I care about the have-nots who live here? As for my medical teams, I demand the best for my patients. That was the only thing on my mind five years ago, since that’s clearly what you’re talking about here.”
“I want the best for my patients, too. Except I don’t throw other people under the bus, even when they make a mistake or could do something better. I give them a second chance, and try to help them along the way.”
“Some patients never get a second chance.” The words came out more sharply than he’d intended as memories of Gabriel squeezed his chest. “Which is why I insist on working with only the most qualified people, instead of pandering to anyone’s ego.”
“Well, anyone who could keep their ego intact around you must be made of steel. And it seems to me that maybe you’re the one with the ego problem. Hotshot cardiac surgeon from a wealthy family. A guy with a God complex who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”
“I have many colleagues who ask to work with me, and if that’s because they think I’m one of the best surgeons around, I’m happy about that. If you call that a big ego, so be it.”
She took a swig of coffee and shrugged. “I call it like I see it.”
He took a step closer, his chest burning at her unexpected attack, and after they’d had such a friendly conversation, too. “Maybe the truth is you have a plenty big ego yourself. Attractive enough to land a job in a prestigious hospital. Beautiful enough to have hospital higher-ups go to bat for you, even when you mess up.”
She gasped, taking two big steps forward to jab her finger into his chest, her eyes flashing with blue fury. “That’s just insulting, and if I were a man you wouldn’t dare say something like that to me. I’m not going to stand here and defend myself, because I couldn’t care less what you think about me, other than you have to trust me to do a good job here. You believe what you want about anything else, but I know what I’m doing, and I got my job through hard work and nothing else. You’re stuck working with me and I’m stuck working with you for the next two weeks. We have children to heal and lives to save, and that’s the only thing that’s important to me. So get over yourself and deal with it.”
She swung around and marched to the door. Coffee sloshed from her cup and onto her pink sleeve, trickling to the ground, but she just kept going without another look back.
Daniel blew out a slow breath as he watched the sexy sway of her backside disappear through the door. How had he lost control of that conversation, and why had he let her goad him into verbalizing his questions about why some of the hospital administrators had argued to keep her on?
Normally, he was a man who could hold his thoughts, but there was something about her that got under his skin. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he’d felt so frustrated at her words, and at the same time he’d been mesmerized by her lips as they’d moved, that the comments about her beauty helping her get her job had just fallen out of his mouth, even as he’d known he shouldn’t say anything. Even as he’d spoken, a part of him had wanted to reach for her, grasp her shoulders, and pull her against him. Wanted to drop his mouth to hers to keep her from lambasting him. Wanted to sip the coffee from her lips, experience the taste of her that he knew would be sweeter than the sugar in her drink.
And wouldn’t that have been a giant mistake? What the hell was wrong with him?
He rubbed his hand down his face. The number one priority in dealing with her just became being careful to speak to her, and react to her, with only the utmost professionalism. How ironic would it be for her to lodge a complaint against him about his conduct on this medical mission?
A brisk walk might help him get his equilibrium back. And maybe it was time for him to learn to do a little meditation himself, to purge his brain of any and all peculiar and troubling thoughts about Annabelle Richards.
* * *
Another long day of surgeries left Daniel with an aching back and a sense of satisfaction. The hours spent were worth a little discomfort, since repairing holes in children’s small hearts or addressing hypoplastic left heart syndrome and other critical heart malformations was exactly why he did these missions.
The whole team had worked tirelessly along with him, including Annabelle. He couldn’t deny that she’d shown herself to be a steady hand with the anesthesia, communicating well with the nurses and bringing what he’d learned was her special brand of charm to the young patients. She might not speak very good Spanish but at least she tried, and knew how to deal with their patients in a way that calmed even the most nervous. Her wide smile, and the way she used tiny fairy and superhero dolls as props to leap gently onto their little arms and bodies, distracting them from the medical preparation happening around them, always made them relax and laugh before she got down to the serious business of getting them to sleep for surgery.
Maybe she really had grown as a doctor over the past five years, after the anesthesia resident’s nearly catastrophic error and her mistake of not supervising well enough what the guy was doing. An error that had nearly ended up with their young patient dead. Maybe he wouldn’t have been as angry if the teen hadn’t been having the same surgery Gabriel had died from, or maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. But he had to believe that not a soul alive would blame him for being furious and distraught about a member of his staff nearly losing a child’s life through completely avoidable actions.
It was hard for him to think beyond that upsetting day when it came to Annabelle. Hard to give her the benefit of the doubt now, his chest still constricting at the memory of the chaos as they’d struggled to keep the boy alive. Another teenager, this one under Daniel’s watch, nearly dying. Was he supposed to just look the other way? Forget about it? The boy’s family had no idea how close they’d come to losing him that day, a fate that would have changed their world forever.
Some would say he should move on and give Annabelle another chance since she was older and more experienced now. And maybe they’d be right. But he’d already gotten the wheels greased for him to work with a new doc, and for her to do other, still important, work but at a different clinic, far away from him. He would feel under less stress in the OR here, and patients at the new clinic would get Annabelle’s help facilitating the surgeries they needed. So nothing but good would come from his plan.
“You got this?” he asked the team after the patient’s vital signs were normal and he was satisfied the surgery was a success.
“Yes, Dr. Ferrera,” Annabelle said in a cool, professional voice. “Ready to remove the breathing tube and IVs.”
“Good. I’ll be over at Administration, evaluating tomorrow’s patients, making final decisions about who’s on the list and when.”
Annabelle and the nurses all nodded, focusing on the patient, as they should. Daniel stripped off his gloves and mask and went to the other cement block building that served their bare-bones administration staff and doubled as a waiting room/sleeping room combo. Families with children sat on the folding chairs and sprawled on the floor, many of whom he knew had come from miles away. Patiently waiting to be seen, they slept there or outside on homemade blankets they’d brought with them, along with bags of food, since the clinic could only provide bottled water to drink. They waited to find out if they’d be one of those chosen to get well, or be put on the list for the next time a clinic was run. Some looked deceptively healthy, others were visibly ill. Far too thin, too pale, too quiet and motionless for a child to be.
Daniel’s own heart abnormality had always been hidden behind a facade of good health. He’d played sports, he’d skied, he’d seemed fine in every way. With both their heart functions in reasonably good and manageable conditions, it had been decided that surgery on the identical twins wasn’t worth the risk to either of them. That was, until Gabriel’s heart condition had worsened and he’d ended up needing the surgery that had ultimately killed him.
Daniel hadn’t had to face that.
He knew it was possible that things might change. The hole in his heart that both brothers had been born with, and that medical professionals had always kept an eye on,