Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (39 page)

Four

Harlan didn’t usually go into the OR before anyone else did. Like most top surgeons, he was the last one to enter the OR, and the first one to leave. The best surgeons did only what they had to, and left all the grunt work to the nurses and orderlies. The surgeon was the top of the hospital food chain, and that accorded him certain privileges. Surgery was a delicate art, after all. Too much fidgeting in the OR was bad for a surgeon’s hands, for one thing. And the amount of prep work that had to be done before the surgeon made a single incision made for a lot of standing around, for another—which just made for more fidgeting.

But today Harlan broke his usual rule. He was the first to scrub in, the first to go into the OR, which was still empty save for the metal operating table and the sterile instrument trays that the prep crew had already laid out. He didn’t want to face Joanna at the scrub trough, didn’t want to endure yet another argument or get frozen solid with one of her cold, steely silences, either. The OR was a sacred place—one where the surgeon was king. He had absolute power within those four sterile walls, and it was the only place where he could rest assured that Joanna wouldn’t control the conversation.

Harlan knew that once Joanna learned she was assisting him instead of one of his underlings, she’d use whatever opportunity she could to throttle him for their argument that morning—and every other argument that they’d had on a near-daily basis for the past three months. Not only that, she’d throttle him for completely abandoning his new role of her devoted husband in favor of the old overworked-macho-surgeon routine.

Harlan wasn’t going to give her that opportunity. No siree.
He
had to be the one in control, not her. When Joanna walked into the OR to take inventory on the instrument trays, he’d be waiting for her. And there wouldn’t be a damn thing she could do about it.

At least for as long as the operation lasted, anyway. Harlan wasn’t prepared for what might happen once it was over.

Joanna knew that she deserved better than what she was getting from him. And Harlan knew it, too. But that didn’t mean he was ready to admit it. Especially to her. When it came to acknowledging what a callous, insensitive bastard he could be, Harlan still had a pretty big blind spot.

On the surface, Harlan often seemed like a massive, powerful bully. But in reality, he was a tiny, frightened child hidden inside a grown man’s body. Picking fights and hurtling insults were merely a defense mechanism he used to keep people from seeing who and what he really was.

Joanna had always seen right through that macho act of his—it was the main reason he’d fallen so hard for her. In return, Joanna had fallen in love with the man he truly was underneath all that thick armor. In fact, she’d helped tear that armor away, even melt it down a little.

But Harlan’s suit of armor was back on tighter than ever, and Joanna’s patience was wearing thin. Harlan feared he was losing her. Hell, he
knew
he was losing her. But instead of opening up to her even more than he had during their courtship, he just barricaded himself further and further behind a wall of anger and hostility.

It was a strategy doomed to fail, and he knew it. But when push came to shove, anger and hostility was all Dr. Harlan Wilkinson knew. It had served him in his life pretty well so far, after all. Except when it came to his wife.

His wife was in the scrub room, now. He could hear the light touch of her footsteps on the linoleum. He knew the length of her stride, had memorized the soft sound of her steps as they padded along the floor. Even from forty feet away and through a thick metal-and-tile wall, he could just barely detect the light, smooth pattern of her breathing. He knew Joanna so intimately it frightened him, sometimes. Because whenever someone knows another person so deeply, so completely—it means at some point, you have to become vulnerable.

Harlan Wilkinson didn’t like being vulnerable. Some days, he even thought he’d rather be alone than risk being vulnerable. Which was exactly why he was within a hair’s breadth of losing the one person he loved the most.

Harlan heard Joanna’s familiar stride as she crossed the scrub room, approached the OR’s swinging double doors, and came inside. She didn’t notice him at first. Her first order of business was to inventory the waiting instrument trays and prepare the first set of sponges.

Joanna was a first-rate surgical nurse, and even though she could probably do pre-op inventory in her sleep, she took the time to do it slowly and meticulously, a perfect textbook performance. Joanna hadn’t earned the title of lead surgical nurse just because she was Harlan Wilkinson’s wife. She’d earned it because she was the best surgical nurse in three states.

It was yet another reason why Harlan adored her. As someone who’d always been the best at almost everything he did, Harlan had always demanded the best for himself in all things as well. And his wife was no exception. But now that he was struggling to keep her, his best was something Harlan wasn’t sure he was prepared to give.

Joanna finished her inventory and made some notations on the OR computer terminal. She still hadn’t noticed him. Either that, or she was deliberately ignoring him.

Dana Johnson, the new nurse-anesthetist, came in and began setting up her equipment—obviously still frightened of Harlan based on his earlier outbursts. Joanna took up her position at Harlan’s left, as was customary for the surgical nurse on a routine operating procedure. Two technicians scrubbed in and stood beside Joanna to assist her with the more complicated instruments. Nobody commented on the fact that Harlan had abandoned usual operating procedure by beating them into the OR first. Nobody said a word, in fact. The air hung heavy with something that felt a lot like fear. Primal fear.

Harlan shuddered. Did everyone in this room really
fear
him? Including his wife? Was he really that much of a raging asshole these days?

Yeah. Probably.

Well, he couldn’t let himself get too worked up over that. Not right now. He had a patient to operate on first. Everything else could wait. There was only one problem.

There was no patient.

The OR staff stood at the ready. Seconds ticked by on the large industrial clock that hung on the OR wall, then minutes. But the patient still didn’t arrive. The operation was officially registered to begin at 3:45 pm; it was now 3:57, and there was still no patient.

“All right folks,” Harlan said, trying to be as congenial as possible. “Anybody know where the patient is?”

No one responded. But Joanna shifted back and forth on her feet, and one of the nursing technicians snickered.

Harlan bit back a curse. “Is there something going on here that you aren’t telling me?”

Joanna turned to face him. She stared deep into his eyes with nary a flinch. Clearly, she’d known he was the attending surgeon on duty from the moment she walked into the room, and it hadn’t fazed her one bit. She even could have taken that opportunity to continue their argument from this morning, but being the first-rate professional that Joanna was, she didn’t.

“Ahem. Har—I mean, Dr. Wilkinson, the patient isn’t here yet because you forgot to sign the surgeon’s intake form as required by North Carolina state law.”

Now Harlan cursed for real. “Fuck,” he muttered, trying hard not to be too loud about it. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He’d been so preoccupied with his marital problems that he’d forgotten to do the one thing he
never
forgot to do—sign back in as attending surgeon on duty, assuming all duties and responsibilities thereof. He’d dropped the ball before he’d even got a chance to pick up a scalpel. And now he was holding up the show.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he said, and stomped out of the OR, cursing the whole way.

Goddamn it. So much for taking control of the situation. He’d lost control before the situation had even started. And now since he’d forgotten to sign in, he’d have to leave the scrub wing, de-robe and de-mask so he could go back to the administrative office and sign in as attending surgeon on duty, then he’d have to re-scrub and re-gown before going back into the OR. The whole process was going to take at least half an hour. And meanwhile, Joanna and the rest of the surgical team would just be standing around in the OR twiddling their thumbs, wasting valuable time—which gave Joanna plenty more reason to be angry with him.

The situation had gone from bad to worse, and it was all Harlan’s fault. As usual.

He trudged back into the scrub room, where the scrub nurse was waiting for him with open arms to remove his sterile gown and mask. Harlan couldn’t help but notice that she was stifling a grin. Just like the waiting surgical team back in the OR, she seemed to enjoy the fact that he’d screwed up royally. Had she known about his gaffe the whole time? If so, why didn’t she bother to tell him before he finished scrubbing? Was she enjoying a good laugh at his expense, just like everybody else?

Yep, she sure was. It was all the petite scrub nurse could do to keep from cracking up on the spot.

Harlan dropped his sterile gown and booties into the waiting hamper and stomped out of the scrub room, swearing all the way. Now he wasn’t even trying to keep his voice down. He was shouting obscenities to whomever and whatever might be in earshot.

Things weren’t exactly going the way he planned.

He took care of the necessary paperwork, pretending to be oblivious to all the chuckles and smirks he encountered in the administrative offices. There seemed to be no shortage of people at Covington Community Hospital who enjoyed seeing Dr. Harlan Wilkinson make a public ass of himself. What exactly did that say about his reputation? Nothing good, that was for damn sure. Was he really so despised by everyone?

Yes, he was.

And the saddest part of all was, nobody despised Dr. Harlan Wilkinson more than he despised himself.

Joanna stood beside the instrument table, bored silly. Harlan had been gone for almost forty minutes. She was counting the blue porcelain tiles on the wall across from her to keep her mind occupied. Joanna knew that as the ranking member of staff in the OR as long as Harlan was gone, nobody else would dare say a word as long as she stayed silent. And that was fine by her. Because Joanna was afraid if she opened her mouth, she’d start to cry.

Her marriage to Harlan wasn’t even six months old, and it was already falling apart. She knew it, Harlan knew it—hell, practically everyone in Statesville knew it. She could hardly show her face in public anymore without being a total laughingstock. Everyone in town had thought she was crazy to marry Harlan after only knowing him a few months. She’d done it anyway. But now she wondered if maybe everyone had been right all along.

Everyone in the OR stood on pins and needles as they waited for Dr. Wilkinson to return. The patient was lying on a gurney in pre-op, groggy from pre-anesthesia drugs but still awake enough to wonder what the holdup was. Every second that ticked by was wasted time. And since this hospital billed OR time by fifteen-minute intervals, chances were good the patient’s HMO would pitch a fit when it got the bill and saw that a routine gallbladder operation took almost an hour longer than normal for no reason other than an administrative oversight.

Not only were Harlan and Joanna’s marital problems causing a lot of headaches, they were costing a lot of people a lot of money, too. Something had to give, and Joanna knew it.

But she was at a total loss as to how she might put an end to this whole mess. The hospital was short-staffed and underfunded, so there was no end in sight when it came to their grueling schedules. And Harlan wasn’t exactly the type who would go to marriage counseling. He was way too macho for that. The man had a hard enough time admitting he’d made a simple paperwork mistake, so delving deep into his personal foibles and relationship demons with a total stranger was out of the question. Harlan would probably rather jump naked off the Empire State Building than see a therapist. He didn’t even like going in for his annual physical. Doctors always made the worst patients.

Joanna knew that realistically, there was probably no salvaging her relationship with Harlan at this point. Maybe it was just better to quit while she was still ahead. Her marriage was less than a year old, which meant she could probably just get it annulled and avoid a long divorce battle. She wouldn’t seek out any of Harlan’s money or assets, either—she’d just cut her losses, turn tail, and run. Maybe start over in the big city, like her old colleague Shirley Daniels had done. Maybe—

“All right folks, I’m back.” Harlan’s voice boomed against the OR tile, jerking Joanna out of her reverie. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

He took his place beside Joanna, but he didn’t meet her eyes. Her stomach did a little flip-flop, just like it always did whenever she was in her husband’s presence. Even when they were at each other’s throats, the physical attraction between Joanna and Harlan was electric, totally undeniable. Her body was always drawn to his like a magnet, irrespective of where they were or what they were doing. It was why they’d fucked each others’ brains out in an elevator within minutes of meeting. It was why that even with as much as she hated him right now, she would like nothing more than to lie right down on the operating table, spread her legs, and have him fuck her senseless right in front of the entire OR team, patient or no patient, operation or no operation.

Yes, Joanna and Harlan had great sexual chemistry, all right. But there was a lot more to a good marriage than just sex. And these days, they didn’t even
have
sex—which basically meant they had no relationship at all. Life had a tendency to get in the way of everything else—their sex lives most of all. And they were left with pretty much zilch.