Passionate Rivals

by Radclyffe

  A few more hours of anonymity suited Syd just fine. At the end of a day that now felt like several, she didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone. She only wanted to check on this last patient, and then she was done. Funny, as tired as she felt, the idea of going home to an empty house and another dinner of takeout or frozen pizza didn’t hold all that much appeal. Maybe that explained why she was still here when she didn’t strictly need to be.

  She stopped in the doorway of one of the individual rooms closest to the nurses’ station, where the most acutely injured patients who needed even closer monitoring than all the others in the intensive care unit were placed. The patient was completely still, intubated and heavily sedated. A sheet covered his entire body, except for his face, which was partially obscured by the tape holding on the breathing tube and the white roll of gauze encircling his skull. The intracranial pressure wave on the monitor just to the right of the hospital bed cycled up and down in a steady rhythmic curve, each peak and valley following the beat of his heart and the subsequent pulse of the blood that flowed through his brain. ICP still normal.

  Syd smiled to herself. The procedure she’d done in the emergency room had possibly saved this man’s life—he wasn’t out of the woods yet, and he had multiple injuries, any number of which could cause a lethal complication. But she had definitely saved his brain, and what was a beating heart without a mind and spirit to go with it? A surge of satisfaction pushed back the fatigue and stress of the long day. This moment, this rush of pleasure, was worth the price.

  “He’s looking good,” a deep voice said from behind her.

  Syd started slightly, registered who it was, and turned. “Hi, Dr. Hassan.”

  “Dr. Stevens.” He smiled, his broad handsome face intelligent and intense. “That was a nice job this morning.”

  “Thank you.” She glanced over her shoulder at the patient again. “I’m just glad it worked.”

  “Mmm,” he murmured, his eyes traveling over the monitors and the patient as they spoke. “I just looked at his repeat head CT.”

  “Yes,” Syd said, “me too. I didn’t see any problems. I thought…”

  “What?”

  “I thought the edema around the hematoma looked improved.”

  He nodded. “Yes, so did I. That’s probably from the drug regimen we’ve got him on along with the hyperventilation.”

  “I was wondering if we should increase the steroid dose. We’ve still got a little wiggle room.”

  “I was thinking the same thing myself,” he said, “but since there’s a little improvement, let’s hold off on that. Keep it in reserve in case we need it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anything else?” Kos asked.

  “The ortho guys want to fix that open fracture in his right tibia as soon as they can.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  Syd considered how to answer. Every question was a test of her judgment and her knowledge, and she was on totally new ground with every single attending in the hospital. Well, no point in waiting. She might as well let everyone know who she was. “I told them I’d check with you, but I didn’t think he’d be ready for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “Good call.” He leaned against the doorway and folded his arms. “So you’ve got one more year.”

  Syd’s chest tightened. “Yes.”

  “What are your plans after that?”

  “I’m thinking about a peds fellowship,” Syd said.

  “Good field,” he said mildly.

  “Yes.” She’d always been set on peds. Why had she just said she was thinking about it instead of planning on it? Tired, that was all.

  “You know,” he said conversationally, “the thing about neuro is that everybody’s got a head and a brain. Even kids.”

  “Um, yes.” She laughed and for some weird reason, she wasn’t tired any longer. “I guess that’s true.”

  “Yup.” He straightened, took one more look at the patient, and said, “Well, I’ve got to finish making rounds. Are you on call tonight?”

  “Oh. No.”

  Looking surprised, he said, “You’re here late, then.”

  “Not really. I just wanted to check on some of the patients before I went home.”

  He nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Well, good night, Dr. Stevens.”

  “Good night, Dr. Hassan.”

  She noticed he didn’t write a note when he left, so she stopped by the station and added a post-op note to the chart. Now she could go home.

  On her way to the locker room, she ran into Dani coming out of the elevator.

  “Hey,” Syd said. “You headed home?”

  Dani shook her head. “No, I’m waiting to do an appy.”

  “Why?” Syd frowned. “Haven’t you done about a million of them?”

  “This one’s on a four-year-old. And, you know…new guy.”

  “Wait, let me guess. Fitzpatrick is doing it, and you’re bumping some lowly second year so you can operate with the peds chief?”

  “Yeah,” Dani said with a grin. “Fitzpatrick knows the family, and if she’s gonna be doing it, so am I.”

  “Butt kisser.”

  “Damn right. You want to grab a coffee and hang around for a while?”

  “Sure,” Syd said, “might as well. I wasn’t going to do anything at home anyhow and I’m starving.”

  “Let’s hit the cafeteria, then.”

  Syd didn’t mind hospital food. Most places actually tried to offer nutritious choices, and whatever was on the menu usually beat what she would have gotten from a drive-through. She ordered some vegetable lasagna and salad that looked pretty decent. Dani was a burger woman.

  When they settled at a table in the mostly empty cafeteria, Dani asked, “So, what do you think about the situation?”

  “I’m sorta trying not to,” Syd said wearily. “Too many things I can’t control. Today went okay, all things considered.” She paused, catching the glint in Dani’s eye. Surprise and a little envy stole through her. “You’re having fun, aren’t you?”

  “Sort of.” Dani attacked her burger as if she hadn’t seen food for a week. Somehow she managed to put away more food than Syd and Jerry combined, and never seemed to gain a pound. Her metabolism always ran on overdrive, kind of like her energy level. She always burned hot. “There’s a different vibe here, don’t you think? Something in the air.”

  “Things are a bit more charged around here.” Syd pictured Emmett for some reason, her attitude and drive. Emmett projected more than confidence. She carried herself like a gladiator about to enter the arena.

  Dani grinned. “Yeah. It’s a rush.”

  “So how is your service coming together?” Syd changed the subject along with her unruly images of Emmett McCabe.

  Dani rolled her eyes. “They’re smart—I have to give them that. But I wouldn’t want to date any of them.”

  Syd laughed, and she hadn’t thought anything could make her laugh through her bone-deep weariness. Oh, she’d been tired before, and she hadn’t even worked a full twenty-four hours. After all this time, she could easily go thirty-six without starting to flag. But the day had brought up things she thought she’d put away a long time ago. Somehow, Dani still made her laugh. “You’re already thinking about that?”

  “Not really,” Dani said. “Okay, maybe a little. You know how it is—you meet people and you know right away they might be somebody you wouldn’t mind working with, but you wouldn’t want to have a drink with them.”

  “I know what you mean.” Syd’s mind went instantly to Emmett. Again. She’d have a drink with Emmett. Actually, she’d had a drink with Emmett after knowing her only a few hours. She’d wanted to keep talking to her, she’d wanted to keep feeling the thrum of connection, she’d wanted to hold on to the excitement of discovery that had been almost instantaneous. The moment she’d met Emmett, she’d felt the way she always imagined she could feel with someone.

  “Who knows,” Syd said as casually as
she could. “Maybe you’ll change your mind when you get to know them better.”

  Dani snorted. “That is highly doubtful.”

  Dani’s beeper sounded and she checked her message. Grabbing the last bit of burger, she crammed it in her mouth and stood up, taking her tray with her. “OR’s ready, gotta go. See you later.”

  Syd waved. “Have fun.”

  Having no doubt Dani would have fun, Syd bussed her tray and headed back up to the locker room for the second time. She took the stairs instead of bothering to wait for the elevator, and as she started up, she automatically stepped to the right at the sound of footsteps rapidly descending. Emmett appeared on the landing ahead.

  “Hey,” Emmett said, stopping a few stairs above her. “I thought you went home an hour ago.”

  “Oh. No, I…what’s going on?”

  “Not exactly sure,” Emmett said. “I just got a text from the chief to meet her in the emergency room.”

  “Do you want a hand?” Syd asked impulsively.

  “You’re not on call,” Emmett said.

  “I don’t have anything else to do.”

  Emmett tilted her head, studied Syd for a second, and grinned. “Sure, why not?”

  Chapter Twelve

  “I didn’t get a trauma alert,” Syd said as she turned and followed Emmett back down the stairs. She still had her trauma beeper turned on, even though she wasn’t technically on call. She was still there, after all, and a trauma case would give her an excuse to stay. The hospital was a world she knew, and one where she knew herself. PMC might have a slightly different geography than Franklin, but she recognized the culture and soon she’d know the terrain.

  “There wasn’t one.” Emmett pushed opened the stairwell door and held it as Syd went through. “Maguire called me direct and asked me to meet her.”

  “So you’re her guy, right?” Attendings didn’t usually call residents except to give them an order or chew them out. A direct request to catch a case meant Maguire thought Emmett was the strongest resident available. And Emmett wasn’t even chief resident yet. Yet. But that sure looked inevitable. Not that she was surprised. What surprised her was that Maguire had even taken the time to talk to her that morning at all or even entertain the possibility of anyone but Emmett being the chief resident next year. Right this minute, Syd didn’t care. Maybe she would if she and the rest of the ex-Franklins survived in the brave new world.

  She snorted.

  “What?” Emmett shot her a look as they trotted side by side.

  Hall traffic picked up as they got closer to the ER and trauma admitting with residents rushing past, transport moving patients in wheelchairs and gurneys, and the occasional visitor looking anxious and uncertain. Night and day weren’t that much different once you left the patient floors. Oh, sure, there were peak hours for ER cases—first thing in the morning after people waited all night hoping to get better only to discover they felt worse, fender benders and more serious crashes during rush hour, and the inevitable weather-related accidents whenever it rained or snowed or got icy. But no matter the hour, major trauma centers were busy around the clock.

  Syd said, “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Maguire doesn’t have a guy,” Emmett said.

  “And I guess that’s why she called you personally,” Syd said mildly.

  “She probably figured I’d be here.”

  “Why are you? You’re not on call, are you?”

  “No.” Emmett hit the button for the ER entrance. “But you’re not either, and you’re here.”

  “Yeah, but I’m the new guy. Not the guy.”

  Emmett laughed. “Sure, and guy or no guy, six months from now you’ll still be here, waiting for something to happen. Won’t you?”

  Syd had to laugh too. “Maybe. It’s a lot more fun sitting around here than anywhere else.”

  “Yeah,” Emmett said with a sigh. “Funny about that, isn’t it?”

  Syd tried to pull back. Kidding around with Emmett was too easy, so easy she did it without thinking. And she didn’t like doing things she hadn’t thought out and planned ahead for. She’d done that way too much in the past, and all it had gotten her was heartache. Except once—but then, the hurt from that had never gone away either. “I guess it’s an occupational hazard.”

  “For most,” Emmett said as if she was turning the idea round in her mind. Almost as if she might regret not having much else in her life except work.

  Syd understood. The same wondering whispers cropped up in the back of her mind every now and then too. Was the road she was on really going to be enough for a lifetime? She didn’t want to think about that either. Definitely time to get back on nice safe neutral ground. “Besides, I wasn’t in any hurry to ride the subway tonight, and Dani’s doing a case.”

  Emmett perked up, that sharky glint that was so damn hot when it wasn’t annoying racing into her eyes. “Peds has a case?”

  “An appy.”

  “And Dani’s doing it?” Emmett smirked. “Oh, yeah, an appendectomy’s a senior resident’s case, all right.”

  Syd kept a straight face. “Hey, nothing wrong with working hard.”

  Emmett narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me Fitzpatrick is staffing it?”

  “I—” She laughed. “Okay, yes.”

  “Nothing wrong with a little kiss-ass either.”

  Despite having said the same thing to Dani not thirty minutes before, Syd protested. “Like you never—”

  “Never needed to.”

  “I’m drowning in bull right now.”

  Emmett raised a brow, and damn, she looked even hotter when she did. The glint in her deep blue eyes was joined by a ridiculous dimple to the right of her mouth. That dimple had been one of the first things she’d noticed. And right on the heels of that memory came the recollection of the buzz that had followed her first sight of Emmett. Then the buzz wasn’t just a memory, and Syd mentally backpedaled. She so did not need this right now.

  “I’m not even going there,” Syd said flatly.

  Emmett gave her a look as if she could feel the change in temperature and shifted the conversation. “So, where are you living?”

  “In the Northeast,” Syd said, her breath easing as the quagmire of unwanted emotions receded. “About five minutes from Franklin.”

  Emmett whistled. “That’s going to be quite a haul down here every day.”

  “I know—we might have to do something about that.” Syd sighed. “It was great…before. At least our landlord isn’t much of a stickler for leases. We can probably give notice anytime if we ever get a chance to look for another place.”

  “I’ll keep my eye out,” Emmett said. “This time of year a lot of places open up in the neighborhood. An advantage to not being right in the city. But with a new crop of interns showing up soon, you’ll have to move fast.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.” Syd hesitated. Maybe getting Emmett involved with anything personal was a bad move. On the other hand, they were probably going to have to move. And trying to keep Emmett at a distance was hard enough when it wasn’t something harmless like this after all. “We’ll need a place big enough for the three of us.”

  Emmett treaded carefully with every word. Syd was finally talking to her, but teasing anything non-work-related out of her was tougher than finding water in the desert, and she didn’t want to go too quickly. Still, curiosity was gnawing at her. Syd had walked into her life out of nowhere and opened a chapter in her past that had never been properly closed. Questions lingered along with regrets and a good bit of being pissed off too.

  Right now, though, she was just enjoying talking to her. That instantaneous connection, the shared humor and understanding that didn’t require explanation, had been the first thing that had drawn her to Syd. That and the feeling Syd was a kindred spirit—someone who loved the challenge of surgery as much as she did, someone who wanted to excel, a competitor and a colleague all rolled into one.

  When she’d met
Syd, the future had seemed so clear. She’d been so sure she’d end up at University and Syd would be there, a year ahead of her, someone to share the good and the bad with. When the connection had gone from conversation to physical intimacy almost faster than she’d been able to absorb, she’d been sure they would share much more than just their love of surgery. Then Syd had disappeared, and Maguire had tempted her with the program at PMC, and all of a sudden, she hadn’t wanted to end up at University. She didn’t regret her decision to rank PMC first, not for a minute, but now that Syd was here, she remembered how it had been…and how it might have been. She would have sworn she’d left it all behind, forgotten about it…mostly. But now, facing Syd, she was scrambling for any little bit of what had been. She kicked herself mentally. She was probably being a fool. In fact, she most definitely was being a fool.

  “So you, ah, live with someone?” Emmett asked as casually as she could and braced herself for the reply. After all, almost five years was a long time. Syd probably had a girlfriend. Maybe even a wife. That would be good, right? Chapter closed. Over and done, finally.

  “Jerry, Dani, and me,” Syd said.

  “Residents,” Emmett said with a rush of pent-up air.

  “Yes. We all started together, and you know how that is. You have to stick together at first because you’re all just trying to stay afloat, and then you end up friends, and then…well, you know how it is.”