Passionate Rivals

by Radclyffe

  “No!” Syd grabbed her friends and shuffled them all back another few steps. “We’re good. Go.”

  “Right. Okay. Well—”

  Syd and her friends disappeared around the corner, and Emmett wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing. The unexpected appearance of a woman she’d never expected to see again but, unlike so many other women in her life, had been unable to forget occupied her mind for an instant until she remembered who she was and where she was going. She hustled down the hall, slapped the wall button for the automatic doors, and sprinted through into the trauma admitting area.

  Treatment tables illuminated by overhead lights lined one side of the long room. Everything needed for resuscitation and emergent surgical intervention—oxygen lines, EKG machines and defibrillators, portable ultrasounds, instrument packs, and ventilators—flanked the stainless steel beds with their flat black vinyl mattresses. Pale blue curtains that could be pulled around the beds to isolate the patients when necessary hung from tracks in the ceiling. Those were almost never closed since the patients who ended up in trauma receiving rather than the regular ER were rarely aware of their surroundings and usually didn’t stay long. Most were fast-tracked to the OR, if they survived long enough.

  Only a few beds were occupied right now. A surgical resident sutured multiple lacerations on a guy with a cervical collar in one bay, an ortho resident immobilized an open tib-fib fracture in the bed next to that, and a trio of interns surrounded a third patient, busily drawing bloods, inserting catheters, and dressing what looked like superficial burns. In the midst of scanning the patients, Emmett caught a glimpse of bright sunshine and a swath of clear blue sky through the automatic doors leading into trauma receiving from the parking lot outside. The disconnect caught her by surprise. It was morning. Springtime. She hadn’t been out of the hospital since before dawn the day before. She’d forgotten there was a world out there.

  And she was off her game. First ambushed by Sydney and memories from so long ago they belonged in a museum, and now getting seduced by thoughts of running in the brisk morning air with warm spring sunshine slowly lulling her mind and muscles into contented relaxation. Enough. She was a surgeon and she had work to do.

  Honor Blake, Zoey, and two ER residents clustered around bed one at the far end of the trauma bay. Emmett hurried over. “What have we got?”

  “How’s your ass?” Zoey muttered. “Nice reflexes, by the way.”

  Emmett shot her a look.

  “Morning, Dr. McCabe.” Honor straightened and raised a brow. “Dr. Cohen said you’d had a bit of an accident. Everything okay?”

  “Nothing serious, Chief,” Emmett said, catching Zoey’s grin out of the corner of her eye. She’d have to kill her later for trying to steal this case out from under her. “Just…got held up.”

  “Oh. Good.” Honor nodded toward the patient. “Bicyclist versus car. Alert in the field, obvious extremity fractures, and head trauma with facial injuries.”

  Emmett pulled on gloves and moved to the head of the table. A young guy who looked about twenty was strapped to a backboard, his cervical spine immobilized in a stiff collar, a temporary splint on his right lower extremity, and an impressive laceration extending from his eyebrow into his right temporal hairline. He was breathing on his own, a good sign. Vital signs displayed on the monitor beside the bed, all in normal range. He was awake but appeared sedated. His pupils were equal and normally reactive. Brain was okay. She listened to his chest, confirmed he had good breath sounds on both sides, and quickly palpated his abdomen. Soft and nontender. Heart, lungs, and major organs looked good so far. Extremity injuries were obvious but non-life-threatening. He wasn’t in any immediate trouble, so they could work him up to rule out any less obvious trauma with scans.

  “Zoey,” Emmett said, “let’s get him to CAT scan—”

  “I’m on it.” Zoey flashed her a smile. “I’ll take care of the laceration—”

  “You two need to be in Maguire’s meeting,” Honor said, glancing at her watch, “five minutes ago. We’ve got this. There’s nothing urgent surgically.”

  Emmett said, “We still have to rule out chest and abdominal—”

  “We’ve got this,” Honor repeated, indicating her ER residents. “Phillips, Armand, get an ortho consult. Order head, chest, abdominal CTs. Then one of you close up the laceration.”

  “Hey,” Zoey said brightly, “I don’t mind hanging around to close that up. In case you get busy.”

  “Not necessary.” Armand, a small wiry guy, carefully but determinedly edged in front of Zoey. The ER residents were every bit as aggressive about catching cases as the surgical residents. “You don’t want to miss your meeting.”

  Zoey glared.

  “Come on,” Emmett said before Zoey decided to arm wrestle the ER resident with the ER chief standing right there. The ER chief who happened to be married to Quinn Maguire, the trauma chief and the director of their surgical training program. Not a great idea. Sometimes it was better to play nice.

  “Fine,” Zoey muttered.

  Emmett pointed at Armand, who didn’t even bother to hide his smirk. “But if there’s anything on the CT, he goes to trauma.”

  “Fine,” Armand said.

  Honor grinned. “We know the drill, Dr. McCabe.”

  Emmett shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  Honor made shooing motions. “Don’t be late for your meeting, now.”

  Knowing when she’d lost, Emmett nodded. Once they were out of earshot, she motioned to Zoey and said, “An accident? You told Blake I had an accident?”

  “What would you call it,” Zoey said with laughter in her voice. “Last I saw you, you were sprawled on the floor with a hot blonde on top of you. I guess I could have told her that.”

  “Very funny.” Emmett carefully blotted out the image of Sydney on top of her along with the sensation of Syd’s fingers on her face. And their legs entwined…and…not a good idea. At all. “How about not saying anything at all.”

  “She knocked you flat on your ass.”

  “I’m aware,” Emmett said as she headed down the hall toward the auditorium.

  “Any idea who they are?”

  Emmett shook her head. “Nope.”

  Not entirely true, but she didn’t know anything about Sydney, really. What she thought she’d known about her once hadn’t been enough to avoid the pain she hadn’t seen coming.

  * * *

  “You okay?” Jerry asked as they rushed through the unfamiliar halls.

  “Yes.” Syd’s knee twinged with every step, but that was the least of her worries.

  “Great entrance,” Dani said dryly.

  “Hopefully we won’t run into them again right away,” Jerry said.

  Dani snorted but Syd couldn’t find any humor in the situation.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to,” Syd said. “They’re surgical residents, after all.”

  “And she knows you,” Dani said.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Syd said, careful not to let her uneasiness show. Emmett McCabe. Here. She’d thought Emmett was headed for University Hospital across town. The last time they’d talked—well, they hadn’t talked. They never did much talking about anything except surgery when they managed a few free hours at the same time. A few hours those few times. And then she’d been so thrown, so caught up in too many decisions, too many crises, to explain anything. Her world had spun out of control, and Emmett had seemed like part of a different lifetime. And she still was. Emmett was a stranger now—that’s what Syd needed to remember.

  “Well, she knows your name.” Dani managed to nudge her shoulder as they sprinted. “What’s that all about?”

  “We met a long time ago, for about…five minutes.” Not exactly true, but in the greater scheme of things, it might as well have been five minutes. Thinking of a few encounters as just a few minutes made it easier to keep things in perspective. Not even weeks, really, but a few nights over the span of a few weeks before her life had ta
ken an abrupt turn in the road. Since then she’d been down more than a few roads she’d never expected to travel.

  “She’s hot,” Dani remarked.

  Syd shot her a look. Not that she could argue about the obvious. There were plenty of dark-haired, blue-eyed, bold-looking women in the world, but Emmett’s personality matched her looks, and together they created a force that was hard to ignore. Effortlessly sexy and naturally charming was a tough combination to forget. But Syd had managed.

  She’d never expected to see Emmett again, and thinking about her just reminded her of how much she’d lost. She’d very successfully relegated the brief interlude with Emmett McCabe to the list of other events in her past life that no longer mattered, and she’d just have to do the same thing again. She had more than enough to worry about just getting through the upcoming year.

  “Let’s forget it, okay? We’ve got more important things to think about.” Syd stopped in front of the closed door with the plaque on the wall beside it announcing they had reached the Strom Auditorium.

  The double doors were closed, but the murmur of voices coming from the other side was audible. She felt a little bit like a gladiator about to enter the Colosseum and tried not to think about the lions waiting on the other side. Silently, the three of them closed ranks. Jerry’s shoulder touched her right, and Dani’s pressed against her left. There’d be others from their program inside, trying to carve out a place in an unknown world just like them. But they were the seniors, the leaders, and they needed to set an example. They might be in a new program, but they were still responsible for their junior residents, and they couldn’t leave their people adrift.

  “Remember we’re as good as anyone in that room,” Syd said quietly. “No matter what happens, we need to have each other’s backs.”

  “Right,” Jerry murmured.

  “Damn straight,” Dani said.

  Syd pushed the doors open, and they stepped through together.

  Chapter Four

  Strom Auditorium

  PMC Hospital

  Taking a deep breath, Syd pushed open the double doors and quickly stepped through into the auditorium. Just as quickly, she stopped to get her bearings. Like so much of what had happened in the last twenty-four hours, the surprises just kept coming. She couldn’t prepare for the unknown, and being unprepared left her feeling vulnerable and out of control. Two things she hated and worked every day of her life to avoid. But she was a surgeon, and surgeons had to assess quickly, even in the midst of chaos. She took everything in with one quick scan.

  She hadn’t expected the room to be so big. She’d been in Off-Broadway theaters smaller than this place. Two tiers of seats flanked a wide center aisle leading down to the stage. The screen at the rear could stand in for an IMAX showing. A podium with the usual array of microphones and electronics occupied one front corner. Franklin hadn’t had anything quite so grand, and bitterness welled in the back of her throat. PMC was bigger, brighter, and richer than Franklin. That was all. Shiny and showy didn’t equal better medicine.

  She hadn’t expected so many people, either. At a fast glance she guessed the place would seat several hundred, and at least half the seats were occupied. She’d pictured the twelve of them from Franklin meeting with the program director in a conference room somewhere, maybe even going unnoticed for a day, like they had as interns. No one actually acknowledged an intern’s presence for weeks sometimes. First years were transitory—interchangeable and easily replaceable. Well, so much for slipping seamlessly into the system. This looked far more formal and, she hated to admit, intimidating.

  Beside her, Jerry grunted. “Time to swim in the deep end.”

  Dani muttered, “Looks like it’s showtime. And we’re the show.”

  “Yes, well,” Syd murmured, “we all know how to swim.” She pointed to a clutch of Franklin residents congregated in several rows about halfway to the front. “Come on, let’s go sit with the small fry.”

  Aware of a few heads turning as they trooped down the aisle, Syd kept her gaze straight ahead. None of them were strangers to being evaluated. They’d all had their share of interviews, assessments, tests, and trials. This was just another one. Okay, maybe one that was a lot more important than many of the others they’d endured, but they had endured. And they would again. Several of their interns and junior residents looked up as they moved into an open row behind them, clear relief etched in their expressions.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” one reedy second year guy in nerdy glasses stage-whispered.

  “Not anything more than you do.” Syd leaned forward to give his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll find out together. Just hang in there.”

  He squirmed in his seat but nodded, his shoulders lifting slightly as if the presence of the older residents had given him courage.

  At exactly 6:45, a dark-haired woman in maroon scrubs and a white lab coat strode onto the stage. Her lab coat was clean but wrinkled, as if she actually wore it to work in. It didn’t hang on the back of a door to be pulled on by some administrator for show. But she was no administrator, and a bit of Syd’s uneasiness drained away. Syd knew her. Quinn Maguire, the trauma chief and director of the surgical residency training program. Syd had taken Maguire’s webinar on emergency management of airway problems, and she’d heard her speak at grand rounds at University Hospital when she’d been there. Maguire had an international reputation, and despite Syd’s anxiety about being here, she was excited to be able to train with her. She wanted a career in peds surgery, and handling pediatric trauma was a big part of taking care of children. In major trauma centers, the pediatric and trauma surgeons often worked together. She wanted to get as much trauma experience as she could in preparation for her peds fellowship. If she somehow managed to secure one after all of this.

  Emmett. Emmett had been responding to a trauma alert when Syd had knocked her over. Even as a medical student, Emmett had said she wanted to do trauma, and it looked like she hadn’t changed her mind. They might end up sharing cases. They might end up— No, she was getting way ahead of herself. She had no idea what she’d be doing here, and until she did, imagining anything, worrying about anything…hoping for anything, was an exercise in disappointment. She needed to remember what she’d learned the hard way—deal with the moment, in the moment, and don’t get caught in a web of hope and dreams that could be swept away with no warning.

  Maguire walked to the front of the stage, ignoring the podium and the microphone.

  “Good morning,” she said without apparently raising her voice.

  All the same, the room instantly stilled. She was a striking-looking woman—jet black hair, athletic build, strong, commanding features. She moved confidently, everything about her powerful and assured. She reminded Syd a little bit of Emmett, another frivolous thought she had no intention of dwelling on.

  “Thank you all for making room in your busy schedules,” Maguire said. “This announcement affects everyone in the department of surgery, and I wanted everyone to get the information at the same time so we can minimize rumors and baseless speculation. Not that any of you are prone to gossip or conjecture.” Maguire waited for the laughter to subside, a faint smile adding to her piratical good looks.

  “She’s hot,” Dani muttered.

  “Shut up,” Syd whispered. “You think everyone is hot.”

  “Not everyone,” Dani said. “I don’t think Jerry’s hot.”

  “I’m wounded,” Jerry grumbled.

  “Stow it, you two,” Syd said, grateful as always that she had the two of them to remind her of who they were. Of all they’d been through and how strong they were, together and apart.

  Maguire looked over the audience that had neatly partitioned itself into attendings on one side and residents on the other, with the Franklin Twelve, as Syd was coming to think of her cadre, grouped behind the PMC residents.

  “Franklin Medical Center,” Maguire said, “is one of the nearly one hundred surgical training programs in
the country forced to close its resident training program due to the widespread decrease in federal funding for advanced medical and other educational training.”

  A low murmur spread through the room, and Syd steeled herself.

  “I want to stress this had nothing to do with the program’s accreditation or the standing of its residents.”

  Several PMC residents sitting a few rows ahead of Syd and the others turned and stared. What had been curious expressions at first had grown hostile and suspicious. Syd kept her eyes on Maguire.

  “The announcement of the cuts was precipitous and unprecedented, leaving the affected programs little time or avenue to secure alternate funding. Fortunately, the American Board of Surgery and the National Board of Medical Examiners held emergency meetings just last week to approve the expansion of select training programs. We are one of those programs.”

  The room was so still Syd was sure her pounding heartbeat must be audible ten rows away. Maguire might as well have been handing out daily OR assignments.

  “We will be adding twelve new residents to our program, three in each year, one through four, commencing immediately.”

  The quiet shattered and a roar erupted as people began shouting questions. Maguire settled her hands into her lab coat pockets, looking as relaxed as if a hundred people weren’t shouting a hundred different questions at her.

  The PMC residents sounded like a cageful of raging wolves.

  Are you fucking kidding me?

  We have to share our cases with twelve more residents?

  What about the call schedule?

  How do we even know they’re even good enough—

  “Yeah,” a woman’s voice cut through the din, “after all, that’s a community-based program. Don’t tell me they’re anywhere near as good as we are.”

  Dani shot up in her seat, and Syd grabbed her arm. “Not a word.”

  “Fuck that,” Dani said.

  “It’s not worth it.”

  “It’s worth it if it makes me feel better,” Dani said.