He was successful, hard working, good looking, or so he believed, but not conceited. His brother was far better looking and easier to be around. He had worked long hours and longer years to be a respected hematologist. He had been on more committees than he could remember decoding the connection certain blood diseases and conditions had to the development of cancers. Cancer like his father had died from.
Rebecca had never understood his dedication, his drive. She had chased and cajoled, offered and pleaded until he had just given in and given up, and that weakness had been his downfall. She didn’t understand the long hours of commitment. She didn’t care if someone had to wait for her petty foibles. Once they had married, she had expected him to be her husband, not a couple, and definitely not a man with a career to answer to.
They had dated for two years, had been married for just over two and now were divorced for over a year, and she still thought she could order him around, that she could control him. He blinked as it sunk in. Six years. Had he really put up with her for so long?
He released a disgusted sound. Why? When he had known his feelings, his own heart and mind and had accepted his path? He sighed, shaking his head at his own thoughts. Because regardless of how much of a pain in the ass she was, he had cared enough to not want to hurt her. He had never wanted to hurt her inside. He folded a pair of slacks, taking care with the crease points, only paying attention to his packing with half a mind as his thoughts wandered from her phone call to what lay ahead. Two of his suit jackets hung in a carrier on the hook inside his closet door and he was nearly done packing by the time he had lowered his blood pressure again.
Thinking about his coming trip, he felt that rush of anticipation again. He was flying to Bend, Oregon. A small-town community with an even smaller center, which had a place for him. Maybe. He still needed to investigate it. Maybe it was time for a change. Maybe he was finally ready for one. He loved St. Louis. Loved to watch the Cardinals take it out of the park and pray with everyone else that the Rams would make the Super Bowl. He sank down to the edge of the bed lost in his thoughts, picking apart a few truths. How long had it been since he’d even done something as decadent as attend a baseball game? How long had it been since he’d drawn a breath and not felt caged, pressured, and in Rebecca’s case, hunted?
His eyes drifted closed as the memories came back to him of his hiking trip, so many years ago. Green firs, rushing creeks. Beautiful sunsets and gorgeous sunrises not blocked by towering skyscrapers, or hindered by the noise of life in the big city. The sweet smell of the wild country. His chest swelled as he inhaled, his thoughts reliving the moments of six years past. He had set out again, hiking for several days after his first wayward adventure of becoming lost, but he didn’t get lost again. He had purchased another compass and with food in hand, had resumed his tackling of nature.
He hadn’t seen the wolf again either. The wolf. There it was, in his thoughts again. He shook his head in logical denial.
A white beauty of an animal that had somehow, probably, saved his life. The memory still held the feeling of unreality, a vision or a dream. He had wandered, hungry and thirsty when it had appeared almost as if from nowhere. Wolves were intelligent, but not so intelligent as to guide a human to safety when their first instinct was to avoid them if at all possible. How could a wild animal even know to lead him to a trailhead to begin with? He shook his head. It was an absurd mixture of unreality and vision. It had to be.
He had convinced himself as the days had passed without sighting the beautiful animal again, that he would have found the trail again on his own. Yet he’d silently admitted, at least to himself, just how far off the beaten path he had been. He could have wandered another day or two easily before he’d realized that he was going in the wrong direction. The wolf had led him nearly due east when he remembered he had stuck to south, and the distance had been immeasurable. He probably would have hit northern California before he would have found any path that would have led him back into the parklands he had intended to walk.
THREE
Selene steadied the slide on the electron microscope. The patient’s white blood cell count was through the roof again, and she couldn’t find the cause. She hated it when the little boogers hid. Hated it when they made her look stupid.
There wasn’t a fever, at least not as of five minutes ago, but hey, the way her morning was going, anything was possible. She wanted to snarl in open frustration but managed to keep it down to just a frown as she focused the images in front of her with a delicate twist of knobs. She tugged the lab coat a little tighter around her body, restraining it from brushing against the table and jarring something. The patient was twenty-two, a healthy male with swelling in his leg and increased pain and loss of circulation. The reason should have been detectable as a blood clot, but his x-rays had come back normal, and if it was there, she hadn’t found it.
“Doctor Aiza, here are the results you wanted.” A voice floated from over her shoulder sliding the folder on the metal tabletop next to her.
“Thank you, Jenny.” She stood erect, putting a hand to her lower back and pushing, hearing a soft pop. She shifted her weight and reached for the folder to look over the lab work results. She still had four more slides to review. Maybe they would give her something. She’d even settle for just an infection if she could find it.
“Doctor Aiza?” came a strong male voice and she knew she wasn’t alone any more. Her eyes drifted closed as his scent tickled her senses, her memory.
It was as she had feared. He was the one.
“Yes?” she replied, refocusing on the patient information in her hands.
“Can I interrupt?”
“Crap!” she whispered as the cause of his high white cell count caught her eye, all but jumping off the page now that the clot had had a chance to build steam. “Jenny, get this one into x-ray, then prep for surgery. I found it.” The small blockage and finally grown enough to completely lodge itself. It was a good thing the patient came in as early as he had, or it could have become worse and a lot more dangerous for him if he had waited.
“Right away,” came the professional response from the outer hallway. She studied the paper in her hands, hoping that if the report and the x-ray said the same thing it was the only thing wrong with him.
“Doctor Aiza?”
Her head snapped up, whipping her hair backward from where it fell across her brow. She brushed it back as a tremulous smile hit her lips. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” Her gaze took in the tall man before her, his brown hair combed but soft and neat, his light brown eyes curious but sharp. “Can I help you?” To look at him again, after so long, left her slightly breathless. A raw sensation, a hum skittered over her skin at his proximity. Drawing a slow breath, she fought to keep it all out of her expression and out of her voice. She knew who he was, had known from the beginning. The memory of his voice when she’d spoken to him before during the phone call when they’d discussed the position he had been chosen for had all but made her collapse out of her chair.
“Doctor Aiza, I’m Doctor Benedetti.” His smile was inviting, considerate. Evidently her frazzled morning wasn’t unnoticeable. If he only knew, she thought with a tug of her mouth.
“Doctor Benedetti,” she said as she held out her hand. His shake was warm, gentle, strong. Somehow just as she had pictured him, had remembered him. The soft tingle that flowed up her arm landed in her stomach with a rush. She had no choice but to ignore it for the moment. “I’m sorry. I had a case come in early this morning that’s been driving me insane. I completely forgot today was Thursday. Why don’t you follow me? I have a few minutes before Brian will be ready for me to do what I need to do.”
She led him down the hall of the familiar, small sized medical center. “What do you need to do?”
he asked, a curious note in his eyes. A perfectly normal question, on most days it would have been too.
“I need to review the slides I have remaining against this.” She tapped the
file in her hand. “Then if I find what I think I’m going to, I need to scrape an infection from his tibia, caused by a blood clot that I didn’t see this morning that has caused another infection. Two stinking infections. No wonder I couldn’t find it,” she whispered to herself as she made her way into her office.
“Sounds like a day at the office for me,” he joked lightly.
She lifted the corners of her mouth in understanding. “I’m sure it does. The problem with this is it’s the most excitement we’ve seen in six months. I won’t say I’m rusty, but when you don’t see it every day, it isn’t the first thing you think of either.”
“I can see that,” he agreed with a solemn nod.
She touched the intercom on her desk as she sat down. “Priss, can you get me two coffees, please.”
She lifted a finely shaped brow at her guest. “Black okay?”
He nodded once.
“So how was your flight?” she began with the coffee request fulfilled.
“As normal as can be for six in the morning.” She felt his eyes on her, watching as she played with the file in her hand. Why was it so hard to look him in the eye?
She swallowed down the nervous flutter that had hit when she had looked into those assessing brown eyes just a few minutes before. “I’m glad. Thank you for giving us the chance. I know the board thinks very highly of you and in recommending you.”
His tall length barely fit into the simple metal chair she had in front of her desk, his long legs taking up all the free space between him and the desk. Her office wasn’t excessive, but she rarely had company to accommodate in the cramped space either. He looked very professional, collected, in a simple suit and tie. Nothing like the first time she had seen him. She’d never forgotten his expressions of grief, disbelief and gratitude overlaid with exhaustion, hunger and anger all in a matter of hours of trailing him. Focusing, she tuned into his words. She needed to be in the present to handle it. Thinking about the first time she’d seen him on the trails in the backwoods of her home territory would not do for this meeting.
“I was very flattered, actually.” She watched as a soft frown filled his expression, his own thoughts seeming to be very intense. “To be honest, I was wondering if this opportunity hadn’t come right when I needed it to.” There was a wealth of meaning in those words as his gaze lightened, no longer a dark introspective hue as he relaxed further.
“My only concern, Doctor Benedetti,” she stressed, forcing herself to return to sound calm and unruffled. “Is that we might be too calm for you. Like I explained, we don’t have a lot of cases like Brian to work through. We are a slow paced, patient attentive hospital. What we need you to consider is a position as an on-staff, on-duty doctor who could help shoulder the director responsibilities. I know it is more administration responsibility than you were expecting but the pay difference is marginal because of the cost of living difference.”
He nodded when she heard a soft knock on her office door. She waved in Priss with the coffees when she peeked in. He sipped at his with a grateful thank you as she cupped hers, just holding it.
“I would like to look around a bit, get a feel of things. I haven’t been in the area in six years. I really enjoyed it when I was here.”
She offered him a smile. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you’re able. The hotel room you have is comped by the committee and they have set aside a budget for you.” She made sure their candidate was well treated. Finding out it was this man… She was still feeling very unbalanced by his arrival. It didn’t matter. He was their choice, and the hospital needed him.
His brow lifted marginally. “They really want to impress me, hm?” He chuckled congenially as her cheeks warmed.
“Well, I gave my recommendations also,” she added in a quiet tone. She’d had no idea the doctor they were researching was… She refused to add that label, or finish the thought. She would have done it regardless. Bram Benedetti was the perfect fit for Bend.
A silent moment passed before the intercom broke in. “Doctor Aiza, Brian N. is ready.”
Pressing the button on her side, she asked, “Is he comfortable?”
“If he were any more comfortable, he’d be riding the pink elephants instead of just dreaming about them.”
She groaned softly. “Jenny. We have company.” His deep chuckle was heard from across the desk.
“Oh, I forgot,” Jenny said in a sassy tone that implied that, no, she hadn’t.
Selene stood, facing her guest. “You are free to ask anything and talk to anyone, all you want. I will be about an hour but after that, I should be free.”
She fumbled a little bit getting out of the chair, getting her feet under again, trying to make her way around her desk. She needed to breathe without his scent in the room, without his heat swarming all over her. The last forty minutes in close proximity had been an excruciating lesson in self-restraint. The wild reactions she’d been slammed with at the first sound of his voice, at the first lingering scent of his warmed skin seemed to be getting worse too.
He lifted a hand to let her proceed. “Please, don’t let me keep you.”
She licked suddenly dry lips as her gaze collided with his. “Thank you, Doctor Benedetti. I had planned on giving you the tour myself. I’m sorry this morning is so crazy,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried back to the lab. She prayed it hadn’t looked like she was escaping. Once she was inside the doorway, she fell back against the wall, her heart pounding in an erratic rhythm. She took a deep breath. He hadn’t changed in six years. Not really. He looked leaner, his smile was more controlled, not as free as it had been when she’d first seen him, but his eyes, they were the same. Those same soft eyes that she had seen in the sunlight, eyes which had gloried in the warm summer sunshine.
He was who she had first suspected him to be, except six years ago she hadn’t been ready. She still didn’t think she was, but there was no way now to avoid him or ignore his presence. He was the perfect candidate for the opening. If he accepted.
She shoved away from the wall, striding back to the microscope with purpose. She had a person waiting in surgery. If she found the blood clot that she was now positive would show up on the x-ray and could remove the bone infection that she was looking for, her work would be done. Dragging in a deep lungful of oxygen she set her sights on her slide and pushed the remainder out of her thoughts.
***
Bram followed her into the hallway as she rushed into the lab room where he had first found her. She was not what he had expected. He had known she was young, it was in her voice, but she was also very well trained if the many degrees on her walls were any indication. He knew well enough how long that took.
The flicker of her hair in the fluorescent lights as she disappeared grabbed at him. Platinum blond blended with a soft golden yellow, a remarkable fusion of light and dark, and incredible eyes, cloud gray.
He walked the halls of the four story hospital with a meandering gait, seeing the patterns that were and weren’t familiar. The sound of footfalls, the ring of the telephone. He observed as much as he could, introducing himself around but by the looks he received, everybody knew he was there and why.
The reaction to his presence that warmed him as he walked those halls was no one gave him a rude welcome. As he made an introduction or two, he realized that the feeling within those private rooms and among the staff was like home. Warm and inviting. Hospitals, in his experience, were typically cold, sterile environments because of the flow of human traffic. No chance or need to become accustomed to any one face. Yet several conversations he eavesdropped on, if only briefly, showed that here, that assumption was not the case. The smiles were genuine, the emotions were real.
“Excuse me, Doctor Benedetti?
He turned to the young man standing just behind his shoulder, in his mid-twenties was Bram’s best guess. “Yes?”
His smile was broad. “I was on my labor rounds. Would you care to join me?”
Bram
couldn’t hide his surprise as his gaze widened. “You handle maternity?”
He chuckled. “I know. I don’t look old enough. It’s all a disguise,” he whispered with a wink. “I’m Doctor Davenport.” He held out his hand. “Or just Doctor Dave. And I’m thirty-three.”
Bram laughed an easy sound, soundly busted in thinking exactly what Dr. Dave had assumed.
“You had me. I really can’t see it.”
“My mother’s genes,” he added with an unconcerned shrug. “I know you’re waiting for Selene. I thought this might help pass the time.”
“I’d like it. Very much.” Bram slipped into step with the other doctor. “And thanks for asking.”
Doctor Dave shot him an easy grin. “Hey, no problem. We all know Selene is hoping you will join. I know she’s on the committee, but she is the force behind this hospital, even without the board. When Doctor Travis retired, she was the one who held it together. And for her age,” he said. Bram could hear the note of awe in his respectful words. “But that’s beside the point. We all thought she could do it all because she has, and lord knows she does an excellent job at it, but this is apparently where she seems to have hit her limits.”
“You make it sound like you haven’t seen them,” Bram remarked as they rode the elevator to the fourth floor.
Doctor Dave’s laugh was short, but not unkind. “In truth, I haven’t. She can go without sleep, food or conversation for the longest that I’ve ever seen and still be as steady as a rock on the Fourth of July.” The elevator doors opened with a nearly silent swish and Bram followed when Dr. Dave exited.
“She sounds like quite a woman.”
Doctor Davenport stopped outside a door in the maternity ward. His voice lowered in respect.
“She is and she’s an incredible doctor. You will see it if you accept, but we were told to not do any arm twisting while you were visiting and I’m sure that is all I can say without breaking that order. Now then,” he said as he knocked lightly then pushed open the room door after a welcoming call. “Mrs. Ling. How are you and the baby doing? And I have a visiting doctor with me doing a tour so, please no flashing,” he warned her in a joking voice. Bram was surprised when instead of being offended, the petite lady burst out laughing. She held her baby tenderly as he lifted the chart and reviewed the latest information.
A Trust Earned Page 3