Passionate Rivals

by Radclyffe

  Emmett didn’t move her mouth, at least not to talk. She closed her eyes, one hand on Zoey’s abdomen, and immersed herself in Zoey’s body—the tension in her hips, the tremor in her limbs, the soft murmurs and surprised cries of excitement. Zoey came quickly, the way she always did, hard and with abandon. Emmett loved that about her, how free she was, how demanding she was of pleasure, and what a pleasure it was to satisfy her. People always bragged about having friends with benefits, but she doubted most of them really knew how good it could be. Zoey’d been her best friend since Emmett had been assigned as a second year to mentor the newbie during those first tumultuous months. They’d clicked right away—bright, vivacious, sorority girl Zoey and dark, intense Emmett from the coal mining town of Bethlehem, PA. The rich girl and the bad girl. By the end of the year they were sharing a run-down Victorian on the wrong side of the tracks a quick walk from the hospital. And sharing a bed when one or the other wasn’t in the hospital or with someone else.

  They’d known right away they were destined to be friends, first and foremost. The sex was just a natural extension of their connection—effortless and free and without conditions. Zoey tended to keep her lovers around until the heat cooled, and somehow she usually managed to keep them as friends when it was over. Emmett was different. She kept things simple from the start—a few nights, maybe even a few weeks, but never long enough to create problems when she moved on. And she always did. She had more important things to focus on. Like getting every drop of experience she possibly could so she’d come out on top. The top was where she wanted to be—in charge, in control, untouchable.

  Emmett raised herself on an elbow when Zoey, muttering, “Enough already,” pushed her none too gently away.

  “Sure?” Emmett teased.

  “You know you killed me.” Zoey lifted her head, squinting at Emmett. “Bet you five bucks the hospital meeting’s about next year.”

  “Nah. There’s no way Maguire is going to make an early announcement. You know the tradition. The program director announces the chief resident the last week of the fourth year.”

  “So maybe they’re early this year.” Zoey snorted. “Like everyone doesn’t know who it’s going to be anyhow. It’s been yours since the first year.”

  Emmett sat up on the side of the bed, searching for her scrub shirt in the tangle of covers. She was a surgeon, and surgeons were superstitious to a one. She never took anything for granted, never counted on anything until she had it firmly in her grasp. The minute you got comfortable, life kicked you in the teeth. The lesson had nearly broken her in the learning, but learn she had. The only people she counted on were Zoey and Hank. And the only success she believed in was a successful surgery. “You never know how it’s going to go. Maguire isn’t the only one making the decision. Look at who they picked last year.”

  “Okay.” Zoey grinned. “Amy Baker is an airhead. But come on, Maguire loves you. You’re practically her clone. You want trauma, you’ve got great hands, and you’re fearless. Just like her. Hell, you even look like her.” Zoey made swoony eyes and pressed her hands to her breast. Her really, really beautiful breast. “Dark and broody and intense. Yummy. All you’re missing is your very own Honor Blake.”

  “As if.” Emmett laughed, thinking about the trauma chief’s wife. The simmering arousal in her belly flared a little before she quickly doused it with a mental bucket of ice water. Jeez. Maguire’s wife, for crap’s sake. Okay, so maybe she harbored a slight crush on the beautiful, brilliant Honor Blake like half the hospital, but she wasn’t about to admit to it. “Maguire doesn’t play favorites.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not you.” Zoey ran her fingers down Emmett’s spine, her touch familiar and as natural as the sense of rightness Emmett experienced every time she walked into the OR. “Maguire wouldn’t be playing favorites where you’re concerned. You’re the best, and everyone knows it.” Zoey kissed Emmett’s back between her shoulder blades and threaded both arms around her waist, resting her cheek against Emmett’s shoulder. “Give me thirty seconds and—”

  Emmett’s pager beeped and she pulled it off the chair next to the bed. “It’s Hank. He’s in the cafeteria for rounds.”

  “Your brother has impeccable timing,” Zoey said.

  “Come on—let’s grab a shower. Hank can wait a few minutes.” Emmett twisted around and kissed Zoey. “I’m good. Maybe I’ll see you at home tonight, and we can pick this up then.”

  “If Anderson doesn’t have me here checking post-ops until midnight again.” Zoey shook her head. “I really think he hates me.”

  “Anderson hates all residents. He doesn’t play favorites either.”

  Zoey laughed as Emmett stood and pulled on her scrub pants.

  “If we hurry, we can finish rounds before the meeting,” Emmett said. “I’m scheduled for an ex lap at eight, and I want to review the labs again before the patient goes down.”

  “Of course you do, you shark,” Zoey said.

  “I prefer to think of it as being prepared.”

  Zoey made gagging noises as she dressed.

  Smiling, Emmett filled her pockets with her phone, pen, and wallet, then clipped her ID to her pocket and her pager to her waistband. “Can’t wait to see what you’re like next year when you’re in the race for chief, Ms. Perky I-Love-My-Job-and-All-the-World-Is-Beautiful.”

  “I’ll be a perky shark.” Zoey opened the door and almost walked into Sadie Matthews, who stood with her hand raised to knock. “Oh, hey, Sadie. What’s up?”

  Sadie looked past Zoey to Emmett and glared. “Not a thing.”

  Sighing inwardly, Emmett followed them down the hall. Great start to the day. Eight o’clock and the first case couldn’t come soon enough.

  * * *

  Franklin Health Center Hospital, Northeast Philadelphia

  5:45 a.m.

  Sydney Stevens double-checked her locker, sliding her hand along the top shelf into both far back corners where she couldn’t see, then running her fingertip along the seams to make sure nothing had dropped into the shallow channel between the metal shelf and the side walls of the tall, narrow gray cubby. Anyone watching her would probably think she was being paranoid, but she knew better. In junior high, she’d lost a gold ring with a tiny row of diamonds her mother had given her on her thirteenth birthday. The ring had been her grandmother’s, and she’d been so excited to be the oldest of her sisters and the first one to get a special family gift. When she’d discovered it missing, she didn’t tell anyone she’d lost it, and the guilt and grief plagued her every day for months. The day she’d found it stuck in the back corner of her locker while searching for loose change, the relief had made her dizzy. The light-headed, heart-pounding sensation came back to her now just thinking about it.

  Who knew what she might have lost in this locker. She’d lived out of this locker for four years. This locker was more central to her life than the room in an apartment she shared with two other people. This locker was the place where she kept her most important possessions—her white coat, her extra scrubs, her stethoscope and Merck Manual, her shower supplies and secret stash of candy for emergencies. Locker number 74. Her locker validated her place in the hospital and symbolized a marker on her road to success. Cleaning it out felt a little like death—and a lot like failure.

  She wasn’t supposed to be leaving yet. None of them were. Her job wasn’t finished, her goal unachieved. Her moorings had been cut, and she was at sea without a life jacket. All around her other surgical residents mimicked her motions. The atmosphere was funereal, their expressions reflecting the confusion and helplessness and fear they all shared. No one spoke. What was there to say? They had no choice in what had happened to them less then twenty-four hours before or what would happen to them in the next days and weeks. Some of them she probably would never see again. Over half had been her interns and junior residents, her students and colleagues and competitors. Closer than her sibling had ever been. Her family, this family, was fracturing—
again. By eight a.m. they’d all be gone, and while their absence would be felt for a while, the relentless forward momentum of hospital life would soon outpace their memories. Medical students and PAs would step in to fill the empty spaces at Franklin Hospital, and eventually no one would remember what it’d been like before. Before what felt like the end of one life and the beginning of another she hadn’t planned. She thought she’d never be at this crossroads again—displaced, buffeted by forces she hadn’t expected and couldn’t change, and unsure of the way forward. But here she was, with her life veering off path into a future she couldn’t see.

  “You ready?” Jerry Katz said, straddling the narrow bench that ran in front of the wall of lockers, his possessions in a backpack slung over his shoulder. He still wore green Franklin Hospital scrubs with the faded initials FHC on the pocket.

  “Yes, just about. Where’s Dani?” Syd said.

  Four years ago, the three of them had arrived at FHC along with six others on the first of July for the start of their surgical internship. She hadn’t known anyone and had grabbed the nearest empty seat in the small auditorium next to an African American guy in a faded Eagles jersey and the build of a serious jock. He looked familiar, and a minute later she’d made the connection.

  “Aren’t you the Eagles running back—or something?”

  Jerry had smiled ruefully, his dark eyes gazing at something only he could see. “Past tense—wide receiver. Retired. I put my surgical training on hold for a while, but now…well, my blown knee sent the message it’s time.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize—” Feeling awkward, she’d broken off.

  “That I was a doc and not just a hot body?”

  She’d laughed. “Sorry, not much of a sports fan.”

  “You’re forgiven, seeing how it’s our first day and all.” He’d laughed too and the awkwardness had disappeared.

  The chief of surgery had walked in and everyone stopped like they were playing a game of statue—frozen in midmotion, barely breathing.

  His voice rang out, emotionless and merciless. “Look to your right and look to your left. Remember their faces, because by the end of this year one of them will be gone. In five years, there’s a fifty percent chance both will be.”

  Syd stared at Jerry, whose jaw tightened as his gaze met hers. She’d turned to her left and the seat was empty—until Dani Chan dropped into it, a grin on her face and defiance in her eyes.

  “What did I miss?” Dani asked, looking from Syd to Jerry.

  Syd smiled. “Not much. Just that most of us won’t make it through the program.”

  “Yeah? Heard that before. You guys buying it?”

  “No,” Syd said, her fear turning to resolution. She wouldn’t be beaten. She’d already lost too much time.

  “Hell no,” Jerry said.

  “Me neither.” Small, lithe, and perpetually on the verge of being engulfed in a whirlwind of energy and emotion, Dani made up the last of their triumvirate. The Three Musketeers—roommates, cheering squad, and inseparable friends. And putting a lie to the chief’s projections, they were three of the five in their residency year to make it all the way to the end. Or they would have been, after their fifth and final year of training. The year they’d all been chasing after and that had been right around the corner.

  “D’s waiting for us in the lobby.” Jerry looked around and winced as the locker room, usually filled with chatter and clanging metal doors, slowly emptied. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  He shook his head, his expression vacillating between angry and resigned. “I can’t believe they didn’t tell us before this.”

  Syd laughed mirthlessly. “Not as if we’d have any say in it.”

  “It’s our careers on the line,” he said.

  “I know.” Syd suppressed her anger. Jerry was right, but no point tilting at windmills. This battle was lost. They had a long day to get through, and she needed all her energy to face it.

  “At least we have jobs, for now,” he muttered.

  “Yes.” She closed her locker carefully, making sure the latch caught, as if something of value still remained inside. Behind her, a few stragglers slammed theirs and walked out. She zipped her duffel and turned her back on number 74.

  Another chapter in her life, ending not as she had planned it, not as she had imagined it, but with a cold, lost feeling in the pit of her stomach. A feeling she had to bury along with the others.

  Syd squared her shoulders. “Let’s go, then.”

  * * *

  “I can take Jack to daycare this morning,” Honor said as she slid toast in front of Arly, another slice in front of Quinn, and finally grabbed her own coffee off the counter.

  Quinn corralled a slice of toast with one hand and directed Jack’s spoon back toward his oatmeal and not his left eye. His eye-hand coordination was exceptional for a two-and-a-half-year-old—he took after his mother, after all—but he had his own brand of exuberance that sometimes derailed his efforts.

  “I’ve got time before the department meeting,” Quinn said between bites. “As long as he doesn’t need a bath first.”

  “Then you’d better watch that spoon.”

  “On it.”

  Honor snagged the last piece of toast and sipped her coffee. “How do you think it’s going to go?”

  Quinn shook her head. “It’ll be bumpy for a while. Surgeons aren’t known for sharing cases.”

  Honor sighed. “You can’t blame them.”

  “No. But the agreements are in place, and we’ll all have to make the best of it.” She glanced at Arly, who was absorbed in something on her iPad. “Why are you up so early?”

  “No reason.”

  “You ready for tonight?”

  “Yep,” Arly said without looking up.

  Quinn shot Honor a silent query, and she shrugged. At almost thirteen, Arly might just be displaying the inevitable teen disinterest in sharing feelings with her parents, but Arly had never been typical and today was not an ordinary day.

  Quinn said, “You comfortable with the seventh form?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ve cleared my schedule,” Quinn said, “and I can be home by six. We can run through it—”

  Arly set her iPad down and studied Quinn, her dark brown eyes so like Honor’s Quinn was surprised every time. Calm, thoughtful, and so damn strong. Arly grinned, and then she was thirteen again—a little cocky, a little amused.

  “What?” Quinn said.

  “You’re nervous,” Arly said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Arly smirked. “Yes, you are.”

  “Arly test,” Jack proclaimed.

  Honor laughed and managed to save his shirt from a helping of oatmeal as he waved his spoon in the air.

  “Yes, she is taking a test,” Honor said, “and she’s going to do great. And so is Quinn.”

  “Yay,” Jack said with another flourish of his spoon.

  “I’m not nervous,” Quinn said. “I just thought—”

  “I know,” Arly said with a wise expression. “You’re worried I’ll feel bad if I don’t pass tonight. But I won’t feel bad.”

  “Okay.” Quinn sat back. Maybe she was a little nervous. She just wished she could save Arly from disappointment, keep her from ever being hurt. An impossible task, but she couldn’t help it. She could hide it, though, in fairness to Arly. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

  Arly nodded. “Here’s what I think. If I don’t pass, it’s because I’m not ready. But I am.”

  “You’re right. You are.”

  “Besides, you’ll be there, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Honor hugged Arly and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll both be there.”

  “Okay then.” Arly went back to her iPad, the issue clearly settled.

  Quinn sighed. Time to get to the hospital and deliver the news that would put all her residents to the test they had no idea was coming. But
if they wanted to be surgeons, they’d have to get used to that.

  Chapter Two

  Northeast Philadelphia, 5:50 a.m.

  “So how do you think they decided the split?” Dani leaned on the horn as she threaded her ancient Volkswagen Bug through Broad Street traffic, heading south into the heart of Philadelphia and the expressway west. “Come on, buddy, the light’s yellow! You don’t stop on a yellow!”

  “Us, you mean?” Jerry braced one arm on the dash to avoid face-planting into the windshield.

  “Well, yeah, duh,” Dani said.

  “Maybe they drew straws,” Syd said. “Do you think you could ease up on the stop-and-go a little bit? I’m about to dislocate something back here.”

  “Bite me,” Dani said.

  “Right. No thanks.” Syd’d taken one for the team and let Jerry have the front seat where at least his knees didn’t quite reach to his chin. She was almost as tall as him, although with his build he looked taller than six feet, and she had to scrunch sideways in the minuscule cramped rear seat. Every few seconds the Bug went from sixty to zero, and she was almost thrown onto the floor. At least it wasn’t winter. Somehow Dani never seemed to notice the little red car had no heat. Maybe compared to Buffalo, nothing the Philadelphia winters threw at her registered.

  “Could be a lottery,” Jerry said, “or some other kind of random draw.”

  “Like names in a hat,” Syd said. The idea was absurd, but so was heading off to a new hospital with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. So was being essentially homeless from one day to the next. “This…”

  “Sucks?” Dani snarled.

  “Yes.” Syd sighed. “Does it matter at this point, how they decided between the three other programs in the city?”

  Dani made a snorting sound. “It might. It can’t be a coincidence the three of us are together.”

  “True,” Jerry said. “We’ve always been—you know—top of the pile. Right?…I mean, I’m just saying…”