...The furious bleating of Chad’s beeper woke him from the first sleep he’d had in two days. He rolled off the cot in the doctor’s on-call room, stuck his feet into his loafers, and staggered through the swinging door.

Now fully awake, he hit a dead run all the way to the door of the stairs and pounded down them to the emergency room. As he burst through the door, he nearly knocked down a nurse.

“Heh!” she exclaimed as she protected the tray of blood samples she carried from spilling.

“Sorry,” he yelled over his shoulder, but didn’t stop.

Another nurse up ahead waved him to the room. “They just brought him in. Assault victim. Multiple contusions. Possible internal injuries,” she barked at him as she thrust a chart into his hands.

He barely glanced at the patient, who the EMTs were shifting from their gurney to the ER room bed. Behind them, a man hulked in the doorway. Since Katrina a year ago, most of the hospitals in New Orleans had closed down, leaving the few smaller ones not flooded to handle the returning population. Their small ER stayed on constant alert.

Chad glanced at the victim, registering all the visible signs of the assault. Swollen lips and eyes, blood-caked hair indicating a head injury, torn, bloody clothing. He’d seen the same things a thousand times in his stint as an ER doctor over the last three years.

But something made Chad look twice. Something that tweaked a long-forgotten memory. Something that sent his stomach into a freefall.

“Do we have an ID?” Chad asked, hearing the tremble in his own voice, hating it, and hoping no one else had heard it.

The man in a rumpled dark suit stepped forward. A cop. Actually, a detective. Chad had seen his share of them by now to spot one. “We found his wallet. They beat him, took his backpack, and left him for dead.”

“Name?” Chad stared at the young man’s face as he ran his hands over the guy’s arms and legs to check for breaks.

If he’d bothered to look up, he would have seen the nurse staring at him. He never asked about his patients. Not their names, not about family, nothing. Too risky. With names came emotions, and the only way Chad had been able to follow his dream of being an ER doctor had been to cut off his emotions. At least that’s the excuse he’d told himself.

Be quick, be professional, be cold.

“Jeffrey Stone. Twenty-six. Student at Tulane.” The big detective shrugged. “That’s all we have on him. We’re trying to reach the family now.”

Chad’s heart stopped. Dead. It couldn’t be, could it? “Are you sure it’s Jeff Stone?” He glanced at the cop and got a somber nod. “I don’t think he has any family.”

“You know him?” the detective asked.

“A long time ago,” Chad replied as he stepped out of the way for the nurse to insert an IV into the back of Jeff’s hand. “Back in high school.” Summer camp on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, to be exact.

“What do you know about his family?” The detective had his pen out now and was scribbling on a small notebook.

“Not much. I heard his parents had been killed recently, that’s all.” Chad had never admitted to anyone that he’d kept track of Jeff over the years. Why would he? It had been a long time ago at summer camp. They’d never seen each other since then. He’d never called Jeff. Never kept the promise to keep in touch.

But Chad had never forgotten the boy who’d awakened the knowledge in Chad’s heart that he was gay. He’d never forgotten those blue eyes or the very first time he’d kissed another boy.

Jeff Stone.

Fuck.

Chad ran his hands through his hair and exhaled. “Nurse, we’ll need x-rays and a full blood work-up. Let’s see what damage’s been done here.”

He pushed every screaming emotion back under the rock in his heart and methodically and precisely went over the patient’s body to ascertain the extent of his injuries.

Chad halted in his tracks as Jeff groaned. His eyes fluttered open, impossibly lush black lashes surrounding those killer blue eyes that had haunted Chad’s dreams. For a moment, Jeff’s gaze wandered around the room, passed Chad, then returned and locked on Chad’s face.