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Doctor In The House

Год написания книги
2018
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Bailey took in a deep breath. Gritting her teeth, she lengthened her stride as far as she could and quickened her pace to make up for the difference. They turned heads as they snaked their way through the halls.

She was right behind him when they reached the entrance to Operation Room One.

Only then did Ivan stop. He felt a little winded himself. He needed to make time for morning jogs again, he thought. Somehow that had managed to slip by the wayside. These days, he lived and breathed his work and little else. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a concert.

His eyes washed over her. Bailey did her best not to shiver. “Stubborn, aren’t you?”

Bailey smiled at him in response. “My father said it’s one of my best attributes.”

“Fathers lie,” he said flatly.

He wanted to get under her skin, to get her angry, so she struggled to remain clam. “If I may ask, what kind of operation is it?”

He gave her a look that easily would have left others quaking in their shoes. It annoyed him that he had no effect on her. “A complicated one.”

“Good,” she replied without missing a beat. “May I scrub in? I can—” She was about to tell him that she had her scrubs in her locker and could change into them faster than she could explain it, but she never got the chance.

She could see him shutting down right in front of her eyes. “You can scrub all you want, DelMonico,” he said, putting his hand on the swinging door, “but you’re not getting into my operating room.”

She covered his hand with her own. The action stopped him in his tracks. Ivan eyed her over his shoulder.

“What are you afraid of, Dr. Munro?”

She had done what few people ever did. She’d caught him by surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

His voice was cold, brittle. Bailey felt like someone who had just walked out onto the plank and now tottered on the edge of the wood. But if she backed off, Munro would have nothing but contempt for her. More contempt for her, she amended.

“What are you afraid of?” she repeated. “That you might be wrong?”

His eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m never wrong.”

Okay, maybe she should have been more specific. “About me, Dr. Munro. Wrong about me. You think I can’t cut it.”

“I know you can’t cut it,” he informed her mildly. “I’m not letting you cut anything.”

She lifted her chin pugnaciously. “What are you going to tell Dr. Bennett?”

Rangy shoulders rose and fell. “That I tried but it didn’t work out.”

She pushed back his lab coat from the hand she was covering and looked at his wrist. “After only ten minutes?”

He inclined his head. “We both lasted longer than I estimated.”

She drew herself up to her full five-foot-five height. “I’m not going anywhere, Dr. Munro.”

He nodded, as if she’d finally caught on. “My words exactly.”

Too late, Bailey realized her error. “Away,” she corrected. “I’m not going away.” As she spoke, her voice increased in strength and depth, even as she struggled to keep it low. She didn’t want to be accused of screaming or creating a scene. “I’ve come a long way to be standing right here in this hallway, arguing with you, and if you think that your reputation as the devil incarnate is going to scare me off, it won’t. I’ve seen the devil, Dr. Munro, and it’s not you.”

He stood there for a long moment, then drew his hand from beneath hers. Turning away from her, he pushed open the door to the operating room and walked through.

“Scrub in.”

CHAPTER 7

Ivan was vaguely aware of the indistinct squeal behind him and then the sound of eager footsteps growing fainter.

He assumed it was the little-resident-that-could’s way of showing her enthusiasm as well as her joy before she ran off to change into her scrubs and prepare for the operating room. Crossing the perimeter of the operating room, as much to show his presence as to get to the area where the sinks were, Ivan carefully took in every square inch.

Casting an aura of disquiet as he went.

As it should be. Complacent people were lax. Lax led to mistakes.

He wondered if he’d just made a mistake, being too soft. Telling DelMonico to scrub in.

It wasn’t as if he would allow her to touch one of the instruments. His only intention was to let her just breathe the same air as his surgical staff. He and only he would tackle Mark Spader’s brain tumor.

Brain tumor.

Alone by the sinks, Ivan took in a long breath and then released it. Like a magnet set on a table with metal fillings, the surgery before him drew away all thoughts of the resident and how he hated being harnessed with petty responsibilities that took away from the focus of his purpose here at Blair.

To mend as many patients as he could. To try, in some small, futile measure, to make it up to Scott for what he’d done. As if that were possible.

A dry, humorless laugh echoed within the small area as he shed his lab coat. He was already dressed in his surgical livery. Prepared, always prepared.

Except for that one night.

Against his will, thoughts came back to him. Scott Kiplinger was the reason he was here. Scott was the reason for everything, most of all why he had become a neurosurgeon. Because if there had been a neurosurgeon on duty that night, if one had been called to the ER in time instead of hours later, Scott might still be among the living. Walking, talking and being the best friend he’d ever had.

The best friend he’d killed as surely as if he had aimed that gun and pulled the trigger himself.

But he hadn’t physically pulled the trigger. Scott’s despair had pulled it that awful, beautiful afternoon in the meadow. That fateful afternoon when he had finally persuaded Scott to leave the confines of his house, where all the curtains were always drawn, shutting out life. Shutting in the darkness.

Scott had lived that way, never leaving his house, for almost two years. Ever since the accident.

The accident, Ivan thought darkly, remembering every vivid detail, that had been all his fault. If he hadn’t been speeding, if he hadn’t taken that curve so fast, if there hadn’t been ice on the ground, if Scott hadn’t been in the car.

If, if, if, IF.

Ivan sighed, scrubbing his damp hand over his face. Wiping it dry as he uttered a curse through clenched teeth, he then washed his hands a second time.

If.

Battling with the word didn’t change anything. Didn’t make him stay home instead of going out for a ride. Didn’t make him sober instead of buzzed on three beers.

Neither did it change how very naive he’d been, thinking he’d scored a coup, getting Scott to leave his house. At the outset, it had seemed like the perfect plan, driving Scott to the meadow where he had loved to hike and run. Scott, the all-around athlete, getting in touch with his past. It had seemed so right at the time.

He’d thought, believed, that the sight of something familiar, something once so beloved, would finally, magically, bring Scott around. Would suddenly rally him to grasp on to the fragments of life that he still had and make him want to build on them.
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