Wyatt tried to hold on to the threads of her tantrum. “What are you saying? Because you’ve never done something before you can’t learn how to do it? You’re a surgeon who prides herself on being up-to-date on the latest technologies and practices. I’ve seen you practice for hours on cadavers.”
“Exactly! Practice. You can’t know how to do something without it and I’ve never had it. Not when it comes to this. Without practice there is failure, and in this area, with you, I’m not willing to risk it.”
“Fine,” he shouted. “You don’t want to risk it? Then go find someone to practice on and give me a call when that’s done.”
That made her blink. “You want me to see other people?”
“Sure,” he said, lying through his teeth. “See someone else. See ten other people. Practice until your heart’s content. But if I find out if you’ve slept with any of them, there is going to be hell to pay.”
She sighed and shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous again.”
“You’re a mature single woman who is into me,” he said between gritted teeth as he started the Jeep. “I’m a mostly mature single man who is into you. Way into you. We like each other despite ourselves and are electric between the sheets. But you don’t want to pursue this because you think you haven’t had enough practice with men and you’re afraid you won’t know how to say things like ‘I’m sorry you had a bad day, dear.’ And I’m the one being ridiculous?”
She didn’t respond and for that he was grateful. He pulled into traffic and concentrated on the cars in front of him instead of her.
He hoped she was thinking about what she was willing to let go and what was worth trying for.
She needed to get this right. For his sanity, for his freaking heart. She needed to.
Chapter 8
Camille scrubbed her hands harder than was necessary with the bar soap. There was something soothing in the ritual that made it calming even while she rubbed her skin raw. Germs were to be avoided at all cost. Cleanliness wasn’t merely a rule before surgery, it was a surgeon’s obligation. A pact between the patient whose chest lay exposed and the person who would be putting her hands inside it.
There were many other rules her grandfather had drummed into her head, but this one was the first.
Rule one: cleanliness.
She wasn’t to eat without washing, dress without washing. She wasn’t to close a book without then washing. Elementary school was forbidden. Nothing more than a cesspool of germs, her grandfather felt that not only could he do a superior job in her education, but he could shield her from the typical contaminants found in a classroom.
The most predominant of these being other children.
No, it had never been hard to isolate the root of her current hypochondriac tendencies. As a child if she sneezed, it was an issue for concern. She was diagnosed and treated as if she had developed a new strain of tuberculosis. Quarantined at times even from the man who should have been nursing her back to health.
Illness was not to be tolerated. Although he’d since stopped operating on patients as his hands had grown too unpredictable, her grandfather often worked with other surgeons in the OR directing them as needed.
Her health affected his health and his health could not be compromised given his responsibilities.
So she washed herself and stayed away from germs of any kind and suffered his treatments for the minor ailments she had managed to contract over the course of her lifetime.
And she never made any friends. And she never had a boyfriend.
She recalled the first time she had let someone kiss her. Another student she’d met in med school. The revulsion she felt violating such a fundamental principle of her grandfather’s had her promptly pushing away from the boy and finding the nearest bathroom where she’d vomited.
It would be years before she allowed herself to even think about such things again. School made it easy. So did the long hours of her internship. Becoming a doctor, then a surgeon, left little time for a social life. But after he died, she knew it was time to break out of the shell he had created for her and try to find a way to be normal.
So she got a cat and she learned to sit still when Aphrodite licked ice cream from her fingers. And she scooped kitty litter, albeit with a face mask and rubber gloves that were secured on her forearms with thick rubber bands.
She found another boy to kiss, a man this time, and waited for the nausea to pass. Then she’d let him have sex with her, which had caused another fit of vomiting. But she tried again, this time with a fellow resident. She let him kiss her and have sex with her and she hadn’t vomited.
She also hadn’t really enjoyed the experience either. It all seemed like so much work to maintain control of her reactions.
But she hadn’t had to do that with Wyatt. With Wyatt she’d been so overwhelmed by the pleasure she hadn’t been able to dwell on all the rest.
Another reason why pursuing a relationship with him was risky. With him she felt different, not herself. She was having a hard time determining if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Because she couldn’t decide, the only smart course of action was to avoid him and the feelings he evoked altogether.
Her grandfather always said if she didn’t know in which direction to proceed, then the logical move was to remain still. In the area of romance she’d been remaining still for most of her life. Somehow in this instance that very logical option felt wrong.
Of course she could take Wyatt’s advice. Maybe find a way to practice with other men, build up her level of confidence in her ability to handle a relationship. It sounded like a lot of work, and part of her wondered how these other men might feel about it.
Hi, would you mind going out with me so I can become more sure of myself as a woman so ultimately I might be able to have a relationship with the man I really want?
No, definitely not a great opening line. But she would consider it because despite what she’d told Wyatt earlier today, she wasn’t quite ready to give up on herself yet. And definitely not ready to give up on them.
Replacing the soap, she rinsed her hands under the water, wincing at the heat hitting her sensitive skin. Jeff, one of the surgical nurses she would be working with today, came into the washroom with gloves in hand.
Camille held a hand out to him while he snapped the first glove into place, then the next.
Peeking up at him, as he was much taller than she was, Camille realized for the first time that he was handsome. Before she’d only ever seen him as a tool she needed to do her job. It’s how she thought of everyone in the operating room with her. A supporting cast with her as the star.
He had a strong chin, long narrow nose and high cheekbones. Firm but full lips. In her eyes he wasn’t nearly as captivating as Wyatt, but he was the type of man a mature single woman might take an interest in. The type of person she might…practice with.
“Are you okay, Doctor?”
Caught staring, Camille avoided his gaze. “Yes. Sorry. Is the patient ready?”
“Ready and waiting.”
Camille made her way into the O.R. It was crowded today with the anesthesiologist, a resident assisting her with the heart-lung bypass machine, an intern observing and another surgical nurse besides Jeff. Camille wasn’t thrilled to see Marie, knowing the animosity the woman felt toward her, but she would not let it affect her work.
She nodded to the anesthesiologist who delivered the anesthesia through an IV line in the patient’s arm. As soon as the patient was completely under, the respirator line was inserted into the windpipe and preparation to hook up the patient to the heart and lung machine began.
Camille went about her business methodically. She preferred a quiet operating room rather than filling the space with background music or television. She liked to think there was a rhythm to a surgery, a silent beat that let her know how it was proceeding. Background noise drowned that out of her.
The only sound today was her detailing step-by-step for the
intern how she was proceeding and directions to Jeff and Marie. She explained to the intern why they were using a biological aortic valve replacement instead of a mechanical one and gave her opinion of the use of robotics during heart surgery.
Camille was not a fan of robotics, believing they didn’t act as quickly as her human hands did when there was problem.
After several hours and a seamless operation, the patient’s heart function was restored and the bypass and respirators were turned off. Again, Camille could find no fault in her technique, but knew that she would be making several visits to the ICU to monitor this patient’s recovery. The patient was wheeled out of the O.R. to the post-op recovery room where she would stay until she recovered from the anesthesia before being transferred to ICU.
In the scrub room Camille pushed open the swinging door to find Jeff and Marie casually talking as they washed the surgery off their hands. Camille disposed of her blood-soaked gloves in the hazardous waste bucket and joined them at the sinks.
She wasn’t unaware that as soon as she did join them their conversation ceased. Marie had been asking Jeff about his plans for his day off tomorrow and Camille would have liked to have heard the answer. Tomorrow was the first time in a long time she would not be on call. Not a bad day to practice date.
“Good job, you two. In there.” Camille nodded to both of them. It occurred to her that she didn’t do a lot of that. Compliments weren’t something she expected so they weren’t something she offered. Being excellent was her job, expecting excellence from her staff was the norm. So to comment on it every time it happened seemed pointless.
However, given the hospital staff’s current feelings toward her, she thought a little flattery couldn’t hurt.
They both nodded with somewhat confused expressions on their faces. Camille didn’t think that was a good sign.
“So, Jeff…um…” Camille realized she had no clue how to start this conversation. Again, something she needed to practice. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“No,” he stated flatly, looking at her as if she had suddenly grown two heads.
“Oh. So I…um…was wondering. Maybe, sometime, if you would like to go out for drinks or something. Sometime. Maybe.”
“Are you serious?”
It wasn’t exactly the response she was looking for. And oddly, he seemed angered by her question. She knew that asking someone else out so she could learn how to be with another man wasn’t exactly thoughtful of her, but she didn’t think he would guess her underlying reasons.
“I suppose?”
He huffed. “You really are oblivious, aren’t you? I know you’re a doctor and we’re supposed to bow to you, but I won’t. You’re a fool. And for the record, I think Dr. Dade is ten times the physician you are. I’m out, Marie. See you.”
Jeff sidestepped her and left the scrub room without a backward glance. Camille turned and saw the door swinging from his exit and wondered if she had ever made someone angry by asking them out. She was pretty sure this was a first. He called her a fool. She’d never had such a slur raised against her. Worse, he thought Dr. Dade was better at the job. That was an outright lie.
“What did I do?”
Marie came up beside her, drying her hands. “You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Jeff plays for the other team.” Camille must have made her confusion obvious. “You know…the other team.” When that still didn’t register, Marie said it straight. “Jeff is gay.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Camille flushed. Should she have known that? She didn’t spend much time focusing on the personal lives of the people she worked with. Except Wyatt.
Jeff seemed like any other man to her. Given her limited exposure to men in general she wasn’t shocked to learn she had not properly identified him as homosexual. Maybe he was right and that did make her foolish.
“Right. Which is why he was probably so cheesed with you asking him out. He’s militantly gay. You know, completely out and open with everything. The fact that you didn’t know, he automatically assumes it means you have something against people like him. Like you want to believe they don’t exist.”
“That’s not true.”
“Don’t sweat it. He’ll recover. He’s been an absolute jerk lately. Anger central all the time. I think someone broke his heart, but he’s not talking.”
“I can’t seem to do the right thing by anyone in this place.”
Marie tossed the towel in the laundry bin. “You are persona non grata these days. Dr. Dade has been missed.”
Camille recalled the image of Marie with Dade in the break room. “Can I ask you a question? What was it that you saw in him?”
“Dr. Dade? Uh, he’s hot. He’s rich. He’s got that surgeon arrogance thing going full blast, which, in short doses, is a huge turn-on. And in bed, I’ve never had better. He used to put his hands around my throat and cut off my air while I came. It was fabulous.”
“You mean sexual asphyxiation?” Camille was familiar with the clinical definition but could never associate something so morbid with making love. It was dangerous and potentially life-threatening and…
“A total mind blower,” Marie said. “You should try it.”
“I don’t think so. Weren’t you worried? If he cut off your air supply for too long, he could have stopped your heart.”
“I know. That’s half the fun. The risk. Besides he used to say he was a heart surgeon and that if he stopped my heart, who better than him to start it back up again.”
Camille couldn’t refute the logic, but the idea of putting her life in someone else’s hands that way, someone who treated her so casually, was insanity.
“I’ve shocked you,” Marie said, patting her gently. “Sorry. I figured everybody knew about Dr. Dade and all the kinky things he likes to do.”
“I’m not shocked.” It was a total lie. Camille was extremely shocked. It put into context what she’d witnessed in the lounge that day. Marie hadn’t been a victim of Dade’s sexual domination. She’d been a willing partner.
“So I guess he kept things pretty vanilla with you.”
“With me? Not with me. I was never with Dr. Dade…like that.”
“Seriously? Then why did you go all crazy stalker on him?”
Camille shook her head, not understanding the gist of the conversation. “Marie, you’ve completely lost me. I was never intimately involved with Dr. Dade and I certainly never stalked him.”
“But he said—huh.”
“He said what?”
The nurse shrugged. “After he gave his two weeks’ notice his car had been keyed and the windshield smashed. He claimed it was the work of someone who couldn’t handle being dumped. I don’t think he ever came out and said it was you. But he sure implied it. And he gave that as one of the reasons he was leaving. He was hoping…out of sight, out of mind. You know? Anyway, it’s all past tense these days. I tried a few times to call him, but he’s not returning my texts or anything. Said he wanted a clean break when he left. I guess he meant it. See you, Dr. Larson.”
Camille watched the younger nurse leave and thought she had a very different opinion of Dade’s departure. No doubt Logan was hoping that out of sight of her might actually make him look like a better surgeon. But the fact that someone had keyed his car, too, couldn’t be a coincidence. Either it was the same vandal at work, or whoever was angry with Logan was as angry with her.
Later, sitting in the break room with a weak cup of tea, Camille checked her watch. It was nearly eleven. The surgery had gone longer than she planned, but her patient would have been moved to ICU by now and she wanted to check up on her as soon as she was settled in. Critical care nurses weren’t huge fans of having doctors look over their shoulders when they weren’t needed but Camille wasn’t taking any chances this time. Her head was telling her that the surgery went well. Everything had looked good. Not one stitch out of place.
The lack of evidence of any wrongdoing with the o
ther two patients should have eased her mind that their deaths were merely coincidental and a circumstance of fate. There was no reason to think she had any part in their passing. Which meant she had no real reason to be worried about Janet Hamilton currently in ICU.
Only her gut—something she could never recall listening to before as it went against her grain as an intelligent doctor of science—made her feel worried. That is why the gut was stupid.
The entrance to the break room was suddenly shadowed and Camille looked up to find Wyatt standing there with a grim expression on his face. He was like the King of Gut, one more reason that made a future with them together impossible.
He walked to where she was seated and she knew instantly that he must have heard of the debacle with Jeff. He wore a half smirk, half frown and his eyes said the rest.
“What are you still doing here?” she asked.
“Working until midnight. Taking another doctor’s shift at the clinic.”
Her bad luck. His lips twitched and she knew, knew for certain the rumors had already begun to spread.
“You told me to do it,” she said sulkily.
“I told you to harass a gay nurse?”
For a second it occurred to Camille that she had guessed right. No, it wasn’t even a guess. She had looked at his face and had known that he was going to comment about the incident with Jeff. She couldn’t recall ever being that insightful with another person before. It was a milestone.
“I didn’t harass him, I simply asked him out. He got very angry and stormed off. Marie had to tell me he was gay.”
“Marie shouldn’t have had to tell you. Everyone knows about Jeff. He’s very open about his personal life.”
“That would have required me caring about his personal life before. I didn’t.”
“I see,” Wyatt said, taking the seat across from her. “So why this sudden interest in his personal life now?”
Camille dipped her tea bag a few times to avoid answering.
“You know,” Wyatt said casually, “if you were going to practice with anyone, I would prefer it to be with someone like Jeff. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about the hankypanky stuff afterward.”
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