How to Save a Surgeon

by C. M. Stone

  In the kitchen, he found his sister at the stove with a pot of pasta boiling. The food processor was still out on the counter with the pesto in it, a bowl with a half-finished salad next to it. Chris took the bottle of wine from Jackson to stick it in the fridge, then went back to his post at the sink where he was washing dishes. Likely the best place for him, considering some of his notorious failures at domesticity.

  Eliza brushed back a curl that had escaped her bun to stick to her forehead and smiled. “Happy birthday. Cheesecake’s cooking, and dinner should be done pretty fast.”

  “I can’t believe you’re actually cooking me dinner.” Jackson gave his sister a quick kiss on the cheek, then inspected the salad bowl. “Is this Mom’s spinach salad?”

  “Yeah, I got a little behind on everything. I figured I could whip it together right before we ate.”

  “If you have the recipe, I’ll finish it off. It’s been a while since I cooked much but I’m pretty sure I can manage a salad.”

  Eliza nodded to the recipe notecard and gestured at Chris. “At least one of you can.”

  Chris only laughed. “Did she tell you about the popcorn?”

  Jackson began slicing the red pepper into slivers for the salad. “What popcorn?”

  “I brought my air popper out for movie night, and then there were a few unpopped kernels left in the bottom of the bowl. Chris put the bowl in the microwave to try to make them pop.”

  Jackson raised a brow at his best friend, waiting for an explanation.

  Chris grinned, clearly lacking any shame over the incident. “The bowl melted.”

  “Did the microwave survive?”

  “Barely,” Eliza said.

  “Huh. Well. I’m glad you’re the one cooking then.”

  “How was work?” Eliza asked.

  He didn’t relish the thought of reliving it all over again. Stumbling through the day with Morales was hard enough the first time. “Everyone’s gearing up for the fund-raising gala this weekend. They’re trying to get enough to expand the children’s hospital. And I’m mentoring a new intern. Gonna try to get her to stay in trauma medicine, too. That’s what the chief wants me to do, anyway.”

  The mirrored looks of dismayed shock from Eliza and Chris were downright insulting.

  “That’s a hell of a high bar, considering…” Chris said. “Does he want you to do it because of that professorship?”

  He grabbed the bowl of salad and walked toward the table, buying himself some respite from the looks on their faces. Their concern wasn’t anything he hadn’t felt himself, but it seemed so much worse coming from them. “Yeah, and, yeah, I know. He thinks I need to prove myself, though.”

  “One-on-one isn’t the same as a classroom,” Eliza said. “Why not just go off your record as a surgeon and an instructor?”

  There was no malice in their interest, even if it felt more like someone picking at a scab than idle conversation. “Because a lot of my students fail.”

  The rest of dinner was transferred to the table in blessed silence, only broken by the sounds of movement. He found the bottle of wine left chilling in the fridge and opened it to pour a glass for each of them.

  “Mom and Dad never called me today.” God, that sounded whiny. He took a sip of the chardonnay. “Second birthday in a row now.”

  Eliza smoothed her napkin in her lap, her eyes downcast to avoid looking at him. “Did you call on Mother’s Day?”

  Annoyance prickled at Jackson. “I was busy. I sent a card and a text message. Same as I do on birthdays.”

  “We all know you’re busy, but…” Eliza trailed off, spreading her hands helplessly. “You’ve got a lot of vacation time you don’t spend. Maybe if you spent some of it seeing them, it’d help.”

  He wondered if Eliza realized he hadn’t used any of his vacation time in years. The thought of voluntarily walking away from work for any length of time felt strange. And, that was, when he thought about it, why his parents’ lack of interest bothered him so much. Aside from a few friends and his sister, he didn’t have any interactions outside of the hospital. In a sad way, he relied on his absentee parents to compensate for that.

  “You should visit them,” Eliza pressed.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Thinking about it was probably as far as he’d ever get. He’d withdrawn so well from the world after Amy died that the ability to reach out and reconnect had shriveled up like atrophied muscle. Chris and Eliza’s enduring patience made it easy, but with everyone else—his parents included—he just found it too painful to try. Rebuilding relationships after years had gone by sure as hell wasn’t as easy as climbing back on a bicycle.

  Chris cleared his throat to break the awkward silence. “So. What’s the new intern like, then? Is she good?”

  The change of subject was welcome, even if it brought him back onto Morales. “She’s smart, very passionate. I worry she might be a little too emotionally involved, though. She teared up on a patient and that’s just…difficult for everyone.”

  “You sound like you admire her, at least,” Chris offered.

  “She probably has the makings for a good surgeon, but almost as soon as we met we were arguing. It’s like throwing dynamite into a fire, the way we clash.”

  “Is she hot?”

  “Not funny, Chris,” Eliza said.

  “It’s a valid question, if they’re setting each other off like that.”

  Jackson shook his head with a sigh. “You know I shouldn’t even look at an intern that way. I’ve had enough doomed romance for a lifetime.”

  “An intern isn’t the same as…” A dark look from Jackson cut Chris off before he said anything more.

  No, an intern wasn’t the same as a dead girlfriend. Unlike Amy Elsevier, pursuing Darla would be more likely to end in one of them being transferred than grieving. Darla and Amy had other things in common, though. Anxiety, vulnerability, whatever it was that gave Jackson that need to rescue and fix. He knew from experience it was a terrible motive for a relationship.

  And Morales was unquestionably hot. Her dark curls would have looked far more tempting if they’d been left loose, but her ponytail just served to draw more attention to her exquisite features. Her glasses made her otherwise girlish face seem more serious, the frames accentuating just how large and dark her eyes were. He’d always been able to appreciate women of a variety of body types, but there was something special about a petite, curvy woman—and Morales had curves to spare. She was absolutely everything that pushed his buttons, and yet…

  “It doesn’t matter what she looks like. I need to be professional with female colleagues.”

  “God, you sound like an ethics textbook,” Chris said. “So keep it professional and focus on her strengths. It’s easier to learn through positive reinforcement than anything else.”

  “That’s not something I need advice on from you. You’ve never mentored anyone,” Jackson said.

  “I’ve trained more than my fair share of horses. People are easier because they’re smarter.”

  Jackson had to laugh. “You’re so full of shit.”

  “It worked on your sister, didn’t it?”

  “Chris!” Eliza reached over to swat Chris playfully, and he caught her hand. He pulled her closer by that hand to kiss her and Jackson had to look away, even as he felt a little surge of pride at having successfully gotten them together.

  “I’m not going to treat her like a horse.”

  “Your loss. I’m telling you, all the animal behavior studies are clear on this. Positive reinforcement is the best way to teach someone to learn complex behaviors.”

  “I can’t imagine anything more insulting than treating her like a lab animal.”

  “So you think she prefers fighting with you?” Chris countered.

  “That’s not what I said. There’s a lot of room between training somebody like a horse and arguing with them.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll b
e nice, but not like she’s an animal. Jesus.”

  “We’re all animals. Some of us are just a little more at peace with that than others.”

  “We’re doctors.”

  “As entertainingly stupid as I find this conversation, could the two of you give it a rest?” Eliza held up her wine glass meaningfully

  Jackson raised his own glass to toast to that. “Gladly.”

  Chapter Four

  The apartment building had stucco walls on the outside and brightly colored Spanish tiles on the roof, like hundreds of others built in the area during the ’90s. The first time Darla had seen them, she thought they looked charming and unique in comparison to the buildings in Chicago. But after seeing the exact same design over and over again, some of the charm had started to wear thin.

  Though there was that sameness to construction, her roommate Brandon had fallen in love with this specific neighborhood. Their building was eight minutes by car from the hospital, halfway between the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and the Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Holidays and parties in the building were always entertaining with the number of residents who worked in theater. Brandon’s dating life stayed pretty active too.

  Brandon stopped his car under the parking lot awning. “Hey, you survived a whole day with DeMatteo. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Pretty sure it doesn’t.”

  Survival had never been in question. She had just wished the earth would swallow her whole a couple of times. Things had turned around by the end of the shift, though none of that could wipe out her earlier fumbles.

  “Maybe next time you could take one of your pills. This is what they’re for, right?”

  “In theory.” She drew the words out slowly, regretting not for the first time that Brandon knew about her condition. Advice from well-meaning people about things they had never experienced felt old the first time it happened. Her doctor had told her to take the beta-blockers an hour before anything particularly anxiety-inducing, to help keep her heart rate steady. They worked wonderfully for warding off the migraines or symptoms from her mitral valve prolapse, but they had their drawbacks. “Except they might also make me all sluggish and forgetful, so I’m worried about taking them at work.”

  “It’s not like DeMatteo has that great of a memory anyway. Every time I had to do rounds with him, he forgot my name. Maybe since you messed up, you could convince him you’re a different intern.”

  “Great. So even when I do well, he might not remember who I am?”

  Brandon’s phone started ringing. She glanced back to see him wander away in the parking lot as he answered it, likely looking for some measure of privacy. That was easy enough to give him, at least.

  She reached the exterior staircase at the same time as her neighbors from across the hall. The two women lived together with a little girl of about five—a family, Darla assumed. One of the mothers was close to six feet in her heels, her body thin and sinewy. The other was shorter, with a softer figure closer to Darla’s. Both of the mothers dressed nicely, though the little girl had something sticky and sweet smeared all over her face as she munched away at a cookie. Darla gave the family a quick smile before she started to follow them up the stairs.

  “Mommy, I feel funny,” the little girl said.

  “You probably just had too much sugar at the party. We’ll get you in a bath and into bed and it’ll be fine,” said the short woman holding her hand.

  “But I can’t…” The little girl trailed off, her words sounding strangely slurred for a kindergartner.

  Darla looked closer at the girl. It was difficult to notice at first, but once she paid attention the faint wheezing from the girl was unmistakable. Her face looked ever so slightly fuller than usual as well. Swelling, most likely. “Does your daughter have any allergies?

  “Excuse me?” The second woman shot Darla an offended look. “How is that any of your business?”

  “Because she looks like she’s having an anaphylactic reaction.”

  Both of the mothers turned to their daughter. The tall one dropped to one knee to look into the little girl’s face, cupping her cheeks in her hands. “Susie? Susie, are you okay?”

  The wheezing only grew worse as the little girl’s eyes went wide with panic. Instead of responding, she tried to flail free of her mother’s grasp. The shorter mother caught her before she could fall down the stairs, but both women looked nearly as panicked as their child.

  Things would only get worse if she didn’t step in.

  Darla touched the back of the shorter woman’s hand. “Do you have an EpiPen for her?”

  “No! She had a bad reaction to a bee sting once, but we’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

  A bee sting. That could explain things. “Can I take that?” She took the cookie from the little girl to drop it into her pocket, then refocused on the parents. “Benadryl?”

  “Inside.” The taller woman raced up the stairs to unlock the apartment door. “It’s all in our bathroom.”

  “May I?” Darla scooped Susie from the shorter woman, then followed the taller one up the stairs and into the apartment.

  Her heart pounded, the now-familiar rush of adrenaline focusing her attention on reaching the bathroom and assessing the severity of the girl’s reaction. Darla was so keyed up, every detail barraged her. The scent of potpourri, framed posters of Vegas stage shows on the walls of the living room, a Doc McStuffins doll left on the floor that nearly tripped her, the weight and measured breathing of the child gasping in her arms.

  She shoved into the bathroom, accepting the bottle of Benadryl and setting the child to sit atop the countertop. “I need you to drink this, Susie.”

  The little girl’s first attempt to swallow the antihistamine through her swollen throat tripped her gag reflex. Darla wrapped her arms around the little girl to soothe her and stroke her hair as she vomited, listening all the while to be sure her breathing passages were clear. A small plastic cup sat on the edge of the sink. Darla stretched to fill it without abandoning Susie entirely.

  “Here. Let’s rinse your mouth out really good, okay?” Honestly, Darla was thrilled the girl vomited. At least that would lessen the amount of allergen in her body, causing the anaphylaxis. She watched closely as the girl sipped and then spit the water back into the toilet. The stench of stomach acid mixed with baked goods filled the bathroom, which was already feeling too full with three adults crowded into it.

  “Now let’s try this again. It’ll help you.” Part of her worried the little girl’s throat was too inflamed to swallow at all and they’d have to take her to the hospital immediately, but despite a little dribbling over her chin it seemed to go down.

  Several tense minutes passed with no sound save Susie’s wheezing until finally it subsided.

  Darla disentangled herself and hit the handle on the toilet on her way out of the bathroom to make room for the parents to fuss over their daughter. The cookie was plastered with lint when she took it out of her pocket, but still clean enough that she could make a few educated guesses at the ingredients.

  “She’s okay with nuts?”

  “She has a PB&J almost every day. It’s never been a problem,” the shorter mother said.

  Darla sniffed at the cookie and nodded to herself, suspicion confirmed. “It’s probably the honey that set her off, then.”

  The taller mother turned away from her daughter to give Darla an exasperated look. “How does honey make someone’s mouth swell up?”

  “Filtered, pasteurized honey is pretty inert and safe, but if it’s improperly handled or raw it can contain bee venom. It’s usually only a problem in kids with bee sting allergies.”

  The shorter mother’s mouth pursed into an outraged circle. “Oh my God. Bruce’s stupid hippie food! He said those were ‘raw’ cookies.”

  “I’d just watch her around honey if you don’t know it was filtered. It really shouldn’t be a big concern most of the time. For tonight, you shou
ld get her in to see someone. Even with her symptoms subsiding, it’s still in her system.”

  “Are you a doctor?” asked the taller mother.

  It was a reasonable question, but it filled Darla with a warm glow all the same. “Still an intern. In a couple months, I’ll be able to practice on my own, but not yet.”

  “Well, you saved our daughter and that’s good enough for me.”

  “I didn’t do anything you couldn’t have done yourselves.” The panic of the girl’s parents more than anything else had been the problem. No one could blame them for responding emotionally to their child gasping for breath, but it wasn’t the best frame of mind for decision making. Thinking about it that way put her day into a new perspective. Jackson’s admonishments to be less emotional had seemed arbitrary at the time.

  “You saved her.” The way the taller woman said it made it clear no counterarguments would be accepted. “My name’s Rachel and this is my wife Nikki.”

  Now that the emergency was over, Darla could really take note of her neighbors beyond parental panic. Rachel’s height wasn’t quite as dramatic as it had looked at first glance. Instead, it was helped along by a precarious pair of heels and her dark curls puffed up around her face. Her makeup was flawlessly understated, highlighting her high cheekbones and full lips without ever taking center stage. Nikki was just as short and full-bodied as she’d looked at first glance, but what Darla had taken for braids before were tiny, neatly formed dreadlocks. A small gold nose ring complimented the deep brown of Nikki’s skin. They were the sort of casually gorgeous women who’d always made Darla feel insecure, but there was no judgment as they looked at her. Just gratitude.

  “I’m Darla. It’s nice to meet you.” She winced. “I mean, not that the situation is nice, but it’s just…you seem nice.”

  Nikki laughed and that seemed to break the remaining tension. “If there’s anything we can ever do for you, please let us know.”

  Her skin prickled with the heat of a blush. “That’s not necessary. I really didn’t do much.”