by Jo Leigh
“Anytime, big brother.”
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I swear it.”
Her beeper went off. Natalie sighed, patted his still-tense shoulders and headed for the door. “You’re an incredible doctor, Guy, and a pretty decent man. I know you’ll do the right thing, whatever it is.” With a final smile, she left his office, closing the door behind her.
CALLIE BAKER SET ASIDE the damage report and her master list of what had to be done to get the hospital back to perfect working order, even though she hadn’t even started on the delegation sheet. It was time for rounds.
She knew most chiefs of staff didn’t go on master rounds, but for her it was a sacred ritual. Although she could only manage it once a week, twice if she was lucky, it was the one duty that kept her heart and her mind completely focused on who she was and what her job was all about.
Above all else, she was a doctor, and she liked to think she was a damn good one. The administrative duties would swamp her if she let them, and that wasn’t going to happen as long as she had something to say about it.
It had taken her a long time and a hard road to get where she was, and one of the key ingredients to her success was her ability to see the big picture while never losing sight of the details.
Before she left the office, she stopped in the small restroom and made sure she was put together. After a quick application of lip gloss and a readjustment of the hummingbird pin on her jacket lapel, she straightened her white coat and headed out to the front lines.
Everything went according to plan until she hit the ICU. Callie read through Bruce Nepom’s chart three times. His prognosis wasn’t good. In fact, it was a miracle that he was still breathing. His injuries had been severe, especially the cranial damage. That’s what had caught her attention. Something didn’t fit. A deep, focused trauma at the back of the skull.
She looked at the man, swathed in bandages. His blood pressure was so low as to be a hint instead of a statement, and she knew it was only a matter of time. A short time. She wondered why he was here alone.
After making a note on the chart that she wanted to be updated on his progress, Callie continued her rounds. Bruce Nepom’s injuries lingered in her mind, however. A fuzzy question that had to be answered.
RACHEL WOKE UP SUDDENLY at two-thirty from a dream. Guy Giroux had been to her house. But unlike the real event, this time he’d come in and he’d wept like a child. In her dream she’d tried to comfort him, but her own discomfort made her awkward and jerky. He didn’t seem to notice, but Rachel was beyond mortified. It was like seeing the man naked, or walking in on him making love.
Guy had a place, and it was at the hospital. He had a role, and that was as her boss. Anything that disturbed that picture was uncomfortable and to be avoided at all costs.
Only, the picture was disturbed now. Guy had lost his stepdaughter. Someone he cared about, loved. He’d been married, which Rachel had known but never thought about, and there had been a little girl in his life. It was altogether too personal.
At work, Rachel was an attending physician and little else. She listened to her staff, joked with them, even went for the occasional drink after a tough night. But she kept her private life to herself.
She’d learned early that, as a doctor, emotional objectivity was a good thing. Not that she didn’t care what happened to her patients. In fact, that’s where all her nurturing went—to the people who needed her. The truth was, she was too emotional. Things affected her deeply, and she cared way too much when confronted with pain and suffering she could do nothing about.
Rachel had been that way all her life, and it had made for a roller-coaster puberty. Her friends’ lives all became larger than life, their joys were hers to share, and their pain cut her to the core.
Her decision to become a doctor was born from a deep need to make things better. Not just for others, but for herself. She couldn’t stand feeling helpless.
In grade school she’d had a dear, wonderful friend. Molly had moved two houses down when they were both in fourth grade, and it had been love at first sight. They lived at each other’s houses, played together constantly, dreamed big dreams. Molly was like a sister to Rachel, only they fought less.
And at fifteen, Molly got bone cancer. Two years later, she’d died, and Rachel had nearly gone with her, her grief was so consuming. Standing by, watching her friend’s body waste away was the most excruciating experience of her life, and from that time on, nothing had swayed her from her course.
It was in medical school that Rachel realized she couldn’t help anyone if she was engulfed in grief herself, so she decided she simply wouldn’t let it in. It was as if she’d created an invisible bubble around herself, and nothing came through.
Nothing.
The strategy had worked so well it almost scared her, whenever she let herself think about it. Because there was one problem: she’d never been able to figure out a way to let the positive emotions enter through the barricade.
Not that she was unhappy. The satisfaction she got from her job was deep and fine. But was it enough?
Waking up alone, going to sleep alone, cooking for one…It fell short. Not short enough to make her give up her career or even curtail her hours. If she ever did meet anyone, he’d have to deal with that, or hit the road.
For some unknown reason, she thought of Guy again. She needed to think of him as her boss, not a man. A really attractive man.
That was one road she wasn’t going down. Nope. No way. He was off-limits. Completely and utterly. He was the reason she preferred the night shift and why she did all she could to keep their communication on paper.
Rachel threw the covers back and headed for the shower. Her shift didn’t start until nine, but she had shopping to do, some calls to make. And she wanted to get to the hospital early to review her paperwork and check on Heather Corrigan’s baby boy.
CHAPTER THREE
ELEANOR FITZ, the charge nurse in the NICU, wasn’t someone Guy new well. He dealt with her during administrative meetings and whenever a preemie was born in the E.R. They’d never talked, aside from work. He didn’t understand his reticence to approach her now, and he pushed it aside, intent on seeing Heather’s child.
When Eleanor saw him standing just inside the room, she seemed startled, but she quickly hid her surprise. “Dr. Giroux, how can I help you?”
He walked directly to the large sink and scrubbed his hands as if preparing for surgery. Then he draped a sterile mask around his neck and walked across the room to the nurses’ station, his gaze sweeping the incubators, isolettes, infant warmers and bevy of monitors hooked up to the tiny charges. The other nurses, most of whom he recognized, were busy, and there were two fathers, one holding his child, the other looking desperately through an incubator at his.
“I’m looking for Heather Corrigan’s baby,” he said.
For a split second Eleanor’s forehead creased, but perhaps he imagined it because when she smiled, she seemed all business. “He’s right over here.” Turning, she led him to the incubator at the far end of the room. Both a heart and a respiratory monitor were connected, and when he got closer, he saw an IV tube inserted into the hand of an incredibly tiny, very yellow baby.
“What’s his condition?”
The nurse didn’t even pluck the chart from the corner of the incubator. “He’s doing better than he was, but that’s not saying much. Very low blood pressure. You can see his jaundice is advanced and his kidney is only at ten percent. There’s still a lot we don’t know. His blood work isn’t finished.”
Guy stopped himself before he snapped at the woman in his frustration. “Please call the lab immediately and have his bloods done, stat.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, the words an unasked question.
“This is my stepdaughter’s child. I’d like to be informed immediately of any changes. You have my beeper, I assume.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, and it was if she had changed into another person. Sof
ter. Sympathetic.
He wanted to make her leave, and he could have with a glance, but he didn’t. The child deserved all the sympathy in the world, considering his stepgrandfather.
“I’ll get right on it, Doctor,” Eleanor said, stepping aside. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”
He nodded, his gaze on the boy.
“Doctor?”
He turned, surprised that the nurse was still there. “Yes.”
“Does he have a name?”
Guy stared without seeing. Thought about his girl, the way her hair insisted on flying about in the most undisciplined manner, no matter how she tried to tame it. About the way her laugh made him smile, even when he was in the foulest mood. “Heath,” he said. He looked at the baby once more. “His name is Heath Corrigan.”
RACHEL WAS STILL a little stunned at the storm damage she’d seen on her errands. Roofs had blown off, trees had toppled, electrical wires had been ripped from their housings. It was amazing the E.R. hadn’t been ten times as busy.
She’d finished her grocery shopping, gone to the post office and to the dry cleaners. Tonight would end her graveyard shift, and the day after tomorrow she would begin days. It wasn’t an easy transition to make, not only because of her body clock, but because of the social aspects of the day shift.
There were more patients, more interactions, more staff. She’d be doing rounds with Guy, seeing him in the call room, in the lounge. It was also time for her yearly review, and while she felt confident her performance was up to par, she didn’t like the fact that Guy had so much power over her.
Not that she hadn’t had supervisors and bosses before. She’d done her residency at Baylor in Houston, and they were notorious for their brutal reviews, but no one had ever flustered her the way Guy did. For all her expertise at disassociating her emotions, she failed miserably when she was around him.
She’d given up denying her attraction to him. It was there. Big time. But just because she felt it didn’t mean she had to act on it.
She just wished it would go away—that she could cure her attraction like a headache and be done with it.
And now, given his grief at the loss of Heather, she needed to be extra attentive, more personal, giving.
Okay, she wanted to be those things because no one should have to go through his pain, but the territory was dangerous and she had to be so very careful not to let him get too close. Not to let her guard down.
Once Rachel arrived at the hospital, she headed straight for the NICU.
In the elevator to the fourth floor, two nurses joined her. Rachel smiled at them and stood to one side. Of course she knew them both—they worked in cardiology—but not well.
“I know,” Cathy said, her voice just above a whisper, yet clear as a bell to Rachel. “I couldn’t believe it. His own stepdaughter.”
“I heard he was just devastated,” Ilene whispered back.
The elevator stopped on Two, and the nurses left without a backward glance. Rachel sighed. Courage Bay was a small hospital, and rumors raced through it like a fire. That was another reason she had no intention of letting Guy’s situation get to her. Nothing went unnoticed around here, and she would rather die than be the subject of staff gossip. It was enough that she’d earned herself the nickname of the Iron Lady. No one had ever said it to her face, but she’d heard it in the lounge, even on the floor. Better she should be known by that moniker than as a soft touch.
At the fourth floor, she headed toward the NICU, but as she passed the big windows, she came to an abrupt halt. Guy Giroux, her tough-as-nails boss, sat in a rocking chair, a sterile mask covering the lower half of his face, a tiny bundle, still hooked up to an array of monitors, cradled in his arms.
A wave of compassion swept through her, as strong as the winds that had toppled the trees last night. Without her permission, tears filled her eyes and she had to blink them away as she struggled to regain her composure.
This wasn’t the plan. She hadn’t even spoken to the man and she was getting blubbery. This never happened to her. Not anymore.
She got a grip on herself, straightened her shoulders and headed into the room, stopping to wash her hands and grab a mask before she walked over to him.
Guy didn’t look up. She doubted he knew she was there, the way he was watching the child.
Oh, God, the baby was so small and so jaundiced. Her gaze went to the monitors, and she was immediately concerned about both the BP and the heart rhythm.
“Hello, Rachel,” Guy said.
She smiled, but her body was almost rigid with control. “Hello, Doctor. I came up to see how the baby is doing.”
“I wish it was better,” he said, and that’s when he looked up at her.
It was as if she were staring at a new man. All she could see were his eyes, but the change in him was palpable. Guy had always been compassionate—that was one of the things that made him such a good doctor—but this was…different. There was a softness she would never have guessed, right there in his dark gaze.
“What can I do?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Before we get into that, I want to apologize for this morning. I had no business barging in—”
She held up her hand, her face filling with heat as she remembered her outfit, or lack of one. “It’s not a problem. I’m sorry I didn’t finish up the paperwork yesterday. I came in early to do just that, but if I can help here, I’d like to.”
He smiled. Not that she could see his lips curve through the mask, but the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you did everything possible for Heather. I’m still stunned about all this. I spoke to her mother. Seems she thought Heather was in Los Angeles with her father.”
“Oh, no.”
“Tammy didn’t even know about the pregnancy.” His gaze went back to the boy. “This little guy had no help coming into this world. No prenatal care, no grandparents. I just don’t understand. This wasn’t like Heather. She’s always been a good kid.”
In the two years she’d been at Courage Bay Hospital, she’d never had such a personal conversation with Guy. Her first instinct was to get out, go back to the world she knew, but she could tell he wasn’t finished. That he needed to talk.
So she walked over to an empty incubator and grabbed the rocking chair positioned next to it. She placed it close to Guy’s chair. Settling into it, she crossed her legs and leaned back. “Tell me about her.”
Guy touched the baby’s tiny arm with his index finger. “I only had Heather for four years. Her mother and I got divorced when she was thirteen. She was bright. Heather, I mean. Inquisitive. I’d hoped that someday she’d become interested in medicine, but back then, all she cared about were boys and music, music and boys. Oh, I forgot clothes. Those were big, too.”
“She sounds like a typical teenager.”
“In a lot of ways, she was.” Guy looked at her, although Rachel had the feeling he wasn’t really seeing her. “She loved to sail. I suppose that’s where we spent most of our time together. I was always getting home after she went to bed, leaving before she woke up.”
“That’s the doctor’s curse.”
“It cursed that marriage, all right. But I learned my lesson. Never again. I wasn’t there for either of them. They needed me, but I didn’t give much of a damn. Tammy…”
She didn’t press him to finish the sentence. In fact, she didn’t want to hear the rest. His confession was hitting her in a place long buried. The two of them were so alike. At least Rachel had never made the mistake of getting married. She knew it would be just as Guy said. She wouldn’t be there in a way a wife or mother needed to be.
“Tammy’s in France, but she’s going to get here as soon as she can. I still haven’t connected with Heather’s father. I left two messages, but the number I have may be old.”
“Do you think he knew what was going on?”
Guy shook his head. “I never cared much for Walter. The idiot. He was unfocused
and a wastrel, but I never imagined he was this negligent.” His voice hardened into something Rachel recognized a lot more than his previous gentle cadence. “I’m going to find out exactly what he knew, and when. And how he could have let this happen. I blame him for Heather’s death.”
His head bowed a little farther, as if she wasn’t there. Rachel barely heard his next words, they were whispered so softly. “And myself.”
“Guy, you’ve been divorced from Tammy for how long?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “Five years.”
“And the last time you checked, Heather was supposed to be with her mother in Europe?”
He nodded. “Yeah. The last time I checked. Which was months ago.”
“I know this is hard, but don’t borrow any more grief than you already have. There’s no way you could have known that Heather wasn’t with her parents. Or that she was pregnant. Her own mother didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t absolve me, and you know it. But I’ll tell you one thing, Rachel—I’m going to get to the bottom of this. And I’m going to make sure Heath is taken care of. In every way.”
“Heath?”
“After his mom,” Guy said, rocking the baby gently. “He needs to get better. I have to figure out exactly what’s going on here and fix it.”
“Then let me help.”
His chair stopped. “How?”
“I’ll go to the lab and I’ll go over the reports with a finetooth comb. Let me call Tim Burns…get him in here.”
“He’s on vacation.”
Rachel knew the neonatologist was away, but she also knew that he was only in Palm Springs, and that if he understood the situation, he’d get back here, pronto. She also knew the specialists on staff were perfectly capable of handling preemies and all the problems that went with them, but Burns was the best. And he was Guy’s friend. “Let me worry about that.” She stood up, put the rocker back. “I’ll page you as—”
The baby’s heart monitor went off that second, and even though every instinct she had was to rush in to see what was wrong and what she could do, she stepped back as the team swarmed around Guy and the incubator.
