Moonlight Over Manhattan(8)

How did women expect to wear heels like that and not damage themselves? That shoe was an accident waiting to happen. And although she seemed normal enough, he knew better than to let appearances dull his radar for trouble. A few years before, a student had presented with toothache, which had turned out to be a way to get pain meds. She’d overdosed a few days later and been brought into the emergency room.

Ethan had been present for her second visit, although not her first. It was a lesson he’d never forgotten.

“Miss Knight? I’m Dr. Black. Can you tell me what happened?”

It must have been a great party, he thought as he examined the ankle.

“I twisted it. I’m sorry to bother you when you’re so busy.” She sounded more than a little embarrassed, which made a change from the two patients he’d seen immediately before her, who had taken his care as their God-given right.

He wondered what she was doing here on her own on a Saturday night. She was all dressed up, so he doubted she’d spent the evening on her own.

He guessed she was mid to late twenties. Thirty possibly, although she had one of those faces that was difficult to put an age to. With makeup she could look a little older. Without, she could pass as a college student. Her eyes were blue and her gaze warm and friendly, which made a refreshing change.

Generally speaking, he didn’t see a lot of warm and friendly during his working day.

“How did you twist it?” Understanding the mechanism of the injury was one of the most helpful ways of piecing together a picture of the injury. “Dancing?”

“No. Not dancing. I wasn’t wearing shoes when I twisted it.”

He watched in fascination as her cheeks reddened.

It had been a while since he’d seen anyone blush.

“So how did you do it?” Realizing she might think he was after details for his own entertainment, he clarified. “The more details you give me, the easier it is for me to assess the injury.”

“I jumped from a window. It wasn’t far to the ground but I landed awkwardly and my ankle turned.”

She’d jumped from a window?

“You’re a bit of a risk-taker?”

She gave a wry smile. “My idea of risk is reading my Kindle in the bath so no, I don’t think I’d describe myself as a risk-taker.”

Ethan’s senses were back on alert. Instead of thinking possible addict, or potential adrenaline junkie, he was thinking possible abuse victim. “So why did you jump?” He softened his tone, trying to convey with his voice and actions that he could be trusted.

“I needed to get away from someone.” She must have seen something change in his expression because she shook her head quickly. “I can see what you’re thinking, but I wasn’t being threatened. It really was an accident.”

“Jumping from a window isn’t usually an accident.” Unless she was intoxicated, but he didn’t smell alcohol and she seemed perfectly composed. More composed than most of the people around her. The ER on a Saturday night wasn’t a pretty sight. “Why not leave by the front door?”

Her gaze slid from his. “It’s a long story.”

And one she obviously didn’t intend to share.

Ethan thought through his options. They saw plenty of domestic abuse incidents in the ER, and they had a duty to offer a place of safety and whatever support was needed. But he’d also learned that not everyone wanted to be helped. That it was a process. “Miss Knight—”

“You don’t need to worry. I was on a date, if you must know, and it wasn’t going well. My mistake.”

“You jumped to get away from your date?”

She stared at a point beyond his shoulder. “He wasn’t exactly the way his profile described him.”

“You’d never met him before?” And now he was thinking trafficking. And maybe he’d been wrong about her age and she was closer to twenty than thirty.

He checked the form and saw from her date of birth that his first guess had been the correct one. She was twenty-nine.

“I was trying online dating. It didn’t go quite the way I thought it would. Oh, this is so embarrassing.” She rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “He lied on his profile, and I didn’t even realize people did that. Which makes me stupid, I know. And naive. And yes, maybe it also makes me a risk-taker, even if I’m an unintentional risk-taker. And I’m horribly bad at it.”

He was still focused on her first words. “Lied?”

“He used a photo from thirty years ago and claimed to be all kinds of things he wasn’t.” She squared her shoulders. “I found him a little creepy. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing so I decided to make an exit where he couldn’t see me. I didn’t want him to follow me home. You don’t need to hear this, do you?” She leaned down to rub her ankle and her hair slid forward, obscuring her features.

For a moment he stared at it, that curtain of shiny gold.

He breathed in a waft of her perfume. Floral. Subtle. So subtle he wondered if what he was smelling was her shampoo.

He never became emotionally involved with his patients. These days he didn’t become emotionally involved in anything much, but for some reason he felt a spurt of anger toward the nameless guy who had lied to this woman.

“Why the window?” He dragged his gaze from her hair and focused on her ankle, examining it carefully. “Why not go out through the front door? Or even the kitchen or the rear entrance?”