by B. B. Hamel
“I read it,” he confirms, reaching into his jacket. He pulls it out and lays it flat on his lap. “Myra, how many doctors did you see before talking with me right now?”
Mom snorts. “Tons. Honey, how many?”
“Twelve.”
Westin looks surprised at that. “Seriously? You saw twelve?”
“I would’ve seen more but I ran out of time.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “I’m willing to bet every single one of them told you the same thing, didn’t they?”
“In so many words,” Mom says slowly. “They did.”
“You should be getting better then. I assume you’ve been following their advice?”
“Of course,” she says, a hint of exasperation in her tone. “And here I am. You think I want to be here, in excruciating pain? I can’t move without feeling like my back’s going to snap in two.”
“I know,” he says softly. “That’s why I’m here. I read your files, saw the scans, the charts. Despite what the other doctors say, I think you’re a perfect candidate for surgery. I honestly think I can help you, Myra.”
Her eyes light up. I see the hope in them and I want to throw up. I have to turn away and walk to the other side of the room.
“You have no clue how it feels to hear you say that,” she whispers.
“Listen though, and please understand. I can’t make you any promises. This surgery isn’t a guarantee. There’s no promise we’ll go through it and come out better on the other side. And the way we’re doing it will be… tricky, at best. You need to be prepared for that.”
Mom nods slowly, eyes never leaving his face. “I know what you’re saying, doctor. I’m okay with the risk. I’m okay with it not working. What I’m not okay with is lying on this damn couch and doing nothing.”
I smile a little bit. That’s my mother, the woman that worked two jobs and got a degree and raised a daughter, all on her own. She’s still in there, somewhere at least.
“Okay, Myra, okay.” Westin smiles a little bit then glances in my direction. “How much did you tell her?”
I stand very still and shake my head slowly.
He sighs and looks down. He takes a deep breath.
“What?” Mom asks. She glances back at me, frowning. “What’s wrong, Bailey?”
My heart races. I can’t tell her. I can’t tell her about this deal. She won’t understand at all. She won’t let me do it. She’ll be horrified that I’m giving myself over to this man for two weeks, all for her.
“We aren’t doing this officially,” Westin says softly, and I realize with a start that of course he wasn’t going to tell her about the terms of our deal.
He just needs her to understand how we’re doing this surgery.
“What do you mean?” she asks. “We’ll be going to the hospital, won’t we?”
“Yes,” he says slowly. “But also no.” He looks at me. “Care to explain?”
I walk over and kneel down next to her. I take her hand and look in her eyes. “Dr. Turner is willing to take a serious risk for us, Mom, but we can’t do the surgery in any official capacity. We’ll use the hospital, but… I’m going to assist him.”
She blinks at me. “You’re joking?”
I shake my head. “He’s going to train me. We’ll schedule it for a month from now, and I’ll work every day. We’ll get it perfect.”
She looks at Westin, clearly confused. “What’s going on here?”
“Myra, I can’t do this surgery in any official capacity. The hospital won’t let me. I had an… incident. It doesn’t matter what happened, but now the hospital isn’t letting me do any more risky operations, like yours would be.”
Mom looks at me. “Is he kidding?”
“He’s not,” I say softly.
“What did you do?” she asks Westin.
“I made a mistake,” he says simply. “It was a costly mistake. I don’t make many… haven’t made many, at least, until that day. That mistake cost the hospital a lot of money… and me a lot of freedom and trust. So now we’re doing this on our own if we’re doing it at all.”
“Mom.” I squeeze her hand. “This is good. It’s our only chance. He’s taking a huge risk here.”
“Why would you do that?” she asks.
I go very still. I don’t want to answer this question. Frankly, I was terrified of this question, and hearing it now in the air makes me want to scream.
But Westin just smiles. “Your daughter is going to pay me,” he says. “But more than that, I think I can help you and I hate that the hospital is wasting my skill.”
“So you’re arrogant,” Mom says.
I squeeze her hand again. “Mom.”
“It’s okay,” Westin says, laughing. “Maybe you’re right, Myra. But I’m all you have. What do you say?”
She looks at me then back at Westin then back to me again. I smile at her and nod once.
“We can do it,” I say softly.
She sighs. “Well, hell. What do I have to lose?”
“Great!” Westin says, grinning.
I sigh and release her hand. She smiles at me then winces again as I step away.
“What now?” she asks.
“Now I want to do some routine exams, if that’s okay. I have my bag in the car. I’ll go grab it.”
“Fine, fine,” Mom says. “At least my living room is more comfortable than a hospital.”
Westin laughs and heads off. I follow him outside, making sure the door shuts behind me.
“We didn’t need to tell her,” I hiss at him.
“Yes, we did. You think she would’ve been able to keep this a secret if she didn’t know?”
“She’s just going to be scared now.”
“She’d always be scared,” he says, turning to face me. “At least now she knows what she’s getting into. I’m not going to lie to my patient, Bailey, not even for you.”
I glare at him but I hate that he’s making a good point. “Okay, fine. She needs to know. But we’re not telling her about… you know.”
He cocks his head and smiles a little. He reaches out, fingers lacing back through my hair. I let out a little gasp as he tightens his grip and moves closer. “About you becoming my little toy?” he whispers.
“Right.” I don’t look away. I won’t give him that satisfaction.
“Don’t worry. I’m not in the business of embarrassing women I want.”
I bite my lip. “Fine. Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
There’s a long, tense moment before he finally lets me go. He walks back over to his car and reaches into the passenger side, pulling out a black bag.
“What now?” I ask him, feeling nervous, hopping from one foot to the other.
“Now I do my doctor thing. After that, we’ll see.”
“We’ll see?”
He shrugs. “I don’t exactly have a plan saved up for doing an illegal surgery. You realize how difficult this is going to be, don’t you?”
“I know,” I snap at him.
He just smirks at me and heads up the porch. “You should start studying. I’ll send you some material.”
“I’m sure you will.”
He hesitates a second. “Take this seriously, Bailey. I know you might think you hate me right now, but you won’t, not for long. So get over it.”
I glare but I don’t say anything. He’s right, I do think I hate him, but I’m not about to let it show.
The problem is, he has all the power and he knows it. He’s the only one that can help and he can so easily take advantage of the situation. Maybe he already is, I can’t really be sure.
All I know is, he’s a bastard and I’m not letting him take any more than we agreed on.
“Stay out here,” he says softly. “It’s easier if I do this alone.”
“I should be in there.”
“No. She’ll lie in front of you.”
“What? No, she won’t, we’re always honest with each other.�
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Her laughs at that. “Come on, Bailey. You’re already keeping something from her. What do you think she’s keeping from you?”
I hesitate a second. “Fine. God, you’re such an ass.”
“I know. See you soon.”
He disappears inside and I sit down on the front porch, staring angrily at the simple black car that asshole drives.
I hate how this is going. I hate that I’m going to give myself to that man. I hate that I want to do it and I hate that I keep thinking about his mouth between my legs.
I hate that I’m dripping wet just picturing it.
I’m so pathetic, but I have no other choice.
At least Mom knows what the deal is now. At least she can make a decision for herself and she won’t blow this whole thing up.
That was the easy part, really. The hard part is still coming.
One month. I have one month to learn how to be a nurse.
I’ll just casually cram years’ worth of training into one month.
No big deal. I can totally do it.
I feel so nervous, I almost want to throw up again.
But I have to keep it together.
I have to do it for my mother, who already gave so much to raise me.
I sigh, close my eyes, and try not to picture Westin’s hands on my body.
6
Westin
Getting consent from the mother was the first step. I have a pretty good idea about how the actual surgery’s going to go, but there are still a bunch of logistical things to consider.
For example, we’ll need access to an operating room, one that’s been scrubbed and cleaned. We’ll need instruments, drugs, all that stuff. This isn’t an incredibly hard surgery, but it’s also not simple. I’m going to need the tools to do this properly in the proper setting if we have any chance at all.
So I need to figure out how to access all that stuff.
It won’t be easy, but I have some ideas.
First things first, though.
Three days after meeting with Myra Phillips, I find myself in the basement of the hospital, one floor above the parking garage. Bailey’s pacing back and forth in front of me, wearing tight black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, like she’s out to rob a house or some shit.
“Are you listening?” I grumble at her.
“I’m listening. It’s just a lot of information all at once.”
“I know. But we have a month and you need to focus.”
She huffs and sits down. We’ve been at it for an hour and she’s already getting frustrated.
At least there’s an empty room we can use, complete with a whiteboard. They do presentations down here, or at least they used to before the hospital made cuts a few years ago. Now these rooms sit empty.
The perfect place for a late-night study session.
Bailey yawns. It’s a little past one in the morning and the hospital is mostly dead, but it’s never entirely asleep. Hospitals are one of the few places in this world that are always staffed, always open, always ready.
Which makes it harder to sneak things in and out, of course.
“Your mother’s life depends on this.”
“I know. You keep saying that.”
I glare at her. She’s not a bad student, but she’s getting frustrated with herself.
I’ve been going over the basics of the operation. I figure she doesn’t need to know every little detail about anatomy. We can skip everything she doesn’t absolutely need to know and simply go over the routine of the procedure, making sure she understands why certain things are necessary.
Later, we’ll do technique. Now, it’s fundamentals.
“Look, think of the spine as a… as a staircase.”
Bailey rolls her eyes but stops pacing. She crosses her arms, head cocked.
I push forward. “Each step depends on the steps above and below it. If any of the steps have a problem… the whole staircase is compromised. With your mother, she has an infection in her vertebrae, in the bone itself. She has the chronic form of this disease, which means it’s not easily cured.”
“I know all this,” Bailey says.
“I know you do. Just listen.”
She sighs and finally sits down. “Your mother’s infection is high up in the spine, near her shoulders. That’s probably the worst place you can have it, honestly. Can’t do much at all with pain in that area without aggravating it.”
“Which is why she’s always on the couch,” Bailey grumbles.
“Right. So what we need to do is both difficult and simple. We need to open her, drain the wound, debride the material, and put her back together. At the worst, we’ll need to remove the bone entirely.”
She frowns at that. “Remove the bone? Can we do that?”
“We can, but it’s a last resort.”
“Okay, fine. What happens if we remove it?”
“Rods, graft, plates, fusion.” I shrug a little. “I can tell you more specifically once the procedure is underway.”
She chews her lip. “There’s a lot of uncertainty. Are all surgeries like this?”
“No,” I say, sighing. “This is why most doctors don’t want to touch your mother. They just hope antibiotics will work, but they don’t, not always at least.”
“So they just throw drugs at her and hope and pray.” She makes a face and I can see the anger all over her.
I walk over and sit down in an empty chair. I put my hand on her thigh and sigh. “Look, the medical system is fucked up. We can’t change that.”
“No, we can’t.”
“But we can help your mother.”
“Right.” She takes a deep breath.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to jump through so many hoops just to get here.”
“And now I have to jump through even more hoops.”
I give her a little grin. “But this is a fun hoop.”
“I don’t call studying anatomy ‘fun,’ believe it or not.”
“I believe it, considering how awful you are.” I move my hand back as she glares at me. I stand and walk away, pacing a bit. “I need to figure out a way to motivate you.”
“I’m motivated enough.”
“Oh, sure, you were motivated in tracking me down, no doubt about it. But now? You need to focus.”
She purses her lips and leans back. “How do you propose we do that then, doctor?”
I smirk at her and a brilliant idea hits me. “I know what we’ll do.”
“Go ahead. I can’t wait.”
I look her over once and nod to myself. “You know how in some romantic comedies, when the hero and the heroine are studying together, the heroine will strip every time the hero gets a question right?”
She groans a little. “Please don’t get naked. I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be so bad, but don’t do it anyway.”
I laugh softly. “No, pet. You’re going to be the one stripping. Every question you get wrong, you take off some clothes, until you’re completely exposed for me.”
She bites her lip. “I don’t think so.”
“Then we’re done for the night.”
“That’s not the deal.” Anger flashes up. The girl has such a temper, I actually like it. She’s feisty and it’s fucking sexy. “You don’t own me, not yet at least.”
“No, I don’t. And you can say no to this if you want. But you’re useless to me right now. You’re barely paying attention. You’re too afraid to commit. So I’m going to kickstart the process.”
She shakes her head. “No way.”
“Then go home.”
I stare at her, not moving. She stares back and I watch as a blush creeps onto her cheeks.
“This isn’t going to work.”
“I think it will and I’m the one teaching.”
“You just want me to get naked.”
I shrug. “Yeah. There’s that, too.”
She sighs. “Fine. I’ll do it. For my mom.”
“No, you’re doing it for me.”<
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She glares but doesn’t argue.
I laugh a little and walk over to my textbook. I flip back a few pages, looking at what we’ve gone over.
“Okay, how many thoracic vertebrae are there?” I ask.
“Twelve.”
“Good girl.” I flip anther page. “And where are they located?”
“Middle of the spine, shoulders down to the end of the ribcage.”
“Good.” I nod approvingly and I swear there’s a hint of a proud smile on her lips. “What are the costal facets?”
She hesitates. “Uh. Bony prominences?”
I shake my head, smiling. “Wrong.”
“What are they?”
“Articulation surfaces for head of the rib. Now strip.”
She glares at me, balls her fists, then lets them go. She stands and takes off her sweatshirt, tossing it aside. She’s now in a short sleeve t-shirt and jeans.
She sits back down. “Next.” Arms crossed, defiant.
I go through a few more questions, one after the other. She gets each one right, and each time she smiles a little bit more.
“See, all you needed was motivation.”
“Don’t take credit for my brilliance. Come on, bring it.”
I laugh a little. “Okay. What are the intervertebral discs made out of?”
She hesitates a long moment and I can tell she’s struggling. “They’re made from… bone?”
“Sorry, darling. They’re made out of fibrocartilage.”
She winces. “Shit.”
“Strip.”
I can see her hesitation. She’s wondering if she should take off her shirt and be in only a bra or take off her jeans and be in her panties.
She opts for the shirt.
I’m very fucking thankful for this game.
Her breasts are incredible and she’s wearing this tight, small black bra. I’d say it barely fits but I suspect that’s part of the point. Her breasts spill out, pressed together in just the perfect fucking way. She’s blushing now and I’m staring at her like I want to fuck her rough right here in this room…
Which is exactly what I want.
“Next question, doctor,” she prompts.
I clear my throat. “Right.”
She gets two in a row right. On the third, she forgets how many discs there are.