The Doctor's Deadly Affair

by Stephanie Doyle

  “On the floor! Now!”

  They might not have been city-trained cops, but the four officers who had burst through the door, guns pointed, seemed threatening enough to Wyatt.

  To Jeff, too, apparently. After the briefest hesitation, he got down on the floor, arms spread.

  “Camille, honey. You with me?”

  Now that Jeff was secured, Wyatt dared to look up. Her eyes were closed but her coloring was fine. With one arm still wrapped around her waist, he lifted her so that he could work the rope off her neck. She flopped forward onto his shoulder and his heart kicked into overtime.

  Carefully, he laid her out on the rug. The police were handcuffing Jeff, pulling him to his feet, and shoving him out the front door.

  “Ambulance is on its way.” Sheriff Mooney stood over him, an expression of concern etched in his face.

  An ambulance. Wyatt didn’t need an ambulance. He was a doctor. He would fix her. Checking her pulse, he closed his eyes with relief as he found it strong and steady if a bit fast. Doing a quick assessment, he could see that her arm was broken. He moved it away from her body and the slight jostling must have sent a bolt of pain through her.

  She groaned and the sound pierced his heart, but her eyes fluttered and he thought the pain was worth it if she would wake up.

  “That’s it, babe, wake up. Let me see those eyes. Tell me you’re with me.”

  They opened, and he could see the glassy look of fear and pain in them.

  “Jeff. Get out. Save—”

  “They got him. The police have him. It’s all over now. Really over.”

  “Arm,” she mumbled.

  Wyatt nodded. “Yeah. It’s broken.”

  “Can’t operate.”

  “No,” he said. He waited for what would come next. Waited for the agony she would feel, not from the pain in her arm, but from the knowledge that for a time she wouldn’t get to be the only thing she thought she was.

  But instead of tears or heart-wrenching moans, she lifted her good hand to his face. He pressed his hand against hers, holding it in place, thinking how much he loved her touch. Any touch. Like there was magic in her skin.

  “I almost lost you,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice from cracking.

  “No, you saved me. Wyatt?”

  “Yes? What? Anything. The ambulance is on its way. Any second. We’ll get you to the hospital. Get the arm set. I’ll call in the best orthopedic, I promise.”

  “Ambulance. Make sure the stretcher…it’s clean.”

  He nodded, and then he laughed, feeling the joy bubble out of him. She was going to be all right. If she was worried about the stretcher being clean, then his Camille was going to be just fine.

  Chapter 18

  She opened the door to the establishment and paused, searching for her target. She spotted him in the back at a corner table. He was reading the paper and didn’t see her at all.

  Camille took a moment to look around at the people drinking coffee and eating scones and muffins. She inhaled the smell and thought that it didn’t bother her as much as it used to. The countertop where people sat on stools resting their elbows didn’t look like the germ fest she used to think it was. The tables where others sat appeared to shine with polish.

  The mugs in their hands were gleaming white.

  Still, Camille had brought her own personalized coffee mug with her. There were some limitations after all.

  She made her way to Wyatt’s table and cleared her throat as a way of announcing her presence. The paper in his hand crumpled as he peered over it.

  “Hi.”

  He waited a beat. “Hi.”

  “Can I sit?”

  “Sure.”

  Okay, so she knew it wasn’t necessarily going to be easy. Eating crow never was.

  And she deserved to suffer a bit in this moment. Wyatt had been a rock for her while she was in the hospital. He’d saved her life and sat with her through the recovery. He’d held her unbroken hand during Delia’s memorial service.

  All the while, she had been less than an appreciative patient.

  The damage hadn’t been light. Jeff had broken her tibia clean through. A team of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country had been called in for the consultation and it was decided that surgery as well as pins to hold the bone in place were required.

  Wyatt’s had been the last face she saw before going into the O.R. and his was the first face she saw when she came out. He was there for her for the subsequent days while they waited to see if any nerve damage had been done.

  There wasn’t.

  However, once the arm was in a cast and she was free to leave the hospital, she wanted to go home. Her home. He didn’t fight her. He didn’t insist she stay with him or force his presence on her. She could see the fight they had before Jeff’s attack was still in the air between them. And she knew that he had resigned himself to let her figure a few things out on her own.

  She’d done an excellent job of convincing him that she didn’t need him.

  Darn it.

  He drove her home from the hospital, assured her that Aphrodite had been well cared for during her hospital stay and promised that he would be there if she needed him. Then he kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye.

  For a moment, sitting in that car with him in front of her house, she’d been tempted to invite him in. To ask him to stay with her because she didn’t want to be alone. Not for a day. Or for a week. But forever.

  It wasn’t fair. She knew that instinct was based on the lingering fear she felt from Jeff’s attack and her new fear of what the future might hold if her arm didn’t heal properly.

  He deserved better than fear. So did she.

  If she was going to ask him to stay, it had to be for the right reasons. Which meant she needed to work through a few of her issues first. The most prevalent being how she was going to handle not being a surgeon for the foreseeable future. The cast would be on for eight weeks. Therapy would take weeks after that to regain her strength. The day-to-day future, which had been so set in stone for a bulk of her life, had suddenly shifted.

  What if she wasn’t the surgeon she was before? What if surgery of all kinds was out of the question?

  What if she was just Camille Larson?

  She had needed days to overcome that. In truth, a good two weeks had passed before she had finally begun to stir from the catatonic paralysis she’d fallen into after being released.

  But after those weeks alone, after coming to grips with the death of her patients, making the calls of condolences to their families and mourning Delia, she’d been left with the reality that she hadn’t evaporated from existence.

  Weeks of not operating on anyone and she didn’t fade away into the stratosphere. She didn’t become invisible. She didn’t want to throw herself off a bridge or commit herself to a nunnery.

  She lived. She breathed. She functioned.

  It was during that time when she couldn’t face the hospital, Wyatt or any of the things that happened to her in the weeks before the attack that she began to take walks. She began to breathe fresh air and watch as people went about their days, living their lives. People who could hold hands. Couples who kissed each other in public. Mothers who wiped the runny noses of their children.

  People who were connected to other people.

  Camille decided it was time to try new things. Theaters that had been taboo could be conquered with a discreetly purchased plastic cover that fit over the seat. Restaurants weren’t nearly as scary as long as she inspected the glasses and the plates carefully. Gyms…well, they were still completely too sweaty for her to attempt, but she had tried.

  After all, she’d been dumped into a trash bin and survived that. Was anything else as awful? She’d almost been killed. Didn’t that mean she could live through anything? She was beginning to think so. Beginning to believe.

  So she sat across from Wyatt and when the girl serving the tables came over, Camille pulled her mug from her purse an
d removed the plastic wrap. “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

  “Right,” the waitress said.

  “Can you ask them…not to touch the rim of the mug too much?” After all, she was still a work in progress.

  “Gotcha.” The girl left with the mug and Camille tried to avoid Wyatt’s intense scrutiny.

  “You know that stuff will kill you.”

  “Everything in moderation is acceptable.” She hoped.

  “You brought your own mug?”

  “A compromise. I decided that I couldn’t avoid eating or drinking establishments forever. I can’t bring my own utensils and plates to a restaurant without looking weird, but here it’s perfectly acceptable to carry a personal mug. So I do.”

  He smiled and folded the paper in half, and then again as if he was done reading it.

  “What brings you here?”

  “Several things.”

  “This,” he said with a smirk as he leaned back in his chair, “ought to be good. Proceed.”

  “I don’t know that I properly thanked you. For saving my life…twice. For being there for me in the hospital, for taking care of Aphrodite—”

  “Next,” he said in a flat tone. “This bores me. I don’t want or need your gratitude.”

  There was a reason they called it crow, she thought. The feathers were sticking in her throat. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve taken some time to think about things.”

  He moved toward her then, his elbows now resting on the table. “Go on.”

  “I had to come to grips with the fact that I couldn’t be who I had been trained to be. At least for a few months. The cast is off.” She raised her right hand.

  “I noticed.”

  Of course he did. “But I still need several weeks of therapy to regain full mobilization. And then I need to go back and do cadaver surgery. After that I’ll need to assess where I am physically. No doubt I’ll need to be reviewed and perhaps overseen during surgery at least for the foreseeable future until everyone is convinced I’m back to normal.”

  “You’ll get there.”

  “Normal?”

  “No, not there. You’ll get back to being the surgeon you were.”

  “How can you be so confident?”

  “Because I know you. I know how hard you’ll work. According to the docs—and I’ve consulted many—there should be no permanent damage and if that’s the case, you won’t let anything like time or pain or people watching over your shoulder stop you. You’ll do what has to be done to be the best. Not because you need to be, but because your patients need you to be. You’ll do it for them.”

  He was right. And she let herself smile because, despite everything that had happened between them, he knew her so well and he never tried to hide that.

  “I think you’re right. But in this time of waiting I’ve had a chance to reevaluate myself.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’ve been able to recognize that some of my fears are unfounded. My neuroses, while based in childhood trauma, are not insurmountable with some determination and hard work.”

  “Have you been back to see Dr. Rosen?”

  “No. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I’ve been going to restaurants.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “I’ve been trying not to sanitize my silverware before eating, but I usually cave.”

  “Amazing progress. Why?”

  “Because if a person is going to date someone,” Camille gulped. “Well, she has to learn how to eat out, and drink coffee at coffee shops and have a glass of wine at the bar. That’s what couples do.”

  He smiled. “And have you been practicing dating?”

  She sighed, sensing that at this point he was teasing her more than testing her. “I have not. I discovered that I don’t care for the idea of dating lots of different people. Truthfully, there’s only one person I imagine seeing myself with.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and stroked his chin with his hand as if deep in thought. “I’m going to guess that’s not Dr. Logan Dade.”

  She smiled. “You would be correct.”

  “So who is this mysterious person with whom you wish to practice date?”

  Camille rolled her eyes. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know he would gloat. “I think I would like that person to be you.”

  “Why?”

  Here, she decided. Now. It was time for the truth. “Because the one thing I learned through all of this is that I missed something more than being a surgeon.”

  “Really,” he drawled.

  She pursed her lips and glared at him. “You’re not really going to make me say it.”

  “You bet your ass I am. Tell me, Camille. What could you have possibly missed more than surgery?”

  “You.” It wasn’t as hard to say as she thought it might be.

  His face took on an expression that she didn’t know if she had ever seen before. Maybe he looked a little like her grandfather when she graduated from med school. But this was bigger than that. This was better. She was prepared to say that she loved him. She’d been practicing it for weeks. The words still stuck in her lungs, her throat, her tongue and sometimes her teeth. But if she worked really hard and took several deep breaths before trying, she could say it.

  I love you, Wyatt.

  But he nodded. “I have a better suggestion.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Practice dating can be stressful.”

  “Tell me about it.” Camille pulled her blouse from her neck, feeling that it had grown damp from her sweat.

  “You need a comfortable and safe environment.”

  “If you say so. I’m pretty much ready to agree to anything.”

  This time his smile was more than joyful, different than rueful. It was predatory and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up in a good way. “I think if we were married you would feel more comfortable to explore yourself.”

  “Really,” she drawled in a weak imitation of him.

  “Yes,” he said, standing only to come around the table and kneel before her. “I think if we were married, you could practice anything you wanted with no worries about failing.”

  “That might be a very conducive environment,” she agreed. It was as though the hang-ups, the apprehensions, and the past…fell off her shoulders and onto the floor. She was a new woman…because of him.

  “Marry me, Camille. For your own good.”

  She smiled and reached out to grab his hands, squeezing them. “I have always believed in taking the advice of a good doctor.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8831-1

  THE DOCTOR’S DEADLY AFFAIR

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Doyle

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  Stephanie Doyle, The Doctor's Deadly Affair