Bad Boys Rule

by Naughty Aphrodite

  “Aisha?” he called.

  “How could you?” she cried.

  “You did well,” he said. “That was an extremely difficult call, and you made the right choice.”

  “Caleb!” she yelled, her eyes strained and reddened from the ordeal, and he couldn’t say a word. She pulled off her robe as though it was burning her and flung it at him. Then she picked up the books by the coffee table and aimed them at his head in fury but he was able to avoid them. They hit the wall and fell to the ground, and so did she. She collapsed onto her knees, and when he came around to help her up, she violently pushed his hands away.

  He sat down quietly on the floor by her and watched her as she gazed into thin air. The rage in her had been spent, and minutes later, all she could feel was a bitter cold that coursed through her veins. She held up her hand in a fist and began to hit his chest with slow, agonized blows. “Why are you doing this to me?” she muttered. “Why?”

  He let her hit him until she grew weary and soon she found herself in his arms. Her head was against his chest, and he had his arms tightly around her.

  The door suddenly opened but she did not know who came in. It was thereafter shut and soon they were left alone once more. She would never know how much time passed. When she finally began to rise, he helped her up, and when she turned around to leave, she told him not to follow her.

  She knew that he would respect her wishes, so she left and headed over to her office.

  Chapter 12

  Caleb could not bring himself to remain in his office, so he left and headed down to hers.

  When he arrived, he couldn’t knock so he waited by the door and leaned his head against it. Perhaps he had gone too far, way too soon, and had pushed her beyond her limit. Seeing the shock in her eyes, he deeply regretted it. A couple of nurses passed by and were surprised to see him by her door, but they just quickly moved away. He didn’t care.

  A few minutes later, he received a call and reluctantly headed over to the Director’s office. When he arrived, he knocked and was granted entrance to meet a panel awaiting him.

  Seated was the father of the girl who had lost her life while he operated on Aisha, and another man who seemed to be his colleague.

  “Dr. Pace,” the Director called, and Caleb turned towards the kind, graying man. “Please have a seat, these men are from the medical board.”

  He did as he was told, and the Director stated the grievances that they had against him.

  “Under the circumstances,” he answered. “I made a call, which I wholly stand by to this day.”

  “You bastard!” the girl’s father spat. “You’re still unrepentant. After sacrificing my daughter, you still have the audacity to wear such a smug look on your face?”

  “Mr. Crane, let us be civil,” said the Director. “This is an official meeting.”

  The man went on. “There were two simultaneous cases!” he yelled. “Both important but one crucial and urgent. And you chose wrongly. My child lost her life because you lack common sense. And here you are still insanely standing by your actions? I’ve asked around,” he said, “and nothing makes sense to me. Who is that patient that you sacrificed my daughter for? What is she to you?”

  The Director cleared his throat. “Mr. Crane, please calm down. We do not discriminate against any patients here, but dutifully attend to emergency cases in the order that we see fit-“

  “So what is your comment on the order that he followed?” the man asked, his eyes filled with anger.

  The Director was silent for a few moments. “Mr. Crane…” he began.

  “Answer me!”

  “Answer him,” his colleague urged.

  “The Director glanced at Caleb who was watching the man and spoke. “I stand by Dr. Pace’s judgment. Since he deemed the glass shard patient’s case more urgent, then I will support him to the very end. I have known him for years and he would never put his personal feelings before the care of any patient. He could be working in the best hospitals in the country, but instead, he had chosen to bless us here with his presence. That alone is more than enough testament to his pure heartedness and true dedication to patient care.”

  “I made the best call that I could in the moment,” Caleb said. “I am truly sorry for your loss, but I do not regret my actions. Have a good day.”

  The man shot to his feet. “Don’t you dare to walk out of here otherwise you will be finished!” he yelled. “Do you hear me? I will destroy you until there is no hospital in this entire world that would ever accept you!”

  Caleb walked out of the office and shut the door solidly behind him.

  He tried to control his frustration by taking deep breaths, but when it didn’t help, he headed down to a quiet corridor and leaned his back against the wall. He thought of the little girl… and then of Aisha, and the tears filled his eyes. He lowered his gaze to the floor and tried his best to control his sobbing.

  The anger burst out of him, as well as the grief - both for the woman he’d thought he had lost forever, and the girl that he had sacrificed to save her. But was any of it worth it? He had been wrong, he knew, but he had been too scared to have made an alternative choice. He knew that his failure to save the little girl was a scar that would be forever engraved in his heart, and one that would be impossible to forget.

  However, all he asked in return for this sear of his conscience, was that Aisha would respond to him as he hoped, and bring his torment to an end. That would be a price well worth any sacrifice, but instead, she was shutting him out, the more he tried to get closer to her.

  He didn’t know what to do! Frustrated and angry, he wiped his tears and began to head towards her office.

  When he arrived, he pushed the door open and slammed it shut behind him. She had been reading what looked to be a journal on her table, but the moment she saw him, he noted the resentment that came into her eyes and it infuriated him all the more.

  “What have I done to you?” he roared. “Why are you treating me this way?”

  He came around the table and banged his hand against it. She jumped in fright and tried to rise but he placed his hands on both handles of her chair and caged her in.

  “What have I done that is so wrong?” he asked. “Why are you hiding from me? Do you know what I have been through these past few years? Do you know the pain that you have caused me?”

  The tears fell down from his reddened eyes as he yelled. “I regret the day that I fell in love with you. Do you hear me? I regret it with all of my heart. If I had known that you would become so selfish and heartless, then I would have stopped myself from falling into this trap, even if I’d had to tear my own heart out. How could you do this? How could you run away and leave me to believe you were dead? And even now that I have found you, how could you remain so heartless and still continue to torment me? Do I not deserve peace? Do I not deserve sympathy also? Why do you think yourself the only victim here? Tell me! Why?”

  He looked into her eyes to see the tears gather in them. “Why do you think I am here?” was all she said.

  A few moments passed by, and his blood tipped over. He pushed her coat aside, and despite her struggle, held onto the collars of her silk blouse and ripped them apart. Buttons went flying everywhere just as he revealed the tattoo between her breasts.

  “What is that?” he asked, as he stared at it. He then lifted his head to gaze into her eyes. “She had that exact same tattoo, in the exact same place, and she looked exactly like you. Unless you have truly lost your memory, who do you think you are trying to fool?!? She also had a birthmark that I am aware of, it was on her right hip. Perhaps I should confirm that also…” he shouted and gripped the button on her jeans.

  Alarmed, she tried to push his hands away. “Caleb!” she yelled, but it was only when he ripped the zip down that her hand flung out and struck him across his face.

  A few silent moments passed between them before he spoke again. “Make sure to put a
bag of ice on that hand,” he said. He straightened and walked out of her office.

  ***

  Aisha watched him go, distraught as he walked away. Coming to this hospital had been a very bad decision, and she had known it from the very start. She had been here less than a day, and things were already falling apart.

  However, could she leave? And if she did, where would she go? She had nothing or no one else.

  Seeing him shed tears and in that much pain, had driven a blade through her heart, and she needed to take it out. She laid down her fears for the moment, and eventually, she was able to make a decision. Minutes later, she rose and found herself heading toward his office.

  When she arrived, she took a deep breath before she knocked, and was granted entrance.

  “Dr. Pace-” she began as she walked in, but then stopped in her tracks when she saw an elderly woman, attired in a priceless looking ivory suit speaking to him. At first, she gazed blankly at the woman, too startled to speak, but then she turned her eyes toward Caleb and mustered up a tight smile. "You seem really busy,” she said. “I’ll come back.”

  He shook his head and ordered her to come in and take a seat. The woman turned then and the moment her eyes fell on her, she gasped aloud and held onto her chest. Aisha looked from Caleb to his mother, speechless as to what to do.

  “This is my mother,” he introduced sourly, and the woman gazed back at him like he was crazy. She began to retreat backward as though Aisha were a ghost, raising shaky hands to point directly at her.

  “Mom,” Caleb rose, and Aisha immediately retreated. “I’ll come back,” she blurted and shut the door behind her.

  Chapter 13

  “What the hell was that?” Caleb’s mother screamed, and for a second, he was worried that the shock would go to her heart. So he came around the table and held her.

  “Mom.”

  “A-i, Aisha?”

  “Mom, please sit down, I’ll explain,” he said, and managed to lower her into her seat. After a few more minutes, she was finally calmed and he was able to speak. “She’s not Aisha,” he said. “But she does bear a striking resemblance to her.”

  “What do you mean by she’s not Aisha?” she shrieked. “Are you blind?”

  “I would know more than anyone if she were her, Mom. I know the marks on her body and I performed the surgery on her.”

  “What are you saying?” she cried. “She is dressed as a doctor. How can there be such a coincidence in the world?”

  With a deep sigh, Caleb accepted his defeat and gazed at his mother. “You’re still such a terrible liar,” she said to him. “Who do you think you’re trying to fool?”

  Defeated, he looked away. “This is unheard of. Why doesn’t she recognize me?”

  “She doesn’t recognize me either,” he said. “She lost her memory.”

  “How?”

  “I have no idea,” he replied. “Her current name is Joan.”

  “How did she come here? How did you find her? Is that why you left the city and moved to this tiny town?”

  “Meeting her is pure coincidence, Mom. She was brought in as a traffic accident patient a few weeks ago.”

  “How can one girl be so much trouble?” she asked. “Her entire existence is an accident, even her connection to you. I wish you’d never met her. She has caused such damage to all of us.”

  “Mom…” he cautioned, and she heeded his warning.

  She remained with him for a bit longer until he had to leave to see a patient.

  “I’m not comfortable with her here,” she said to him as he escorted her to her car.

  “Everything will be fine,” he said to her, repeating the assurance so many times that he lost count. Eventually, she took her leave.

  When she was gone, he turned around to look at the building and sighed deeply. He was still so unable to lie to others, but perhaps the only person he was able to lie was to himself. Would anything ever be alright? Perhaps it was time for him to accept this fact, or were his hopes still worth clinging to?

  He reentered the building, and waiting for him in the reception was the woman who kept turning his life upside down. She held up a CT scan for him. “I need your consult,” she said, and he nodded. They headed quietly up the grand stairs and toward the Oncology Room where she shut the door behind them.

  She placed the CT scan against the monitor and began to speak. “The patient just came in with a blade wedged between his two ribs,” she said. “He has tears to the pericardium and his lungs, but I’m afraid that he has also damaged a major artery. I should be able to take the blade out and quickly stop the bleeding but… look here.”

  “Is that a tumor?” Caleb asked.

  “It is. And the blade is too close, the tumor might be malignant. The tumor is also too close to this artery.”

  He sucked in his breath. “This is a difficult one.”

  “It is.”

  “Let’s ignore the glass for a while and focus on taking out the tumor first. We can then send it for a quick lab test. If it’s malignant, then we perform a lobectomy.”

  “It might be too difficult to keep the blade in place as you remove the tumor,” she said. “Any slight movement and the bleeding can become uncontrollable.”

  “Well, it has to be done. Are you up for the challenge?”

  “Me?”

  “Sure, he is your patient.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t- I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I’ve been in an OR before.”

  Her response broke his heart. “When will you stop lying?” he asked. “Both to me and yourself? Perhaps you have forgotten the complexity of the procedure you carried out this morning. Even I cannot convince myself that I would be brave enough to make such a call if I’d been in your position. You literally cut open a man’s abdomen in the ER but yet you do not think you’ve ever been in an OR before?”

  She shut her eyes and sighed deeply. “Why won’t you let me be?” she asked, her voice low and as tormented as he was.

  “What bothers me the most is that you can actually let me go. I see this truth in front of my eyes, and yet, I refuse to believe it and it’s driving me insane. But I need to know why otherwise there will remain this sliver of hope in my heart that will eventually end me. I don’t believe that it was because you didn’t love me that you disappeared without a word. It has to be something else, something so scary that it could overpower everything. Even if I wasn’t as important as I had thought, you would have never just given up your career to live this way. You loved it way too much… you were too dedicated. So, since I truly love you like I claim, I cannot just let you be. But you can relax. I’m not begging you to come back to me, but I will give you back your life, and your career. I will find the answers that you are too afraid to reveal.” He stood up to leave, but then she caught his hand.

  “Don’t turn around,” she begged and he did as she asked.

  He waited, but she didn’t say a word and he knew that she was fighting with herself. Eventually, she spoke, “I’ll join you in surgery.” He nodded in response.

  To him, it was far from a satisfactory answer, but for the first time, he had received hope. She had been called out already... but she was still too scared to own up to it. He had to applaud her either way, for if she had not caved in with those moments of silence, then he would still have been doubtful. But in those few seconds, she had said all that he needed to hear, without her speaking a word.

  She wanted him to help her search for the answers that she could not find, but at the same time, she didn’t want him to. However, she didn’t have the courage to outrightly deny him, because perhaps that would be her only chance to regain her life. That was all he needed to know.

  He headed over to the locker room, got changed and prepared for the surgery.

  Chapter 14

  As Aisha watched him work, she felt chills run through her body. It was a sort of euphoria that she was
familiar with but had not experienced in a long time.

  In the heat of the emergency procedure she had done earlier, she had been so panicked out of her mind that she had failed to recognize it, but now that someone else had the reigns and all she did was assist, her eyes welled up with tears.

  She watched as he succeeded in safely removing the tumor and then placed it on a tray to be immediately sent for a test.