In the Doctor's Bed

As soon as they wheeled the mother-to-be through the double doors, several nurses took over. One of them was Jerome. “It took both of you to bring her here?” he asked grinning. “Better not let Miss Thang see you. She’ll think you’re goofing off with nothing better to do.”

“I was on break,” Isabelle said smiling. “Besides, I needed to talk to Jaclyn about something.”

At that moment Dr. De Winter walked out of the operating room and Jaclyn had to quickly compose herself. The man did things to her without even trying. Not that he would try because he didn’t have the same interest in her that she had in him.

He stopped before them. “Dr. Morales and Dr. Campbell. How are you two doing?”

“Fine,” they responded simultaneously.

He looked solely at Isabelle. “Dr. Morales, Dr. Thornton has requested that one of my interns be ready to assist him tomorrow. He’s performing an advanced surgical procedure on the throat of a six-year-old boy. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

Jaclyn thought the smile on Isabelle’s face was priceless. “Yes, sir. Very much so,” she said in an excited voice.

“Then be here ready to scrub up at eight in the morning.”

“Thanks. I will.”

“Good.” And without saying anything else, or giving Jaclyn a second glance, he walked off.

Jaclyn’s gaze followed him until he was no longer in sight. She then switched her attention back to Isabelle who was grinning from ear to ear. Dr. De Winter’s recommendation that one of his interns be present during surgery was a big thing and every intern under him knew it.

“That’s a good opportunity, Isabelle. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I can’t believe he chose me.”

Jaclyn chuckled. “I can. He recognizes how good you are and knows you’re planning to go into pediatrics. You deserve it.”

The smile slowly faded from Isabelle’s face. “Not everyone will think so.”

Jaclyn knew that to be true. Not all the interns were supportive of each other. Some were competitive and a few were downright cutthroat.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. A few might bitch and moan, but I doubt any of them will question Dr. De Winter about it,” Jaclyn said.

“You’re right, but—”

“No buts, Isabelle.”

Later, when Jaclyn made her rounds, she turned the corner and collided head-on with Dr. De Winter, sending the charts she was carrying flying across the floor. “Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Apparently, Dr. Campbell,” he said in what she thought was an ultra-sexy voice. It was the same voice that she’d heard in her dreams last night, the night before and the night before that.

He knelt down and began picking up her charts and she knelt to join him. “You don’t have to do that, Dr. De Winter. I can get them.”

“No problem,” he said, handing her the charts he’d collected.

Their gazes connected the moment their fingers touched and she felt a deep stirring in the pit of her stomach. As she stared into his eyes she thought she saw them darken, but when she blinked he’d already straightened and was standing back up.

She stood as well. “Thank you,” she murmured, clutching the charts to her chest like an armor of steel.

“You’re welcome. And how are your patients? Any problems or concerns?”

Because he’d asked … “There is this one thing. We’re still trying to determine the reason behind Mr. Aiken’s high fevers.”

Dr. De Winter nodded. “I understand he had another one this morning.”

“Yes. We took more blood, but there’s nothing abnormal. The fever means there’s infection somewhere in his body, but nothing is showing up in his blood.”

“So you’re dealing with an FUO?”

Fever of unknown origin. “Yes,” she said, clearly disturbed.

“Any other signs and symptoms, Dr. Campbell?”

“None.”

“Let me see his chart for a second.”

She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and then flipped through the charts to find the one belonging to William Aiken. She handed it to Dr. De Winter, grateful their fingers did not touch this time.

Her pulse thudded as she stood there and watched him peruse the man’s chart. She couldn’t help noticing how his long lashes fanned across his cheeks and how sensuous his mouth looked. He then glanced up and caught her staring at his mouth. Good grief.

“May I make a suggestion, Dr. Campbell?”

“Yes, sir, you may.” The one thing that was different about Dr. De Winter compared to other doctors in an authoritative position was that he didn’t project a brash, all-knowing demeanor. He liked getting input from the interns he supervised and always solicited their opinions.

“Have blood drawn from his toe, preferably the big one, and have it checked.”

She raised a brow. Probably any other intern would have accepted what he said without question, but unfortunately she wasn’t one of them. “Why, if I may ask?”

He chuckled and the sound seemed to whisper across her skin. “Yes, doctor, you may. When I was an intern at a college in Boston, I had a patient with FUO and drawing blood from the big toe was suggested to me by the chief of staff. He explained that often bad blood will find places to settle and can’t easily be detected.”

She nodded as understanding dawned. “Which was the premise behind bloodletting,” she said, thinking out loud and seeing his point. “Which is the draining of bad blood out of a person’s body. And if there’s bad blood not detected, it might be confined in one of the body’s peripheral points. A premise we have now put to sound scientific use.”

“Exactly.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Dr. De Winter. I’ll have that done immediately.” She then quickly walked away.

Lucien watched Jaclyn hurry off and drew in a deep breath. When they had accidentally touched moments ago, it had taken everything within him to control the urge to pull her into his arms and mesh his lips with hers. That encounter had been too close for comfort. Way too close.

No matter how much he tried to control himself around her, he was finding it hard to do so. When they had knelt facing each other and he’d looked into her eyes and gazed upon the lushness of her mouth, heat had flared inside of him. He could imagine them kneeling facing each other, but the setting hadn’t been the hall of the hospital. In his mind they were in the middle of the bed. Naked.

Those were the last kind of thoughts he needed lodged in his brain. He tried forcing them out. The hospital’s nonfraternization policy had been put in place for a reason and he intended to abide by it. But God, he was attracted to her. And if knowing that wasn’t enough to shake his world, then he didn’t know what would. At that moment he thought he could even feel the floor shift under his feet. Yes, he was definitely standing on shaky ground.

Jaclyn nibbled on her bottom lip as she read Mr. Aiken’s most recent lab report. Dr. De Winter had been right in suggesting that blood be drawn from the man’s toe. The report clearly indicated bacteria in Mr. Aiken’s body. Bacteria of an unknown source.

Now she had to determine what was causing it. As she read the report again the main question circling around in her head was why the bacteria hadn’t shown up in a routine lab test.

“You’re too pretty to be frowning.”