The Heart Surgeon's Secret Son

by Janice Lynn

  “You’re thinking of moving back to Georgia?” Lord, she hoped not. “Why would you move to Georgia?” she mused out loud. “Your research is here in Boston. Heart patients worldwide need you.”

  “I can do my research anywhere,” he snorted, dismissing her words when she’d expected him to puff up with egotism. Most of the men of her acquaintance would have done so when given such an ego stroke. “But I have no plans to return to Atlanta.”

  Outwardly pretending she couldn’t care less, she bit back a sigh of relief.

  “I think we should call a truce.”

  Surprised, she met his gaze. “A truce?”

  “Short of you faking a major illness, in which case I suspect Cardico would either reschedule your training yet again or fire you, you’re stuck here for the week.”

  He had a point. As much as she’d like to just walk away, she had a great job at Cardico. Ryan would be leaving for college in a few years. Tuition wouldn’t come cheap. And, there were her benefits, like health insurance and so on. Unemployment, even if just for a few weeks, wouldn’t be a smart risk.

  “What kind of truce?”

  “We’ll behave on a professional level while at the hospital, treat each other with respect.”

  Sounded feasible. In theory.

  “When we’re not at the hospital?”

  “Any time we spend together outside work…” he flashed a mouthful of perfectly straight teeth in a smile that had sin written all over it “…we’ll decide how to deal with moment by moment.”

  “Fine,” she agreed, vowing to make sure she didn’t see him outside the hospital.

  She’d do her job, give Cardico their money’s worth, but beyond that she’d stay clear of Dr. Daniel Travis.

  And maybe, just maybe, she’d survive this week.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “HOW long have you had increased difficulty breathing, Mrs. Johnson?” Daniel asked the woman sitting in a chair in one of his exam rooms.

  He worked in a cardiac clinic within Boston Memorial Hospital that connected to his private office. Ten cardiologists in total practiced at the clinic. His patient schedule was lighter than normal today due to the time set aside for Cardico.

  For Kimberly.

  Although tiny crow’s feet fanned her eyes and her body boasted maturity that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen her, time had only added to her beauty. She looked amazing.

  Plus, she carried herself with a grace she hadn’t possessed at seventeen.

  Grace and confidence.

  Because for the rest of the morning after they’d left his office, she’d been nothing but the smooth professional.

  Even now she was in the cardiac lab, watching a CRT pacemaker placement performed by one of his partners, Dr. Gregory Jessup. Greg would be relocating to Nashville in a few weeks to take a cardiology position with Vanderbilt Hospital and would head up implementing CRT placement in Tennessee.

  He guessed Kimberly opted to go with Greg to avoid more time with him, but he’d given her the choice.

  “Dr. Travis?”

  Daniel blinked.

  “Dr. Travis?” The older woman wrinkled her nose and swatted him with the magazine she used to fan herself.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Johnson.” He’d done it again, blanked out with thoughts of Kimberly. Never did anything come between him and his patients, but today he admitted he’d been distracted by a collision of his past with his present.

  Pull yourself together, Daniel. You’re dealing with people’s lives.

  He looked into Mrs. Johnson’s dark eyes and gave her his full attention. “You were saying?”

  The woman gave him an odd look, then returned to fanning the magazine back and forth. “I was saying that I’ve not been able to catch my breath for at least two weeks. If I walk from one end of my apartment to the other, I have to sit down and I feel wheezy. My apartment ain’t much more than a speck on a breadcrumb so it ain’t that much of a walk, yet I can barely do it.”

  Daniel made a few notes on the computerized notebook that contained Mrs. Johnson’s electronic chart. “Have your feet been swelling more?”

  “Lord, yes.” She lifted a foot off the floor and waved it at him. “I can’t even wear real shoes anymore because these elephant trunks won’t fit in them before the day’s done.”

  “What about your hands?”

  She held up chubby fingers. “I haven’t worn my wedding band in weeks because the last time I did I had to take an extra fluid pill and use a stick of margarine to get it off.”

  Daniel sat the computerized clipboard on the counter, then listened to the left and right sides of Mrs. Johnson’s neck. Her carotid arteries both sounded clear. No bruits, a tiny swishing sound that blockages made. Then he listened to her heart. She had a grade-two murmur with mitral valve regurgitation caused by her congestive heart failure. Ronchi could be heard in both lung bases.

  “Cough,” he ordered her.

  She did so. The wet rattle didn’t clear.

  “I’m going to order a chest X-ray and an echocardiogram. You might recall that an echocardiogram is an ultrasound of your heart and isn’t painful.” He leaned back, watching her reactions to his words so he could fully address her concerns. “Your heart isn’t pumping blood efficiently enough and fluid is building up in your lungs. That’s why you have the rattling sounds in your chest called ronchi, and it’s why you feel so tired and out of breath all the time.”

  Her dark eyes bore into him. “Can you fix me?”

  “I want to look at the test results first but, regardless of what they show, we’re going to make some changes to your treatment program.”

  She nodded.

  “We’ll need to increase your fluid medications. You’ll have to have blood tests more frequently to watch your sodium and potassium levels. As with your current medicine, the new pill can cause your potassium levels to drop. This is dangerous for a variety of reasons, but one of the major ones is that it can cause muscle spasm. Your heart is a muscle and the electrolyte imbalance can throw it dangerously out of rhythm.”

  Mrs. Johnson’s eyes widened.

  “As long as you get your blood tests when you’re supposed to, we’ll be able to keep your potassium level close to where it’s supposed to be.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m going to give you some literature on a special type of pacemaker for congestive heart failure. It’s designed to correct your heart’s ability to contract, which will improve your ejection fraction—that’s the amount of blood the heart pumps out with each beat. With improved ejection fraction, it will improve your congestive heart failure.”

  Her mouth twisted in confusion. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that if you qualify for the pacemaker you’ll be able to walk from one end of your apartment to the other without getting so short of breath.” One of life’s little blessings one didn’t appreciate until the ability disappeared and exertion of any kind became a trial. “I think you qualify, but I want to see your echocardiogram before making a final decision.”

  Nodding her approval, the woman flashed a smile at him. “Sign me up, Dr. Travis.”

  “First we have to run the tests and you have to read the literature. We’ll meet back in a few days to go over the results and make a decision on the CRT pacemaker.”

  Her forehead creased. “What’s CRT?”

  “Cardiac resynchronization therapy. It’s a fancy way of saying that it will synchronize the electrical activity of the heart, making it beat as a complete unit.”

  Mrs. Johnson gave him a blank look and he attempted to explain again in simpler terms, but she shook her head.

  “If you say it’ll make me feel better, that’s all I need to know, Dr. Travis.”

  He smiled, wrote out the order for the tests, and said goodbye to the woman he’d been seeing for several months.

  “I’ll have Trina—” his nurse “—schedule these. I’ll check you again in a few days.”

&
nbsp; If Mrs. Johnson’s tests came back showing her to be a candidate for the CRT pacemaker, he’d squeeze her in toward the end of the week so Kimberly would get to observe.

  Kimberly. He’d put her from her mind for…he glanced at his watch…five minutes. She’d still be in the cardiac lab.

  And he had more patients to see and needed to keep his mind off her.

  Kimberly was brought to Daniel’s office after Dr. Gregory Jessup had finished the CRT pacemaker placement in an eighty-year-old woman. He pulled up a computer video feed of a procedure Daniel had done early on in the study phase, explaining how the device worked and differed from other pacemakers.

  “I’ve got to run to a meeting,” the dark-eyed and dark-haired doctor in his early thirties said. Dr. Jessup had a quick smile that reached his eyes. He’d flirted a little, but in a no-pressure sort of way. She got the impression from his easygoing comments that he was just a natural flirt and one of those people everyone liked.

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him, smiling sincerely. “Thanks, Dr. Jessup.”

  “It’s Gregory.” He nodded at the computer screen. “That should keep you entertained until Daniel finishes with his patients. If not, there’s always solitaire.”

  He shot her a wink and reluctantly left Daniel’s office.

  She watched in fascination as Daniel threaded a wire lead into the right upper chamber of a heart. With hands steady enough to make a neurosurgeon envious, he screwed the lead into the atrium wall. Two more leads followed. One in the right ventricle, one in the left.

  The man was a brilliant cardiologist. She didn’t have to have five years of cardiology nursing experience to recognize his skill.

  Not only was he good at healing hearts, but also at making each patient feel important, special.

  He’d always made her feel special, too.

  Right up till she’d found out they’d made a baby.

  Then everything had changed.

  “You looked bored.”

  Daniel spoke from beside her, causing her to jump. She’d been lost in thought and hadn’t heard him enter his office, much less come to stand beside her.

  She glanced up, leery of the twinkle in his eyes. She didn’t begin to understand how his mind worked, but found his smile irresistible and felt her own lips curving.

  Hastily, she glanced at the computer monitor. “The procedure is fascinating, as is the CRT pacemaker. I wish I understood all the aspects of how it works.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. By the end of the week you’ll be wishing I’d shut up about the CRT.”

  “I doubt that.” She’d always found her job fascinating. Unable to stay away, her gaze returned to him. “I hope it’s okay that Dr. Jessup let me wait here.”

  “No problem.” He watched her a moment then his gaze lowered to her mouth.

  Feeling edgy at his closeness and how he looked at her, she bit her lower lip.

  “Tell me about the battery Cardico developed,” she said to cover her nervousness. As long as she kept things businesslike between them, she’d be fine. Right. “I know it’s supposed to last longer, but this is the first pacemaker to make use of it. Why did we opt to go with the CRT first?”

  His gaze slowly lifted. His blue eyes pinning her, he shrugged. “It’s a good fit, I suppose. The CRT is designed to give improved quality of life and the patient not having to go back into surgery for eight years rather than six is a definite improvement.”

  His words were all business, but the way he said them came out seductive. Or perhaps that was just her overactive imagination. Or the way his eyes said totally different things, like that he’d made note of her gnawing on her lower lip.

  “The battery was originally tested at Boston Memorial Hospital?” Kimberly gulped.

  “With an Ivy League college so close and the teaching environment of the hospital, doing research here comes naturally.” He leaned near, clicked on the mouse, dragging the arrow to the box to turn off the video feed. His arm brushed her shoulder in the process and she bit back a squeak. Whether from his touch or the yummy way he smelled wasn’t clear and didn’t matter. Business conversations weren’t supposed to be so…hot.

  “I don’t think,” he continued, still close enough she could feel his body heat warming her, “I’d like practicing at a facility that didn’t stay at the cutting edge of technology.”

  “No, I suppose not,” she agreed, shooting a quick look at his thoughtful expression. “But trying new things, that’s risky, too. If your research is wrong, people die.”

  “All good things come with risk. If one isn’t willing to push the boundaries, to try new things, one has to accept the current state as the best one can ever be.”

  She could almost believe he spoke about more than medical research. Almost.

  “I’m very proud of you, Daniel.” The words came out soft, sincere but held the impact of fingernails scraped across a blackboard.

  Or, better yet, a bucket of ice that quenched the flames flickering between them.

  Because there was nothing warm about the way Daniel’s eyes looked when he spoke.

  “Your sentiments are meaningless to me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AFTER his continued good humor during the morning and his sexually-charged looks, Daniel’s sharp words caught Kimberly off guard.

  Had their truce gone up in smoke so quickly?

  Gritting her teeth, she stared at the screen without seeing anything. She knew he didn’t care, but to have him so bluntly cut her to the quick opened a gaping wound in her heart.

  Tears blurred her vision, but she fought them, refusing to let them fall, to let him see how his words had hurt.

  How dare he be all nice and then hit her when her defenses were down?

  “Come on,” he ordered in a gruff tone that left her uncertain if he was upset with her or with himself. “You have a lot to learn in a short amount of time.”

  Without looking at him, she nodded. “Fine. I’m ready.”

  Not really, but the sooner she learned all about the CRT, the sooner she could go home. To Ryan.

  That had her gaze shooting to Daniel, almost as if she expected him to have heard her thoughts, to know she’d given birth to their beautiful son.

  “What?” he asked, staring at her.

  She shook her head and followed him out of his office to make his hospital rounds.

  They stopped by the nurses’ station and Daniel introduced her to a couple of nurses who seemed friendly enough, if slightly disinterested in her. However, their eyes ate Daniel up.

  She had no right to be jealous, she reminded herself. No right.

  She wasn’t jealous.

  She was hurt. Hurt he’d so easily dismissed her pride in him. Although silly, she felt a stake in his success. After all, she’d given up what might have been so he could live out his dream.

  His easy camaraderie with the female hospital staff served to contrast starkly how stilted their enforced togetherness really was.

  Fighting to keep a professional expression on her face, she shadowed Daniel, smiling at appropriate times, nodding when indicated, but inside she fought a hollowness that threatened to engulf her in darkness.

  “How are you feeling, Ellen?” Daniel asked, entering a hospital room with Kimberly close behind him.

  “Hungry,” the woman admitted from her bed. She had a sling on her arm to prevent movement from working the pacemaker loose. She’d wear the sling for a couple of days to keep her arm immobile.

  “That’s a good sign.” Daniel flashed a smile that caused Kimberly’s heart to speed up.

  So warm. So caring. A blessing to any patient who had the good fortune to have his services.

  Seeing him, watching him work, assuaged any thoughts of whether or not she’d done the right thing in ensuring he went to medical school, of taking that small role in his success. Daniel was living out his dream.

  “This is Kimberly Brookes.” He introduced her to his patient. “She
works for the medical equipment company that makes the pacemaker I placed in your chest this morning.”

  Mrs. Mills’s gaze shot to her and Kimberly gave a friendly smile.

  “She observed your procedure,” Daniel continued, crossing to stand next to the woman’s bed. He shook a short, overweight man’s hand, presumably that of Mr. Mills, then studied the heart monitor screen hooked up to Ellen. When satisfied, he put on his stethoscope and listened to her heart and lungs. “Everything sounds perfect,” he told his patient, then looked up at Kimberly. “Want to listen?”

  Was he granting a peace offering or just doing his job? Regardless, she nodded. She took his stethoscope, trembled at the thought that she now held an extension of who Daniel was and placed the tips in her ears.

  “May I?” she asked the patient, just to make sure Mrs. Mills didn’t mind.

  The woman nodded. “The more who listen, the better chance nothing will be missed.”

  Daniel gave a hearty laugh. “Good point, but I assure you that your heart is working better than it has in years.”

  Kimberly placed the diaphragm against the woman’s chest, listening at all five of the crucial points. Steady rhythm, steady rate, with only an extra click giving notice that the pacemaker was there.

  “Wonderful.” She smiled. “Thank you for letting me listen.”

  “You’re welcome,” Daniel and Mrs. Mills answered simultaneously.

  Daniel winked at his patient. “Great minds and all that.”

  He quickly checked Mrs. Mills’s ankles and feet. Minimal swelling, Kimberly noted, but the woman had ulceration on her little toe that should be seen about by her family practitioner.

  “Mrs. Mills, I’m going to ask for a podiatry consult for your feet,” Daniel said, closely checking between the woman’s toes.

  Even better. Kimberly smiled again. Thorough to the end, even when the problem wasn’t directly related to what he was treating.

  “I don’t like the look of the sore on your left little toe and you have some macerated skin between your toes on both feet.”