Page 386 of The Doctors Will See You Now

“Yeah?”

I didn’t even have my jacket off of my shoulders when she followed me inside.

“I was just about to page you. I know you’ve got surgery scheduled for this afternoon already, but we’ve got an emergency downstairs. Blunt force trauma, and the scans are showing a bleed.”

“Where’s Dr. Johnson?” I asked of the only other neurosurgeon on the floor today.

“In OR two.”

“I thought he was supposed to be done at noon?” I half asked, half stated. It’d taken me a few egotistical years in the field before I realized how much nurses really ran the fucking show. I might be trained in precision, but Carol was the one who dealt in details. I’d never be able to run this department without someone like her helping me keep track of shit.

“The damage was a little more extensive than he was expecting, but vitals are still strong. He doesn’t see any reason that the extra two hours under should be a problem.”

“All right,” I accepted, closing my eyes as I thought through my other options. Dr. Forrest was on call, but knowing the kind of lunchtime madhouse it was in Midtown at this hour, having just been out there myself, I didn’t think that was a good option.

Carol waited patiently for me to figure out what to do. In real time, it’d only been a few seconds of stewing, but I always felt too slow. These decisions were life-and-death, urgent milestones of a patient’s life. To me, or Carol, it was an everyday nuance. I worked hard to keep myself firmly in the patient’s point of view.

“Okay. Push back my two o’clock to four, and have Dr. Forrest come in and catch up on all the case details. I’ll take the emergency downstairs, and if I don’t make it out in time, Forrest can take the four o’clock with Sarah Clark.”

Carol didn’t even chirp, turning quickly on her heel and exiting my office to execute the order. Unfortunately, as her presence disappeared, the obviousness with which I had a camera pointed right fucking at me grew. Apparently, now that I wasn’t fighting the good fight to get back in Charlotte’s good graces, the millions of future viewers seemed a little less invisible.

Great.

I tried my best to ignore it as I rounded my desk and shucked my coat, tossing it on the hook and pulling all of my personal items out of my pocket to lock in the drawer of my desk. I moved as quickly as I could out the door and down to the locker room to change into my scrubs.

When I came out the door from changing, Jorge was there. In fact, I nearly ran right into the motherfucker.

Goddamn, this was going to take some getting used to.

“You’re going to have to back off in the OR, okay?” I told him as he followed me with nearly zero personal space. I could only imagine the camera five inches from my face as I put my hands directly in someone’s fucking brain.

Jorge didn’t speak—I was becoming more and more convinced it wasn’t allowed—but he did nod. At least, I thought he did. Even the motion of his head was underexaggerated.

Oh, well. If he didn’t comply, I’d have him thrown the fuck out, contract or not.

Breaking into a jog, I turned the corner to the nurse’s station on my floor to find Carol holding out the file I needed like a quarterback holding a football for his running back.

The image made me smile, but it also formed a weird pit in my stomach.

Everything about football did these days. I’d told Charlotte that I didn’t have time for sports, and mostly, that was true. But there was another reason I didn’t immerse myself in all things athletic, and it wasn’t nearly as easy to explain.

Winnie was married now, to Wes Lancaster, the owner of the New York Mavericks, and even more than that, my daughter called him Dad.

Naturally, at first, I was jealous of the way he was with her. He coached and supported her foray into football, and I sat on the sidelines.

Luckily, that didn’t last long. No, I realized pretty swiftly that I’d spent my daughter’s entire young life being a jackass with nothing more than money and a few sporadic calls to offer, and Wes had come along when she’d needed someone. He’d given her the structure and love of a father when I hadn’t, and I was grateful.

It was, perhaps, the first truly adult emotion I’d ever experienced.

But the twinge never went away, the swirling mist of what if and why not a power in my mind I couldn’t will away.

My life could have been different if I’d been a quicker learner. If I’d realized the things I had now earlier on. But I also couldn’t go back.

And if I had to let someone fill the voids my faults had left, Wes Lancaster had done a great job. As thanks, I tried carefully to avoid treading on the territory he’d built. Sports with Lexi could be his thing.

As I read through the patient’s stats quickly, Fred Marratta, male, fifty-two, no history of smoking or cardiac distress, and no medical red flags on either side of his family history, the parameters of this surgery were shaping up to be manageable. I’d still have to take a good look at the scans when I got into the OR, but I didn’t foresee any glaring problems. This was a surgery I’d been through literally hundreds of times. It was never easy, but I’d learned which way the dominoes normally fell and how to counteract them when necessary.

Gerry, a black-sneaker-wearing male OR nurse from way back, had everything set up as I stepped inside after scrubbing up, and Mr. Marratta got transferred from the bed to the operating table.