Navy Doc On Her Christmas List. Amy Ruttan

well, being on duty taught me a lot of things.” His expression changed and his brow furrowed, worry lines deepening, and he crushed the empty plastic cup in his hand.

      What happened over there?

      “I’m going to finish my rounds,” he said, standing up. “I know you’re here, but I’m officially on duty and I do have some rounds to attend to.”

      Ella nodded. “Good. Once I hear about the patient I’ll have you paged, but if the bile duct is clear I can handle a laparoscopic cholecystectomy on my own.”

      Zac didn’t look her in the eye. “Okay.”

      That was all he said as he disappeared from the staffroom. The jovial, fun conversation was over and he was distant again. The wall was up and she wasn’t sure she should even bother trying to climb it.

      Zac would never change.

      And she was foolish to think he ever would.

      * * *

      “That is a nasty third-degree burn you have there. How did you get it?” Zac asked as he examined a patient’s forearm.

      “Deep-frying the turkey.” The man winced. “Only my brother’s apartment in SoHo couldn’t really handle my deep-frying. We shorted the fuse and then the fat tipped over. I caught the turkey, though.”

      Zac raised an eyebrow. “Deep-frying a turkey is a thing?”

      “Oh, yeah,” the patient said. “I always deep-fry the turkey. Granted, my wife makes me do it outside, and we have way more property in Nashville, but my brother and his fiancée insisted we spend Christmas in Manhattan in a cramped apartment that they pay a ridiculous amount for.”

      “Yes, that is true. Small apartments and large rents.” The burn would need to be debrided. There was a plastic surgeon resident at the hospital. The least he could do for this poor man was have his burn properly taken care of. “I’m going to page one of our plastic surgeons on call to help clean up the burn and then wrap it. Do you have a way home in this storm?”

      “The cabbie could only get me so far and then I hiked in the rest of the way,” the patient said.

      Zac nodded. “Well, you can stay here until the storm lets up and they clear the streets. If you’re not from New York you could get really turned around in this storm.”

      “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.”

      Zac turned to one of the nurses who had kissed him under that horrible fake mistletoe, but he couldn’t remember her name for the life of him. He’d berated Ella for not knowing or calling the residents by their first names and now he couldn’t remember this nurse’s name. So instead he plastered on one of those flirtatious Davenport smiles that he used to be famous for. “Nurse, can you page Dr. Onge to assist this patient?”

      The smile worked and the nurse didn’t seem upset that he didn’t know her name.

      “Of course, Dr. Davenport.”

      “Thanks.”

      He left the exam room as quickly as he could. He knew that women like that nurse were only interested in him because of his money, his name and his outward appearance. If they knew what a mess he was inside, they probably wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-foot pole.

      Yes, they would. You said it yourself: money and prestige.

      Prestige and the name. That’s all people saw in him, which was why he had been so adamant to head to Annapolis and get his medical training there, instead of at an Ivy league college. He had seen what marrying for money and prestige did to people in his parents’ circle.

      His parents had seemed so happy, but obviously that wasn’t true. Even though he and his father hadn’t seen eye to eye on many things, it had shattered his whole world when it had come out that Hugo had had an affair. He couldn’t take it and instead of staying around for any of the fallout, the navy had been an escape for him. The navy had been his salvation, until that changed, and all he’d wanted was to be back in the safety of his family. Even though he hadn’t thought he deserved it.