Doc Showmance, page 4
Susan deflated his endotracheal tube cuff in preparation to remove it when Mac woke up. “Total badass, Doc. Yet again. Last night that splenic torsion, and now today.”
I didn’t acknowledge the compliment. They made me feel awkward. I’ve never handled praise well.
“Let’s warm him up. Get him awake and blinking at us.” Then I remembered the cameraman in the corner. Oh, no. This would be tomorrow’s prime time drama.
“Mr. Decker is up front,” Susan said. “Receptionist said he’s been sitting up there for about a half hour.”
Poor Wade. A lot of his angst was my doing. I needed to apologize for that. Mac had been extubated and now rested beneath a warming blanket.
“I’ll ask if he wants to see Mac.” I glanced around at the disaster of surgical supplies and clutter in the room. “Maybe straighten up a bit?”
“I’ll go talk to him,” Kovac said, appearing as if out of thin air. He’d changed out of the bloodied scrubs into his standard jeans and seventies Hawaiian shirt with his stethoscope draped around his neck.
In comparison, I usually wore scrubs and a lab coat. I filled every pocket with supplies like pens, a calculator, thermometer, and a penlight. Because I was a dork who needed the assurance of if I needed it, I had it on me.
“Like hell you will.” I got in front of him. “Did you even let Wade said goodbye before you started?”
“Who’s Wade?”
I rolled my eyes. “The owner, for fuck’s sake. No.” I shook my head. “You’re not talking to him.”
Kovac leaned in and said low, “Look, this is my case. I started it. I’m ending it.”
“You pronounced his dog dead on the table. In fact, you decided he was dead before you even went into surgery. Why even do the surgery if you knew you were going to kill him?”
Kovac’s gaze darted to the camera that was getting all of this conversation recorded. “That’s bullshit. I care deeply about all my patients.”
You’re on camera. “I know you care about your patients.” Total bullshit, but it’s what the world thought. Because they carefully edit all Kovac’s TV time. The show also paid off a few people to keep them from making a stink when their pet’s case went south under his care. “I just saved Mac’s life. So, back the hell off while I go tell his owner he’s alive. I saved his life. Not you. You don’t get to play hero after all that.” I waved toward the surgery room.
I lowered my voice. “Look, I know this is about saving face on camera, but right now let me do right by this dog’s owner, who’s a friend of mine. Let me see if I can keep him from suing you.”
Kovac’s glare promised retaliation. He hissed under his breath, “Watch your back, Hardin.”
Assholes like him didn’t scare me.
I marched toward the lobby, hoping the cameraman stayed with Kovac. Through the swinging doors, I located Wade as one of the two people in the waiting area. He sat, gazing blankly at the TV where a nineties sitcom rerun played. His empty, shocked loneliness broadcast the pain of acceptance that news of the worst was coming. Life was fragile, but none comprehended it more acutely than someone who realized their best friend, sometimes only friend, might be gone. The pain of losing a pet was a socially marginalized grief, borne too much in silence. Vets bore the weight of this grief with an empathy that few of the person’s friends and family understood since they comprehended the depth of the bond.
He didn’t hear me approach. Quietly, I asked, “Wade?”
He lurched in his chair and rotated. Reddened eyes met mine.
“He’s doing fine. He’s going to be okay.” I smiled. “He’s awake.”
Wade collapsed forward with his hands on his knees. “Oh, God. Thank you. I’ve been praying.”
I put my hand on his shoulder while he pressed a thumb into the corner of his right eye.
“He’s got some healing to do. We had to do a blood transfusion, and he might need another. He’ll need to stay through tomorrow, but I feel like I got the whole mass out. Now, we don’t know what kind of tumor it is, but even if it’s cancerous we bought him a good amount of time. He’s not bleeding anymore.”
“When you called…” Wade looked up. “I didn’t get to see him before they took him away to do surgery. I worried that might’ve been my last time with him.” He dropped his head and swiped at his eyes.
“I’m sorry about how it all happened.” I sat in the empty chair next to him. “I didn’t want to make that call to you, but…” I whispered, “I’m sorry I had to put you through that.”
“He almost died, didn’t he?” he rasped out.
“He did. But we got him through. I have an incredible surgical team. We stopped his bleeding, and I got out the mass. I have a good feeling about it. The rest of his liver looked great.” I fought the tears burning my eyes. I had a hard time watching grown men cry without tearing up. My gaze went bleary. “You want to see him?”
He nodded.
I stood and silently led him to the back where Mac rested in an oversized lower-shelf cage on a cushy mat beneath the circulating air warmer. I noticed the things that might make Wade uncomfortable—the trash bag filled with bloody items shadowing through its white plastic, the pile of bloodied instruments waiting to be washed and sterilized, and the syringes of medication on the counter nearby readied to be administered intravenously to Mac. Yet the room was quiet. No other patients were being worked on in the treatment area. No howling or barking dogs broke the peace. A sleeping cat rested a few cages over.
The basset hound’s face perked up when he saw Wade, although he didn’t try to get up. I loved the moment when a dog got the spark that only came from seeing the person who was their reason for existing.
Wade knelt down next to Mac and touched his head as if worried he’d hurt him. “How ya doing, buddy?”
Wade hugged Mac’s head to his chest in a long, silent moment of communion. He glanced up to find me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I stood from where I’d knelt next to him. “Remember, he’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s a fighter. We have to give him tonight to recover from surgery and regroup in the morning. Why don’t you spend a bit of time with him? My shift is over, and I’ve got to take off. Just let one of the techs know when you’re ready to go.”
Wade mumbled something soft to Mac.
I felt watched. Quick glance around found Ian Todd’s gray gaze on me.
Ian stood angled in a way to watch me while one of the managers seemed to be showing him how to use the computer software. He looked as if he planned to speak to me. The intention was written in the lines of how intensely he stared.
That was a no.
Not today. Not after this surgery.
If I were anyone else, he might’ve made me gooey to be the focus of his attention. But I wasn’t his groupie. I refused to lose my mind over him or his good looks. I remembered what he’d done to me well enough not to be distracted by him. In school, we’d been friends who enjoyed our time together as study buddies and lab partners. There’d been an almost moment, the night before he flushed whatever fledgling lust we had for each other down the toilet. For that one instant in time we’d almost given in to the burning chemistry between us. But he traded it away to gain popularity points at my expense.
I’d seen him a few times at conferences since graduation. Every time I froze him out if he tried to talk to me. I understood the danger of trusting him again. Hell, I knew I couldn’t trust myself. Not when confronted with that gray gaze and that face carved straight from my fantasies.
At the moment I wasn’t sure what might come out of my mouth if he approached me, and I didn’t want to feed the show more drama.
Like a coward, I planned my escape. I should’ve had tonight to figure out how to handle seeing him again. And again… And every flipping moment of the day. I needed a strategy to avoid storming to the edge of panic every time he so much as glanced my way.
“You okay if I head out, Wade?” I asked. “It’s been a long day. Mac’s in good hands overnight.”
Wade stood, too. “You sure he’ll be okay without you here? You trust the doctor who’ll be watching him?”
“She’s great. She’ll call me if she’s worried. I promise. If he needs it, I’ll come in and check on him. I’ll call you if that’s necessary.” I scribbled a note on Mac’s order sheet to indicate it was okay for the staff to call me at any time.
“You’ll be here tomorrow, Doc?”
I nodded, only half my attention in this conversation. “I’ll be in first thing. I’ll call you and let you know our plan for the day.”
“Thanks for saving his life.” He jumped forward and pulled me into a hug and whispered, “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I forced myself not to squirm and not to pull out of the hug too soon. But he smelled of sweat, and I felt trapped. I wasn’t a hugger. Me freaking out coming in five, four, three…
Thank God, he let go.
My gaze sought Ian. Why? I wasn’t sure. His eyebrows had moved upward, and there was a smolder of fire I couldn’t interpret in his gaze. Screw him if he was being judgmental. Wade had just lived through hell.
I mouthed to Ian: Dillweed.
I said to Wade, “We’re going to take the best possible care of him tonight. You’re welcome to spend another few minutes here with him. If you have any questions or worries, I’m sure you have Joley’s number. You can send her a message and she’ll relay it to me.”
I forced myself not to look Ian’s way again. In a total chicken move I hightailed it to the communal doctors’ office.
“That was quite a show,” Ian said from the doorway.
Jumping, I held my oversized bag against my chest like a shield. Damn it, his radiant good looks sucked me in before I refocused my brain and reminded myself who this was. Those gray eyes were so intense on me, as if there was no one else more interesting. I managed a throat clear, but my voice came out hoarse. “It wasn’t a show. I did what was right for my patient.”
He grinned. “It’s over. You don’t have to keep acting for the cameras.”
Be cool. Be tough. My emotional tank had hit empty an hour ago. All I had left was defensive grumpiness, which meant my mouth filter wouldn’t work. “I never peacock for the fucking cameras. I refuse. Actually, I can’t act. It’s why this, with you here and whatever the hell they plan to make us do, is a nightmare. I can’t pretend to like you.”
“You think pretending to like you is going to be a picnic for me?”
“Then go. Quit. Please. Let’s not do this.” I lowered my bag and glared. “Go back to what you’re good at in those set up wild animal scenarios.”
His smile fell. “You don’t think I can do this. You think I can’t do emergency medicine.”
Oh, good Lord. I’d forgotten if I pushed him by disagreeing, he’d dig his heels in and do whatever the hell it was simply to annoy me and prove he was better at it. “I’m sure you’re a great vet to dolphins and elephants. Won’t see a lot of those here. What you will see is a lot is life or death scenarios. If your medicine is rusty, those split-moment decisions might not be the right ones. Then your patient dies.”
Okay, not exactly the right thing to say to inspire him to leave.
His cheek muscle spasmed as he stalked close to me. He had a solid foot on me, not that I was intimidated. “You don’t hold the monopoly on good medicine, Amber.”
“Go prove you’re Mr. Super Sexy Smart Vet somewhere else. Anywhere that’s not here.”
He was in my space, and oh, God, he smelled good. Fresh and spicy aftershave. In a job rife with terrible odors, this was heavenly.
Not heavenly. Snap out of it.
He cocked his head and scanned down my body. Softly, he said, “You think I’m sexy?”
Oh, my. The purr of his tone made my stomach clamp. I managed to tug my gaze off his. “I’m not doing this insanity of you picking apart every word I say. Not tonight.”
I marched out of the office, only to spin around and march back to grab my cell phone off the counter. Damn Ian for putting me off my game. This frazzled, scatterbrained behavior was about to become my new norm if he was in the vicinity.
Ian smiled a radiant expanse of white teeth. “You’re scared.”
I froze. I turned back to face him.
He chuckled low. “I get it. You’ve always been scared of me…of this.”
“I. Am. Not. Scared. Let’s get one thing straight. There’s no this.” I marched away without looking back.
Oh, it was on now. No one, and I mean no one, got to accuse me of being chicken.
Five
Amber
By the time I got home my hands shook so much I almost dropped my keys on the way to the front door. I wasn’t capable of faking interest in Ian. I’d always had a real, simmering awareness of him that I did not want to become the viewing audience’s business. In fact, I didn’t want to admit I felt this way to myself. The man also irritated the hell out of me.
How could I not tell my family about this development that would inevitably ruin my life for the next few months if I agreed to the ludicrous plan of faking it with Ian? I didn’t think I could survive a few months without their help and support.
The ranch house that screamed suburbia but cost as much as a mansion anywhere not in San Diego needed a solid makeover. The red clay tiles were cracked in spots. The white stucco had faded to a kind of buff color that no amount of power washing would resolve. My attempts at gardening lacked diligence. It wasn’t as if anyone else in the household had any interest in landscaping. Home repairs took a back seat to other life issues.
When I entered, my little sheltie, Pinot, stared up at me from his post at the door. Even though a stoic beast, he glared as if me abandoning him to the heathens, my siblings, for so long reflected a brutal betrayal.
“Sorry, bud.” I reached down to pet him. He didn’t even look at me. “Oh, come on.”
Finally, the dog lifted his brown eyes to mine and gave me a small tail wag.
“You’re a complicated beast, aren’t you?” I laughed as he stood and moved into me for a hug.
“You’re the only one he likes,” Bruno said. “He’s been sitting there staring at the door for hours. I tried to distract him, but he’s a stubborn one.”
Unlike the rest of the menagerie of four legged rescues running around the house, Pinot was the only one loyal to me alone. I gave him one last squeeze before standing.
At thirty-one, Bruno, the abandoned son of a Mexican immigrant, had a boyish face and a moustache-goatee combination. Like a five-year-old, he still loved parading around in silly, stripy, multicolored socks and shorts. He never met his parents, but none of us remembered much about our birth parents. All of us had been tossed into foster care when young and earned reputations as unadoptable problem kids that bounced from home to home until high school, when we’d been thrown together in the home of a miserable chain-smoking single woman where all the worst kids ended up. There, we bonded in our dysfunctional way to survive high school. And we’ve been together ever since.
Well, we all went our separate ways during my three years at Caltech—yeah, I was a math nerd who got overwhelmed by undergrad to the point I didn’t have time to worry about my siblings. Although, I should’ve.
I was also a superstar who skipped out on the last year of undergrad to go directly to veterinary school. But my first year in vet school when I discovered Joley was homeless, Bruno wasn’t making ends meet as a fast-food delivery person, and Marino was on the run from loan sharks for gambling, I brought us back together. It wasn’t easy for me to attend vet school while working a part-time night job to keep the electricity running at the apartment for all of us. Eventually, everyone found some form of employment until Joley and Bruno went back to school. We used whatever extra income we had to pay Marino’s debt. Things were easier for me now without school, even if this job didn’t pay as well as it would when I finished the residency and passed my board exam to become an emergency medicine specialist.
Bruno pulled me into a dramatic hug. “Heard you had a rough day.”
“From who?”
“Susan texted.” He grinned all goofy and mischievous. “Before you go tanning Marino’s ass like he deserves for his stupidity, there’s something we gotta do. Like, happening right now.”
I shook my head. So not in the mood.
He tugged me into the TV room, snagged the remote, and after one click an upbeat salsa song filled the air. Like a smooth operator, Bruno pulled off my oversized purse and tossed it onto the sofa.
“Oh, no.” I pushed at him to get free, although my effort lacked enthusiasm. I liked music and dancing.
“Come on, sis.” He swung me into the sway of the salsa, expertly twirling me around the floor before he pulled me close and sang the lyrics off-key at the top of his lungs. It hurt my musical sensibilities, but I loved him. “I need more hips, Amber. Hips. Hips.”
The beat had me. With a giggle, I remembered the social dance class he’d dragged me to back in high school at the community center out of desperation to learn Latin dance to impress some love interest of his. The instructor had screamed so many times it was burned into my head: “Hips. Hips. Hips.”
I put my hands on my hips and did a rotation for him.
“Perfect.” He winked. With a fake evil laugh he moved me across the floor. We’d never win any medals for our performance, but I thought we had soul.
When the song ended, he kissed the top of my hand. So melodramatic. “Thank you. Now dinner. We prepared a gourmet meal for you.”
“Really?” I snorted sarcastically. None of them knew much about cooking beyond things that came prepackaged and went into the microwave. “Buttering me up to take it easy on him, are you?”
“Hell, no. I want a front row seat to you ripping into him. It’s just more fun to watch with decent food. Marino was at the top of his game this afternoon with his mouth in gear but his brain in neutral around the loan shark.”
