Nurse to Heal the High Seas Doc - Chapter 2

Dr. Nicole Sapson pulled back from Shane and tried to pretend there wasn’t heat pooling in her cheeks. She and the nurse practitioner had worked together for the last year. He was the only person who’d never asked about why she’d chosen this very non-traditional medical career path.

That wasn’t the reason for her crush. Well, not the only reason. The Adonis was over six feet, with jade eyes, skin lightly tanned from hours spent in the sun, and light blond hair she’d thought of running her fingers through more than once. Add in the fact that he was smart and funny, and a crush was the inevitable outcome.

Though she’d thought someone was the complete package once before and gotten burned—literally. No way she was tempting the universe again.

A crush on a co-worker was cliché. Particularly considering that they were the lone medical staff on the ship—if you didn’t count the researchers headed to and from the South Pole who spent time transitioning to the poles. The rest of the year the ship was on the high seas doing all kinds of oceanic research. Having a crush on him was like something out of the medical dramas on television where the staff only dated each other.

“Everything stocked up?” Shane’s question pulled her from the woolgathering.

He knew it was. The good news about working on a research vessel was that they weren’t needed too often. The bad news was that they weren’t needed too often.

“Yep. But we could always check again.” Nicole shrugged. She never wished for a patient, but a total lack of them did make shifts drag.

Shane crossed his arms and looked at the door. "Probably won’t be long before someone is here. We are what—” he looked at his watch “—twelve hours from the Drake Passage?”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “You hardly needed to look at your watch for that assessment. But yeah, the Drake is about that far away.”

The Drake Passage—a six-hundred-mile body of water with at least forty-foot waves—always dwindled the supply of anti-nausea meds they kept on board for sea sickness.

“We have the winter crew on board. Less than a hundred, since some of them fly in from South America. Which is good, because I overheard the captain chatting and he mentioned getting warnings of sixty-five-foot waves.”

Nicole shuddered. She’d travelled through the passage several times and never enjoyed the swaying that happened there.

Shane stood, stretching. His shirt rose and the hint of hard abs appeared above his scrubs.

Nicole cleared her throat and started toward the other side of the clinic. The drawers didn’t really need sorting, but it gave her hands something to do. And would hopefully clear her brain’s focus on Shane.

The alarm sounded and she barely managed to grab on to the counter before the ship tilted nearly all the way to the side.

Shane let out a grunt and she heard him tumble.

Shifting so she was still holding on to the counter, she saw the man blinking and running a hand along the side of his head.

“Stay where you are,” she said.

Shane looked at her. His eyes were clear but there was already a knot forming on the side of his head.

She slid down to the floor and crawled towards him.

“I’m fine,” Shane assured her.

“The knot on your head says otherwise. When we steady, you are confined to quarters for the next forty-eight hours.” Nearly the whole Drake Passage.

“You need help for the Drake.”

Nicole ran her hand over the swelling, catching Shane’s attempt to control the flinch. “Head trauma protocol—”

“I don’t have a concussion.”

“Head injury protocol. You know the rules. Ice. Pain meds and rest. Doctor’s orders.” Shane opened his mouth, but she laid a finger across it. “No arguments.”