by Sarina Bowen
“That all sounds great,” Callie hedged. “But what does it have to do with me?”
“Well, that is the unusual part. Hank Lazarus isn’t wild to participate. But he said he’d do it if you were in charge of the program.”
Callie blinked back her surprise. “But I’m not a rehab specialist.”
Elisa grinned. “He doesn’t really care, apparently. And neither do I, quite frankly. Because your job would be to set up the program and administer the study. I’d put our therapy director in charge of working with the patients.”
Callie didn’t say anything for a moment. It was an amazing opportunity to work closely with the director of the hospital. But even so, her impulse was to refuse. Taking charge of something so far outside her field of expertise was a terrifying idea. “I’ve never administered a study,” she said eventually.
“Callie,” Elisa urged. “I’ll bet you’ve read the finer points of several thousand medical studies.”
“Of course.” If you strung together the journal articles that Callie had read during the past ten years, the pages would circle the earth.
“Doctor, you could write this paper in your sleep. And I need you to do it.”
“In my sleep?” Callie joked, and the director laughed.
“Preferably not.” Elisa’s face became serious again. “But I really must ask. Do you have any idea why Lazarus chose you?”
The question made her face feel hot. “No,” Callie said quickly. The fact that she found Hank to be the most attractive man she’d ever met had nothing to do with it. “I don’t know him, aside from his two hospital visits. When he was originally admitted for his injury, I did tell his parents to, as he put it, ‘chill out.’”
Dr. Fennigan winced. “Was it a big scene?”
Callie shook her head. “Not at all. It was just one of those moments when he needed someone on his side. And apparently I was that person.”
The director was quiet for a second. “Well, that’s a bit complicated. Do you suppose the parents will hold it against you?”
“No way. Frankly, I’d be stunned if they remembered me.”
Doctor Fennigan folded her hands on the blotter. “Okay, and that’s been your only interaction with Mr. Lazarus?”
Callie’s blush deepened. “I discharged him two days ago, and he invited me to have dinner with him. But I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“Because he was my patient!” Callie stuttered.
“Not after you discharged him.” The director looked thoughtful.
Stunned, Callie just shook her head. “Still. It wouldn’t be right.”
“So Hank Lazarus’s motives are potentially complicated.” Dr. Fennigan tapped the blotter on her desk. “Callie, am I putting you in a difficult position if you accept this job? If he harasses you, it won’t be good for anyone. Not for you, not for the hospital…” She frowned.
“I don’t think…” Callie sighed. “He doesn’t strike me as the harassing type. Honestly, he was just being nice. I’d be surprised if he ever brought it up again.”
There was a long silence while Dr. Fennigan thought it through. “Well, Callie,” she finally said. “Let’s go ahead with it, then. But I want you to feel free to come to me with the slightest problem, okay? If you need to bounce anything off me, my door is always open.”
“Thank you,” Callie said.
“This means you’re getting a promotion. Your pay rank will go up one grade, and I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that I’m pulling you from the hospitalist rotation for three months, while you get things up and running.”
“Seriously? I won’t be on call?”
Elisa shook her head. “Not unless you choose to do overtime. For twelve weeks, the study will be your full-time job.”
Dr. Fennigan stood up. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Callie. Now, take these files. We have our first meeting with a representative of the Lazarus Family Foundation on Monday.” They shook hands, and the director added a business card to the stack in Callie’s hands. “My personal cell is on here. I mean it when I say to call me anytime. If you have any issues, we can’t let them fester.”
“I appreciate that,” Callie said. Then she shook Elisa’s hand again before walking back to the elevator, stunned. And when the doors opened again on the first floor, the first person she saw was Nathan.
“Hey, Callie,” he said, thrusting a file at her. “Can you take this patient for me? Shelli and I have a dinner reservation.”
Ordinarily, that sort of thing would ruin Callie’s day. But this time, she caught the chart and gave Nathan an enormous smile.
“What?” he asked, clearly skeptical of her joy.
Callie had just realized the biggest perk to her unexpected promotion. For three months, she wouldn’t have to work alongside Nathan. Thank you, Hank Lazarus. “I’m allowed to be happy, aren’t I?” she teased. “Go on then. Do your dinner.” She gave him another big smile and walked away.
CHAPTER FIVE
The weekend was just long enough to put Callie into a nervous tizzy. The study was a big opportunity for her. So she spent Saturday and Sunday reading every academic article she could find about FES. And Sunday night was devoted to a full-fledged fashion crisis. She tried on every scrap of clothing she owned. Twice.
Standing in the break room on Monday morning, Callie began to panic. There were three things that she feared in life: debt, failure and horror films. And this meeting with the Lazarus Foundation pushed two out of the three of her buttons. Running a clinical trial on a subject outside her expertise took Callie pretty far outside her comfort zone. And with a towering heap of student loans to repay, she couldn’t afford to bungle this meeting and this opportunity.
Willow had given Callie a beautiful scarf one Christmas. She’d put it on today for good luck, and to complement her dove-gray suit. But as she stood in the break room fingering the delicate fabric with clammy hands, Callie was sure it looked all wrong. Removing the scarf, she matched up the corners one more time, draping the silk over one shoulder before retying the ends.
Tapping carefully into the corridor on heels, Callie ducked into the women’s bathroom for one more reassuring glance in the mirror. But the reflection looking back at her was obviously trying too hard. She was still a poor kid from the wrong side of Sacramento who had studied medicine with deep financial aid. And she was still one screw-up away from potential bankruptcy. The scarf just looked awkward. Hank’s elegant family would never be fooled by a piece of coral-colored silk.
Callie yanked the scarf over her head and carried it back to her locker. It was ridiculous, really. She could tie off a perfect surgeon’s knot with a suture needle and tweezers. But she could not tie a scarf. There was no more time to wonder why. It was show time.
Carrying half a dozen copies of the presentation she’d prepared, Callie took the elevator up to the executive floor. “Dr. Anders?” Again, the receptionist greeted her, but this time it was with bad news. “Dr. Fennigan told me to tell you that her flight back from Bermuda was canceled. She’s dreadfully sorry, but you’ll have to do the Lazarus family meeting without her. I’ve set you up in the conference room, which is just to your left.”
Callie tried not to let the panic show on her face. “Thank you,” she whispered.
After a steadying breath, she walked into the conference room. There was just one person there, and Callie wondered if she was in the wrong room. The girl seated at the table was wearing slim jeans, hiking boots and a fleece vest over her T-shirt. It was the standard Vermont uniform. But Callie had been expecting a room full of suits.
“I’m Stella Lazarus,” the girl said, rising to offer a hand to Callie. “Hank’s sister.”
“Ah, of course you are,” Callie said, introducing herself. Stella’s warm brown eyes were so much like her brother’s. She was a tall girl in her mid-twenties, with shining dark hair. The Lazarus family produced only beautiful offspring.
Callie teetered nervously
over to sit at the head of the table, wondering immediately whether that had been the right thing to do. She had no experience with corporate pomp and circumstance. And now there was a silence, and she realized she ought to fill it with small talk while they waited for the others. “It sure is nice out,” she said. Good one, Callie, she chided herself. The weather. How original. She felt a drip of sweat roll down her back.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Stella said with a glance toward the window. “In fact, I was hoping to go running before lunchtime.”
“How far do you like to run?” Callie asked. Although she wasn’t a runner herself, so this would be another conversational dead end. She sneaked what she hoped was a subtle glance at the clock over Stella’s shoulder.
“Just seven miles,” Stella said, with a less subtle glance at her own watch. “But it takes me about an hour, so…” She looked at Callie expectantly.
The moment stretched out in silence, giving Callie just enough time to worry whether she should have included the Scandinavian data in her presentation. Or whether that would have been overkill…
Stella cleared her throat. “The receptionist told me that Dr. Fennigan wasn’t here today. So shouldn’t we just get down to business?”
Callie just blinked at her. “I thought we were waiting for…” She didn’t finish the sentence, realizing at the last moment that Stella had just implied that nobody else from the foundation was coming.
“Hold up,” the girl said, one palm in the air. “Were you expecting someone else? Don’t I look like I belong at the grown-ups table?” Her dark eyebrows furrowed. “Sorry, I’m all you get. But don’t worry—the checks won’t bounce, even if the black sheep of the family writes them.”
Callie opened her mouth and then closed it again. “I just…” She swallowed hard. This was awkward. “I just assumed that there were others who wanted to learn about FES. I know it’s an interest of your mother’s…” She scrambled to peel a copy of the presentation off the pile and slide it down the too-shiny conference table toward Stella. Sitting at the far end now seemed ridiculous. Her face heating, Callie got up and moved to the seat next to Miss Lazarus’s. “Maybe we should start over. You can call me Callie, and I’ve been asked to run a therapy program testing the efficacy of FES.” She extended her hand once more in Stella’s direction.
Stella shook, but then crossed her arms over her chest. “My brother chose you to run the study, didn’t he?”
“I, well…” It had taken only about five minutes for this young woman to turn her into a stuttering wreck. “He recommended me,” she finished.
Stella grinned. “Of course he did. Hank always surrounds himself with beautiful women.” She reached into a large handbag on her lap and pulled out what appeared to be a very big checkbook. “Let’s just get this over with. What do we owe you for the set-up costs?” Stella clicked a pen into action, and then caught the look of confusion on Callie’s face. “That’s why I’m here, right? My daddy doesn’t trust me to run my own life, but as long as I work for his company, and stay close to home, they let me run around with the checkbook.”
By now, Callie knew she’d lost all control of both the encounter and the conversation. “Look, Stella, can I be blunt?”
“I don’t see why not,” she answered, crossing her arms. “I always am.”
“Well, good. Because I’ve never been in the same room with a check larger than my mortgage payment. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just that I assumed that giving away a substantial amount of money took an entire committee, or something. Lawyers. Accountants. Maybe a note from the pope. I know how medicine works, I promise. But I don’t have a clue about funding it.”
For a second, Stella didn’t blink. But then a slow smile began to tip up the corners of her mouth. And by the time it was complete, her eyes twinkled. “That’s fair, I guess. Because I don’t know a thing about medicine.”
Callie let out a breath. “Then humor me for a few minutes, would you?” She’d come here today to do a professional job of explaining her study, and she would do that if it killed her. Callie patted the presentation on the tabletop. “I’d planned to tell you all about the project, because I think it’s a great technology. It’s exciting to me. Will you let me do that?”
Stella fanned the document with her thumb. “This is quite the doorstopper, Callie. Can you just give me the highlight reel?”
Cutting her losses, Callie flipped open her work to the third page, where there was a diagram of an FES bike. And then she explained it as best she could in sixty seconds flat.
“So,” Stella said, tapping the page afterward. “The patient’s muscles pedal a stationary bike without the brain’s permission? That sounds so…science fiction.”
“I know it does,” Callie agreed. “But it works. And the hope is that the brain is listening—that we can remind the neurons how to fire intentionally.”
“That is pretty cool,” Stella agreed. “I can see how it would be a good workout, whether the brain gets on board or not.”
“Exactly. But…how good? I want to quantify it. And then I want to prove to insurers that they should pay for it, because the patients they’re covering will have lower health costs down the road.”
Callie saw a light behind Stella’s eyes. “Aha.”
“Indeed.”
Stella clicked her pen again. “Okay. So we’re going to do some good in the world. I might hate my job, Callie, but I’m not a total bitch. How much should the first check cover?”
Callie took out an accounting statement that Dr. Fennigan had sent her and slid it across the table. While Stella wrote out the check, Callie’s shoulders sagged with relief.
* * *
Three weeks later, the foundation’s contribution had already transformed a portion of the hospital.
Callie skated into her new office, dropping an intake form for patient number thirty-eight into her already overflowing inbox. Her new job came with the luxury of an honest-to-God office, with a door on it. So what if it was the size of a large walk-in closet, with a window that looked out only on the hallway? It was hers. It said so in gold letters on a placard outside the door.
The hospital had patched together a new suite of therapy rooms in record time, utilizing the space where the old daycare center used to be. Callie had assumed the construction would take weeks. But the dry wall guys and the painters had dropped in with the speed of paratroopers.
It was all just more evidence of the project’s importance to the hospital. Terrified of letting Dr. Fennigan down, Callie had been working day and night to make sure the study launched smoothly.
Luckily, when she’d put out the call for study participants to nearby hospitals in Vermont and New Hampshire, she was quickly flooded with applications. Enrolling fifty healthy paralyzed participants was proving to be no trouble.
And interviewing the patients was proving to be even more fun than Callie had imagined it would be. As a hospitalist, she was used to working with sick people. But the applicants for her study were mostly healthy, active people. Most spinal-cord injuries happened to those between the ages of sixteen and thirty.
And three quarters of the time, the injuries happened to men.
So, Callie had spent the week taking baseline measurements of the muscles of healthy, active men. They had every body type, of course, and their injuries spread the gamut from lower leg paralysis to full on quadriplegia. But since the more mobile patients used their upper body strength all day long, a startling proportion of these guys were ripped and cut. Quite a few of them were ex-military, too. This meant that Callie had also spent the week trying not to blush as she wrapped the tape around sculpted biceps and triceps. More than once, she’d privately entertained the notion of creating a calendar of her favorites. She could title it Hunks on Wheels.
When Callie had spotted Nathan in the parking lot yesterday after work, he’d reminded her of a skinny mouse. Go figure.
“Hey, girlfriend.”
Callie
looked up to find her new coworker leaning his giant frame against her office door. “Tiny” Jones was a formidable creature. At six foot two, and about a thousand pounds of solid, cocoa-hued muscle, he was just as hunky as the applicants, and with a giant bubbly personality to go along with his big body. He held out a patient file, which Callie dropped into her inbox. “Another keeper?”
He nodded, and then tapped the clipboard under his arm. “And two more are waiting for us. Which of these two hotties do you want me to size up?”
Callie took the charts from his hands. One of them said LAZARUS, HENRY (HANK). “This one,” Callie said, handing Hank’s file to Tiny. She didn’t think she could measure his body parts without bursting into flames. “But please ask Hank not to leave before I can pop in to say hello. You know who he is, right?”
“I heard that his mom and pop are paying our salary.”
“More or less.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t hit on him?” Tiny winked.
“Not right away,” Callie teased. “Now, shoo. We’re never going to eat lunch at this rate.”
“Roger that. If you’re going to take a minute with him, I’ll swing by the caf. Turkey BLT and a coffee light?”
“Bless you. Let me just…” She fumbled for her purse.
“I’ll put it on your tab.” Tiny was gone before she could get to her wallet. The man was a godsend.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Callie found Hank waiting for her in the therapy room. “That guy is hysterical,” he said by way of a greeting, jerking his thumb toward the door through which Tiny had just made his exit.
“Isn’t he?” Callie agreed. “We’re lucky to have him. A great therapist and a comedian, together in one extra-large package.” She held out a hand to Hank, and they shook. But then Callie took a healthy two steps backward again, and not because Hank always made her feel like blushing. This past week she had noticed that standing back from a wheelchair patient made everyone more comfortable, as they didn’t have to crane their neck upward to maintain eye contact. “How’ve you been?” Hank asked, folding his arms.