Out of the speakers came some soft, elevator Christmas music, reminding her that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Someone had the small TV at the nurses’ station on CNN, muted, and ticker after ticker spelled doom and gloom for their economy. “You know, it’s really not a good time to be selling a house,” she whispered.

Blake reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Cristina-”

“Seriously. He should just forget about selling his damn house.”

“I think I can get this bullet out without sending him to surgery,” one of the doctors said.

“Do it.” Dustin sounded as if he was breathing through gritted teeth.

“Give him more pain meds,” Christina demanded. Why weren’t they giving him more? “Blake-”

Blake held her back, whispering in her ear. “They know what they’re doing. You know they know what they’re doing.”

“Do you feel this?” the doctor asked, poking at Dustin’s bare foot.

“Feel what?”

Oh, God. “He’s going to be fine…” She stared at Dustin’s too-pale face. “You hear me, Dustin Mauer?”

The doctor gave Blake a look that had the firefighter holding on to Christina very tightly, but she was very aware that no one was making any promises. “He’s going to be fine,” she repeated for herself.

“Yes,” Blake said, sounding a little tense. “He is.”

The alternative was far too painful to contemplate. A world without Dustin? Without those eyes, that smile, that gentle, giving, sweet nature that he could turn just a little rough and edgy when he had to? No way. She couldn’t imagine not having him in her life. “Goddammit, we have a picnic to go to.”

Dustin didn’t respond to that and she tried to move closer to the gurney, but Blake caught her. “We have to stay back or they’ll make us leave.”

“He practically jumped in front of that gunman!” she cried. “To protect that girl. To protect me!” She did the saving, dammit. No one needed to save her.

Blake kept a good hold of her, probably afraid she was going to jump the line of nurses and start yelling at Dustin again. She gripped the front of Blake’s shirt, giving him a shake when it was herself that needed one. “I’m not done with that man!”

Very gently, Blake pulled her in for a hug. “I know.”

“I have things to tell him.” She wasn’t exactly sure what they were yet, but she’d figure that part out. She tried to look at Dustin through the throng of people now working on him. “Do you hear me, Dustin Mauer? I have things to tell you!”

“Cristina, come on now,” Blake begged her. “The drugs have just knocked him out. Stay back. You’ll get your second chance. Everyone gets a second chance.”

If anyone should know, it was Blake, who’d come back from the dead, literally.

But suddenly everyone in scrubs was on the move, with Dustin between them, far too still and quiet on the gurney.

“Going into X-ray,” the doctor called back. “Checking bullet and bone placement. Is his family here?”

“Not yet,” she managed, her gut tight.

“We’ll be back.”

It didn’t escape her that he moved off without having ever given anything away.

In the movies that never boded well. As Dustin’s gurney moved past her, she reached out and touched his foot. It was all she could reach. “You’re going to be fine,” she whispered after he was long gone behind the double swinging white doors. “You are.”

DUSTIN LAY in the hospital bed, wriggling his toes. He was never going to get tired of wriggling his toes, not ever again. That was the good news.

The bad news? He hadn’t quit his job soon enough.

“You feeling sorry for yourself?”

Dustin craned his neck and eyed Jason, sitting by his bed. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for your pansy ass to wake up. So…does getting shot hurt as bad as everyone says?”

“Nah.” He sat up and grimaced at the pain. “Piece of cake.”

Jason’s smile faded. “You scared the shit out of us. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Believe me, I don’t intend to. They got the bullet out.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m okay.”

“Yes.”

“And the other guy who got shot?”

“Also okay.”

“So do you have the getaway car?”

“You’re not clear to go yet. And Cristina and Blake had to go to the police station to give statements, but they were going to come back to see you.”

“I need out of here.”

“But-”

Dustin struggled to toss off the covers. He was wearing a hospital gown. Great. “Either drive me or call me a damn cab. And where are some damn pants?”

“Jeez, those drugs you’re on are supposed to make you happy.”

“I’ll be happy. Out of here.”

BY THE TIME Cristina got back to the hospital, she was seriously losing it.

Dustin was recovering.

She knew this because she’d called every ten minutes. “I need to see him,” she said to Blake, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

“He’s probably sleeping.”

“Okay, but I still need to see him. I think I might…have feelings for him. Real feelings, you know?”

Blake laughed softly. “Yeah, I know.”

“Well, I didn’t!”

“That’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake. But we love you anyway.”

She stared at him for a beat. “You do?”

“All of us, Cristina. Every last one.”

She struggled with this concept, wanting to believe that could actually even be possible, but not sure, even now, if she could. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“Maybe it’s your sweet, sensitive nature.”

“No, really. Why?”

He took in her tense features, and softened. “We love you because you’re the best of the best, Cristina, and because you’re fierce and intense and amazing. You’d lay your life down for any single one of us. Hell, you’d do it for a stranger. Now you have a guy, also one of the best of the best, who feels the same way about you, and you’re sitting at a green light looking at me.”

“Oh!” She hit the gas and didn’t let up until she’d pulled back into the hospital. She rushed past the E.R. cubicle where only a few hours before Dustin had lain bleeding, not able to feel his toes, to the information desk, where she was directed to Dustin’s room.

And found an empty bed.

An aide was cleaning up the sheets. “Where is he?” she demanded hoarsely.

“Who?”

“Dustin Mauer. The patient who was here. Where is he?”

“He’s gone.”

FOR THE FIRST TIME in her entire life, Cristina left the job in the middle of a shift. Abandoning Blake at the hospital, she drove to Dustin’s house and banged on his door, opening it herself when she couldn’t wait. “Dustin-Oh.”

A Dustin look-alike was on the other side of the door. He was tall, leanly muscled, and so much like Dustin she had to blink.

“Hello,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I-” She looked behind her, back outside, to make sure she’d driven up to the right house.

“Oh, you’re at the right place,” he told her. “You’re the heartbreaker, right? Cristina.”

“Jason.” Dustin said this from his perch on the couch, his voice low and raspy and so familiar it nearly brought her to her knees. “Let her in.”

“She’s already in.” But Jason stood back and gave her room.

“My brother, Jason, the watchdog,” Dustin said. “Jason, this is Cristina.”

Cristina managed a small smile and then moved past Jason to stand in front of Dustin, so relieved to see him she could scarcely breathe. He looked like shit, like death warmed over really, but he was breathing, so that was good. Still, she wanted to wrap him up in her arms and never let go. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“So we’re even.”

“I scared you? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Why are you here?” he asked instead of answering her.

She shoved her hands into her pockets. Probably she should have figured out exactly what to say to him. “Isn’t it customary to visit someone who’s been shot? Even idiots who check themselves out of hospital against doctors’ advice?”