A Doctor's Secret

Tania smiled to herself. Modesty was always a nice quality. It was also very rare in men who looked as good as Jesse Steele did. There was something about women throwing themselves at their feet that gave handsome men heads that barely fit through regulation-size doorways.

She kept her eyes on her work. “The man in trauma room three seems to think you’re the closest thing he’d seen to a guardian angel. And the man in trauma bay four thinks you’re the devil incarnate, so my guess is that you must have done something.”

He was probably going to have to give a statement and maybe show up in court, as well, if it came to that. No good deed went unpunished, Jesse thought.

Still, he did feel good about having saved the old man’s diamonds. “I tackled him.”

The doctor arched an eyebrow. He found it very sexy. “Excuse me?”

“The guy with the police escort,” he clarified. “I tackled him.”

“Why?” she asked.

His response had been immediate. There hadn’t been even a moment’s hesitation. “Because the old man yelled ‘stop thief,’” he told her and then, before she asked, he added, “and the guy in the suit was the only one running away from him.”

She could see why the old man had sounded so grateful. “That was pretty brave of you,” she acknowledged. “Most people would have looked the other way or pretended not to hear.”

He couldn’t do that, couldn’t look away or count the cracks in the sidewalk when someone needed help. He hadn’t been raised that way, wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he’d just walked on. “I don’t like thieves.”

“Most of us don’t,” she agreed, humor curving her lips. And then she paused for a second to scrutinize him. There was more to this man than just looks, she decided. “Sounds like it’s personal.” Because her father had been and her new brother-in-law still was involved with the police force, she guessed, “Is someone in your family in law enforcement?”

He had meant to stop with just the first word, but somehow the rest just slipped out. She was extremely easy to talk to. “No. Someone in my family was robbed.”

Something about the way her patient said it made her look at him again, her needle poised for a third tiny stitch. “Who?”

“My parents.”

Tania felt her heart tighten in empathy. “What happened?”

Her patient blew out a breath and was quiet for so long, she thought he’d decided not to answer. Which was his right. She was prying.

But just as she completed the last stitch, he said, “My parents ran a small mom-and-pop-type grocery store in Brooklyn. We lived right above it. One night some thug came in and robbed them. When he tried to steal my mother’s wedding ring, my father pushed him away. The thug shot him point-blank and ran. My mother got to keep her wedding ring, the thug got seventy-three dollars in cash, and my father died.” His voice was stony. He could still remember hearing the shot and wondering what it was. He was home that night, struggling with his math homework and planning on asking his father for help. He never did do his math homework that night.

Tania cut the black thread and felt numb. When he mentioned his parents, she could envision her own, Magda and Josef, being in that situation. Granted, her father was a retired police detective, but, judging from the way Jesse’s jaw had tightened, the underlying emotional ties were the same.

She lightly placed her hand on his arm. “I’m very sorry.”

He nodded, trying to put distance between himself and the memory of that night. The memory of flying down the stairs and bursting into the store, only to see his father on the floor, not breathing, blood everywhere. His mother sobbing. Funny how it still cut so deep, even after all these years.

Jesse cleared his throat. He could feel the passage growing smaller, threatening to choke him. “Yeah, well, that happened a long time ago. I was thirteen at the time.”

Sympathy filled her. “Must have been rough, growing up without a father.”

She didn’t know what she would have done without hers. Especially after the incident. It was her father who’d broken through the stone wall she’d built up around herself rock by rock. Her father who’d held her hand throughout the ordeal and who’d given her the courage to stand up for herself. Without him gently, firmly urging her on, trying mightily to control his own anger, she didn’t know if she would have pressed charges, much less been willing to go to court to tell her story yet one more time. Each time she recited it, it got worse for her, not better.

But the latter never turned out to be necessary. She was spared the courtroom ordeal. Jeff Downey confessed at the last minute and the case was settled out of court with a plea bargain. He was sent upstate and got ten years. Less with good behavior. He was paroled six months ago. Which meant he was out there somewhere. She tried very hard not to think about that.

She’d always suspected that her father had had something to do with Jeff’s confession and his accepting the plea bargain, that somehow, Josef had managed to put pressure on the boy she’d once thought was the answer to her prayers instead of being the source of recurring nightmares. Her father had denied doing anything out of the ordinary when she asked.

But she knew her father, knew how he felt about all of them. How he felt about her being violated. There was nothing more important to Josef Pulaski than his wife and his daughters.

Although logically, she knew that not everyone had parents like hers, in her heart she always envisioned her parents whenever people mentioned their own. It was always sad to find out the opposite was true. Those were the times when she felt really lucky.

“It was,” Jesse agreed. His father had been a stern man, but fair. They were just beginning to get along when Jason Steele was murdered. “But I got through it.”

Interested, Tania asked, “What about your mom? How did she handle it?”

“She sold the store, bought a flower shop instead. Most people don’t rob flower shops.” He remembered how he begged her not to buy another store and how she’d tried to reassure him with statistics about flower shops. He still went there every day after school—to guard his mother until she closed up. “And she managed.” He paused, wondering how the blond-haired doctor with the killer legs and the sweet smile had so effortlessly gotten so much information out of him. “Is this part of the treatment?”

“Sorry, my attending always says I get too close to my patients.” Which wasn’t strictly true, Tania added silently. She asked questions, but she didn’t get close. Getting close involved vulnerability. She hadn’t gotten close to anyone since the incident. Not even to the men she’d gone out with since then. She didn’t know how.

He eyed her for a second, as if he was trying to make up his mind about something. “Do you?” he asked. “Get too close?”

She didn’t answer him directly. She gave him a reply she felt worked in this case.

“I find patients trust you more if you take an interest in them. And I am interested in them,” she assured him. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be in this field.” Smiling, she mentioned the first job she could think of that had to do with solitude. One she’d actually considered, except that solitude meant that she would be alone with her thoughts, and that she couldn’t do. “I’d be a forest ranger.”

“A forest ranger,” he repeated, amused. “That would have been the medical world’s loss.”

Tania laughed softly. “Well, I see your encounter with the thief didn’t knock the charm out of you.” Pushing back the surgical tray, she stripped off the rubber gloves and deposited them into the trash bin. “We’re done here,” she announced, then took a prescription pad out of her lab coat pocket and hastily wrote something down.

“There might be pain,” she warned him, tearing off the paper. “You can get this filled at your local pharmacy, or use the hospital’s pharmacy.” She gave him directions since he was probably unfamiliar with it. “It’s down in the basement, to right of the elevator bank when you get off.”

Jesse took the prescription she held out to him and glanced at it. His eyebrows drew together in consternation. He was looking at scribble. “You sure it says something?”

Tania grinned. Her mother, she-of-the-perfect-handwriting, used to get on her case all the time. “It does look like someone dipped a chicken in ink and had it walk across the paper, doesn’t it? That was my first inkling that I was going to be a doctor. I have awful handwriting.”

Jesse folded the paper and put it into his wallet. “Not awful…” he said with less than total conviction, letting his voice trail off.

Before she could say anything, someone behind her asked in a jovial voice, “So, how is the hero?”

They both looked over to the trauma room’s entrance. The man whose diamonds he’d recovered stood in the doorway, beaming at him. There was a butterfly bandage on his cheek but other than that, he seemed none the worse for wear.

Tania pushed her stool back, then rose to her feet. “Good as new,” she declared, then turned back to Jesse. “Now comes the really hard part.” Her mouth quirked. “Filling out the insurance forms.” She turned to lead the way out. “You can do that at the outpatient desk.”

Isaac stepped into the room. He raised both hands, as if to beat the notion back. “No need. It’s on me. I’ll pay it,” he told Jesse eagerly.

Jesse slid off the table, picking up his jacket. “That’s all right,” he told the older man. “My company has health insurance. They’ll take care of it.”

Isaac gave him a once-over, taking in the torn trouser leg and the stains. “Then a new suit,” he declared with feeling. “I owe you a new suit.”

For just a second, there was a mental tug of war. But in the end, pride prevented Jesse from taking the man up on his offer. The suit he had on had set him back a good five hundred dollars because he knew appearances were everything.

But he was his own man. He always had been. That meant he paid his own way and was indebted to no one.

“No,” he assured the old man, “you really don’t owe me anything.”

This could go on all afternoon, Tania thought. She gently placed a hand to each man’s arm and motioned them out of the room. “I’m afraid that you two need to settle this outside.” She smiled brightly at Isaac. “We need the room.”