Kay isn’t going to like having her precious routine interrupted. I can do everything myself if someone will just get me a phone book.” His voice was low, partly because he had no intention of losing control to the point where he raised it; mostly because his throat felt as if he’d swallowed sandpaper.
That frustrated him even more.
“I also need to have the meeting I missed last night,” he muttered. “But that’s something I can’t do until you let me out of here.”
And that’s what bothered him most, he thought, and shoved his fingers through his hair.
Alex saw him wince, then heard him hiss a breath when the suddenness of his movement caught up with him and pain radiated from his shoulder. She didn’t doubt for a moment that his agitation had only increased the pain in his head. Strain dulled his eyes. Except for his bruises, the sheets now had more color than his face. She didn’t know if he was the most stoic man she’d ever encountered, or the most masochistic. She would concede that he was the most driven.
She truly didn’t care about his wheeling and dealing. Her concern was getting him well and keeping him comfortable while she was doing it.
“I realize you have obligations,” she conceded, certain he wasn’t coping with the pain anywhere near as well as he wanted her to believe. “But I don’t think you appreciate how much trauma your body has sustained. I’ll have your nurse bring you a phone book and I’ll change your pain medication to something that will take the edge off and leave your head clear. But you might as well call whoever handles your schedule and have them cancel everything for the next couple of weeks.”
She turned to avoid his scowl and headed for the door. “Oh, yes. One more thing. Your condition right now is, officially, stable. Do you want that released to the press, or do you want no comment.”
“I already gave my statement to the woman from the administrator’s office.”
“And you overstated your condition and understated the accident.”
For a moment, he said nothing. He just watched her with his brow furrowed while frustration warred with the pain that undoubtedly frustrated him, too. “I’m not going to argue with you, Doctor. Go with your call on the condition, but leave my estimate of the accident alone.”
He’d been there. She hadn’t.
He didn’t say as much, but that was the message she got as challenge slipped once more into those disturbingly blue eyes.
“Good enough,” she told him, wondering why he couldn’t have piled up his car when someone else had been on call. “Get some rest.”
She stepped into the wide hall, feeling more as if she’d escaped the room rather than merely left it. She’d dealt with demanding type-As, the chauvinism prevalent among some of her male colleagues and her son’s terrible twos. All of which, she felt, qualified her as something of an expert when it came to handling difficult men.
But a woman didn’t handle Chase Harrington. She worked around him. Still, she hadn’t lost her cool when he’d lost his patience. Or when he’d so cavalierly informed her of how she could handle his leg and his medication. And she thought she’d done a commendable job of ignoring the way his glance kept moving to her mouth as she spoke. All he’d done was make her forget to ask if he had any more questions about his condition, which was something she rarely failed to do with a patient.
Irritated with herself for letting him get to her, refusing to go back and let him do it again, she headed for her next patient intent, for the moment, on putting the man from her mind.
Her intentions were honorable. But Brent Chalmers axed them within ten seconds of her walking into his card-and-mylar-balloon-filled room. The gangly blond teenager with the shy smile had heard that Chase was there.
He’d never actually heard of Chase before. Until a few weeks ago when his throwing arm had been mangled in a thresher, the boy’s life had centered around sports, a car he was saving to buy and the little farming community of Sylo a hundred miles away. If he’d ever read the business section of a newspaper, it was only because he’d been required to write a report on it for class. He’d just overheard the nurses whispering about some rich guy who’d climbed Mt. McKinley and his ears had perked up.
Brent was usually serious and quiet, and whenever he saw Alex he worried aloud about his ability to ever use his arm. Today, though, as she examined his nicely healing wounds all he wanted to talk about was how awesome it must feel to reach the top of the world.
“Man,” he mused. “Can you imagine the shape he must be in to do something like that?”
The question was rhetorical, but she could easily have answered it. Even as she marveled at the boy’s excitement, a mental picture of a beautifully muscled male intent on conquering a mighty mountain flashed in her mind. She couldn’t begin to imagine the determination, the endurance, the sheer strength of will such a challenge required. But Chase apparently went after what he wanted, claimed it, then moved on.
The thought disturbed her, almost as much as the odd jolt she’d felt when she’d first met his eyes.
What disturbed her more was that he’d distracted her from her patient.
“Do you, Dr. Larson?” Brent asked, shaking his stick-straight blond hair out of his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Pulling the top of his gown back up over the muscles developing in his bony shoulders, she blinked at his narrow, expectant face. “Do I what?”
“Think you could ask him how long he had to train before he made his climb. And maybe you could ask how long it took. I mean, that would be so cool. Climbing like that, I mean. Wouldn’t it?”
“Actually, I can think of about eight hundred things I’d rather do than struggle for oxygen while I freeze my backside over a mile-high drop-off.” Smiling easily at his unbridled interest, she nodded to the nurse to replace his elastic bandage and sling. “Tell you what. Now wouldn’t be a good time, but if you’d like, I’ll ask Mr. Harrington if he feels up to having company tomorrow. If he does, you can talk to him about the mountain yourself before I release you on Monday.”
The mix of emotions flushing his face was fascinating. “Oh, don’t do that,” he begged. “I couldn’t talk to him. I mean not, like, to his face,” he explained, sounding as if she’d just suggested a personal audience with the Pope. “But, thanks. Yeah, really.” The onslaught of discomfort gave way to a smile. “I’m getting out of here?”
“You sure are. There’s something I haven’t told you, though. I haven’t had a chance to redo the room you’ll be staying in since I bought my house. It’s sort of pink.” Wendy, the pregnant teenager who’d lived with her until she’d delivered and moved out last month, had called it rose. It reminded Alex more of antacid. “And you have to share a bathroom with my four-year-old.”
His expression suddenly shifted, concern moving into features sharpening with the first angles of budding manhood. “I don’t mind, ma’am,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “I’m used to my little brothers and sisters.”
She hadn’t meant for him to go shy on her. But that’s how Brent usually was. It had only been the prospect of the extraordinary that had breached the adolescent self-consciousness and quiet manners she normally saw.
“I know you are,” she told him, rather wishing she could see that enthusiasm again. He was such a neat kid. And his family was salt of the earth. She’d met all four of his brothers and sisters. They and his parents had held vigil while she and a team of vascular surgeons had reconstructed his arm. Their prayers and his doctors’ skills had brought him this far, but it would take months of daily physical therapy for him to regain use of the limb. The problem was his parents’ insurance. It wouldn’t cover a live-in rehab facility and his family’s circumstances and distance from town made outpatient treatment impossible.
Alex had figured that two more weeks of intensive therapy would give