by C. M. Stone
Nikki gave her a sardonic look, then turned back into the bathroom to pick Susie up and start washing her face. “If you tell people you didn’t do much, they’ll eventually start believing you. You did a good thing, Darla. Own it.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Okay. Thank you, but I don’t expect anything for helping.”
“Well, I’m a hairdresser and Rachel does makeup. You ever have a hot date, you come knock on our door, all right?”
Darla laughed at the thought. The last time she’d been on a date had been back in Chicago, before she started her internship. Finding the time to meet someone and feel sexy enough to try flirting when she spent nearly every waking moment in frumpy scrubs was next to impossible. “I don’t think that’s very likely, but I’ll remember. Keep an eye on your little girl, okay? Keep an EpiPen on hand. Just in case.”
“We’ll take her in to Quick Care.” Rachel led her to the door, then patted her on the arm. “Have a good night.”
Her feet felt a bit lighter on the walk across the hall, her head a little higher than usual. It really hadn’t been anything spectacular she’d done, no matter what they said, but it had helped. She had helped.
Brandon stopped at the top of the stairs and eyed her, then glanced over toward the neighbors’ door as Rachel shut it. “What the hell were you doing in there?”
The weight of the world came back almost immediately, her shoulders slumping. “Their daughter was having an allergic reaction, and I helped her. It’s no big deal.”
“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment, then gave her two thumbs up. “Awesome. Anyway, any more thoughts about working with Dr. Ice?”
“DeMatteo was very…professional.” She unlocked the apartment door to let them both in. It seemed to be the best word to use to describe him, rather than falling back on all of the “cold” descriptions she’d heard interns use before. They didn’t seem exactly right to her. He was distant, but there wasn’t anything cold about him. That might be a first impression, but after seeing him deal with those seriously injured construction workers, she knew he wasn’t nearly as unaffected as he appeared to be. He could be intimidating, though.
DeMatteo was easily four or five inches taller than Brandon, who was fairly short and slim for a man. Unlike DeMatteo’s naturally golden skin tone, her roommate was so pale he’d turn bright red after just a few minutes in the sun. The fact that Brandon kept his hair bleached blond and buzzed close to his scalp further robbed him of any hint of color. The bleached-out look made for a striking combination that granted him more presence than his slight build and height might have otherwise given.
“He probably hates me, but at least he isn’t dropping me from his service. I don’t think, anyway,” Darla went on.
Brandon made a noncommittal sound and brushed past her into the kitchen. “That was Heath on the phone, and he had some juicy gossip. Apparently Dr. Ice had a girlfriend a long time ago and she killed herself. They say that’s why he’s such an asshole.”
Hospital gossip was rarely accurate, but maybe a kernel of truth was hidden under it all. DeMatteo wouldn’t be the first person to lose a loved one, and there had to be something more to him pushing people away while clearly unhappy that his parents weren’t calling him. Punishing himself like that couldn’t have come from nowhere. “He doesn’t seem like the type to let personal problems interfere with work, though.”
“People can surprise you.”
Chapter Five
Darla cradled her phone as she set her lunch tray down across from Brandon and her friend Maggie, another first year resident. “Hi, Mama. What’s going on?”
“Just checking in. How’re things in trauma medicine?” Anita Morales asked with brittle cheerfulness.
“Uh, okay?” Darla swallowed hard, hoping she wouldn’t have to go into any sort of detail. “Doing my best. I’m not sure that’s enough some days.”
“It is. They’re lucky to have you, and Mt. Sinai Hospital will be lucky to get you, too.” The words had more force to them than seemed entirely warranted, but this was typical. At some point her mother had decided to bulldoze her way through Darla’s anxiety with bluster and unrealistic expectations. “Try not to worry so much, niña. You’ve been so miserable out there, but it’ll be better once you’re home.”
Her mother was right, at least as far as her unhappiness went. Going to Las Vegas had been an adventure all its own, but that hadn’t shaken the sense of deep dissatisfaction that settled over her during her first year as a surgical resident. Would returning to Chicago fix it? She wasn’t sure, but there weren’t any other possible solutions she could see.
“I hope so. I’ve got to eat before my next shift,” Darla said.
“All right, honey. With the time difference it might be too late for me to call back before you’re done, but send me an email. I hate not hearing from you for days at a time.”
“I will.”
“And remember, no matter how bad things get I’m going to be there to help you study for your Step Three exam in a couple weeks.”
The reminder made her wince. The visit was welcome, but the test would finally allow her to obtain a medical license. No amount of preparation could entirely shake her nervousness over it. “Thanks, Mama.”
After she’d hung up Maggie reached across the table to give Darla her cupcake from Mag’s weekly bakery visit. The mounds of white frosting included, the cupcake was about four inches tall. Eating them more than once a week might have required a death wish. “What did your mom want?”
“Usual mom stuff. Do you want in on the Step Three prep when she gets here?”
Brandon shifted in his chair to pull out his own phone. “Definitely. I heard the more somebody specializes the worse they do on it, though. Is your mom going to be that helpful?”
“She’s always been a help to me before.” Darla poked at her potato salad with her fork. “You’re not opening that flashcard app, are you?”
“C’mon. We’re all together. It’s the perfect time.”
Maggie groaned with a shake of her head. “No, I don’t want to think about cysts and parasites. I want to eat.”
“There’ve been a lot of studies that suggest giving people downtime to relax and absorb information is better than constantly drilling them,” Darla said.
“Funny how no residency program ever heard of those studies.” Brandon dropped his phone and resumed picking at his food. “So Maggie and I were talking about her taking over your old room when you leave.”
The potato salad felt like gravel going down her throat, settling heavily in her stomach. “I don’t know if I’m even going to be accepted back in Chicago.”
“We know, but Brandon had to make plans for how to pay the rent when you’re gone and with my roommate bailing on me it seemed like a good solution.”
“That makes sense.” Everyone moving on without her was a worse lunchtime conversation than cysts and parasites. She looked around, trying to think of something else to talk about and save herself the stress of dwelling on yet another cross-country move. Her eye fell on Jackson DeMatteo, sitting by himself and reading on his phone while he ate. His thick, dark hair was slightly tousled, probably from having been shoved under a surgical cap, but it made her wonder if it looked the same when he first woke up. “I hope my next shift with him is easier.”
Maggie turned to follow Darla’s eye. “You should go talk to him.”
“Me talking to him is what made everything go wrong in the first place.”
“Yeah, but you can overcome that.”
“I can overcome calling him ignorant and being thrown out of his OR?”
“You can.” Maggie jabbed her fork in Darla’s direction. “You’re not nervous with us, because you’re in your comfort zone with your friends. Go expand your comfort zone. Get to know him, relax, and show him what a badass you are.”
Darla laughed self-deprecatingly. “I’m not a badass.”
“You’re not
going to be one with that kind of attitude.”
Darla drummed her nails on the edge of the table, fighting against that rising tide of agitation she knew too well. Tests and learning things were easy and it had never stopped her there, but people were different. At least new people were. Was Maggie right that she just needed to get to know him and it’d disappear? “Brandon, what do you think?”
Brandon shrugged. “I’m sorry, is this a life or death question? Go network. It’s only a big deal if you make it into one.”
Maggie beamed and threw an arm around Brandon’s shoulders. “We’ve got ourselves a future motivational speaker here.”
…
Someone else taking a seat at his table didn’t tug Jackson’s attention away from the article he was reading. The hospital cafeteria wasn’t particularly crowded, but if someone needed the other chair at his table he wasn’t about to protest. It was the giant cupcake on the edge of his field of vision that finally had him lowering his phone.
Morales sat across from him, though she didn’t look particularly pleased. Her posture was stiff, her muscles held tense.
“Is something wrong?”
“No. I thought you might like company.”
His eyes slid up and down over what he could see of her. The square cut of the scrubs hadn’t been designed with full curves like hers in mind, and she’d obviously taken a larger size to accommodate that, but there was no hiding the lush body beneath. As near as he could tell, she wasn’t wearing any makeup and her hair was once again pulled into a tight ponytail, but a few curls had escaped this time to make a fuzzy, black halo around her face. Before he could stop himself he wondered how her hair would look let down, preferably spread out over a pillow.
“Sure, I wouldn’t mind some. I’d just been reading up on those hormonal effects on trauma recovery. It actually looks pretty promising.” He offered a smile, watching and hoping she might start to relax.
“It does?” Some of the tension visibly left her, but it was replaced with a look of surprise. “After what you said, I thought…”
“Promising doesn’t mean it’s something we can actually use. It takes years of data and approval before a new treatment can be implemented. And that’s a good thing, because it helps protect our patients from long-term side-effects.”
Her brows raised slightly, and there was the start of a shy smile curling up one corner of her full lips. “You really thought I didn’t know that? Were you worried I was going to start jabbing patients with estrogen?”
Jackson laughed in spite of himself, dragging a hand through his hair. “Probably not, but I hear people talk about new therapies and treatments and usually they’re not being as cautious about it as they should be.”
“I like research. Why would I want people to skip it entirely?” Her voice had a hint of teasing in it.
“I don’t know. You seemed so gung-ho, and I’ve had a few residents who got cocky that they had all the answers before.”
Her smile fully blossomed, her dark brown eyes twinkling like the night sky. For a moment, he was floored by the full force of it. There was something wrong with a woman having a smile like that and looking worried all the time.
“So you’ve got to crush our spirits?” she asked.
“I like to think of it more like keeping you grounded.”
“And who keeps you grounded when you think you’ve got all the answers?”
“I don’t think that.”
She reached across the table to tap his phone tightly with one finger. “You didn’t think this was a great idea when I first told you about it. You were wrong.”
He leaned back in his chair with a roll of his eyes. “Then I guess you can be the one to keep me grounded.”
“I can live with that.”
He nodded toward the cupcake on her tray. “Where’d you get that? Not from the cafeteria. I would’ve noticed the stampede if they had anything like those.”
“My friend Maggie makes a weekly bakery run for a bunch of people here. You can get in on it if you want.” Darla looked down at her cupcake for a moment with a thoughtful expression, then picked up her fork to break off a piece of the cake with a healthy dollop of the frosting on top. She held the fork out to him. “No stampede necessary.”
It was a cupcake, he reminded himself. There wasn’t anything erotically charged about baked goods, no matter what strange temptations he was suffering from. Still, his imagination filled with visions of sucking frosting off of her delicate fingertips. He took the fork from her and tried to ignore the electric charge he felt from his hand brushing hers.
Instead of the plain yellow cake he’d expected, it was sponge cake that had been soaked in something sweet, but with a light, simple taste of its own. At least he could recognize the frosting as whipped mascarpone with little caramel shavings in it.
“I have no idea what that is, but it’s delicious.”
Her laugh was full of skepticism. “Really? You’ve never had tres leches cake?”
“Not that I can remember. I’ve had similar desserts with soaked cake, but they’re usually stronger flavored.”
“You need to get out more. The cupcake’s a little different from how I’m used to it, though.” She took a bite of it for herself, then gestured to him. “You’re welcome to share.”
Eating off his own fork wasn’t quite as decadent as sharing hers, but the cake was a welcome consolation. They were halfway through the giant cupcake before he remembered they both had an actual lunch to eat rather than just dessert.
He switched back to his lunch to get something other than empty calories before he was full and noticed Dick Mevlyn with a nurse just behind Darla’s left shoulder. The annoyance on his face must have shown because she turned in her chair to look.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just this guy who gets on my nerves.” He shook his head with a sigh. “He’s a fine surgeon, but a lazy instructor at the medical school, and he’s always sucking up to everyone else at the hospital.”
Darla went still, her eyes taking on a concerned expression. “Isn’t that just networking?”
“I guess some of it is.” Jackson was sure it would help his own career to do more of that, but Mevlyn just made it seem so sleazy. “Some of it’s something else. Like he always starts flirting with women he might be able to use somehow.”
She pursed her lips in a frown. “I thought that went against the fraternization policy.”
“No, because he usually doesn’t progress to actually dating them as near as I can tell. He doesn’t do it with anyone that he directly supervises or who supervises him either. If I wanted to go around flirting with nurses and residents I don’t work with, that’d be fine, but you and I couldn’t have a relationship.” After the words were out, he felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. Why had he used that example? It was true, but it wasn’t really appropriate to point out, was it? Though maybe more appropriate than thinking about sucking frosting off of her fingers.
“Oh.” Darla’s face was slowly turning red before she ducked her head to try to avoid his eyes. “I guess that makes sense.”
“I mean, as an example. If a resident and the attending they worked under started a relationship, the resident would have to be transferred,” he explained. “Just for everyone’s own good, so there couldn’t be a question of harassment or favoritism.”
It was a sensible policy, he knew. But for once he found himself just a bit disappointed it existed.
Chapter Six
The fact that interns were constantly being cycled through the services of other doctors had always been a blessing in the past. Days or weeks could go by without crossing paths with a specific intern, giving time for hurt feelings over little slights to be forgotten. Days without working with Morales again hadn’t been the welcome relief Jackson wanted, though. Partly because her insatiable quest for knowledge made him feel like he was actually doing what he was meant to be doing, and partly because every day she hadn’
t been in his rotation had been a day he’d spent thinking about her, wondering how she fared with her other rounds, while he surreptitiously glanced up and down the halls for a glimpse of her gorgeous hair and sweet smile.
“Did you know turmeric can kill oral cancer cells?”
Jackson stopped stirring the cream into his coffee. Days without working with her hadn’t been a relief, but somehow five minutes in her presence was already overwhelming. Not in an annoying kind of way, but more in the sense that he couldn’t ignore the stirrings of attraction that he felt in response to her nearness. Her penchant for spouting random facts and barraging him with studies and data? Yeah. He rather liked anticipating what she’d say next. It kept him on his toes. Case in point, wherever she was going with turmeric.
“What?”
She hadn’t had any coffee, at least not as near as he could tell. She was just that chipper once her anxiety melted away, practically bouncing on her heels in pleasure over her latest factoid. It wasn’t natural. Although it was kind of cute.
“There’s a chemical in turmeric,” she said, “called curcumin, and it’s been found to kill oral cancer cells. It’s also as effective at treating gingivitis as medicated mouthwash.”
He sipped his coffee, mulling that over. “Turmeric. Like the herb?”
“Yeah, it’s what makes curry powder yellow. Isn’t that so cool?”
Already he could feel himself being pulled along with her enthusiasm, down roads he couldn’t go. Not if he wanted to keep his distance. “It sounds like some sort of alterna-health bullshit, frankly.” As soon as he saw the disappointment in her big brown eyes he regretted his words. He spoke again in a gentler tone. “Where did you get that?”
She gave a brief shrug. “There were studies.”
“How many?”
“I…a lot.”
He marveled that someone could be so knowledgeable and optimistic about every new treatment at the same time. That her enthusiasm for medicine hadn’t been crushed by the world when she was clearly so sensitive had to count for something.