clenched in her lap, white knuckled. Her cupid’s bow mouth was turned down at the corners and her face was devoid of artifice save for a hint of mascara on her long lashes. She was a natural, earthy beauty in a mint green, form-fitting sundress that let him get glimpses of her toned legs as she shifted nervously in her chair.

  The man in him, the Dom in him, appreciated her trim form and beauty. The psychologist in him told him to get his mind out of the gutter and focus on the task at hand. Figuring out what was troubling his newest patient and causing her to appear like a single nudge would knock her down, that was the job before him.

  Normally, Ram was booked solid with patients from late August through the end of May while his kids were in school. They lived in Dallas with their mother and spent the school year with her. But then he took June and July off from his practice to spend with his children while they visited him. He avoided his office at all costs while they were in town. And he would have said no to this meeting if it had been anyone but his buddy Luc doing the asking. Ram had woken up to a message on his phone from Luc, asking him for a favor, and that favor was in his office now, staring at him with haunted, sad eyes.

  This was why he now had Sadie Montgomery sitting in one of his black leather chairs with the expanse of his glossy wooden desk between them. She was one of Luc’s nurses and had had a meltdown on the job last night. Luc said she had gone catatonic after they’d lost a patient, and he needed her to seek treatment before he could put her back to work.

  “If you would, Ms. Montgomery, walk me through what happened last night. You work in the ICU over at Saint Mary’s Hospital, is that correct?” Ram asked, studying her reaction to his questions.

  She nodded once in a jerky chin move that mirrored the tension in her form. “Yes. I’ve been at the hospital for six months. Before that, I worked at Puget County General in Seattle. I’ve been a nurse for almost ten years now.”

  Ram ascertained there was definite trauma. That much he could tell for certain. Chaotic energy flowed off her, like at any moment she was going to burst from her chair and start pacing the room. She would have the space to do so in his open, airy—and, he hoped, comfortable—office. Her movements were jerky with agitation. It was clear she wanted to be any place but here. That made two of them, but her discomfort in talking about herself made her a puzzle; a fascinating, soul-stirring puzzle. Ram loved solving a good puzzle. Being able to apply that enjoyment to helping someone put the pieces of their life back together was all the more satisfying.

  She had his undivided attention. “Do you like being a nurse, Ms. Montgomery?”

  She did a one-shoulder shrug, like she was attempting to act unaffected. “I’ve always been good at what I do, until last night. And it’s Mrs. Montgomery actually, but it’s easier to just go with Sadie.”

  A dark shadow flitted over her gaze and then was gone. She was good at burying her emotions. Mrs.? Was she married? Divorced? She’d checked the box for single on his intake form. The woman was an enigma, with layers of protection and secrets wrapped around her. His interest was piqued.

  “All right, Sadie. Tell me about last night.” He wasn’t going to let her shy away from the questions that needed to be answered for there to be any sort of progress or prognosis toward creating an action plan to help her.

  “About eighteen months ago, I was diagnosed with PTSD. I thought I had a handle on it, but it blew up in my face last night.”

  “And why were you diagnosed with PTSD? What event brought on the onset of PTSD?” he asked, taking notes. That diagnosis explained quite a bit. It was an area of mental health he specialized in treating. Her timid, defensive, and nervous responses were part and parcel of the psychological proponents of post-traumatic stress disorder.

  An indecisive battle waged itself in her. It was written across her face as she shifted, glanced at her hands and re-clasped them together before she finally began to speak, in a voice so soft and low, he had to listen closely. “Two years ago, I was in a car crash that killed my husband and parents, along with the driver of the semi-tractor trailer that hit us. I was the only survivor from the accident.”

  Oh, baby! Sympathy for her filled him. No wonder she was having problems. “Are you on any medications?”

  She shook her head in the negative. “No. I was on Zoloft for a while, and I tried a few other anti-depressants, but they turned me into a zombie, even at the lowest doses. So my psychiatrist in Seattle took me off them.”

  “Not everyone does well with medication. It may be that you have a sensitive constitution when it comes to those. The reason I ask, is because for me to work out an effective treatment plan, I need to know everything. I want you to take me through each step, what you were feeling leading up to your episode last night.”

  “It was a fairly normal night in the ICU—as normal as they ever are, anyway. We don’t always save our patients. We do everything we can, but sometimes there’s a higher power at work. It had been a hectic shift. The previous night, we lost two of the accident victims we were treating, all from the same family. And then the code blue came in.” She wiped her hands over her face.

  “Our team fought like hell to bring the woman back. She flat-lined into cardiac arrest from her blood pressure dropping. She had internal bleeding from her liver. Doctor Luc is the best there is, and we still couldn’t save her. It’s always tough to lose a patient. If you don’t feel it then you’re in the wrong business. But then one of the other nurses mentioned that now the entire family had died except for the three-year-old girl. It had been an exhaus
ting day, and her words hit me like a freight train. The episode came on so suddenly, my usual tricks of talking myself down didn’t have a chance. It’s always the same, the flashbacks to the night of the accident. From just before the semi hit, to my blacking out when the truck smashed into my vehicle, and then coming to on the stretcher, being carted into the back of an ambulance where I overheard that I was the only survivor. I screamed until they gave me a shot to calm me down. Now, from what Doctor Luc mentioned after my episode, I apparently went catatonic and screamed in the patient’s room. Then I fainted. The next thing I knew, I was coming to in the hospital breakroom, with Luc telling me I had to come see you.”

  Ram chewed that over. There were plenty of holes in her story that they would need to work on filling in, but he had the gist of it.

  “Are you and Luc seeing one another?” Not that it mattered—she could be dating a bunch of guys, or women, for that matter.

  “Me and the Doc? No. He’s fine to look at but I don’t date. I haven’t really since the accident. Not that I haven’t had offers, but I just haven’t been ready. Maybe that’s my problem and I need to.”

  “Do you feel like you’re being disloyal to your deceased husband?”

  She seemed to ponder his question for a moment before she responded. “Yes and no. I think Henry would want me to move on and find someone but I…”

  “But you what? Finish the rest of that sentence for me,” he pushed.

  “I know it’s going to sound silly, but how can I move on and be happy, when he never will be again?”

  Survivor’s guilt. It was one of the toughest kinds to bear. Ram knew that first-hand. “That’s not your fault. You understand that. You said the driver of the semi hit you, which means it was that driver’s fault.”

  “Yes, but if I had been paying more attention to the road and hadn’t been so angry with Henry then I—” She pulled back, fighting tears, like she’d suddenly realized how much she was saying.

  He tried another line of questioning. “Were you and your husband happily married?”

  “We loved each other, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t know any marriage that doesn’t have its issues.”

  She’d sidestepped his question. Interesting. There was something there. Her expression had turned downright militant. He didn’t want to push this line of questioning. Not yet. There was more there to uncover that might be the key to a lot of her suffering. But she wasn’t comfortable enough with him, didn’t trust him enough yet to be able to divulge the deeper issues. That would come.

  He scribbled that information in his notes to refer to at a later date. “Okay, let’s go back to the accident. You said you were the only survivor of a car crash that killed four people, if my count is correct. How does that make you feel?”

  “Well, how am I supposed to feel? One moment my parents and husband were hale and healthy. Then in the next, they were gone. I made it out with a broken collarbone, whiplash, and a few cuts,” she said with exasperation, but he could see the underlying tremor as she tried to hold herself together.

  “My job isn’t to tell you how to feel, Sadie. First, because you can’t make anyone feel something. They either do or they don’t. There’s no expectation from me, so forget the societal pressures of what you think I want to hear or think you should tell me. Second, there are no wrong answers. Feelings are feelings. It’s what you do with those feelings that matters.”

  She sagged a bit in her chair. “Lost, hurt, pissed off, guilty. Take your pick. I tend to run the gamut of them every day since the accident and that’s no matter whether I have an episode or not. Look, Doctor O’Malley, I don’t want to disappoint the staff over at Saint Mary’s Hospital. I don’t want to do therapy. I did that, and it didn’t take it away or fix me. However, Luc won’t let me return until you give the all clear. So, you tell me, what do I need to do to make that happen?”

  He steepled his fingers, wondering where the urge to please came from; whether it was part of her skills as a nurse, or something deeper and more primal than that. It was clear she was going to be a tough nut to crack. But he believed that, with time and effort on both their parts, she could get to a better spot emotionally and mentally.

  “As I indicated at the beginning, Ram is fine. And I believe I can help you. There’s no overnight fix. Post-traumatic stress disorder, as I am sure you are aware, is a condition that could be with you for the rest of your life. That doesn’t mean we can’t work around it and put counter measures in place so that you can lead a satisfying life. When you go home, your assignment is to journal what happened last night. Don’t leave anything out. Don’t worry so much about spelling or punctuation. Just write out your thoughts, feelings, fears, all of it that surfaced because of the patient dying. And I want you to bring the journal with you the next time we meet, so I can look it over.”

  “You aren’t going to let me go back to work, are you?” she stated, rather pissed off, with her arms crossed defensively in front of her chest.

  She was in a volatile place. Luc was right; she couldn’t be around patients in this state. “Not yet. I think Luc was right to send you my way. I don’t normally work over the summer, with the exception of the weekly group therapy sessions I run. However, in this case, I think it would be a good plan of action for us to meet in two days for another session at, say, eleven. I am also recommending that, as part of your treatment plan, you attend the group therapy session tomorrow at ten in the morning. It’s here in the building, in the rec room on the first floor.”

  “Since I don’t have a choice, why not.” She sighed.

  Ram almost smiled, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch at her overly dramatic sigh.

  Then he gathered a few items for her: a reminder card with the date and time of their next appointment with his cell phone number handwritten on the back, and a pamphlet on the Survivors’ Group, as well as a few others that touched on topics like trauma, loss, post-traumatic-stress, and grief. He believed that with knowledge one could overcome anything, no matter how steep the mountain might be. It was how he had conquered his own issues after he was honorably discharged from the Army Rangers a broken man.

  Ram rose from his seat and walked around his desk, where he handed her the packet of information. “These are some things for you to go over. My emergency contact number is on the reminder card. If you feel another episode approaching and are finding it difficult to talk yourself down, call me. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need to, that’s what I’m here for.”

  She reached out as he extended the packet her way, but as he did so, a black business card for Club Underworld slipped from between the pile and fell to the floor. The damn thing must have snuck its way onto his desk. Ram wasn’t ashamed of being in the lifestyle. Far from it. But he also did not advertise his kinks in front of his patients, even those who were in the lifestyle who came to him for guidance.

  He hoped the business card falling from the packet would go unnoticed. But Sadie apparently had the instincts and vision of a cat. Her gaze followed the descent of the card until it landed on the floor between them.

  Shit. Michael would give Ram hell for this if he ever found out, because that was the card that would admit someone to the members’ only parts of the club for a single night. It was like Fight Club. They didn’t talk about it outside the club. This system had been developed for the occasional tourist who caught their eye and wanted to take a walk on the wilder side of things. They were given a black card, and then security knew to send them up to the private club on the second floor. On arrival, they had to sign a waiver and non-disclosure agreement not to talk about anything that was seen while they were there. If they did, they were sued.

  Sadie left her seat, bent down and picked the card up. Her thumb traced over the engraved logo. She glanced up at him from her crouched position, and a shock of potent need smashed into Ram. She was at the perfect height to take his dick inside her cupid’s bow mouth. For the life of him, he couldn’t
eject the image from his mind.

  What the everlasting fuck was wrong with him? Patients were off limits. This wasn’t a gray area. It violated every ethical oath he had taken as a psychologist.

  And yet, he couldn’t seem to scrub the imagery from his brain, feeling his shaft harden in his jeans.

  But then she rose. Thank god. He hoped she didn’t notice the bulge forming at his crotch. She asked, all wide-eyed and innocent, “You dropped this. What is Club Underworld? I’ve not heard of that club before.”

  Ram took the card from her slim hands and his fingers brushed against hers. A livewire current flash-fried his system like an electrical shock. It traveled up his arm and spidered into the rest of his body, making his gut clench.

  Settle the fuck down. You can’t fuck her, she’s a goddamn patient, moron.

  But his dick didn’t want to listen and strained toward her. So, he ignored it, as best he could, wondering where the hell his vaunted, stalwart control was at the moment. “It’s a club I attend. I’m an elite founding member of Club Underworld. I go there for stress relief and fun, to see my friends.” Not to mention to flog and fuck submissives until his knees buckled. He pierced her with a stare. “What do you do to relax and have a good time?”

  “I read at home. Tend to my plants. I’ve considered getting a cat, but outside of work, that’s about it.”

  And it wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. He could understand it. After his injuries, during those first few tenuous years, he’d buried himself in school and then work. It was easier than dealing with the shitstorm of his feelings. “Take it from me. You need to go out and play, get away from the daily grind. I’m including that in your therapy plan. Meet a girlfriend, take a cab and go to the Quarter. If you don’t have fun in the Quarter, you’re doing something wrong.”

  She cocked her head. “But not your club?”