Inside the clinic, after general introductions—Cole had met the head nurse at the wedding on Saturday—Charlotte lifted one silver brow above an obvious appraising stare. “Well, I hope you know how to work hard, because there’s no room for slackers in this clinic.”
Ah, a tight-ship lady. Hmm, Trev had left off that part. Was that a subtle threat to Cole, too? “Don’t worry, Lotte.” He used her preferred name, since Trevor had already filled him in. “We’ll all pull our load. I know Trevor is a tough act to follow, but I’m older and wiser.” He liked to think he was anyway. He winked.
Lotte softened her stern expression at the mention of Trevor. Or maybe it was the wink. “You’ll do fine. All you Montgomery men are overachievers.” At least she was free with her compliments. “It’s just the new one I’m worried about.”
Uh-oh, Lotte played dirty, landing a sucker punch below the belt. Did she not know Lizzie was standing right there? He glanced at Lizzie, expecting to see insult, but she wore an amused smile, keeping her true reaction to herself. Good call. But what he’d give to know what was running through her head.
“If it’s all the same, I’ll look after Dr. Silva,” Cole said. “I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine.”
By the expressions on both women’s faces, he wasn’t the least bit sure about his prediction.
“Now, how about that tour of the clinic?” he said.
*
Midmorning, their routine was sliding into place. Granted, Lotte had only allowed half the usual appointments for the next couple of days, but between Cole and Lizzie they were tearing up the house, if he did say so himself.
He sat in Trevor’s office, inputting the necessary computer data on his last patient; Lizzie tapped on the opened door. He glanced up, and the vision of youth and eagerness changed his serious outlook to something more in the carefree department. The woman was contagious.
“I’ve got a patient who doesn’t want to take birth-control pills. She doesn’t want the implant or the shot. I’ve talked her into using an IUD.”
“Okay?” And what does this have to do with me?
“You said I had to run everything by you.”
“Oh, right. Yes. So can you do what she wants?”
“I’ve only inserted a couple of them.” She’d lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Do we even have intrauterine devices in the clinic?” he whispered back, playing along. Since when had playful been a part of his clinical routine?
“Charlotte says we do, and she’s willing to assist me. That okay with you?”
“It’ll have to be, because I don’t know the first thing about placing an IUD birth-control device. Should I have whispered that?”
That got a broad smile out of her, a reward far greater than he could have imagined. “Okay, great.” She charged off, like an athlete getting called into the game.
“Let me know how it turns out,” he said, but suspected she didn’t hear him since she was already back in the patient-exam room with the door closed.
Twenty minutes later, Lizzie emerged from the room with a victorious smile on her face. Cole watched in amusement. Lotte followed behind. “You did fine,” the nurse said, matter-of-fact.
“Thanks!”
Shortly afterward the patient stepped outside the door, dressed and ready to leave. Lotte started to give instructions, but Lizzie cut her off, taking full responsibility for her patient. The nurse’s disgruntled expression didn’t go unnoticed by Cole.
“Remember you may feel mild cramps like you’re getting your period for the next couple of days. That’s normal. But if you have excessive cramping or begin moderate to heavy bleeding, come back and see me right away.”
“I promise.” The young woman stepped closer to Lizzie. “Dr. Silva, thank you so much for helping me choose a method of birth control that doesn’t involve hormones, shots or pills.”
“I’m glad we found something that works for you, Gina.”
When the patient exited the hallway, Lizzie scrunched up her face, raised her shoulders, fisted and shook her hands in a super-happy gesture. “She called me ‘doctor.’”
Cole shook his head just before he went in to see his next patient, though, for the record, he thought her enthusiasm and excitement over the job were cute, even if they did tick off the RN.
During lunch she locked herself in Julie’s office, the one she’d taken over. He stood outside and listened, positive some crying was going on in there. Wow, she hadn’t given the hint of being homesick for her baby, yet he couldn’t deny the sound of crying. He was about to knock to invite her along to the café in town, thinking it might make her feel better, when Lotte informed him that Lizzie was expressing. Expressing what? Then he heard some weird mechanical noises start up inside.
Feeling the urge to put fingers in his ears, he strode out of the building to buy some lunch, trying his damnedest to put the image of a woman pumping her breasts with a machine out of his head.
“TMI, Charlotte. TMI,” he called just before he closed the back clinic door.
*
Lizzie couldn’t believe how great the day in clinic had gone so far. Then it hit her: she hadn’t thought about Flora for, what, an hour? Her chest clinched and her eyes immediately stung. More proof she was a terrible mother. Flora’s sweet face appeared in her mind’s eye and she ached to cuddle her. But she’d just finished a pre-summer-camp physical for a ten-year-old boy, which he’d passed with flying colors, and she was printing out a copy for his mother to turn in to the camp nurse when Cole snagged her in the hallway.
“I’ve got something for you to hear,” he said.
“Okay, just let me give this to my patient’s mother and I’ll be right there.” She’d called Gretchen during lunch, and she’d promised everything was going great with her baby, so she’d focused back on work. But, oh, how she missed Flora whenever she came to mind.
Once she’d finished her appointment she went directly to Examination Room Two, where she’d seen Cole step back inside. Still feeling guilty over letting Flora slip out of her mind from time to time, she forced those thoughts away and knocked before entering. Tomorrow she’d bring a picture of her baby and put it on her desk.
“Mr. Harrison, this is Dr. Silva. I wanted to have her listen to your heart, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, Doc,” the skinny older man said. He sat on the examination table topless, having removed the worn and faded clinic exam gown.
“Dr. Silva.” She loved hearing him call her that. “I was doing a routine physical and, since it is rare to hear all four heart sounds on auscultation, I thought I’d share it with you. The fact that Mr. Harrison is thin helps a lot. Have a listen.”
He’d said the sounds were something to share, but she knew it was a test. He didn’t just want to share heart sounds with her, there had to be something more going on, and her hunch was it would be up to her to find the reason.
She pulled her top-of-the-line stethoscope from around her shoulders. It had been a gift from Dr. Rivers when she’d graduated near the top in her class. She put the ear tips in and placed the bell on the man’s chest in the first of the five positions for listening to heart sounds. True, most of the time doctors and nurses only heard the lub-dub sounds, but, seeing as this was an over-sixty and thin male, all four sounds were in fact fairly loud and clear, a rarity. She listened again, more carefully, then heard the faint click between S1 and S2. A murmur. Mitral-valve regurgitation.
“How long have you had mitral prolapse, Mr. Harrison?” She skimmed her gaze over Cole before giving the patient her undivided attention, and she’d seen it, the pleased glint in his eyes and the slight nod of the head. Yes, she’d heard exactly what he’d pulled her in here for.
“What’s that?” the man said.
Cole stepped in. “Normally Mr. Harrison doesn’t visit the doctor unless he has to, but since he turned sixty-five his wife insisted he have a physical. He’s never been diagnosed with mitral prolapse
, and seems to be symptom-free, but we’ll do a cardiac workup, get a twelve-lead EKG and send him to a specialist for an echocardiogram, then decide how best to treat him.”
She nodded in agreement, then, realizing the test was over and she’d passed, she said goodbye to the patient and Cole and went back to work. She still had three more patients to see before the clinic closed. One would be a pelvic exam and Pap smear, another a follow-up for asthma and the last a surgery follow-up for gallbladder removal—a clinic schedule just like a real doctor.
Lizzie loved doing this job. It was the one thing in her life she was sure of…she’d been meant to be a doctor.
On the way home she talked Cole’s ear off, but couldn’t help herself, because she was bursting with excitement and needed to share it with someone. Plus, she was on her way home to see Flora. What more perfect way to end a day than that? When she got this way, all worked up and happy, she talked way too fast and slipped into her strongest Boston accent, and Cole probably couldn’t understand half of what she was saying, but she couldn’t stop. Unlucky Cole was the guy sharing the car with her, so she talked and talked and talked. Poor man had to listen to her full-speed-ahead monologue almost the entire ride home.
As her day wound down, and her breasts tightened with milk, she could barely wait to see her daughter. Thoughts of helpless and beautiful little Flora washed over her, making her want to instantly hold her. She’d missed her daughter, of course she had, yet the breather, doing something she also loved, had been a welcome relief from nonstop child care. What an awful thought! Her face screwed up in confusion, and she needed to either break down and cry or talk about it. Sobbing in front of Cole after her first day at work was not an option. “Is it wrong that I enjoyed being away from Flora today?” she said, her chin quivering.
“Are you asking me if you should feel guilty?” He took his eyes from the road and glanced at her.
She nodded, without a shred of confidence in what his answer would be.
He hesitated, obviously searching for the best words. “I wouldn’t dare judge, but I suspect it’s normal for any mother to want a break. Nothing to feel guilty about. It’s got to be stressful as hell to be totally responsible for another life.”
How could this man who’d never been a father nail her exact feelings? “Yes. Very.”
“And your being away for a few hours has probably done both of you some good.”
“You think? You know, I never heard from Gretchen this afternoon and I’d asked her to call with any questions, or if Flora got too colicky, so that’s a good sign, right?”
It was his turn to nod. “Believe me, if Gretchen needed to contact you, she would have.”
Swimming on a stream of insecurity, she couldn’t help herself. “So you don’t think I’m a horrible mother?”
“Not at all. Plus, I think you are a fine doctor in the making who gives her patients a hundred percent of her attention. Which they deserve.”
Insecurities duly banished, she sat straighter, her eyes wide and heart warmed from the compliment. “You think?”
“I know.” He smiled and that Wyoming cowboy grin nearly knocked the breath out of her. This man was downright dreamy when he smiled.
“Thank you!”
He looked relieved when they got to the ranch. When Gretchen appeared at the back door with Flora in her arms, a rush of motherly emotions flooded every pore, and all Lizzie wanted to do was rush to her baby and hold her. To kiss her and make sure the little one knew her mother was back, and they’d be together the rest of the night. From the distance of the car, she studied her precious one, the face she swore had changed since just that morning, and beamed with love. Her daughter was the icing on the cake of her first dream day on the job and she started to rush toward her.
But Cole pulled her back by the arm, first.
“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise on the drive home, but I just wanted to tell you that I think you were outstanding today. You carried your load and you’ve got a lot of potential and I’m going to see to it that you turn into that top-notch doctor you obviously want to be.”
This was the wildest compliment she’d ever gotten, and being that her confidence had been lagging lately, she was so grateful he’d said it. One moment she couldn’t find a placement in a resident’s program, and the next she was impressing one of the finest cardiologists in the country. How crazy was that? Enthusiasm riding on adrenaline spilled over and coursed through her veins, it pumped into her head and washed her brain in happy juice, further proving she’d made the right decision to come to Wyoming. She couldn’t control herself.
She popped up on her toes and threw her arms around Cole’s neck for a tight hug. “Thank you so much.” Then without thinking she pulled her face out of the crook of his neck and kissed his cheek, complete with end-of-day stubble. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, staring into a pair of startled light brown eyes.
Afraid to linger too long, getting lost in his sexy gaze, she rushed off toward Gretchen. Riding another flood of thanks, she took her precious baby into her arms, kissed Flora’s chubby cheek, cuddled her close and thought this had been one of the best days of her entire life. Thanks to Cole Montgomery and the kind surrogate grandmother. Then, getting walloped with a sudden surge of how much she’d missed her daughter all day, she burst into tears.
CHAPTER FIVE
BY FRIDAY, COLE WAS worried how Lizzie would survive. He’d heard the baby crying in the still house in the middle of the night, most nights. He’d witnessed the dark smudges beneath her eyes worsening each new morning. Because of his ongoing neck issues he preferred to stand at the nurses’-station torso-high counter to do his charting in the clinic, and he’d had to step in more than once to ease the friction developing between Lotte and Lizzie. Both were strong-willed women, and wanting the best for the patient; their outspoken styles often clashed. Tension had built all week and something needed to change.
As they drove to the clinic Friday morning he glanced at Lizzie, who’d closed her eyes for the duration of the ride. Her thick hair pulled back tight into the usual braid, the same silver hoops in her ears, the white tailored shirt and black slacks that had turned out to be her personal uniform—perhaps that was the extent of her wardrobe?—her long, delicate fingers twitching lightly from time to time as she stole a few last moments of rest.
He needed to step up as her employer, to guide her and offer gentle advice on how best to serve her patients along with the medical staff. She was a ball of hyperinsecurity one moment and suffered from overconfidence the next, was edgy yet overly sensitive, and she’d been driving the head nurse crazy. That couldn’t continue. He’d let her rest for now, but once they arrived at the clinic he’d invite her into his office for a friendly chat.
She made a quiet snort waking herself, then sat straighter and, with bleary, though still sensational eyes, glanced at Cole. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I think I snored.” She rubbed her makeup-less eyes and stretched minimally under the confines of the seat belt.
He smiled, not wanting to make her self-conscious. So he lied.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Oh, good, then.”
But, since he’d lost sleep over it, he did need to broach the subject foremost on his mind. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking we should start having weekly meetings at the clinic. You know, to talk about our patients and share information. As your senior staff person, I should mentor you and as the newest doctor, you can share your discoveries with me, too. What do you say?”
“I’ve been running everything by you at work.” She looked doubtful, like a person realizing they’re being set up.
“Yes, but we rarely have time to discuss anything in depth. If you were a resident you’d have daily rounds with fellow doctors and senior staff, you’d be questioned and tested on all the medical possibilities, given assignments, and questioned again. I owe it to you.”
She inhaled slowly. “I don’t know how we’d squeeze that in at work, though. There’s hardly time to breathe, and when I take lunch I need to express for Flora.” Without warning she broke into tears, the mark of a stressed-to-the-limit person.
Cole was at a loss for what to say or do, so he let her cry until she recovered a modicum of composure.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea how hard both working and taking care of my baby would be. How do mothers do it? I think I’m losing my milk.” She bit her lower lip, fighting back emotion.
He didn’t have a clue how to comment on that at first other than to say, “I’m sorry,” but then decided to go the scientific route. “I’m pretty sure science has proven that machines can duplicate most human functions, but they don’t ever come close to replacing the soul of the matter.” Idea fresh in his mind, he touched the handless smartphone connection on the steering wheel, desperately needing female backup. “Call Gretchen,” he recited.
Within seconds he heard her voice. “Hello, Cole, is everything okay?”
“Gretchen, can you bring Flora to the clinic around eleven-thirty today?”
“Sure. Is there a problem?”
“No problem. Just make sure she’s hungry when you leave.” He hung up and looked at a clearly flabbergasted Lizzie. “From now on you can nurse your baby during lunch. I’ll have a big healthy meal delivered in every day, and you and Flora can have some bonding time on the job.”
“You don’t have to…”
“Of course I do. It’s my job to keep you from melting down. You’re here to help me, not to become my next patient.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense, no apologies needed.” He needed to hit the right tone with his explanation, not make her feel guilty or coddled. “This is purely selfish on my part, so I’m being practical. You need to be a high-functioning member of my staff. You’ve been doing a commendable job under the circumstances, but there’s always room for improvement, right?”
Father for Her Newborn Baby (Cowboys, Doctors...Daddies) Page 5
