The Surgeon's Surprise Twins

by Jacqueline Diamond

  “Not him.” Standing in the empty waiting room, Betsy shifted her stance. A straightforward woman in her forties, she seemed unusually tense. “It’s, um, Dr. Tartikoff.”

  He wouldn’t dare! “Excuse me?” Bailey said.

  “I realize you two are housemates and, I gather, related by marriage, so this could be awkward.” Betsy met her gaze at last. “But I have confidence in your professionalism.”

  Okay, Bailey mused, she had known that Owen lacked a nurse, but she’d never imagined he would have the nerve to request her. Yet she could hardly refuse. On what basis?

  “Did Dr. Tartikoff make the request himself, or was it someone else’s suggestion?” Perhaps a well-meaning third party such as the administrator had proposed this notion.

  “Definitely him. He has great confidence in your abilities,” Betsy assured her. “It’s an honor. And with everything the hospital has invested in the opening, keeping things running smoothly for Dr. Tartikoff is of the highest priority.”

  What about keeping things running smoothly for me? But she could hardly use that as an objection. Also, Bailey supposed she did owe the guy a favor in return for performing the ultrasound.

  “Okay,” she heard herself say. “When do I start?”

  The answer, as she’d feared, was, “Right now.”

  Chapter Ten

  Starting work at a new doctor’s office required time to adjust. While the overall job requirements were similar, countless small variations could trip you up, plus you needed to get up to speed on the day’s patients.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, it was almost ten o’clock. While Owen—she’d better think of him as Dr. Tartikoff on the job, Bailey reflected grimly—had been in surgery earlier, there were already two patients in the waiting room. They should have been prepped by now.

  The receptionist, Caroline Carter, a sweet young woman with a complexion like chocolate milk and swingy shoulder-length black hair, greeted her with a touch of apprehension. “We’re expecting him any minute.”

  “Charts?” Bailey asked. “Schedule?”

  Caroline provided them. Bailey revved to near light speed as she readied the examining rooms, determined the purpose of the patients’ visits and set out gloves and other equipment for Owen. For him, as Caroline had put it. Thank goodness he was running late, because Bailey managed to get the first two women weighed, take their medical histories and leave them to change into hospital gowns before she heard the staff door open and male footsteps speed along the linoleum.

  In the hallway, Owen loomed twice as large as usual. Except for a blink as he registered Bailey’s presence, he made no comment. Instead, he glanced irritably at the red lights outside the examining rooms. “What’re they doing in there, trying on the gowns for size?”

  Ignoring the remark, she handed him the first chart. “Mrs. Stanfield is here for her initial workup…”

  After that, the morning sped by at an exhausting pace. Word of Owen’s arrival had drawn eager patients from across the region, many of them driving several hours to consult with him. And Dr. T. allocated only a few hours a day to clinic visits, sandwiching them between surgery and administrative duties.

  Yet, Bailey noted when she assisted him at exams, he listened carefully to each woman’s concerns and explained his observations and recommendations fully. Perhaps not with the same depth as Nora, but he did give his reasons along with brochures and addresses of websites that could fill in more details.

  By two-thirty, when the last patient departed in a state of near-bliss at having seen the great doctor, Bailey could have given the spiel herself. In vitro fertilization—IVF—involved harvesting eggs from the woman, fertilizing them with sperm in a lab, and implanting them in the woman’s womb. Test tube babies, once a science fiction premise, had become routine. The procedure gave hope to women with a wide variety of problems, from blocked fallopian tubes to endometriosis and ovulation disorders.

  But there was more, far more. She’d never even heard of intracytoplasmic sperm injection, for cases where the man’s sperm count was very low. Under a microscope, a single sperm could be injected directly into an egg during IVF. That was, she gathered, embryologist Alec Denny’s department.

  Bailey was impressed at the wealth of options available to these patients and their husbands. “It’s amazing that I conceived so easily,” she commented as Owen washed up after the last patient’s departure. “Whatever else you might say about Boone, he’s certainly potent.”

  She could have sworn he started to laugh. “Guess he must be. Hey, you want to grab lunch?”

  Bailey stared at him in horror. “Are you kidding? If people see us eating together, there’ll be no end to the gossip.”

  Owen shot her a look of frustration. “We eat dinner together occasionally. Big deal.”

  “They don’t witness that.” She supposed she shouldn’t speak too freely, but working for Nora had put her in the habit of being frank with her doctor. “Why’d you request me?”

  “Why not?” he countered.

  “Better be careful. All those compliments will turn a girl’s head.”

  Owen chuckled. “I hear you’re a good nurse.”

  “That’s more like it.” Well, it was only for the week, she supposed. “See you around.”

  She felt his gaze following her as she collected her purse at the nurses’ station and headed through the empty waiting room. Caroline stopped munching on her brown-bagged salad and peered at her wide-eyed. “He invited you to lunch?” She had sharp ears.

  “I’m sure it won’t happen again,” Bailey told her.

  “Yes, but—wow.”

  The man must have acted totally aloof until now. Bailey didn’t have to stretch her imagination very far to imagine that.

  She spent the afternoon returning phone calls for both Nora and Owen. There were always small problems to smooth over, as well as prescription refills that needed authorization and questions to answer. Some she could field herself, and others she referred to Owen or, in the case of Nora’s patients, to Dr. Sargent.

  Monday night, Owen returned home late and she heard him on the phone, snapping at Dr. Rayburn. Apparently the hospital corporation’s offer hadn’t been tempting enough to lure a world-renowned urologist whom Owen wanted to head the male fertility part of the program. While that was hardly Dr. Rayburn’s fault, the affable administrator made an easier target than the hospital’s owners two thousand miles away in Louisville, Kentucky.

  On Tuesday, she discovered that the scheduling desk had failed to reach some patients to confirm appointments, so there were two no-shows and several late arrivals. Around eleven-thirty, to Bailey’s dismay, the waiting room remained empty for fifteen minutes, and then four women arrived simultaneously.

  She was taking the first patient’s medical history when Owen peered angrily into the room. “Not ready?” he demanded.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said, keenly aware of the patient sitting right there. “We had a bit of confusion with the appointments.”

  Owen glared. “This is unacceptable.”

  “I agree, but…”

  He stalked out. To her dismay, Bailey realized he must have grabbed the next chart, because she heard the door open to the waiting room and Owen’s voice call out a patient’s name.

  Bailey felt her cheeks flame. “I’m just a substitute,” she told the woman perched on the examining table.

  The woman gave her a sympathetic smile. “Geniuses can be difficult.”

  Geniuses can be a royal pain in the butt. But all Bailey could do was nod agreement and try not to skip anything important as she finished taking down information.

  Despite—or perhaps because of—the doctor’s meddling, it took a while to make up for lost time, since Bailey refused to sacrifice thoroughness to his impatience. Not only did Owen refuse to meet her gaze when they were in an examining room together, he also employed a sarcastic tone when speaking to her in front of patients. Didn’t the man have a
ny idea he was acting like a jerk?

  By half past noon, when the last patient departed with lab paperwork in hand, Bailey wondered how Keely had lasted even a week. Thank goodness Dr. T. had no patients scheduled in the afternoon, because she required at least eighteen hours to recuperate.

  Caroline stopped by the nurses’ station. “Are you all right?”

  “No!” Before Bailey could elaborate, she saw the door open from Owen’s private office. She’d figured he would have flown the coop already, since he rarely stuck around five seconds longer than necessary.

  His eyes—not cinnamon today, but fiery red peppers, or so they seemed to Bailey—skewered her. “I expected better from you, Nurse.”

  Caught out in the open, Caroline swallowed hard and took a tentative step backward.

  “I expected better from you,” Bailey replied tightly.

  The receptionist turned and fled. Who could blame her?

  “I beg your pardon?” Owen’s jaw hung open in astonishment. Apparently he hadn’t expected her to confront him and risk the full force of his fury.

  “Are you aware that the scheduling desk was shorthanded yesterday due to an illness and didn’t confirm a lot of your appointments?” Bailey demanded. “They should have notified me to pick up the slack, but they got their wires crossed and left a message on Keely’s cell phone.” She’d had Caroline check out the source of the problem earlier.

  For a moment, the doctor didn’t move. He just stood there in his white coat, holding a folder and processing the information. “I wasn’t informed of that.”

  “I’m informing you now!” Bailey knew she ought to simmer down, but with maternal hormones on the rampage, she lacked even the modest amount of self-control she usually possessed.

  “I suppose that does put a different light on things,” Owen conceded.

  “You embarrassed me in front of patients. Has it ever occurred to you that nurses take pride in our professionalism? We aren’t put here to be emotional punching bags for your bad temper.”

  He inhaled, fast, a couple of times. “Point taken.”

  She stood there, arms folded, keenly aware that he hadn’t finished. She could almost see the thoughts tumbling around in his brain, like balls in a lottery basket.

  What emerged, finally, was “I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.” She decided not to push her luck by pointing out that he ought to be sorry. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or…sooner.”

  “Very good.” With a bob of the head, he was off at his usual lightning pace.

  Bailey gave herself a moment to recover. Had she really just confronted the tyrant of Safe Harbor Medical Center and come out unscathed? Whew.

  She stuck her head into the reception area. There sat Caroline, cell phone pressed to her ear, in the midst of saying, “…apologized! Can you believe it?”

  “Hang up,” Bailey told her.

  Alarm fleeted across the young woman’s face. “Gotta go,” she told her unseen friend, and clicked off.

  “You are not to repeat anything you hear in this office,” Bailey told her sternly. Caroline’s stunned expression gave her pause, but right now she had to be Owen’s nurse, not everybody’s best friend. “Patients and doctors need to be able to trust that this is a safe, secure and private environment. If you want to stay in the medical profession, you need to learn to be discreet. I won’t report you this time but don’t let it happen again.”

  “I won’t.” The receptionist took a couple of rapid breaths. “I didn’t think… I mean, everybody’s been so interested…”

  “And it made you feel important to be the source of information,” Bailey finished. “I know it’s tempting, but if Dr. Tartikoff had heard you, you might have been fired.”

  “I’ll never do it again. I promise.” Caroline sounded deeply earnest. “I’m really sorry.”

  Two apologies in the span of a few minutes had to be a record in Bailey’s experience. “Just don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  As she left, Bailey wished she could erase the guilt and unhappiness on the receptionist’s face. She hated being an authority figure, but she hoped she’d handled this correctly. A stern warning now might save Caroline’s career, as well as safeguard the entire office.

  Next they’ll be saying I’ve turned into a miniature version of Dr. T. Still, reprimands were sometimes necessary. The key was to show respect for the person on the receiving end.

  In the cafeteria, a trio of interested faces greeted her as she approached with her tray. “You bearded the lion in his den and survived!” Devina said.

  Oh, great. “Has everybody heard about that?” Bailey asked as she took a seat.

  “Just those of us who’re alive and breathing.” Lori shook her head. As the wife of a physician, surely she understood the delicate issues involved. “Somebody’s got a loose tongue.”

  “Not me, I assure you. And it’s been taken care of,” Bailey replied, unwilling to say anything further that might hurt Caroline.

  Ned’s teeth gleamed white against his surfing tan. “You took quite a risk, calling him on his rudeness.”

  “Didn’t think I had it in me?” she teased.

  “I didn’t think he had it in him,” Ned said. “It being humility. Erica’s been telling us he’s basically a good guy, but I’m not sure anybody believed her.”

  Bailey focused on cutting up her chicken and dumplings while she considered how to stem the flood of chatter. The best she could come up with was to provide a different item for folks to gab about. “By the way, did I mention that I’m expecting twins?”

  “I knew it!” Lori crowed.

  “Children are expensive to raise these days.” Although she didn’t look a day over thirty-five, Devina had a son in medical school. “But I suppose your sister and her husband can afford it.”

  Considering that as far as Bailey knew, they still hadn’t paid her doctor, that might not be true. “I suppose so.”

  To her relief, the topic for the rest of the meal shifted to babies and other hospital news, including the hiring of a head for the planned egg donor program. “I hear Dr. Sargent’s very interested in working with that project,” Lori said.

  “Terrific.” But Bailey wasn’t really listening. She was already planning ways to keep Owen’s office running smoothly for the rest of the week, to emphasize her point about professionalism.

  She’d demanded his respect. And she intended to earn it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Although Owen tried to turn a deaf ear to hospital undercurrents, he soon discovered that word of his blowup with Bailey had spread far and wide. He shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing how open she was, but respect cut both ways. This matter should have been kept strictly between them.

  Still, he couldn’t muster up enough outrage to challenge her about it. For one thing, she proved an ideal nurse for the rest of the week, staying on top of developments, working skillfully with patients and anticipating his needs as a doctor. Too bad that, under the circumstances, he had zero chance of securing her in that position on a permanent basis.

  Working as well as living with her, Owen had become keenly aware of the babies’ day-by-day development. Normally, he only saw maternity patients once a month at this stage, and took the miraculous changes more or less for granted. But these were his children swelling her abdomen.

  And then there was Bailey herself. Bailey who sang beautifully in the shower and left funny little notes in the refrigerator (“Hands off or you die!”). When she paused to put her feet up in the middle of the day, he felt concern rather than annoyance. When he saw her eating lunch with Ned, a wave of something akin to jealousy washed over him.

  On Thursday, when he arrived home early enough to sing a couple of duets with her—they’d exhausted their favorites from Rodgers and Hammerstein and moved on to My Fair Lady—Owen nearly told her the truth about his paternity. He wasn’t sure what good it would do, but she deserved to know, and besides, he
held out the sneaking hope that she’d draw a little closer to him and a little farther from her pal Ned. But then he remembered how she’d spread word of his apology.

  Most secrets caused only temporary embarrassment when they traveled through the hospital grapevine. If they reached the press, they ran off like raindrops on an airplane. But Owen feared that the news of his involvement in this soap opera surrogacy situation might cause a crash landing. So he kept it to himself.

  On Friday morning, he spent a couple of hours in Dr. Rayburn’s office with Jennifer Martin and, by videoconference from her office in Louisville, Chandra Yashimoto, the Medical Center Management vice-president. They reviewed plans for the opening the following month, including a series of press conferences, seminars and events for the public.

  These would be followed, in October, by a meeting in Los Angeles of the International Society of Embryology and Reproductive Fertility, at which Owen was to be the keynote speaker. Alec Denny had also been tapped for a prestigious panel. One of the highlights would be a paper presented by Cole Ratigan, M.D., the specialist from Minneapolis whom Owen had sought to head his men’s fertility program.

  “The conference will give you two a chance to get better acquainted,” Chandra suggested. “Maybe you can change his mind. Otherwise we’ll have to find someone else.”

  Owen ground his teeth. When he fixed his aim on a specialist, he hated having to settle for a second or third choice. “Surely the corporation can sweeten its offer.”

  “I took the liberty of calling him personally.” Chandra, normally tough as nails, cleared her throat in what looked, on the computer screen, like embarrassment. “It seems that money isn’t the issue.”

  “What is?” Mark Rayburn asked.

  “He’s concerned that there might be a clash of personalities.”

  That surprised Owen. “With me?”

  “He gave that impression,” the executive said.