Chapter 70

"If you attempt to hoist so much as a single bag of rock salt out of the back of that truck with your current respiratory rate, Elias, I am going to sedate you right here in the slush and drag your unconscious body inside by your ankles," Raphael snapped, his breath pluming in the freezing air as he planted himself squarely in front of the driver-side door of the battered pickup truck.

Elias let out a low, raspy cough that instantly validated every single clinical fear tightening the muscles in Raphael's chest, though the taller man stubbornly kept his hand on the ignition key. "The delivery driver didn't show up because the pass over the ridge is iced over, Raphael. If we don't clear the clinic walkway before the afternoon geriatric clinic arrives, Mrs. Gable is going to fracture a hip on her way in for her blood pressure check, and then you’ll have a real emergency on your hands."

"Mrs. Gable can reschedule her blood pressure check for tomorrow when the plow comes through," Raphael shot back, not giving an inch as he slammed his palm flat against the frost-covered window glass. "And she is infinitely more likely to survive a minor delay in her diuretic adjustment than you are to survive a secondary pulmonary infection settling over that old surgical site. Turn off the engine. Now."

Elias narrowed his eyes, trying to summon the formidable, ice-cold authority that used to make syndicate lieutenants sweat through their tailored suits, but the harsh, rattling wheeze that cut him off mid-glare entirely ruined the effect. "You are abusing your medical license, Doctor."

"I am practicing basic, life-saving triage on an obstinate idiot who thinks a low-grade fever and a hacking cough are acceptable accessories to a heavy flannel shirt," Raphael retorted, wrenching the truck door open before Elias could protest further. "Get out. And walk straight into the house, directly to the bedroom, and into the bed. I’ll handle the salt."

"You have a line of six patients waiting inside the warm clinic annex right now," Elias pointed out, though he reluctantly shifted his weight and swung his long legs out of the cab, wincing slightly as a spasm of coughing racked his broad frame.

"The clinic annex is currently running at a stable temperature of seventy-two degrees, and Elise is handling the routine triage charts while I keep an eye on you," Raphael said, grabbing Elias by the heavy wool of his coat and practically steering him up the shoveled pathway toward the back entrance of the estate. "Your body has spent the last forty-eight hours fighting off a systemic inflammatory response to your own sheer stubbornness. You are staying horizontal."

As they stepped through the heavy timber door into the warmth of the mudroom, Elise looked up from the kitchen island where she was vigorously stirring a steaming pot of ginger tea, her sharp eyes immediately locking onto Elias’s flushed face and the heavy, unsteady lean he was taking against Raphael’s shoulder.

"Let me guess," Elise dryly remarked, not even bothering to put down the wooden spoon as she watched Raphael guide the former syndicate boss toward the hallway leading to the master suite. "The man who once orchestrated the hostile takeover of half the shipping docks on the eastern seaboard was decisively defeated by a twenty-four-hour cold snap and a stubborn driveway."

"He tried to carry a hundred-pound sack of sodium chloride out of a truck bed while running a hundred-and-three-degree fever," Raphael said tightly, kicking the mudroom door shut against the howling coastal wind and unzipping Elias's heavy outer coat with precise, impatient jerks. "I should have locked him in the root cellar."

"I am standing right here," Elias rasped, his voice rough and strained as he leaned heavily against the hallway wall, closing his eyes for a brief second as another wave of dizziness washed over him. "And I can hear both of you conspiring against my dignity."

"Your dignity was forfeited the moment you decided to play rugged winter pioneer without your thermal layers, Elias," Elise replied, walking over with a steaming mug and handing it directly to Raphael. "Drink that, get under three heavy blankets, and don't make me come in there with a tongue depressor."

Ten minutes later, the master bedroom was dim, quiet, and smelling faintly of eucalyptus oil and antiseptic. Raphael stood over the bedside with a digital thermometer in hand, his expression a mask of clinical severity as he waited for the device to beep.

Elias lay propped up against a stack of feather pillows, his face pale beneath his weathered skin, though his dark eyes tracked Raphael's every movement with a steady, burning intensity. "You look more stressed now than you did when we were dodging bullets in that water treatment plant."

"Bullets have predictable trajectories, Elias," Raphael said, pulling the thermometer away and reading the digital display with a sharp intake of breath. "A hundred and two point four. It went up half a degree since we crossed the threshold."

"Because you keep hovering like an anxious mother hen instead of letting me rest," Elias murmured, though his long fingers reached out from beneath the heavy wool blankets to catch Raphael's wrist, his grip surprisingly firm despite his fevered state. "Sit down, Raphael. You’ve been on your feet since five this morning."

Raphael stared down at the hand anchoring him to the bedside, feeling the familiar, dangerous warmth that always seemed to dissolve his professional boundaries whenever the rest of the world stripped away. "I have a clinic full of patients, Elias."

"Elise is handling them," Elias countered softly, his thumb brushing slowly over the inside of Raphael's pulse point. "And even if she weren't, you've earned an hour. Stop running."

Raphael let out a long, defeated sigh, the tense line of his shoulders finally dropping as he pulled a wooden chair closer to the mattress and sat down. "If your white blood cell count doesn't stabilize by morning, I'm setting up an IV line right here on this nightstand, winter storm or no winter storm."

"I yield to your superior medical wisdom," Elias conceded with a faint, dry smirk, his thumb still tracing slow circles against Raphael's skin. "Though I reserve the right to complain about the bruising."

"Complain all you want; you're the one who decided to test your immune system against a nor'easter," Raphael said, though he didn't pull his hand away. Instead, with his free hand, he reached up to adjust the blankets higher around Elias's broad shoulders, his touch shifting instantly from clinical efficiency to something fiercely, undeniably tender.

Before Elias could reply, a sharp, urgent rapping echoed loudly from the front entrance of the estate, followed immediately by the heavy, hurried creak of the mudroom door swinging open against the force of the wind.

Raphael froze, his head snapping toward the hallway as the sound of boots stomping off melting snow resonated through the quiet house.

"Raphael! Elias!" Elise's voice cut through the stillness, tight with an edge of panic that completely shattered the fragile, quiet containment of the bedroom. "You need to come out here right now. We have a problem at the clinic gates."

Elias was already trying to push himself up from the pillows, his fever-bright eyes locking onto Raphael with instant, razor-sharp alertness. "What kind of problem?"

Raphael gently but firmly pushed Elias back down onto the mattress, his face hardening back into the cold, resolute mask of a trauma surgeon walking into an unexpected code zero. "Stay down. I'll see what she wants."

He crossed the bedroom in three long strides, stepping out into the hallway and pulling the door half-shut behind him. Elise was waiting at the end of the corridor, her coat still zipped to her chin, holding a shivering, frost-bitten stranger by the arm—a man wearing a blood-stained mechanic's jumpsuit who looked like he had dragged himself through hell just to reach their door.

"He didn't come from the town," Elise said quickly, her breath catching as the stranger slumped heavily against the hallway wall, leaving a dark smear of crimson across the freshly painted wainscoting. "He came off the old logging road behind the ridge. And he says there's a vehicle rolled over down in the ravine with three trapped passengers—and one of them is bleeding out fast."

Raphael stared at the blood on the wall, the sudden, violent intrusion of the outside world crashing down upon their hard-won coastal sanctuary like a falling avalanche. Every muscle in his body tightened, the ghost of his old St. Jude’s adrenaline spiking instantly through his veins.

From behind the half-closed bedroom door, the heavy rustle of blankets shifting told him Elias was already swinging his legs out onto the floor, ignoring every order Raphael had given him three minutes prior.

"Get the trauma kit from the back of the pantry," Raphael told Elise, his voice dropping an octave into absolute, unyielding command as he turned back toward the bedroom. "And someone tell Elias to put his damn boots on."