Tania asked, “What about your mom? How did she handle it?”
“She sold the store, bought a flower shop instead. Most people don’t rob flower shops.” He remembered how he begged her not to buy another store and how she’d tried to reassure him with statistics about flower shops. He still went there every day after school—to guard his mother until she closed up. “And she managed.” He paused, wondering how the blond-haired doctor with the killer legs and the sweet smile had so effortlessly gotten so much information out of him. “Is this part of the treatment?”
“Sorry, my attending always says I get too close to my patients.” Which wasn’t strictly true, Tania added silently. She asked questions, but she didn’t get close. Getting close involved vulnerability. She hadn’t gotten close to anyone since the incident. Not even to the men she’d gone out with since then. She didn’t know how.
He eyed her for a second, as if he was trying to make up his mind about something. “Do you?” he asked. “Get too close?”
She didn’t answer him directly. She gave him a reply she felt worked in this case.
“I find patients trust you more if you take an interest in them. And I am interested in them,” she assured him. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be in this field.” Smiling, she mentioned the first job she could think of that had to do with solitude. One she’d actually considered, except that solitude meant that she would be alone with her thoughts, and that she couldn’t do. “I’d be a forest ranger.”
“A forest ranger,” he repeated, amused. “That would have been the medical world’s loss.”
Tania laughed softly. “Well, I see your encounter with the thief didn’t knock the charm out of you.” Pushing back the surgical tray, she stripped off the rubber gloves and deposited them into the trash bin. “We’re done here,” she announced, then took a prescription pad out of her lab coat pocket and hastily wrote something down.
“There might be pain,” she warned him, tearing off the paper. “You can get this filled at your local pharmacy, or use the hospital’s pharmacy.” She gave him directions since he was probably unfamiliar with it. “It’s down in the basement, to right of the elevator bank when you get off.”
Jesse took the prescription she held out to him and glanced at it. His eyebrows drew together in consternation. He was looking at scribble. “You sure it says something?”
Tania grinned. Her mother, she-of-the-perfect-handwriting, used to get on her case all the time. “It does look like someone dipped a chicken in ink and had it walk across the paper, doesn’t it? That was my first inkling that I was going to be a doctor. I have awful handwriting.”
Jesse folded the paper and put it into his wallet. “Not awful…” he said with less than total conviction, letting his voice trail off.
Before she could say anything, someone behind her asked in a jovial voice, “So, how is the hero?”
They both looked over to the trauma room’s entrance. The man whose diamonds he’d recovered stood in the doorway, beaming at him. There was a butterfly bandage on his cheek but other than that, he seemed none the worse for wear.
Tania pushed her stool back, then rose to her feet. “Good as new,” she declared, then turned back to Jesse. “Now comes the really hard part.” Her mouth quirked. “Filling out the insurance forms.” She turned to lead the way out. “You can do that at the outpatient desk.”
Isaac stepped into the room. He raised both hands, as if to beat the notion back. “No need. It’s on me. I’ll pay it,” he told Jesse eagerly.
Jesse slid off the table, picking up his jacket. “That’s all right,” he told the older man. “My company has health insurance. They’ll take care of it.”
Isaac gave him a once-over, taking in the torn trouser leg and the stains. “Then a new suit,” he declared with feeling. “I owe you a new suit.”
For just a second, there was a mental tug of war. But in the end, pride prevented Jesse from taking the man up on his offer. The suit he had on had set him back a good five hundred dollars because he knew appearances were everything.
But he was his own man. He always had been. That meant he paid his own way and was indebted to no one.
“No,” he assured the old man, “you really don’t owe me anything.”
This could go on all afternoon, Tania thought. She gently placed a hand to each man’s arm and motioned them out of the room. “I’m afraid that you two need to settle this outside.” She smiled brightly at Isaac. “We need the room.”
Isaac began backing out immediately. “Of course, of course.” He took both of her hands into his, his gratitude overflowing and genuine. “Thank you for all that you did.”
Jesse debated slipping on his jacket, then decided to leave it slung over his arm. A dull ache started in his shoulder. He was going to feel like hell by tomorrow morning, he thought, remembering his days on the gridiron.
“What about you?” he asked the old man as they walked out of the room. “How’s your face?”
Isaac touched the bandage, then dropped his hand. Even the slightest contact sent a wave of pain right through his teeth.
“If Myra, my wife, was alive today, she would say ‘as ugly as ever.’” He shrugged philosophically. “When you are not a good-looking man, a blow to the face is not that big a tragedy.” And then he smiled, nodding at his Good Samaritan. “Not like with you.” He stood for a moment, cocking his head like wizened old owl, studying the doctor’s handiwork. “Nice work. My brother Leon would approve. Leon is a tailor,” he explained. And then his eyes lit up. “Of course. I’ll send you to Leon.” The thought pleased the jeweler greatly. “He will make you such a suit. And I will pay him.”
How did he get the old man to understand that he didn’t owe him anything? That successfully coming to the jeweler’s rescue was enough for him. “No, really, I don’t—”
But Jesse got no further in his protest. Isaac pursed his lips beneath his neatly trimmed moustache and beard. “Pride is a foolish thing, young man.” He wagged his finger to make his point. “It kept the Emperor without any clothes.” His voice lowered. “Please, it’ll make me feel better.”
Tania passed the two men on her way to get the chart for her next patient. “I’d give in if I were you,” she advised Jesse. “It doesn’t sound as if he’s about to give up.” And then she winked at the old man, as if they shared a secret. “Trust me,” she told Jesse, thinking of her father, “I’m familiar with the type.”
And with that, she hurried off to a curtained section just beyond the nurses’ station.
Isaac watched her walk away. There was appreciation in the man’s sky-blue eyes when he turned them back to Jesse. “Nice girl, that one.” And then he asked innocently, “Are you married?”
“What? No.” Was the man matchmaking? Trying to line up a customer for a ring? Well, he wasn’t in the market for something like that right now. Maybe later, but not for a couple of years or so. “And not looking for anyone right now, either,” Jesse emphasized.
His words beaded off Isaac’s back like water off a duck.
“Sometimes we find when we don’t look. And should you find,” Isaac said, digging into his pocket, “you come to me.” Producing a business card, he tucked it into Jesse’s hand. “I will take good care of you. I’ll match you up with the finest engagement ring you’ve ever seen.” And then he added the final touch. “On the house.”
Jesse nodded, pocketing the card, fairly certain that this was an empty promise the old man felt he had to make. Once there was a little distance from the events of today, Jesse was confident the man would feel completely differently. He had no intentions of holding a man to a promise made in the heat of the moment.
Besides,