Their gazes connected the moment their fingers touched and she felt a deep stirring in the pit of her stomach. As she stared into his eyes she thought she saw them darken, but when she blinked he’d already straightened and was standing back up.
She stood as well. “Thank you,” she murmured, clutching the charts to her chest like an armor of steel.
“You’re welcome. And how are your patients? Any problems or concerns?”
Because he’d asked … “There is this one thing. We’re still trying to determine the reason behind Mr. Aiken’s high fevers.”
Dr. De Winter nodded. “I understand he had another one this morning.”
“Yes. We took more blood, but there’s nothing abnormal. The fever means there’s infection somewhere in his body, but nothing is showing up in his blood.”
“So you’re dealing with an FUO?”
Fever of unknown origin. “Yes,” she said, clearly disturbed.
“Any other signs and symptoms, Dr. Campbell?”
“None.”
“Let me see his chart for a second.”
She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and then flipped through the charts to find the one belonging to William Aiken. She handed it to Dr. De Winter, grateful their fingers did not touch this time.
Her pulse thudded as she stood there and watched him peruse the man’s chart. She couldn’t help noticing how his long lashes fanned across his cheeks and how sensuous his mouth looked. He then glanced up and caught her staring at his mouth. Good grief.
“May I make a suggestion, Dr. Campbell?”
“Yes, sir, you may.” The one thing that was different about Dr. De Winter compared to other doctors in an authoritative position was that he didn’t project a brash, all-knowing demeanor. He liked getting input from the interns he supervised and always solicited their opinions.
“Have blood drawn from his toe, preferably the big one, and have it checked.”
She raised a brow. Probably any other intern would have accepted what he said without question, but unfortunately she wasn’t one of them. “Why, if I may ask?”
He chuckled and the sound seemed to whisper across her skin. “Yes, doctor, you may. When I was an intern at a college in Boston, I had a patient with FUO and drawing blood from the big toe was suggested to me by the chief of staff. He explained that often bad blood will find places to settle and can’t easily be detected.”
She nodded as understanding dawned. “Which was the premise behind bloodletting,” she said, thinking out loud and seeing his point. “Which is the draining of bad blood out of a person’s body. And if there’s bad blood not detected, it might be confined in one of the body’s peripheral points. A premise we have now put to sound scientific use.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Dr. De Winter. I’ll have that done immediately.” She then quickly walked away.
Lucien watched Jaclyn hurry off and drew in a deep breath. When they had accidentally touched moments ago, it had taken everything within him to control the urge to pull her into his arms and mesh his lips with hers. That encounter had been too close for comfort. Way too close.
No matter how much he tried to control himself around her, he was finding it hard to do so. When they had knelt facing each other and he’d looked into her eyes and gazed upon the lushness of her mouth, heat had flared inside of him. He could imagine them kneeling facing each other, but the setting hadn’t been the hall of the hospital. In his mind they were in the middle of the bed. Naked.
Those were the last kind of thoughts he needed lodged in his brain. He tried forcing them out. The hospital’s nonfraternization policy had been put in place for a reason and he intended to abide by it. But God, he was attracted to her. And if knowing that wasn’t enough to shake his world, then he didn’t know what would. At that moment he thought he could even feel the floor shift under his feet. Yes, he was definitely standing on shaky ground.
Jaclyn nibbled on her bottom lip as she read Mr. Aiken’s most recent lab report. Dr. De Winter had been right in suggesting that blood be drawn from the man’s toe. The report clearly indicated bacteria in Mr. Aiken’s body. Bacteria of an unknown source.
Now she had to determine what was causing it. As she read the report again the main question circling around in her head was why the bacteria hadn’t shown up in a routine lab test.
“You’re too pretty to be frowning.”
Jaclyn glanced up and smiled at Ravi Patel, another intern. With his tall, slender build, long wavy black hair, dark eyes and dark skin, he made a reality of the old cliché tall, dark and handsome.
All the female interns, nurses and patients alike drooled over the American-born East Indian. Even Miss Thang seemed taken with him and would blush like a silly schoolgirl whenever Ravi was near. What Jaclyn most admired and respected about Ravi was that he was quick to let the admiring ladies know that he was an engaged man. His fiancée, a woman from India, was an intern at a hospital in Miami. The two planned to marry in a few years.
“Hi, Ravi. I was going over one of my patient’s charts.”
“His condition is serious?”
“FUO earlier, but thanks to Dr. De Winter I was finally able to find something in his blood. There are bacteria. Now I’m trying to determine the cause.”
“If you need help, this might be something to bring before the others in our group session with Dr. De Winter in the morning.”
Jaclyn nibbled on her bottom lip. She of all people knew when the group of interns would meet with Dr. De Winter in a classroom setting. She looked forward to those once-a-week sessions when he would take center stage at the front of the class. Those were the times when she could sit in the back and ogle him to her heart’s delight and come across only as a very attentive student.
More than once he had glanced her way and caught her staring and she appreciated that he wasn’t a mind reader. He would have been appalled at some of the things she’d been thinking at the time. “I might do that. Thanks for suggesting it, Ravi.”
Ravi glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “There’s Dr. De Winter. We can ask him now.”
Before Jaclyn could stop him, Ravi had gotten Dr. De Winter’s attention. Jaclyn released a deep breath. She hadn’t quite recovered from their earlier meeting when they had touched. Now he was about to get all into her space again.
“Doctors Patel and Campbell. Is there something I can help you with?” he asked, his gaze passing between them.
“Yes, sir,” Jaclyn said. “Thanks to your suggestion I was able to pinpoint bacteria in Mr. Aiken’s blood. But now I’m concerned with the cause. I’ve done tests to rule out several abnormalities, but these bacteria are determined to remain in certain areas. I’m still concerned that we could not detect it in a routine blood test.”
“I thought this would be something she could bring before the group in the morning,” Ravi interjected.
“I agree with Dr. Patel. This is something we can give the group as a think tank question, Dr. Campbell. In the meantime, how is Mr. Aiken? What are we doing for him?”
Before Jaclyn could respond, Ravi glanced at his watch and then said apologetically, “Sorry, I need to go check on one of my patients.”
He then quickly walked off leaving her alone with Dr. De Winter. She forced her gaze from Ravi’s retreating back to Dr. De Winter. For the next few minutes she provided him with the answer to his question. He didn’t interrupt and every so often he would nod slowly. It was hard not to get absorbed in the tingles of awareness that were going through her body from his standing so close