by Lexy Timms
Then, after making sure that the girl found her own room, Mel turned and walked resolutely down the hallway to the opposite side of the mansion, trying to remember landmarks along the way. She didn’t look back, didn’t dare. Everything would right itself once they had a little rest. It was a promise she made to herself that she didn’t quite believe. It was the rock on which her sanity was braced. It was a false promise, but the only promise she had.
Remarkably, she found the bedroom rather quickly. Only one false turn and once walking into a linen closet the size of an exam room at the clinic led her to his room and that amazing, immense bed. She kicked off her shoes and lay back fully clothed, with no intention of sleeping whatsoever. She’d rest a little while waiting for Brant to come home. Only that. The bed slowly sank around her, cradling her, supporting her, and she let out a gasp of pleasure. This was what luxury felt like. This was what floating on a cloud felt like.
She would’ve sworn she hadn’t slept. She was marveling at the support of the bed and suddenly her phone demanded attention. She’d slept long enough to be groggy; her mouth was dry and her whole body ached from the inside out. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was, but her phone didn’t seem to care.
“Hello?” She sounded to her own ears like dirt between gears.
“Where are you? And who are you with?”
“Mother?” Mel shook her head to clear it.
“Very funny. This is Kenneth. You remember me, right? Your boss? Head of Doctors International? Single point of blame for everything that goes wrong?”
“And martyr,” Mel added helpfully, sitting up and looking around the room, trying to figure out what time it was. Didn’t anyone have clocks anymore?
“And martyr. So how’s the girl?”
“I assume you mean Maria? She’s okay. We’re both very tired, though; it was a long trip.”
“What hotel are staying at? We got cut off earlier.”
“That’s because you hung up on me! Besides, I don’t know what difference it makes. We’re guests…a friend is letting us crash on the couch.”
“Would that be Dr. Layton? From what I understand, his couch is the size of a small country and possibly lined in gold thread.”
Wow, that was snarky even for him. “Kenneth.” Mel was coming awake now. “Where we’re staying is none of your business.”
“On the contrary, Dr. Bell, it very much is our business. Your charge is a minor who you have taken across international boundaries. She, and I might add, you, are there only because of DI, and thus we are responsible.” He mumbled something that sounded liked, “At least we don’t have to foot the bill.”
“Brant… Dr. Layton paid for our airfare,” she pointed out, annoyed to have to be woken up by Kenneth. She hadn’t meant to sleep, but this was grating on her nerves.
“True, and while we’re most grateful for his generosity, it’s this organization that signed off on the visa requirements. If it were not for the efforts of this office, the poor girl…Maria, right? Remember her? She would not have this opportunity.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Kenneth. What is it you want?” Mel flopped back against the pillows, but the magic of the bed was gone. There was no peace.
“Take it easy Mel. It’s not a big deal, but understand that taking a young girl to America to restore the beauty she sacrificed to save her poor father…it’s good publicity for us. It’s a real feel-good story.” She could almost picture him putting his hand up to stop her from speaking. “I know what you’re going to say. But hear me out. DI needs this. Your little clinic in Belize and all the other clinics can’t run without money. It doesn’t grow on trees.” He snorted. “Maybe in Dr. Layton’s backyard it does…”
Mel pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it, as if to ascertain whether the thing was working correctly and she’d actually heard what she thought she’d heard. “Kenneth, you are NOT going to use this girl like a sideshow freak. I won’t let you parade her around! I thought I made that clear earlier.”
“Mel, be reasonable. Do you know how many of the blue-haired wealthy set would sell their shriveled little souls for a chance at Layton’s scalpel? They would give their granddaughters to get his money, and the girls would line up for a chance at his bed.”
What the hell? “You fired him, Kenneth! You tried to get him thrown out of Belize!”
There was a cough, an awkward pause. “A simple misunderstanding. I hadn’t done my research on the man, I didn’t realize his…unique qualifications.”
“You mean you didn’t know he was rich.”
“Exactly.” Kenneth sounded positively gleeful as he laughed. “Do you know who his mother is?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Word is he became a plastic surgeon to try to keep her from looking old.” Kenneth apparently thought this was hilarious. “It’s a losing battle, believe me. His father, now; there’s a man I can respect. Do you know he single-handedly pulled the studio out of bankruptcy and put it in the black? That’s quite an achievement to whip a group of actors and writers into shape, believe me!”
“WHAT DO YOU WANT, KENNETH?”
“Just letting you know, I made some calls. That little girl is going to be famous! She’ll love it: attention, publicity…say, can she speak English?”
“No, Kenneth!”
“Too bad; well, you can translate for now. It might be better if you do, in case she goes off on a tangent like kids do.”
Mel closed her eyes and counted to ten. Rapidly. In English and Spanish. “She speaks better English than you do, Kenneth! I meant No, you are not going to exploit that child!”
“Exploit? I’m not exploiting anyone! I’m giving her a chance to be famous! People will come from all over to talk to her. We’re talking about talk shows and celebrities!”
“And all proceeds go to Doctors International.” Mel’s stomach clenched. She wished she’d skipped dinner altogether.
“Mel, we need the money. We have hundreds of clinics like yours. If this can save lives, then yes, you trot her out and make her sound like a precocious child. This is why we sponsored this. We need this and she needs us.”
“Kenneth, please.”
“The calls have been made, Mel. It’s already in the works.”
Mel was holding a dead phone. Kenneth had hung up. Again.
“Shit.”
How was she going to explain this to Brant? To Maria?
What the hell was she going to do?
Chapter 7
Brant didn’t expect to see the receptionist at her desk. The blonde seemed uneasy as he came through the door, quickly stabbing at a button on the phone as she leaned forward to murmur something into the speaker. It left him uneasy, especially when she avoided his eyes as she greeted him.
“Hey, Dr. Layton.” Not quite her usual exuberant welcome.
“Good evening, Lisa,” Brant greeted the receptionist with a cheery wave, meeting her reticence with normalcy though the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Something was definitely going on. He was a doctor, for bloody sake. Enough beating around the bush. “So, what’s the emergency?”
Lisa busied herself with some papers on her desk. “I’m sorry to call you in, Dr. Layton, but Dr. Mangal asked me to call you. He said it was very important.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
Mangal. Brant nodded slowly and stepped past her, knowing that they’d be in the conference room. The old fox had something in mind, that’s for sure. The question is what. He frowned and sorted through all possible transgressions. The whole thing stank of an inquisition, but the only thing he could come up with was stealing Mangal’s parking space one time when he was just running in and out to grab something he’d forgotten in his office. Hardly a firing offense.
Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe it has nothing to do with me at all.
But he turned anyway, looking at Lisa’s back, and noticed the stiffness of her spine. The way she shuffled the same doc
uments, making the pile a ragged mess in her hands.
Oh, it was disciplinary all right. He hadn’t seen her this worked up since Roberts was fired. And if he was reading the situation correctly, all this tension was aimed squarely at him.
He paused, and cleared his throat. “Oh, Lisa, when I asked you earlier to send a car to the airport for me, who did you call?”
“I made the call,” a voice said from the doorway. Brant looked up into the lined face of Dr. Mangal, the senior physician of the partnership, hating that he’d gotten the drop on him again. The old man delighted in sneaking up on the other partners. Catching them out. Like a snake.
Brant pressed his lips tight. It was all he could do to keep from saying something he might regret. There was something a little too smug, a little too satisfied in the older man’s eyes. But then, Mangal was never someone Brant really liked. The man was too standoffish, his bedside manner cold. But the man had been doing reconstructive surgery for longer than Brant had lived, and was considered the best in the field. Contrary to the snide back-biting comments, Brant never worked on his mother’s vanity—there were family lines that weren’t ethically crossed. The only man in the world she trusted with her looks was standing in the doorway, towering over poor Lisa, his ancient bright eyes were fixed on Brant.
It was like having a hawk in a lab coat stare you down. It was unnerving, and no matter how long he’d been there, and no matter how quickly he’d risen in the partnership, that penetrating gaze was one he would never get used to.
“You called an Uber?” Brant asked, trying to keep it casual though his hands wanted nothing more to curl into fists. But being light, backing down, even in the face of someone as intimidating as this, wasn’t in the list of things Brant knew how to do.
“It was more discrete,” Mangal clipped. “Why don’t we discuss this in the conference room?” He smiled at Brant, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. It was the same smile that a man would use to calm a madman just before reaching for the straitjacket.
Brant straightened and mumbled “thank you” to Lisa, who’d turned deathly pale, and followed his boss down the hall to the room reserved for telling potential patients that surgery can only do so much. Time and nature always had to have a say.
Among the display of noses, breasts, asses, legs, and all kinds of anatomy, largely, though not exclusively female, a table of dark wood crouched in the middle of four overstuffed office chairs. Two of the chairs were already taken.
Henry Williams, second in seniority to John Mangal, had the chair furthest from the door. Mangal sat down beside him. On the other side, Steven Millen, the newest partner and junior to Brant, sat with a warm smile for Brant, but his attitude spoke of someone who would rather be getting a root canal than sitting in this meeting.
Brant took the last chair, the one at the foot of the table. He had a momentary image of the door behind him opening like an airlock in a bad science fiction movie, and his chair, with him in it, getting blown out into the void.
“Gentlemen,” Brant said slowly, “what’s going on? A board meeting with no disclosure after hours? What’s the emergency? Or is there one?”
“In a way there is,” Dr. Mangal began and nodded to William, his eyes glittering and hard.
William shot him a look, but took over the narrative with only a small tremor in his hands. Whatever was coming, he wasn’t exactly in full agreement. “There is a concern, Brant. We’ve been discussing it rather thoroughly. As you know, it was never the position of this partnership to…well, advertise. Dr. Mangal and I are old-fashioned in that regard. It was always considered somewhat…inappropriate for a doctor’s office to hire adverts.”
“This clinic never has needed to.” Brant glanced around the table, completely at a loss. “You have a long-established practice here. The results and clientele speak for themselves.”
“We already have the sterling reputation. There’s…” Steven interjected, and trailed off.
Mangal shot him a quelling look. Brant raised an eyebrow. Apparently, Steven wasn’t allowed to speak, or at least was actively encouraged to hold his tongue. William was Mangal’s mouthpiece, merely iterating what Mangal told him to. This was between him and the old man, and yet, Brant had no idea what exactly this was.
“Dr. Mangal,” Brant spoke directly to the old man, bypassing lackeys in favor of getting whatever dreck was coming his way out in the open. “What exactly is the ‘emergency’ I’ve been called in to address? If this is a business meeting, we’re only a week from the monthly meeting. And if there’s no emergency, I’m afraid I really to need to return to—”
“Dr. Layton.” Mangal raised a hand, as if that somehow justified talking over him. “I understand that you have your own methods and your own choices, but at no time, at no time,” Mangal emphasized his point by pressing the table repeatedly with his finger as though manually adding periods to the conversation. “can we allow you to bring a hint of…” he paused, looking for the right word.
“Impropriety,” Williams said helpfully. It was well-rehearsed. Likely discussed at length without him there.
Brant stole a glance to Steven, who refused to meet his eye. Well, if this wasn’t just…fucking dandy. “What the hell are you talking about?” Anger boiled to the surface. He’d been called out of spending time with Mel for some bullshit lame excuse? “What scandal have I apparently embroiled the practice in?” Brant said, his voice cooling by several degrees. He suddenly had an inkling of where this was going.
“You left here a few months ago for a week-long vacation,” Williams started off, ticking each point off on his fingers, “only to wind up drunk and signing up for a stint with a different practice, signing up for three weeks without any notification to any of us. Then leaving us to take over your patients for you.”
“Fine,” Mangal stated, quelling William with a look. Apparently, this wasn’t rehearsed. William seemed to be stealing all the good lines, and Mangal was starting to get tired of his lackey. Mangal cleared his throat, and stabbed at the air for emphasis of his point. “We covered for you. You’ve done excellent work for many years for us. Your work is exceptional. Patients are very pleased. Others constantly request you. However, your mistake was unprofessional.”
“I know.” What else was he going to say?
“You know?” Mangal seemed unprepared for the admittance. “Yes, well, everyone deserves a second chance. We all screw up occasionally.”
“‘Second chance’?” Brant echoed.
“You were drunk!” Mangal said, red creeping up his neck to his face. “Public intoxication, and so drunk you didn’t realize what you were doing! And you woke up in a jungle!”
“Then,” Williams said shortly, jumping in with so much eagerness that you could just about see his tail wagging, “you authorized the surgery of a foreign national, again without consulting any of us, organized a hospital stay and nursing care and surgery, all for free!”
Was this about the money?
Or was the politics making Williams forget himself. Shooting for favored son status, finally airing a jealousy that had been building for some time. “Not to mention flying said patient and an ex-pat doctor here, and setting them up in your home!” Williams finished this last tidbit in triumph.
Mangal actually looked surprised. He hadn’t known.
“Do you have any idea how that looks?” Mangal shouted, easily getting his game back, and going right back on the offensive. “You’re putting up a young, attractive bush doctor and a foreign juvenile in your house without any sort of chaperone—”
“Mel is the chaperone.”
“Mel? Who the hell is ‘Mel’?” Any pretense of William’s involvement was gone. This was between him and Mangal now, and the colder Brant became the more heated Mangal got.
“Dr. Melissa Bell, the bush doctor, as you so quaintly put it.”
Williams scoffed. “Bush doctor, my ass! Is the woman even allowed to legally practice?” This time it wasn�
�t his finger hitting the wood, it was the side of his clenched fist. “Graduated last in her class, and a year after her exams she went into residency. I assume she took the year off to ‘find herself’? I suppose Brazil was where that happened?”
Brant pressed fingertips to his forehead, feeling a knot growing right behind his eyes. “Belize.”
“Does it matter where?” Mangal’s eyes were beginning to bulge. Another minute and the old man would stroke out. Then where would they be? “It’s all the same backwater swampland! They’re still injecting cancer victims with shark piss!”
Brant couldn’t even… “What the…? Did you try to Google again?”
“That woman does not speak for or about this practice!” Mangal slapped the table.
“No, she doesn’t!” Brant snapped and stood. “Nor has she any intention to! This woman is a board-passed doctor; she’s earned her title just like the rest of us. You don’t know who she is, what she’s gone through…” He caught himself. Mel wouldn’t want what happened to her to be an excuse. He shifted gears. “The clinic is not paying for their flight, their accommodations, or the surgery. That’s all coming out of my pocket. Dr. Bell has been given clearance through DI to come here.” Case closed. Or, at least it should have been.
“She is not enough of a chaperone!” William cried over the two of them, but neither of the combatants were listening.
“Look at him,” Steven said quietly. All eyes turned to him. “Look at him.” He pointed to Brant. “He’s young, he’s richer than the president. He’s skilled. Extremely skilled. He’s a professional. Do you really think he would need to go through all this trouble just to get laid?”
“DOCTOR!” Mangal jumped to his feet as well, swaying slightly.
Brant leaned forward, palms flat on the table, staring Mangal right in the eyes. “Is this what this is all about? You think I brought them all the way here to get into her pants?”
“The question is which one,” Williams said snidely.
That was too far, even for Mangal. Both men turned. Brant wasn’t even breathing he was so pissed off. “You’re disgusting. How fucking dare you.” He glared at Williams, daring the old man to stand up so he could knock him off his feet. “You incredible bastard.”
