The Best Medicine (2 page)

This conversation always made my skin itch. It was the one subject Hilary and I never agreed on—my dormant interest in finding a man. Just because she was happily married with two beautiful children, she couldn’t understand why I was still putting off that phase of my life, why I was still focused on career instead of family. But I simply wasn’t in a hurry. I’d seen the darker side of marriage. I knew the failure rate. I’d lived it with my own parents. My parents . . .

“Wait a minute!” I gasped as my subconscious pushed forward a thought. I clunked my plate down on the table and looked at Gabby. “Did you say
they
will meet me at the restaurant? They, as in
both
my parents?”

That couldn’t be right. It must be just my mother. Just like we’d planned.

Gabby nodded slowly, wary at my change in demeanor.

“What did she say, precisely?” I asked, resisting the urge to grab her by the shoulders and rattle her around.

Gabby’s brow furrowed. “She said, ‘
Diga a Evelyn estava tarde estávamos—
’”

“No! No, in English. Please.” Seriously?

Gabby cast her blue eyes toward the ceiling as if I was the one being inconvenient.

“Oh, fine. Your mother said, ‘Tell Evelyn we’ll meet her at the restaurant because her father got delayed in surgery.’ Why is that such a big deal?”

It
was
a big deal, but of course they wouldn’t understand the magnitude of just how big a deal this was. It wasn’t something I often talked about.

“My parents don’t get along,” I said. “Actually, that’s an understatement. Cats and dogs don’t get along. What my parents have is like mixing bleach with ammonia, then adding Coke and a Mentos. It’s toxic and messy for anyone within a two-mile radius.”

My parents were both cardiothoracic surgeons. Busy, important cardiothoracic surgeons, a point which I had been reminded of repeatedly throughout my youth as they shuffled me back and forth between the two of them. They’d been divorced for ages and the three of us hadn’t shared a meal together since my matriculation into medical school. And
that
dinner had ended abruptly with my mother dumping gazpacho on my father’s linen pants and stomping from the restaurant before the entrée was served. She’d left dents in the sidewalk.

“Didn’t they tell you they were both coming?” Hilary asked. She’d heard a handful of stories about my parents’ diabolically perverse competition with each other, but not all of them. But she knew I thought part of the reason they both practiced in Ann Arbor was to steal patients from one another.

“No, they didn’t tell me.” My mind flipped through a short list of possible reasons they’d be coming together. Maybe my father had been named surgeon general. Maybe my mother had invented another revolutionary new surgical technique. Or maybe one of them had been exposed to a virulent strain of monkey pox and had only days to live. We were meeting at a pretty nice restaurant, so I hoped it wasn’t that. But something had prompted this surprise reunion. Not only were they both coming, but they were apparently riding together? Granted, Ann Arbor was a couple of hours’ drive from Bell Harbor, but even so, one of them must be bound and gagged in the trunk by now.

This was all very curious.

“Dr. Rhoades.” One of our nurses stuck her head in through the lounge doorway. “Dr. McKnight from the emergency department is on the phone. He says he’s got a facial laceration consult. You’re on call tonight, right?”

“You’re on call tonight?” Hilary asked. “Why didn’t you trade with someone since it’s your birthday? I could’ve done it if you’d asked ahead of time.” Her tone was a combination of surprise and condemnation. I’d obviously reinforced her belief I was deliberately keeping busy with work to avoid social obligations. But really, I just wanted the extra money. Every penny I made was being tucked away for my future house. I had my heart set on a place right on the shoreline, and those did not come cheap.

“I like taking call. And besides, everyone else has kids to go home to.” I turned to the nurse. “Please tell him I’ll be right there.” I could deal with this patient and still make it to dinner on time. I just wouldn’t be able to run home to my apartment and change first.

I raised my hand and waved to the remaining birthday crowd. It had thinned, and I realized my other partners had already returned to work.

“Thanks, everyone, for the wonderful birthday party. Sorry to carb-load and dash, but duty calls.”

A few voices called out another round of birthday wishes as Hilary and Gabby followed me into the waiting room. I turned back toward them before leaving the office.

“And a big, fat thanks to you two for spilling the beans about my birthday.” I shook my finger at them, but once again, Hilary was unimpressed by my impotent frustration, and I was secretly glad. I had to admit, I felt a little warm and fuzzy down deep inside, knowing the group had gone to this trouble on my behalf. Sure, maybe they just wanted cake, but they
had
all clapped when I blew out the candles.

“Não há problema.”
Gabby smiled. “By the way—”

Hilary interrupted her sister. “I know you secretly wanted us to make a fuss.”

I laughed out loud at her misplaced certainty. “No, I really didn’t. But I appreciate the gesture.”

“Someone needs to teach you how to have fun, Evie. Live a little.” Her smile was oversized for the occasion.

Gabby reached over and squeezed my arm. “I could send my friend Axel over to your apartment later for a
foda pena
. He’s lots of fun.”

“What’s a
foda pena
?”

“It’s a pity fu—”

“Shh!” I hissed and made a chopping motion across my throat.

Delle, the receptionist, had deftly and strategically positioned herself behind them to listen to our conversation. Honestly, the woman weighed more than a linebacker, but she could sneak up and eavesdrop like a professional assassin. She wasn’t brigade leader of the birthday ninjas by accident.

I made my way from the plastic surgery center office down two flights of stairs and several hallways before arriving at the emergency department. Everyone I encountered along the way greeted me with a broad smile and even a few chuckles. Either news of my birthday had spread or I still wasn’t accustomed to how friendly the locals were.

The Bell Harbor ED was a busy place, but not nearly as chaotic as where I’d trained in Chicago. Emergencies around here tended to be of the beach resort variety, and the whole department had a polite atmosphere. Not that there weren’t car accidents and heart attacks and dramatic things of that sort, but nobody around here ever got stabbed or shot. There weren’t gang signs spray-painted on the side of the ambulance bay, and I hadn’t seen a strung-out hooker in months.

I pushed open the metal doors. A nurse in green scrubs seemed to skip a step at my entrance, then she too smiled wide. Her dark, wavy hair was twisted up in a bun, and I was nearly certain her name was Lecia, but since I wasn’t positive, I just smiled back. Nurses really hate it when you call them by the wrong name. I learned that the hard way in medical school.

“Hi, Dr. Rhoades. You’re fancy today. Are you here for the face lac?”

“Fancy?”

She pointed at my head.

Oh!

No.

Really?

I reached up, and yep, there it was. The tiara. I yanked it from my head, ripping out hair along with it. How could I have forgotten the flippin’ tiara? No wonder everyone kept grinning at me.

“Sorry. It’s my birthday,” I mumbled and tossed it into the nearby trash can. I brushed my hair back from my face, feeling heat steal over my cheeks. I bet I was turning splotchy too. Oh, the joys of being fair skinned. “And yes, I’m here for the face lac. What’s the story?”

She led me toward a curtained area. “Twenty-seven-year-old Caucasian male versus a fifth of whiskey and a boat dock.”

“What?”

“He ran into a boat dock while drunk driving a Jet Ski. Broke the fall with his face. But according to his story, he did not spill any of his drink.”

Her brows lifted as she nodded, clearly impressed by the order of his priorities. She pulled his chart from the rack and handed it to me, adding, “But he’s pretty, and he doesn’t want a scar.”

She shoved the curtain to the side while I looked over his stats.

Tyler Connelly. Twenty-seven. Good vital signs. No employer listed. I stepped closer to get a better look.

He was tall and broad. I could tell that much, even as he lay on the stretcher. His eyes were closed, and his hair was messy with the sort of blond highlights that came from spending hours in the sun. That explained the tan too, which covered all that I could see except for his face—which had a slightly ashen pallor and showed signs of bruising on one side. A white section of gauze was taped along his jawline, from under his chin halfway back toward his left ear.

I tucked the chart under my arm. “Mr. Connelly, I’m Dr. Rhoades.”

A soft snore came from the bed.

I looked at the nurse, who was fussing with a blood pressure cuff.

“Well, you’ve obviously managed his pain well enough,” I said drily.

She chuckled. “We haven’t given him anything. Whiskey, remember? He was half-anesthetized when he got here.”

“On a Tuesday afternoon?”

It wasn’t unusual for emergency department clientele to be drunk, but this patient didn’t look like your average derelict. He was muscular and well fed, and even with the pale hue and gauze stuck to his jaw, that was one aesthetically pleasing face. Rugged model material. Not that I was affected by that sort of thing. But damn, this was a good-looking man.

I moved right up next to the bed and raised my voice. “Mr. Connelly, wake up.”

He twitched and opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and a little glassy, but even so, they were still the prettiest, lightest blue I’d ever seen in my life.

I glanced at his chart once more.

Twenty-seven.

Unemployed.

Intoxicated.

Damn.

And damn again.

He looked at me and blinked—slow—as if his brain was downloading the instructions on how to do that. Then a lazy smile lifted one corner of his mouth.

“Wow,” he said on a sigh as he closed his eyes again. “Sexiest nurses in this place.”

The real nurse chuckled again, then leaned in close to his ear and shouted, “Hey! Sleeping Beauty! Wake up. This is the doctor. And she’s going to put stitches in your face, so you might want to show a little respect.”

Oh, I liked her! Whatever her name was.

His eyes popped open at her words, and he blinked faster. I could see his gaze slowly coming into focus. He looked me over, as if taking in a mental inventory of all my various parts.

“You’re the doctor?”

I got that reaction a lot. The price of being a short, curvy redhead in the land of tall, lab-coated men and their biggie-sized egos. But if my mother had taught me anything, it was how to never let anyone make me feel like less than I was. I wasn’t about to be reduced by an unemployed twenty-seven-year-old who had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than get drunk and play with his man toys. I crossed my arms and lifted my chin, making me at least half an inch taller.

“Yes, Mr. Connelly. I’m Dr. Evelyn Rhoades, a board-certified plastic surgeon. I hear you had an accident today, so I’m going to take that bandage off your face and take a look. Got it?”

I set the chart down and moved over to the other side of the bed.

“Sure. Yeah. Of course.” His small nod ended in a grimace, maybe due to pain caused by his injuries, or more than likely, the onset of his inevitable hangover. The aroma of alcohol permeated the air around him. Not the stale, sour stench that usually accom
panied homeless alcoholics. This was more of a sweet, cloying smell, like bubbly pink champagne left out after a party. Mixed with cocoa butter. Apparently my booze-swizzling patient was not so irresponsible as to forgo sunscreen.

“Are you in any discomfort, Mr. Connelly?” I asked.

“I’m fine.” His glance told me he had more to say but that whatever it was had nothing to do with his medical condition and everything to do with his impression of me. He seemed intrigued but a little suspicious.

“Dr. McKnight is treating his arm and shoulder,” the nurse said. “We’re waiting on some X-rays, but he doesn’t appear to have any fractures or signs of concussion.”

I pulled on purple latex gloves. “It sounds like you could have been hurt much worse, Mr. Connelly. Statistically speaking, you were lucky.”

His ridiculously silver-blue eyes met mine. “Yeah, I’m a lucky guy.” He started to chuckle but seemed to reconsider and coughed instead. His hands moved guardedly to his chest, indicating some level of pain. Even though he was covered by a blue-speckled hospital gown, I noticed all kinds of muscles flexing and squeezing as he did that.

His, and mine.

Damn you, Gabby and your
foda pena
!

I nudged a black rolling stool closer to the stretcher with my knee while a voice in my head reminded me he was twenty-seven. And unemployed. And drunk.