M.D. Most Wanted

It was a feeling that he wanted to have again, and he did. Each time he worked on a patient.

Working on Tomas Morales’s perforated ulcer was a little more complex than applying peroxide and a Band-Aid to a scraped knee, but the feeling of satisfaction was still the same.

Taking off his mask, he tossed it into the hamper and sighed, bone weary. The operation had taken longer than he’d expected. As he ran a hand through his hair, holding the green cap he’d just removed in his other hand, his stomach growled. Fiercely.

“I heard that all the way over here,” Alix DuCane cracked. She was standing by the sink, putting lotion on her freshly scrubbed hands. The gloves she’d just taken off chaffed her flesh. If she wasn’t careful, she thought, she was going to wind up with skin like a lizard.

As if in response, his stomach growled again. One of the orderlies chuckled to himself.

Reese shrugged, tossing the paper towel he’d just used to dry his hands into the wastebasket.

“That’s what happens when all you’ve had for breakfast is a small candy bar.” It’d been stale at that, he thought. Hazards of war.

Having removed her own surgical cap, Alix shook out her short, curly blond hair as she crossed to him. “It was at least a granola bar, I hope.”

Reese grinned and shook his head. “Nope. Chocolate bar. Pure sugar in a sticky wrapper. I think the candy in the vending machine down the hall is melting.”

She tended to agree, having hit the machine more than once for an energy surge in the past week. Alix frowned in mock disapproval. “Shame on you, Dr. Bendenetti. What kind of an example are you setting for your patients? You’re supposed to know better.”

His shrug was careless, loose-limbed. The movement hinted that there was an ache there somewhere, waiting to emerge and make him uncomfortable. He needed a new mattress, he thought. And the time in which to purchase it.

But first things first. “Know where I can get a reliable alarm clock?”

Alix smiled to herself. She knew of several women on staff at the hospital, including two physicians, who would have been more than happy to volunteer to wake Reese up personally, any hour of the day or night. So long as they could occupy the space beside him in the bed right before then.

There was no denying it, Alix thought, looking at her friend with an impartial eye. Reese Bendenetti was one desirable hunk, made more so by the fact that he seemed to be completely unaware of his own attributes. To her knowledge, he rarely socialized. When he did, it was to catch a beer or take a cup of coffee with a group from the hospital. Never one-on-one, except with her, and theirs was a purely platonic friendship. They had a history together, going back to medical school. He’d known her when she was still married to Jeff. Before the boating accident that had taken him away from her.

Alix knew firsthand what a solid friend Reese could be. It seemed to her that it was one of life’s wastes that Reese didn’t have anyone in his life who could truly appreciate the kind of man he was.

Sometimes, she mused, dedication could be too much of a good thing.

But there was still time. Reese was young. And you never knew what life had in store for you just around the next corner.

“Is that what happened this morning?” she asked as they walked out of the room connecting two of the operating rooms. He raised a brow at her question. “I happened to see you peeling into the parking lot.”

Reese smiled ruefully. Driving too fast was a vice of his, and he was trying very hard to curb it.

But this morning there’d been a reason to squeeze through yellow lights that were about to turn red. He absolutely hated being late for anything, most of all his work at the hospital.

“My alarm suddenly decided to turn mute,” he confessed. “I woke up fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be here.”

She’d been to his apartment on several occasions and knew he lived more than fifteen minutes away from Blair Memorial.

“You can really fly when you want to, can’t you?” His stomach growled again. Rotating her shoulders, Alix smiled. “Join me in the cafeteria if you feel like it. I’m having a late breakfast myself. Julie was up all night, cutting a tooth to the sound of the Irish Rovers singing ‘Danny Boy.’” She’d played the CD over and over again in hopes of putting Julie to sleep. As it was she’d spent half the night pacing the floor with the eighteen-month-old. “In the meantime I’ll see if I can scrounge up a rooster for you.”

“You do that.” But instead of following her, Reese began heading down the corridor toward the back of the hospital. “I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes,” he promised. “There’re some people in the E.R. waiting room I have to talk to first.”

She nodded. There was protocol to follow. She knew how that was.

Her own stint on the other side of the operating arena had been a negative experience. Reese had been there with her, to hold her hand when the surgeon told her that everything humanly possible had been done, but that Jeff had still expired. Expired. As if he’d been a coupon that hadn’t been redeemed in time, or a driver’s license that had been allowed to lapse. Each time she’d had to face a grieving family since—which mercifully was not often—she remembered her own feelings and tempered her words accordingly. Neither she nor Reese believed in distancing themselves from their patients. That’s what made them such good friends.

“I’ll save a bran muffin for you,” she called out to Reese.

He made a face. Bran muffins were just about the only things he didn’t care for. Knowing that, Alix laughed as she disappeared.

Reese continued down the hall to the emergency waiting room area. This was the part he liked best. Coming out and giving the waiting family good news instead of iffy phrases. Tomas Morales had been to his office late last week. Choosing his words carefully, Reese had cautioned the man that playing the waiting game with his condition was not advisable. Morales hadn’t wanted to go under the knife, and while Reese understood the man’s fear, he also understood the consequences of waiting and had wanted to make the man painfully aware of them.

Painful being the key word here, he thought, because Morales had been in agony when he was brought into the hospital. His oldest daughter, Jennifer, and his wife had driven him to the emergency room.

This morning, as Reese had run into the hospital, he’d come through the electronic doors just in time to hear himself being paged.

And the rest, he mused, was history.

Mother and daughter stood up in unison the moment he walked into the waiting area. Mrs. Morales looked painfully drawn. There was more than a little fear in her dark eyes. Her daughter was trying to look more positive, but it was clear that both women were frightened of what he had to tell them.

Reese didn’t believe in being dramatic or drawing the spotlight to himself, the way he knew some surgeons did. He put them out of their misery even before he reached them.

“He’s going to be just fine, Mrs. Morales, Jennifer.” He nodded at the younger woman. Jennifer quickly translated for her mother. But it wasn’t necessary. The older woman understood what the look in her husband’s doctor’s eyes meant.

She grasped his hand between both of hers. Hers were icy cold. The woman kissed the hand that had held the scalpel that had saved her husband’s life before Reese had a chance to stop her.

“Gracias,” Ava Morales cried, her eyes filling with tears. Then haltingly she said, “Thank you, thank you.”

Embarrassed, but greatly pleased to be able to bring the two women good news, Reese gave Jennifer the layman’s description of what had happened and paused after each sentence while she relayed the words to her mother. He ended by telling them that they would be able to see Mr. Morales in his room in about two hours, after he was brought up from the recovery room.

“Maybe you and your mother can go down to the cafeteria and get something to eat in the meantime,” he suggested. “It’s really not bad food, even for a hospital.”

Jennifer nodded, her eyes shining with unspoken gratitude. Quickly she translated his words to her mother.

As he began to walk away, he heard the older woman say something to her daughter. He gathered from the intonation that it was a question.

“Please, Dr. Bendenetti, where’s the chapel? My mother wants to say a prayer.”

“He’s out of danger,” Reese assured her. Of course, there was always a small chance that things might take a turn for the worse, but the odds were negligible, and he saw no reason to put the women through that kind of added torture.

“The prayer is for you,” Mrs. Morales told him halting. “For thank-you.”

Surprised, he looked at her. And then he smiled. The woman understood far more than he thought.

Reese nodded his approval. “Can’t ever have too many of those,” he agreed. Standing beside Mrs. Morales, he pointed down the corridor. “The chapel’s to the left of the front admitting desk. Just follow the arrows to the front. You can’t miss it.”

Thanking him again, the two women left.

And now, Reese thought as he walked out of the waiting room, it was time to tend to his own needs. His stomach was becoming almost aggressively audible. He was just grateful that it hadn’t roared while he was talking to the Morales women.

He took a shortcut through the emergency area itself. As he passed the doors that faced the rear parking lot where all the ambulances pulled in, they flew open. Two paramedics he knew by sight came rushing in, pushing a gurney between them.

Instinct and conditioning had Reese taking the situation in before he was even aware that he had turned his head.