by Radclyffe
“Yes?” Pearce put her fork down, growing very still.
“Oh, I’m making this worse. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get personal.”
“No, go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say.”
“Pearce, really…it’s not import—”
“It is to me,” Pearce said quietly.
Wynter let out a long breath. “Okay, here goes. It’s just always seemed to me that doctors, and especially surgeons…often have more than the average number of children. You know—powerful men, the prestige of carrying on the family name, and all that.”
“I know.” Pearce scraped back her chair and twisted to the side so that she could stretch her legs out. She draped one arm over the back of her chair and gazed past Wynter out the plate glass window to the street where taxis lined up in front of the hospital. “You’re right. And you would have been right about us, too, except there was a small problem—Rh incompatibility. The first child, a boy, died as a result of it. Then I came along, and after that, there was one more miscarriage. I think they decided the risk wasn’t worth another try.”
Wynter closed her eyes for a second. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to blunder into this.”
Pearce shrugged. “It’s ancient history now.”
She smiled as she spoke, but Wynter saw no warmth in her expression. There was more, much more, she knew, but she couldn’t bear to explore areas that obviously hurt Pearce. She wanted to get them back to the lighthearted moments they had shared during dinner. “There are three of us, all girls. My oldest sister is a stay-at-home mom who lives two miles from my parents, and my younger sister is a first-year law student at Temple.”
“Here in the city. That must be nice for you.” Pearce pushed back at the specter of loneliness and disenchantment that accompanied thoughts of her family. “Are you from around here?”
“Not too far away. My parents have a working dairy farm in Lancaster.”
“You’re kidding.”
Wynter pretended to take offense. “There are still real live farms in this country, you know, Dr. Rifkin.”
“Yeah, but you don’t strike me as a farmer’s daughter.”
“Really?” Wynter said playfully, enjoying the light that had returned to Pearce’s eyes. “And why is that?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re not a wide-eyed and innocent country bumpkin.” Pearce narrowed her eyes as if in serious thought. “Well, maybe the country bumpkin part fit—” She ducked, laughing, as Wynter’s napkin sailed toward her face. “Hey!”
“I’ll admit to being naïve at one point, but believe me, I’m quite worldly now,” Wynter said archly. She kept her tone casual, thinking that Pearce had no idea how naïve she had been at one time. Naïve enough to think that she had understood what direction her life would take, and she’d followed that path for far too long before she’d begun to question it.
“Seriously,” Pearce said, leaning forward, turning the butter knife on the white linen tablecloth in a slow circle as if it were the hand on a clock, “if you’d told me that you’d grown up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the daughter of a family of doctors, with a summer home in the Hamptons, I would have believed you.”
“Thank you. I think.”
Pearce laughed. “Yeah, maybe that’s not such a compliment after all. Listen, do you want cof—” Her beeper sounded, and she rolled her eyes. “I knew we were living on borrowed time.” She glanced down and stiffened. “Fuck.”
Wynter immediately rose, her voice tight. “The SICU?”
“Almost as bad,” Pearce said, standing too as she sorted through her wallet for her credit card. “My father.”
“What does he want? It’s almost nine o’clock,” Wynter said as she and Pearce hurried toward Talia.
“He wants to make rounds.” Pearce handed her credit card to the hostess and then punched in the extension on her cell phone. After a second, she said, “Rifkin. Yes sir. Five minutes. See you there.” She met Wynter’s anxious gaze. “Yep. He wants to see patients.”
“Now? Does he usually make rounds this late at night?”
Pearce shrugged. “He makes them whenever he wants to. Sometimes if he’s been out of the country and gets in at three in the morning, he’ll show up here and want to go around. He calls, we go.”
They sprinted across the street, dodging traffic without even giving the taxis, limos, and cars a second glance, then jogged through the fairly deserted lobby to the elevators. They made a quick stop at the locker room to shed their outerwear and grab their lab coats. As they rode the rest of the way to the twelfth floor, Pearce said, “When we get up there, you run the list for him.”
Wynter wanted to object. The fastest way to make a bad impression on her very first day was to screw up on attending rounds. She’d taken the extra time to get to know the patients on her walk-through right before sign-out rounds, but there were still fifty new names to assimilate, and many of the cases were complicated. Plus, she didn’t know the physical layout all that well. The last thing she wanted to do was lead the chairman of the department into a dead end somewhere. Still, she couldn’t object. It was Pearce’s call.
“Okay.”
They stepped off the elevator and Pearce led the way to the nurses’ station. Ambrose Rifkin was already there, studying a lab report. He wore a perfectly pressed, spotless white coat over dark trousers, a white shirt, and a blue tie with thin red stripes. He turned to watch Pearce and Wynter approach, nothing registering in his face. When they were a few feet away, he said, “Everything quiet?”
“So far,” Pearce said. “Do you want to see everyone, or just make spot rounds?”
Ambrose shifted his gaze to Wynter. “Since we have a new member of the team, let’s see everyone.”
Wynter hid her surprise. It would take close to an hour and a half for them to see all fifty patients, but apparently, time of day had no meaning to the chief of surgery. She took out her list and stepped up to his side. “Mr. Pollack is in room 1222. He’s four days post abdominal hernia repair and…”
As Wynter and her father started down the hall toward the first patient’s room, Pearce detoured to the storage area adjacent to the nurses’ station and began gathering the supplies they would need. She automatically sorted through the rows of plastic bins stacked one on top of another from floor to ceiling, grabbing sterile gauze pads, tape, Steri-Strips, suture removal kits, and all the other supplies required for changing bandages and anything else that the attending might want done.
“Who’s the new resident?” a female voice said.
Pearce turned slowly and faced the small brunette in the tight black skirt and scoop-necked beige Lycra top. A good deal of her cleavage was showing, and the outfit would undoubtedly fail to pass an “appropriate outfit for work” check, but Andrea Kelly was a ward clerk, and a very good one, and no one was going to complain about her style of dress.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know,” Pearce said teasingly. “You who know all?”
Andrea stepped closer, running her bloodred nail-polished fingertips along the edge of Pearce’s lab coat. “I heard there was a new third-year, but no one mentioned that you were going to be escorting her around personally.”
“Just doing my job.”
Andrea stepped even closer, sliding her hand inside Pearce’s coat and around her flank to her ass, which she squeezed. She swiveled her hips as she insinuated herself tightly between Pearce’s thighs and looked up through lowered lashes. “I can think of some other work to keep you busy.”
Pearce was bombarded by images of Andrea writhing beneath her, her arms and legs wrapped tightly around Pearce’s body, her nails digging into Pearce’s back as she clawed her way to a screaming climax. The visceral memory, coupled with the pressure of Andrea’s body undulating against hers, made Pearce close her eyes with a groan. With her free arm she twisted her fist in Andrea’s hair, her mouth against Andrea’s ear. “You gotta cut it out, babe. I’m working here.”
“I wasn’t in the middle of ro—”
“Oh! Sorry,” Wynter exclaimed as she pushed through the door and nearly stumbled upon the two women locked in an embrace. “I…I need some four-by-fours.”
Pearce backed away from Andrea and indicated the supplies cradled in one arm with a tilt of her head. “I’ve probably got everything you’re looking for right here.”
Andrea smirked as she edged around Wynter and disappeared into the hall. “Don’t you just always.”
“Thanks. We’re in 1215,” Wynter said curtly as she turned her back and walked out.
Pearce sighed. “Perfect. Just perfect.”
Chapter Nine
During the rest of rounds, Wynter directed her conversation to the elder Rifkin, speaking to Pearce only when it related to one of the patients. It was after ten p.m. when they were finished, and Ambrose Rifkin left with a short good night.
“You should probably take off too,” Pearce said as soon as her father was out of earshot. “You’re on call tomorrow.”
“Good night, then,” Wynter said, starting down the hall.
Pearce debated letting her go. The air had been decidedly chilly for the last hour, and she wasn’t in the mood to apologize. Hell, it’s not like she had been committing a crime. She had nothing to apologize for. Fuck.
Wynter disappeared into the stairwell. Pearce debated for another second and then jogged after her. On the landing, she leaned over the rail and called down, “How’re you getting home?”
Startled by the question, Wynter craned her neck to peer up to the floor above. “What?”
“I know you weren’t expecting to be on call tonight. Did you drive to work?”
“No. I took the trolley.”
“Well,” Pearce said as she clambered down the stairs, “you can’t ride the trolley home alone at this hour.”
Wynter was still too annoyed to be gracious. She’d been embarrassed and uncomfortable walking in on an intimate encounter. “Pearce, I took the trolley the entire time I was in medical school. I’m used to it. I’m only going out to Forty-eighth Street.”
“Yeah, but West Philly isn’t all that gentrified yet, and it’s late.” She reached into her back pocket and extracted her keys. “Here. Take my car. I’m not going to be using it.”
“I’m not taking your car.”
“Look, you’ll get home sooner and be well rested for tomorrow. I just wanna make sure you’re up to speed so you can carry your share of the work.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Wynter turned away.
“It’s not safe, Wynter, God damn it.”
“Then I’ll take the security van if it makes you feel better. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Without looking back, Wynter hurried down the stairwell. Reluctantly, she acknowledged that Pearce’s concern was touching, but she was still too disturbed by the unexpectedly erotic image of Pearce with her fingers possessively entwined in another woman’s hair. She didn’t want to think about her own reaction to the sight. She didn’t want to think about Pearce Rifkin at all.
Thirty minutes later, Wynter climbed out of the security van, one of a fleet of vehicles provided by the university to ferry students and employees to off-campus locations, and waved to the driver as he pulled away. She hurried up Cedar Avenue to a Victorian twin in the middle of a block of similar structures and let herself into the kitchen through the side door. The house was dark and she switched on a light over the sink. A chocolate Lab padded into the room and nosed her hand.
“Hey, girl,” Wynter murmured, leaning down and patting the dog’s head absently. She took a battered white teapot with yellow painted daisies on the side and filled it in the sink, then set it on the stove to boil. She was searching in the unfamiliar cabinets for a mug when a voice behind her caused her to jump.
“Honey, if you wake up the kids, I’m gonna have to shoot you.”
Wynter spun around, contrite. “Oh my God. Was I making a lot of noise? I wasn’t even thinking about it.”
“Well, it sounded like you were putting on an addition to the house,” the comfortably round, warmly attractive, and very pregnant African American woman said. She pulled out a chair at the table and settled heavily into it with a grateful sigh. “And if you’re making tea, I’ll have some.”
“I was actually thinking of cocoa,” Wynter said, taking down an extra mug.
“Even better.”
“How were the kids?”
“Everyone’s getting along just fine.”
“I’m glad someone is,” Wynter muttered.
“I figured you were having a rough first day when you called to say you’d be late. I told you to go into anesthesia if you didn’t want to work so hard.”
Wynter smiled at Mina Meru. “Tell that to your husband. I’m sure his opinion is very different.”
“I keep telling him he should stay at home with these two children if he wants to see hard.”
“And here I’ve added to your burden with mine.” Wynter spooned cocoa into the thick ceramic mugs as they talked. “I promise, as soon as I have time to find an apartment, we’ll be out of here.”
“Don’t you worry about little Miss Ronnie. She’s the best three-year-old I’ve ever seen. She keeps up with my four-year-old, and it gives him someone to play with.”
“I know, but—”
“I was serious when I said I want you to keep her here during the day even after you get your own place. Preschool is expensive—”
“I can afford it—the one thing I got out of the divorce was good child support.”
“But with your schedule being so unpredictable, it’s going to be hard to manage just dropping her off and picking her up on time.”
“I know. It was easier when I was working shift in the ER.” Wynter sat at the heavy wooden table in the old-fashioned eat-in kitchen and leaned her head in her palms. She rubbed her temples and sighed. “My God, Mina. I really appreciate it, but with the new baby coming in a few months, it’s going to be a handful.”
“You know my mother and sister are in and out of here all day long. That’s one of the reasons that Ken wanted to stay here to train, so I’d have more help. One more kid is not going to be a problem.”
The kettle whistled and Wynter got up to get it. As she stirred the cocoa, she said, “I would feel a lot better with her here. Before, with two of us, she was only in daycare during the day, but now…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how single women do this.”
“Well, you haven’t been single very long. You’ll get the hang of it.”
Wynter carried the cocoa to the table and sat down again. “I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant until after my residency, and I certainly hadn’t planned on raising a child without a husband.”
“Things don’t always work out the way we plan, honey, that’s for sure,” Mina said, squeezing Wynter’s arm. She sipped her cocoa and regarded Wynter fondly. “If you don’t mind me saying, I think you’re better off without Dave.”
“I don’t mind at all. I agree.” Wynter closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “Half the time I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders, and the other half, I’m downright panicked.”
“Well, you don’t show it.”
“Practice. A surgical residency will do that for you. Never show fear.” Wynter sat forward again, frowning into her mug. “I didn’t think things could get much tougher than at New Haven, but this place is something else.”
“You looked wired when I walked into the kitchen. Somebody giving you a hard time already?”
“No more than I expected.” Wynter blew on her cocoa and then took a healthy swallow. “Actually, the residents seem really nice, and that’s the most important thing.”
“Then what was bothering you so much just now?” Mina reached down and absently petted the dog’s head. The Lab thumped down beside her
on the floor with a long-suffering dog sigh.
Wynter colored slightly and shook her head. “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s silly.”
“Can’t be that much of nothing if it had you slamming cabinet doors in the middle of the night.”
“It was just something that happened on rounds tonight.” Wynter pushed a hand through her hair, still struggling with the remnants of discomfort. “I walked in on the chief resident in a clinch with one of the ward clerks.”
“Is that all!” Mina laughed. “I thought that was standard operating procedure for residents. I told Ken before he started that he’d better keep his hands and all his other parts to himself, or else lose them.”
Wynter laughed self-consciously. “You’re right. It’s not all that unusual. I just didn’t expect it—it was embarrassing.”
“So this new chief resident of yours. Is he worth a second look?” Mina waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe you should think about taking him on.”
“He’s a she,” Wynter said, feeling herself grow warm.
“Oh, my. That’s interesting.” Mina studied Wynter over the top of her mug. “And I assume the ward clerk was of the usual female variety?”
“Oh yes, very much so.” Wynter’s eyes glinted. “She looked like she was about to start taking bites out of Pearce any second.”
“Pearce. That’s the chief resident with the wandering hands?”
Wynter flashed on Pearce’s hand, strong and broad, and the ward clerk’s dark black hair tangled between her fingers. Such a beautiful hand, so powerful. She remembered how precisely Pearce’s hands had moved in the operating room, deftly teasing at the tissues with her instruments, gently pushing aside vital organs. Good hands. Simple words that said everything.
“Wynter, honey? Where did you go?”
Wynter jumped. “Oh. Nowhere. Just tired, I guess. What were we saying?”
“Dr. Hotty Pants. Is that Pearce?”
“Yes. Pearce Rifkin. She’s the chairman of surgery’s daughter.”
“Well, no wonder she doesn’t mind having a quickie during rounds. She can probably get away with anything she wants.”