Dano gave some information to Buzz to tell the ER while I made small talk with Angie to keep her from listening.

“Push!” Dano ordered.

I got close to her ear and guided her through every step. ER Dano, Angie and I worked as a well-oiled machine (he just couldn’t be involved in the fraud or stabbings) until the pain became too much for Angie.

“I can’t!” she cried out several times.

Dano leaned over and looked her in the eye. “Stop that!” he ordered, like a verbal slap.

And Angie stopped.

Then he told her what to do, and I placed her hand on the railing of the stretcher so she could squeeze. I’d remembered from my nursing days that you never let a patient hold your hand when they were in pain because they could break your fingers.

By the grip Angie had on the railing, I was glad I’d remembered that.

Dano told her when to push and when to stop.

“You’re doing great,” I’d add and I looked to see Dano, pulling and tugging one shoulder and then the other until the baby came out in a whoosh of amniotic fluid.

He wasn’t any preemie was my first thought, and Thank you, God, my second.

“It’s a boy,” Dano said in a very matter-of-fact tone.

At first I was disappointed that he wasn’t more excited, but-the baby hadn’t made a sound.

Dano was yelling at Buzz to tell the ER things.

I kept talking to Angie so she wouldn’t hear, but I heard.

Cyanotic. That dusky bluish-gray color. Dano had said the baby was cyanotic. By now he should have taken a few breaths and pinked up. “Apgar, four,” he said as he grabbed the blue bulb syringe and started to suction out the baby’s mouth.

Four. Not good, with ten being the best on the scale that measured a newborn’s condition at birth, but it was only the first scoring, at the one-minute point.

I held an oxygen mask near the baby’s face as Dano worked on him. It seemed like hours although it was only a few minutes. He suctioned so much amniotic fluid out of the baby’s mouth that I wondered if this little one really would make it.

Angie started screaming that she didn’t hear the baby.

I kept trying to reassure her, and Dano suctioned the baby, held him downward and ran his finger along the baby’s foot until he let out a sound.

A sound!

The baby started to make occasional whimpers, although still a bit weak, but with the oxygen and Dano’s treatments, the little boy soon really started to cry.

Angie broke out into tears and Dano wrapped the baby up and held him out to his mother. She took him and held him while the placenta was delivered, and before we knew it, we were on our way after informing the ER that the baby now had an Apgar of seven.

Dano and I sat next to Angie and son, exhausted and exhilarated.

“Birth is just amazing,” came out of my mouth before I realized that I’d spoken my thoughts out loud.

Dano reached over and took my hand into his. “You did good, Nightingale. Real good.”

I turned and saw something in his eyes that I really couldn’t identify, yet in that instant I knew, just knew-that ER Dano was not guilty of anything except being a super grouch-but a hot, sexy one.

And being a grouch was not illegal.

We dropped Angie and baby off at the ER, had baby pronounced healthy and met the proud daddy. As we got ready to restock and head back out, I noticed ER Dano standing at the nurses’ station, where he’d been filling out the paperwork on Angie.

When he talked to the father and heard that they wouldn’t have insurance for several more months since he was new at his job, Dano tore up some paperwork and threw it in the trash.

He’d just given Angie and family a free ride.

Speechless, I robotically moved into the back of the ambulance and sat there staring.

He better not be a criminal, was all I could think. He was too damn nice for that.

We pulled into TLC’s driveway and I took a deep breath. For some reason-maybe what we’d just been through-I felt as if I were betraying Dan. Even though I’d found those papers in his cabinet, it still felt wrong to accuse him of anything.

The guy was a fantastic paramedic and understandably burned out of a high-emotion, high-stress and physically demanding job that I surmised he lived for.

ER Dano was not a nine to fiver.

The back door opened, and Buzz stood there. I turned and saw Dano still in his seat up front.

I looked at Buzz. “Is he all right?”

Buzz shrugged. “Told me to get the hell out and not to ask questions. He said he’d do all the paperwork. Guess he’s fine. Himself.”

I patted Buzz on the arm. Dano didn’t want anyone to know that he’d broken some TLC rule that patients pay for their services, and I had to agree with him on this one.

The day dragged on, as we didn’t get any more exciting calls. Twice we had to move patients from the hospital back to the nursing home, but none were emergencies. Now I sat in the lounge sipping the rotten tea and occasionally looking at ER Dano on the couch, his eyes shut and oh-so relaxed.

In a short time, we’d be dining together at his house, and then I was somehow going to manage to snoop around.

I felt sick to my stomach.

Jeremy had asked me to play a game of cards to pass the time, so he, Jennifer, Marty-another EMT-and I played Texas Hold ’em poker, with me winning the fake jackpot.

Soon the shift ended, everyone said their goodbyes and I walked out the back door.

“See you in a few, Nightingale,” Dano said from behind.

Exhausted, I waved my hand in the air. “Be there around sixish.” I wanted to turn around and see him, but told myself I needed to go home, unwind and get the food or else die of embarrassment when I arrived empty-handed.

I should have arrived at Dano’s empty-handed. Dying of embarrassment in front of a hunk would have been a welcome relief, as opposed to sitting in Stella Sokol’s kitchen-and getting the maternal third degree.

And no one, no one, did the maternal third degree like my mother.

“So, Pauline, why two dinners?” My mother turned away from the frying pan, which held the fantastic potato delicacies, and waved the spatula at me as if ready to use it. “And I still don’t understand why you can’t stay and eat with us. The family that eats together stays together.”

“That’s prays together,” I mumbled, and then shook my head, sipped my tea to buy time (mom’s tea bags were so fresh, I think she grew the herb and made them herself). “I’m…I’ll need them for leftovers. You know how I love the pancakes with eggs the next morning. So does Goldie.”

She spun around and turned the golden brown potato pancakes over. “Goldie. What kind of name is that, and where are my boys?”

“Both working, Ma.” She hated when I called her that but now I was so tired and crabby from her questions that I did it on purpose. I did have to smile at the way she called my roommates “her boys.” I’d grown very protective of the two of them, and was always thankful that someone like my mother could be so accepting of them.

“Working. Like you should be,” she said, taking the first batch of pancakes out and setting them on a paper-towel-covered dish, which she then stuck in the oven.

“You don’t have to keep mine warm.” I got up and made myself another cup of tea. I’d be in the bathroom all night, but that might be just the excuse I’d need to get away from Dano in his own house. “I won’t be eating them right away.”

She shut the oven door and looked at me. “Yes, they need to be kept warm anyway, and you ignored my statement about working. You should be working at Saint Gregory’s Hospital, like Miles. There is a nursing shortage, Pauline.”

“There’s been a nursing shortage, Ma, since the days of Clara Barton.”