Doctor In The House

Ivan pretended to look both aghast and saddened. “And here I was, getting ready to ask them to go to the prom with me.” He shook his head. “You just never know, do you?”

Like a full-on game of doubles played across an extra-wide tennis court, meetings with Ivan always exhausted him. Didn’t the man understand that he was on his side? That he was one of the very few who actually were? “Ivan, this isn’t a joke.”

“Isn’t it?” Ivan scowled at the very thought of having to nurture a fledgling surgeon. “How am I supposed to do my work with some wet-behind-the-ears lower life-form following my every move, sucking up to me and trying to absorb everything like a nondiscriminate sponge?”

Maybe the man wasn’t aware of the way he sounded. Maybe he should have brought in a video camera so that he could play this all back for Munro and let the neurosurgeon witness firsthand just how abrasive he came across. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. You’ve got to change your attitude.”

Unblinking, cold brown eyes fixed on him. Ivan’s face remained expressionless as he asked, “Why?”

The answer, Harold thought, was very simple. He smoothed out the edges of his bow tie with his thumb and index finger. A sign to those who knew him that he was nervous. “Because people hate working with you.”

Ivan shrugged again. “Easy enough solution. Get new people.”

The man just didn’t get it, did he? For the sake of a tenuous friendship and because Munro was the best neurosurgeon he had ever known in his thirty-year career, Harold persisted. “Ivan, if you don’t change, you can’t operate.”

Something resembling a smirk crossed Ivan’s lips. But when he spoke, he was deadly serious. No quips, no sarcasm. “I don’t operate with my attitude. I operate with my skill. Everything else is secondary and unimportant.”

Some people preferred to be nonconfrontational. Sadly for him, Harold thought, the chief neurosurgeon of Blair Memorial did not number among them. Arguing appeared to be something Ivan both enjoyed and keenly relished, sharpening his wit as if it were a sword in need of constant honing. So rather than continue on a field of battle where he was hopelessly out-matched, Harold moved aside what was left of his ham-and-Swiss sandwich and pushed forward a dark blue eight-by-eleven folder.

Ivan perused the cover with a smattering of interest, but made no effort to open the folder. “If that contains a bribe, Harold, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I only take bribes on Fridays. Today is Monday.” With a nod of his head, he indicated the calendar on the chief’s desk. “Try me again at the end of the week.”

Harold pressed his thin lips together. He could almost hear his wife’s voice in his head. Rachel had been after him for years to retire. If he’d listened five years ago, his hair might still be black instead of completely gray. Ivan, he noted, still didn’t have so much as a single gray hair.

“I’m perfectly aware what day it is, Ivan,” he replied tersely. “And no, it’s not a bribe in the folder. It’s your career.”

Ivan glanced down at it, then back at the chief. “The folder should be bigger, then.”

“Open it,” Harold instructed.

To his surprise, Ivan smiled. Patiently. As if he were humoring someone not entirely in possession of his faculties. A few more sessions like this, Harold thought, and Munro might be right.

“Is it me,” Ivan asked, “or are you getting testier in your old age?”

“Oh, it’s definitely you,” Harold told him with feeling, his meaning clear. “All you. Now open the damn folder, Ivan.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” Ivan set aside the last of his sandwich and carefully wiped his fingers on the stiff napkins that had been provided along with lunch. Crumpling the napkin, he tossed it on the tray and then opened the folder.

Inside was an application for residency at Blair Memorial. The obligatory two-by-two photograph was glued in the space provided in the application’s upper left-hand corner. Ivan glanced at the photograph, ignored the application and allowed the cover to fall back into place.

Raising his chin, he looked the chief of staff in the eyes. “Turn her down.”

About to take a drink of his bottled water, Harold nearly choked. He stared at Munro in openmouthed disbelief. “Excuse me?”

“Turn her down,” Ivan repeated, enunciating every word as if the man had suddenly been struck deaf and born slow.

It took Harold less than a heartbeat to find his voice. “On what basis?”

“She’s too pretty,” Ivan told him matter-of-factly. He turned his attention back to the last of his sandwich and his iced coffee.

“What?” The single word fairly vibrated with incredulity.

“Pretty,” Ivan repeated. “Attractive, comely. I believe the term ‘handsome woman’ would have been applied to her a century ago.” His eyes narrowed as he looked across the desk at the chief. “That might be more your style, anyway.”

He had to know Ivan’s reasoning here. “And since when do looks even remotely figure into the selection process?”

“A woman who looks like that—” Ivan pushed the closed folder even farther away from him “—is not going to keep her mind on her work. She’ll be too busy flirting with all the eligible doctors and would-be doctors.” He rolled his shoulders, mimicking the exaggerated movements of a femme fatale. “And they’ll all be buzzing around her like so many bees who’ve lost their way to the hive.” Wrists pointed down, he wiggled his fingers in the air to illustrate. “Want my advice.” It really wasn’t a question, merely a declaration. “Nip this in the bud before it even starts. Tell her ‘thank you but no thank you.’ Better yet—” his eyes glinted as a thought came to him “—refer her to Sloan Memorial,” he said, referring to another teaching hospital in the area. “Let them deal with her and the chaos that she’ll leave in her wake.”

Harold had leaned back in his chair, waiting the neurosurgeon out. When the silence finally came, he seized it. “Are you through?”

Ivan looked down at the paper that had held his sandwich. A dollop of the spicy mustard was all that bore witness to the pastrami extravaganza that had been his lunch. He smiled as he crumpled the paper and placed it and the paper plate onto the tray. “I guess I am.” He pushed back his chair, ready to leave.

“I didn’t mean lunch,” Harold informed him. “I meant with your tirade.”

The choice of words amused Ivan. There were obviously holes in Harold’s education. “That wasn’t a tirade, Harold. When I have a tirade, there’s much rising of hair at the back of the neck. Usually involving the necks of the people I’m tirading against. Believe me, you’ll know when I deliver a tirade.”

“I’m not considering hiring her at Blair Memorial,” Harold said evenly.

“That’s good to know.” Ivan began to rise to his feet. “Now, I’m afraid that I have to—”

His next words had Ivan sitting down again. “I’ve already hired her.”

The surprise on Ivan’s face melted away a moment after it appeared. He shook his head sadly. “Big mistake.”

Harold wasn’t through. “She is your surgical resident.”

“Bigger mistake,” Ivan declared. When Harold made no attempt to rescind his words, Ivan grew serious. And annoyed. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

“I’ve listened,” Harold informed him succinctly. “And like you’ve done so many times before, I’ve chosen to ignore what I’ve heard.” He leaned forward, trying to appeal to Ivan’s charitable nature—if such a thing existed. “There’s no leeway here, Ivan. She has an excellent grade point average—”

Biting back a choice expletive, Ivan waved a hand in disgust at the words. “Oh well, an excellent grade point average, that’ll save lives.”

“And she comes highly recommended.”

“By who?” he demanded, getting to his feet again. He shoved his hands deep into his lab coat as he began to pace the length of the overcrowded office. A stack of folders piled up in one corner toppled, sliding down like gleeful children on a sled sampled the first snows of winter in the mountains. “Some online dating service?”

“By professors at John Hopkins University,” Harold countered, turning in his chair to watch Ivan stride around the room on legs that had always struck him as being too long. “Professors for whom I have the utmost respect. She’s impressed every one of them.”

Ivan’s expression was nothing short of sour. He snorted as if he’d expected nothing less. “I won’t ask how.”

“Don’t be insulting, Ivan.”

“Insulting?” Ivan echoed. “You call this insulting? I haven’t even begun to be insulting.”

One of the reasons Harold Bennett had risen to his present position of chief of staff of one of the best hospitals in the Southwest was that he kept both his head and his temper during times of crisis. To see him angry was as rare as viewing the tail end of Halley’s comet. It was visible, but not very often.

But at the moment his expression was serious, closely bordering on angry. “If you do anything to make her leave, anything that will make her time here at Blair anything but informative and well-spent, I promise you, Ivan, there will be consequences. Consequences that you won’t like.”

Ivan looked at him, utterly unaffected by the prediction. “In other words, there’ll be no change from now.”