Uncovering Her Secrets

How much worse would this morning have been if he and Dasha had had nothing to do but sit around and reminisce? Remember that time when we were dating, and you broke my heart and left me handcuffed to the bed while you stole my fellowship? How much trouble would his mouth have gotten him into then? It certainly would’ve taxed this new leaf he struggled to turn over.

His mouth had caused him years of trouble, and was the reason he had to work with the woman he’d spent the past decade quasi-stalking.

The best way to avoid Dasha? To know where she was. Know where she worked. Know what conferences she attended. Know where she lived, where she likely shopped, dined and visited. Avoidance of that level required intelligence.

It wasn’t really stalking. It was more like anti-stalking. In a stalker sort of way.

And now she stood behind him, no more than a yard away.

Another hour passed.

“How’s it going over there?” She asked for updates regularly but hadn’t made any more attempts to manipulate him by riling him. Something else he should put off thinking about until later when he was deciding whether to come back to St. Vincent’s.

“Closing,” Preston answered. “Transfused two pints of blood.” No doubt this wasn’t exactly what the board had in mind for supervised practice.

“Good. I need you.” To help with the surgery. She needed his assistance with the surgery. The words she’d chosen were bad, but they had no hidden meaning.

“How is she doing on blood?” he asked.

A surgical nurse helped him out of his gown and gloves and into a fresh set.

“Up to three, probably adding another...” She never looked away from her patient.

His first view inside the woman’s chest nearly robbed him of breath. “We could do with a cardiac surgeon.” Could they ever. But in the small cavity his hands joined hers, and they worked in tandem to repair damage that appeared irreversible.

“That’s who I’ve been asking for updates on,” she muttered, but she still worked. She wouldn’t give up. It was one thing he could give her credit for. Well, that and her skill. On a professional level Dasha was good. It was as a human being that she had failed.

His left eye twitched. He squinted. Sometimes taking charge of those muscles helped. Sometimes it didn’t. Working with Dasha might be a deal-breaker. He’d have to think about it.

Later.

When he relaxed the muscles around his eye, his sight sharpened and he saw it. There was a small cut on Mrs. Andrews’s heart, but it had not gone through. “Damn.”

“What is it?” Dasha stopped what she was doing long enough to look where his hands were.

“She needs to go on the pump,” Preston said. “Now.” That the heart wall had held this long was a miracle.

“Get the line in her. Go femoral, we don’t need any more holes north of the belt,” Dasha said, then went back to what she was doing. Already the techs were getting the heart-lung machine in place. They’d started moving the second he said the word pump. Preston could get used to that.

A cannula landed in his hand and he prodded around on the woman’s thigh to find the artery, swabbed with alcohol and threaded it in. By the time he was ready for the return line, the nurse was waiting for him.

He’d no more gotten it settled than a man pushed into the OR.

Nettle. Preston recognized him then. The name hadn’t rung any bells but he’d met this cardiac surgeon before. A golfing buddy of his father’s. Which was all Preston needed to know about him. He could jump to some conclusions on his own. Probably decent at his job, but arrogant, and proud of that arrogance.

“Dr. Hardin, step back, please,” Nettle said, allowing a nurse to help with the gloves.

“She’s got a laceration that isn’t through the muscle.” Preston gestured to the area where the rod had scuffed up Mrs. Andrews’s heart.

“I see it,” Nettle said.

Preston stayed put but lifted his hands free and out of the way, ready to go back in if needed. Yes, he wanted the cardiac surgeon to get there, but now he just felt uneasy and over the years he’d learned to trust that feeling. No way was he leaving without a fight, he just had to try and handle it...tactfully.

Dasha talked the surgeon through what had been done, her team continuing with the pump to get the blood cooling so they could stop her heart and repair it. She hit all the pertinent details, which should’ve made him feel better about the hand-off. But a report wasn’t the same as having seen where the rod had been.

“Thank you both. I’ve got it from here,” Nettle said.

“Don’t you need another set of—?” Preston almost got through his question.

“I have another set of hands. I brought them.” Just then the door swung open and a younger version of the man made his way to the table.

“I’d still like to stay and help.” Preston tried to keep his request in a moderate, reasonable tone. Surely the man couldn’t object to that. “I’ll stay out of the way unless you need me.”

“If she needs her appendix removed, you’ll be the first person we call,” Nettle said. His tone light, no aggression there, but it reeked of condescension.

Nettle had obviously not gotten Dasha’s memo on being nice to everyone.

Preston caught Dasha shaking her head almost imperceptibly at him. Not the time to fight. He knew that. Of course it wasn’t the time, but there was no other time to make a stand and stay with the patient. He couldn’t just leave now and ask later over drinks.

“She’s in good hands,” Dasha said diplomatically, and began trying to steer him toward the door.

“You can’t be all right with this,” he hissed in her ear.

“No,” she whispered back, “but it isn’t going to help Mrs. Andrews if we distract him.” She surreptitiously nodded to a camera above the table.

Preston pulled off his gloves and gown and headed for the door. As soon as she was through it, he grabbed her by the elbow. “Where is the monitor?”

“Next door.” Dasha fished her keys out of her pocket again, and before a minute passed they were crowded around a monitor, following the surgery.

“Is this recording?” Preston asked, looking the room over. “Can we zoom in or something?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know.” Dasha didn’t look away from the screen, but she did get the phone and managed to dial while they watched. “It should be fine. He’s got excellent stats and qualifications. He’s a good surgeon. A little territorial...and it was weird of him to kick us out. Do you two know one another? It seemed like he knew you and didn’t like you.”

“I noticed.” He kept his eyes on the screen. It’d be easier to see if he was there—and easier to pay attention if Dasha was anywhere else—but Mrs. Andrews was her patient too and he wasn’t going to be Nettle-like and kick her out just because her proximity bothered him. He was tough. He could handle it. He’d had five years to get her out of his system. This was just like taking a recovering alcoholic to a bar...the temptation was there, no matter how much he knew it was a bad idea to even think about it. Ignore her scent. Don’t think about the way she tasted. Don’t think about her at all.

If he paid attention to the small screen, to everything the surgeons were doing, he could see if they were in trouble, and—he prayed—have time to get there. Not that it was likely they’d not be able to handle whatever situation they got into, but he just didn’t want to let go. The idea that Mr. Andrews would have to recover from surgery and from losing his wife was too much to stomach on his first day. Especially with all this Dasha business he had to stomach.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Dasha spoke, interfering with his plan to ignore her.

“We’ve met. Nothing happened. But he golfs with my father. I imagine Nettle hears a lot of ranting from Davis P.,” Preston muttered, forcing it to the back of his mind now that he had to try and see clearly from the angle of the camera and the small screen he was viewing on.

“Mr. Andrews is awake.” She passed the phone to him, letting him get an update on his other patient.

“Tell him she’s still in surgery.” He paused and then added, “And with really good surgeons.”

God, he hated lying. The man might be a good surgeon—that was still up for debate—but he was an ass. And all this talking interrupted his monitoring. He hung up and refocused. Someone had to make sure it was done right.

* * *

Dasha kept one eye on the screen and the other on Preston. Alone in a small room together...at least they reeked of surgical soap, nothing sexy about that.

Despite a near hiccup with Nettle, Preston was a professional in surgery. Somewhere in the back of her mind Dasha had known he would be, even if she’d irritated him just moments before. He took his work seriously. He took his patients and his duty to them seriously. Which was what made the situation at Davidson West, his last hospital, so confusing.

Something had to have happened. Something she needed details about. The missing details worried her.

Fainting during surgery could be disastrous. If he’d simply been ill, the spell had been nothing to dismiss him over. If he’d been drinking, there would’ve been criminal charges filed. It really couldn’t be something bad. Accidental. Not his fault. Had to be.

Or could it have been bad judgment? Something that made him so serious about keeping an eagle eye on Nettle? A bad call didn’t necessarily equate with something criminal...

And then there was the strong possibility that he’d simply made too many enemies among the board members and they’d been looking for a reason to get rid of him. Any reason. A man didn’t go through five hospitals in as many years without there being a problem.

Whatever it was, she had to find out before they went into another OR. Then later she could focus on finding a way to curb his tendency to shout loud angry words at people who irritated him. And probably it would be smart to be easy with him. Well, as easy as she could be while keeping him in line.

“What did—?” Dasha stopped as Preston leaped up and bolted from the room. “Where are you going?”

“He’s closing,” Preston said over his shoulder, stepping into the scrub room and grabbing a mask to put over his face.

Dasha followed. “Good?”

“No. Not good. There’s a nicked vessel I was repairing. I had to stop to start the pump then he ordered us out. I didn’t get it totally finished.” He barreled through the scrub room.

“Are you saying—? Dammit!” She fumbled for a mask and followed him through the swinging doors.

“You’re not done, Dr. Nettle,” Preston said, shaking his head as he entered.

She should be glad he was still using titles. It was a nod toward him trying diplomacy first. A good sign.

“I am,” Nettle stated.

“You missed a small bleeder,” Preston said, his posture aggressive even if he spoke levelly.

“I assure you I didn’t. Leave my OR.”

“If you close right now she...will...die.” Preston enunciated every word, his hackles rising higher every time he was blown off.

“Dr. Hardin.” Nettle addressed her instead. “Get him out of my OR.”

She laid a hand on his arm. Preston shrugged it off and gave her such a withering look he convinced her he was right. The temporary position came with a certain amount of authority she was expected to use to settle disagreements like this. “Dr. Nettle, please take one more look.” Request. Diplomatic. She hoped.

“Is your ego really so big that you can’t even look where I saw it?” Preston added. He could suck all the diplomacy out of any suggestion. “If you let her die because you’re too big an asshole to listen, I will file the malpractice complaint myself.”

Threats. Great. Although his words came nowhere near violence, it still managed to sound like he planned to kick Nettle’s butt if he didn’t listen.

And Dasha would have to say something to him about that later. But right now she had to back him up.

Nettle sighed. “Where do you think you saw it?”

“Switch to the other side of the table.” The side Preston had been on earlier. “You probably can’t see it from where you are.” To his credit, he didn’t approach the table, merely directed from several paces away. Very precise instructions: where to look; when to move tissue aside.

“I’ll be damned.” Nettle frowned. “It appears you were right, Dr. Monroe.” He set about repairing the damage.

“It happens on occasion,” Preston mumbled, still cloaked in anger and clearly with no intention of leaving until Nettle had finished and Mrs. Andrews was safe.

Dasha stayed too. This temporary position interfered with her new paradigm: avoid confrontation. Staying out of fights made it more likely that she could keep Old Dasha at bay. Old Dasha was a little too much like Preston. But if she could change, so could he. In theory.

Preston might lack people skills but he wasn’t wrong. And it was unlikely there would be any complaints filed against Preston. Mrs. Andrews wasn’t out of danger by any stretch, but there was one fewer vulture circling because Preston hadn’t backed down.

She just needed him to figure out some other way besides verbal attack to secure that kind of cooperation. He needed a new paradigm too.

Like yesterday.

CHAPTER TWO

IN PRESTON’S MIND, St. Vincent’s had always represented a strange contradictory utopia. The idealized dream job. The hospital where he should’ve always been, rather than the sentences he’d endured under the thumb of Davis P.

But it was also the thing that had cost him the only woman—no, the only person—he’d ever really felt accepted by. Felt motivated by. Maybe he’d been wrong all this time. Maybe there had been nothing special between them, no chemistry or affection. Maybe she was just that way with everyone.

If he hadn’t been all that special to her, it lessened her betrayal. Sort of.

And that thought didn’t help at all.

He stood in the men’s room, where he’d taken sanctuary after Mrs. Andrews’s chest had been closed, and focused on the eye currently threatening to spasm. He could feel it lurking in the tightening muscle.

Stepping to the side, he grabbed some paper towels and wet them so he could apply them to his infuriating left eye.

He couldn’t have been wrong about their friendship. Impossible. And he really couldn’t have been wrong about the sexual relationship. No one could fake the passion they’d shared.

And thinking about sex and Dasha was also a bad idea.

He wrung out the towel and wet it again.

This morning, the offer from the head of surgery at St. Vincent’s had felt like a reprieve. A stay of execution. He wouldn’t have to call in his father for favors—which was how it had been seeming. He’d never done it before, and the idea of starting now stuck in his throat. The fact that he’d even considered it galled him, let alone the idea of volunteering to suffer one of Davis P. Monroe’s epic lectures.

The only other option was starting over in a new town, far from the man’s shadow.

Now it just seemed like he was swapping one evil for another. And this evil, while undoubtedly better looking, couldn’t be trusted to have his best interests at heart. He wasn’t even sure he believed her claim that she’d arranged this because she owed him.

His eye twitched open beneath the wet towel then refused to close. He dropped the towel in the sink and focused. The eye had opened so wide it looked surprised.

Scratch that. He didn’t look surprised in one eye. He looked like Popeye.

He could definitely add stress to his triggers.

As if sensing a moment of weakness, his phone in his thigh pocket started to vibrate.

Preston fished it out and looked at the screen. Davis P. No way. He sent it to voice mail.

He couldn’t stomach a lecture right now. And, really, he didn’t see that he’d be able to suffer one and hold his tongue for the rest of the day. Not when he was questioning his past, his future...hell, even his value as a surgeon, as a man.

Better text something.

Just like that, the decision was made.

Can’t talk. At work. Took position at St. Vincent’s.

Home. He’d go home, give the injection in his left eye—the biggest offender. He’d been hoping to treat the problem with medication, the kind he could take with water. But another attack this soon made it injection time. Maybe switching to the botulin injection would be enough to counter the stress he expected Dasha to stir up.

Sixty days. He could handle two months to be at the hospital he’d always wanted. He just had to tread lightly around Dasha. Not get too close. Forget what had happened. Forget the feelings.

And when his probation was over, he could go back to forgetting her.

* * *

Mid-afternoon on any given Middle Tennessee October day closely resembled summer. Hot during the day but cold at night.

Dasha hated October, and had since she was a child. Her father had left in an October. Her mother had died in an October. And now Marjorie’s illness was just another reason to hate it. Lord, was it stupid for her to get embroiled with Preston in an October.

Another look at the clock. Clock-watching wouldn’t make him arrive earlier.

Once in the OR, she’d be standing still for hours. She should sit. Or tidy. Yes, tidy some more. There was always something to tidy up. Life got even messier if you let your environment get out of order because uncontrollable forces collided with you.

Of course, all the uncontrollable forces colliding with her meant she didn’t have much to tidy now. She grabbed her scrub cap and stood waiting as the second hand passed the twelve.

Time to go down. He’d probably changed his mind. Good. She’d tried, given it a day. If he decided against the position now, she wouldn’t chase him. She was making up for screwing him over five years ago, not trying to make him like her again. She still didn’t need that.

Shaking the right key out of the ring, she exited her office and locked up behind her.

Preston met her at the door.

“You’re almost late,” Dasha muttered, then remembered she was supposed to be the good one this morning.

“It’s called being on time,” he drawled.

“I just thought you were an early arriver usually.” She clicked the lock and stuffed her keys into her pocket.

His eyes called her on that lie. “Only when you made me be.”

“Okay, I thought you’d changed your mind,” Dasha said, sighing.

“Were you relieved?” He had his scrub cap in hand. He also had a slight swelling on his left eyelid. “That sounded like disappointment.”

“Honestly? A little.” Some time last night, while reflecting on her day, Dasha had decided she needed to be honest. Detached and honest. Preston was used to Old Dasha, he didn’t appreciate New-and-Improved Dasha much. “What’s wrong with your eye?” Someone had hit him, she knew it. She just hoped it wasn’t Nettle.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Preston, if we’re going to do this—”

“Stop. Let me make myself clear.” He turned to face her, stopping everything else until he’d spoken. “There is no we. We’re not doing anything together. We’re not friends. We’re not rivals. We’re not ex-lovers in for a sappy reunion. This is not us building a happy highway into the future together.”

She held his gaze, waiting for the rest.

“At the end of the probationary period we’ll be people who occasionally stumble across one another at work. If your motives don’t jibe with this scenario, tough.”

“I have no other motives.”

“Fine, you have no other motives.”

“You have no reason to believe me, I get it. But for your own benefit, stow the sarcasm. Stow the aggression,” Dasha said. “Make friends, not enemies. No matter what you think of me, if the staff catch you throwing barbs at me, you won’t win any points. And just so you know, I’m not the girl I was five years ago. I’ve grown up. Take my advice. I honestly want you to succeed.” She stepped around him and made tracks for the nearest stairwell—moving target, harder to hit.

But that only mattered if he didn’t take her advice to heart and didn’t throw barbs at her in a public setting where others could hear him. They really wouldn’t care for it.

They walked in silence, but no matter how soft his shoes kept his footfalls, she was still unpleasantly aware of the man following. When they reached the room, she held the door for him, as if kind gestures would make him believe she was legit.

He reached the sinks, tied his cap on and turned on the water to start the long process of scrubbing his hands.

She scrubbed in silence, sneaking looks at him in the glass that separated the scrub area from the operating room. Lead by example. Help him build the new paradigm he needed.

“I need to know what happened at Davidson West. I need to know why you fainted.” She tried to keep her voice level, emotionless. Or at least nonjudgmental.

“It’s complicated.” He glanced at her reflection in the glass.

“So is every surgery ever. I can keep up.” And please don’t say it was booze, drugs, or something else bad.

“And personal,” Preston said, his words careful and measured. Careful enough to raise red flags. Swollen eye. Personal fainting issues. It couldn’t be drugs.

“Sleep deprivation from something?” She hoped, and scoured her brain for any illnesses presenting with those symptoms, but they just didn’t go together. Syncope and swelling... Heart disease?

“Yes.” He met her eyes in the reflection, scowled and turned to look at her directly. “Stop it.”

“No. What caused it?” She stomped the faucet pedal and with her hands aloft faced him.

“Something. Personal,” he reiterated, and then added, “Stop diagnosing me. I know that face.”

“Is it your heart?” she asked, and when he started walking tried a different tack. “Are you sleeping better?”

“Like a baby.” He flashed a toothy smile at her.

He wanted to drive her nuts. So secretive. “It’d really help me to know what’s going on with you.”

Apparently Preston had decided he was done talking about it. And now was a really bad time to hit him. Her hands were clean. Her patient was waiting. She followed him out. After getting gowned and gloved, she approached the table and smiled at the large woman lying on her back, staring up at unlit lights.

Time to take her own advice and stow it. She had a patient to put at ease. “Morning, Angie. How’re you feeling? Excited?”

Bariatric surgery often made the overweight excited. If the woman hadn’t needed surgical help with her weight, they might never have discovered the problem with her twisted and backward intestines until the day it became a life-threatening emergency.

“And nervous,” Angie admitted, though her words were a tad slow from the pre-op medication.

“Everything’s going to go great,” Dasha said, smiling down at her and then nodding to Preston, who’d joined her on the other side of the table, all smiles and charm. “This is a colleague, Dr. Preston Monroe, and he’s going to assist in your surgery today.”

“Are you a good doctor?” She may be nervous and drugged, but even in that state the woman reacted to Preston’s crazy blue eyes with a groggy smile.

Dasha would have laughed if she wasn’t irritated with him.

“Number one in my class, Angie.” He winked at her.

“How do you know Dr. Hardin?” Angie mumbled.

“We were in school together.”

And residency. Hopefully Angie was too out of it to realize that Preston had just taken a roundabout way of saying she wasn’t as good a surgeon as he was.

“Dr. Hardin said it’s a difficult surgery,” Angie garbled.

“She likes to say stuff like that. Makes it seem more impressive later.” Preston smiled down at the woman and nodded toward the anesthesiologist at her head. “Time to take a nap.”

A little goofy chuckle slipped out of her patient, but the anesthesiologist was there with the gas, saving her from a showdown with Preston that Angie would hear.