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Before he had a chance to answer, the phone in her pocket buzzed and she fished it out to look.
“Big accident on I-40.” She looked him in the eye then. The man had worn scrubs to an interview, he’d come ready to work—or he had before he’d realized with whom he’d be working. As nice and easy as she’d wanted to play this, there was a chance he’d say no if she just asked him to come along. The only way Dasha knew how to make Preston do what she wanted? Make it a competition...dare him. “I’ve been summoned to Trauma One. I see that you came prepared to work, but I know that having to work with me might be too much for you to handle. I don’t want to make you do anything you just aren’t able to do, but do you think you could give us a hand? Maybe it will help you decide whether you want to stick around.”
The way his eyes narrowed made her worry that she’d played the wrong card.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said, his voice level enough to raise warning bells. “Do it again and I’m gone. I don’t really care what you think. If it didn’t sound like you needed help, I wouldn’t help. Maybe you can learn something from me.”
Before she could say anything, he was out the door and heading in the direction of Emergency. A quick lock of the door and Dasha ran to keep up with his easy jog.
Of course he knew where he was going. He probably memorized the layout of all the buildings before coming. And she was already lagging behind. But that was okay. No, it was better than okay. He would help. They’d need his help today.
And she knew one more thing now: he still looked on her as a rival, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to have the last word. And he really wouldn’t have thrown down the proverbial gauntlet.
Maybe he wasn’t so different after all. She could work with this Preston.
Probably.
* * *
A tractor trailer had turned over, crushing some cars and causing others to pile up, bringing to the ER the kind of injuries Preston expected. Until he saw two people pinned together by a length of steel rod. “What was the semi hauling?” He dragged on gloves and followed Dasha to the unlucky couple.
She called orders as a nurse helped her into a gown and gloves.
The grim looks he saw on the staff’s faces couldn’t be because he was there... Something was wrong. Something besides the carnage.
“You’re looking at it,” a nurse said, nodding to the skewer. “They were in the car together and had to be cut out.”
X-rays hung on the light board, side by side. The woman had a pierced lung, but she was conscious, with fluid currently draining. The man had abdominal trauma. Possibly pierced through his liver. Unconscious.
“Who’s on call for Cardiac?” Dasha asked.
“Stevens,” someone answered, then added, “But he was in the accident.”
The cardiac surgeon had been involved in the tractor trailer wreck?
“Is he injured?” Dasha never stopped moving but her dismay showed for a second before the wall came up. Preston checked the wound on the unconscious man and listened to his breathing then moved to repeat the check on the woman.
“He didn’t make it.” The same nurse who had answered him.
“Who’s on call?” Dasha moved past it, asking questions of different people, compiling the information she needed to see this through.
If the whole staff were as close as Dasha claimed, he could understand the grimness.
A faint burning started in his left eye. Not tears. Tears would be better. It was the other thing. A warning his eyes were acting up. The last thing he needed, an attack on his first day. Possible first day. If he stayed. It was starting to feel like some psychosomatic self-sabotage. But the job was the best part of him, even his subconscious had to realize that.
It was stress.
He should’ve been more prepared to see her. He’d known it would happen. He just hadn’t expected it to happen first thing.
He also hadn’t expected her to be so different. Long hair, blonde in that multicolored way he didn’t entirely get... Clean-faced. Put together. But the long hair looked good on her. Thick and straight. Sleek. Polished. Shockingly polished. She was trying so hard to be tactful. It was like speaking to a Dasha twin but wondering the whole time if he’d been Parent Trapped. Was this really the good twin, or was it the tomboy with scraped knees dressed up in her sister’s haircut and clothing?
That probably qualified as stressful. Left him a little off kilter.
On her way back to the female patient, Dasha stopped to press her upper arm against that of a nurse, just long enough to break her stride. A touch to comfort...albeit a strange one to keep her gloves clean, but a kind gesture anyway.
A second later she was with the female patient, said a few soft words to her, then straightened and resumed directing. “Dr. Monroe, you’re with me. Everyone, we need to wheel these two into the OR. We’ll separate them there.” The nurse she’d touched looked misty-eyed but jumped in to help. They all worked seamlessly as a team. Not just people working together.
Not once had he had that. Not since residency. He’d forgotten how she could do that...make people want to be their best. Strange contradiction in her character.
Think about it later. Time to work. Preston would never wish this kind of accident on anyone, but submersing himself in work was exactly what he needed.
A group surrounded the gurneys. Pounding feet and squeaky wheels announced transit of the unlucky couple through the hospital to the freight elevator—the only one big enough to take the gurneys in the position the steel rebar had locked the couple into—then to the large operating room.
“Dr. Monroe, you’ve got Mr. Andrews.” Dasha didn’t look at him as she spoke but kept an eye on her patient.
He’d like Mrs. Andrews. In truth, that was probably a two-surgeon job, but they only had so many hands. Maybe he could help Mr. Andrews and then give Dasha a hand, if Mrs. Andrews survived that long. Lots of blood vessels in the area that could be damaged.
They settled in the large operating suite. Neither patient was conscious now. Blood loss did that.
Dasha handed him the surgical saw. “Would you?”
Deferring to him? Okay, that was surprising. He always loved the saw—had almost gone orthopedics because of it. Did she remember that?
Later. Focus. Figuring out her motivations would drive him insane, and now was not the time. She was just another surgeon in a dicey situation with him.
The sound of metal on metal bounced off every hard flat surface, roaring at near-deafening levels while the steel teeth chewed through the rod.
As soon as it had cut through, Dasha’s team pulled Mrs. Andrews’s table over, locked the wheels and got to work.
Preston handed the saw to his surgical tech, had his gown and gloves changed, and cut in, following the rod through so much shredded flesh.
As he got to work, the burning in his eye subsided. Maybe he was off the hook. Maybe work really would save him. He and Mr. Andrews would save each other.
“Talk to me,” Dasha called, though she needn’t have lifted her voice. Back to back, they weren’t close enough to touch but Preston could swear he felt her. The air vibrated between them. Or maybe they were touching somehow. Her gown? His? Just something else he needed to ignore.
“Liver pierced. Most of it shredded. There’s enough intact to salvage. Working on the bleeding now.” Of which there was a large amount. “Yours?”
“Working on the bleeding,” she echoed, but in her voice there was a sound he could still identify. She didn’t think Mrs. Andrews was going to make it. But if he knew nothing else about Dasha, he knew she didn’t like to lose.
“I need to know if they got hold of Nettle,” Dasha said, her words rushed, agitated.
But she wasn’t talking to him. Let her deal with the rest of department. His focus was in front of him.
How much worse would this morning have been if he and Dasha had had nothing to do but sit around and reminisce? Remember that time when we were dating, and you broke my heart and left me handcuffed to the bed while you stole my fellowship? How much trouble would his mouth have gotten him into then? It certainly would’ve taxed this new leaf he struggled to turn over.
His mouth had caused him years of trouble, and was the reason he had to work with the woman he’d spent the past decade quasi-stalking.
The best way to avoid Dasha? To know where she was. Know where she worked. Know what conferences she attended. Know where she lived, where she likely shopped, dined and visited. Avoidance of that level required intelligence.
It wasn’t really stalking. It was more like anti-stalking. In a stalker sort of way.
And now she stood behind him, no more than a yard away.
Another hour passed.
“How’s it going over there?” She asked for updates regularly but hadn’t made any more attempts to manipulate him by riling him. Something else he should put off thinking about until later when he was deciding whether to come back to St. Vincent’s.
“Closing,” Preston answered. “Transfused two pints of blood.” No doubt this wasn’t exactly what the board had in mind for supervised practice.
“Good. I need you.” To help with the surgery. She needed his assistance with the surgery. The words she’d chosen were bad, but they had no hidden meaning.
“How is she doing on blood?” he asked.
A surgical nurse helped him out of his gown and gloves and into a fresh set.
“Up to three, probably adding another...” She never looked away from her patient.
His first view inside the woman’s chest nearly robbed him of breath. “We could do with a cardiac surgeon.” Could they ever. But in the small cavity his hands joined hers, and they worked in tandem to repair damage that appeared irreversible.
“That’s who I’ve been asking for updates on,” she muttered, but she still worked. She wouldn’t give up. It was one thing he could give her credit for. Well, that and her skill. On a professional level Dasha was good. It was as a human being that she had failed.
His left eye twitched. He squinted. Sometimes taking charge of those muscles helped. Sometimes it didn’t. Working with Dasha might be a deal-breaker. He’d have to think about it.
Later.
When he relaxed the muscles around his eye, his sight sharpened and he saw it. There was a small cut on Mrs. Andrews’s heart, but it had not gone through. “Damn.”
“What is it?” Dasha stopped what she was doing long enough to look where his hands were.
“She needs to go on the pump,” Preston said. “Now.” That the heart wall had held this long was a miracle.
“Get the line in her. Go femoral, we don’t need any more holes north of the belt,” Dasha said, then went back to what she was doing. Already the techs were getting the heart-lung machine in place. They’d started moving the second he said the word pump. Preston could get used to that.
A cannula landed in his hand and he prodded around on the woman’s thigh to find the artery, swabbed with alcohol and threaded it in. By the time he was ready for the return line, the nurse was waiting for him.
He’d no more gotten it settled than a man pushed into the OR.
Nettle. Preston recognized him then. The name hadn’t rung any bells but he’d met this cardiac surgeon before. A golfing buddy of his father’s. Which was all Preston needed to know about him. He could jump to some conclusions on his own. Probably decent at his job, but arrogant, and proud of that arrogance.
“Dr. Hardin, step back, please,” Nettle said, allowing a nurse to help with the gloves.
“She’s got a laceration that isn’t through the muscle.” Preston gestured to the area where the rod had scuffed up Mrs. Andrews’s heart.
“I see it,” Nettle said.
Preston stayed put but lifted his hands free and out of the way, ready to go back in if needed. Yes, he wanted the cardiac surgeon to get there, but now he just felt uneasy and over the years he’d learned to trust that feeling. No way was he leaving without a fight, he just had to try and handle it...tactfully.
Dasha talked the surgeon through what had been done, her team continuing with the pump to get the blood cooling so they could stop her heart and repair it. She hit all the pertinent details, which should’ve made him feel better about the hand-off. But a report wasn’t the same as having seen where the rod had been.
“Thank you both. I’ve got it from here,” Nettle said.
“Don’t you need another set of—?” Preston almost got through his question.
“I have another set of hands. I brought them.” Just then the door swung open and a younger version of the man made his way to the table.
“I’d still like to stay and help.” Preston tried to keep his request in a moderate, reasonable tone. Surely the man couldn’t object to that. “I’ll stay out of the way unless you need me.”
“If she needs her appendix removed, you’ll be the first person we call,” Nettle said. His tone light, no aggression there, but it reeked of condescension.
Nettle had obviously not gotten Dasha’s memo on being nice to everyone.
Preston caught Dasha shaking her head almost imperceptibly at him. Not the time to fight. He knew that. Of course it wasn’t the time, but there was no other time to make a stand and stay with the patient. He couldn’t just leave now and ask later over drinks.
“She’s in good hands,” Dasha said diplomatically, and began trying to steer him toward the door.
“You can’t be all right with this,” he hissed in her ear.
“No,” she whispered back, “but it isn’t going to help Mrs. Andrews if we distract him.” She surreptitiously nodded to a camera above the table.
Preston pulled off his gloves and gown and headed for the door. As soon as she was through it, he grabbed her by the elbow. “Where is the monitor?”
“Next door.” Dasha fished her keys out of her pocket again, and before a minute passed they were crowded around a monitor, following the surgery.
“Is this recording?” Preston asked, looking the room over. “Can we zoom in or something?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know.” Dasha didn’t look away from the screen, but she did get the phone and managed to dial while they watched. “It should be fine. He’s got excellent stats and qualifications. He’s a good surgeon. A little territorial...and it was weird of him to kick us out. Do you two know one another? It seemed like he knew you and didn’t like you.”
“I noticed.” He kept his eyes on the screen. It’d be easier to see if he was there—and easier to pay attention if Dasha was anywhere else—but Mrs. Andrews was her patient too and he wasn’t going to be Nettle-like and kick her out just because her proximity bothered him. He was tough. He could handle it. He’d had five years to get her out of his system. This was just like taking a recovering alcoholic to a bar...the temptation was there, no matter how much he knew it was a bad idea to even think about it. Ignore her scent. Don’t think about the way she tasted. Don’t think about her at all.
If he paid attention to the small screen, to everything the surgeons were doing, he could see if they were in trouble, and—he prayed—have time to get there. Not that it was likely they’d not be able to handle whatever situation they got into, but he just didn’t want to let go. The idea that Mr. Andrews would have to recover from surgery and from losing his wife was too much to stomach on his first day. Especially with all this Dasha business he had to stomach.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Dasha spoke, interfering with his plan to ignore her.
“We’ve met. Nothing happened. But he golfs with my father. I imagine Nettle hears a lot of ranting from Davis P.,” Preston muttered, forcing it to the back of his mind now that he had to try and see clearly from the angle of the camera and the small screen he was viewing on.
“Mr. Andrews is awake.” She passed the phone to him, letting him get an update on his other patient.
“Tell him she’s still in surgery.” He paused and then added, “And with really good surgeons.”
God, he hated lying. The man might be a good surgeon—that was still up for debate—but he was an ass. And all this talking interrupted his monitoring. He hung up and refocused. Someone had to make sure it was done right.
* * *
Dasha kept one eye on the screen and the other on Preston. Alone in a small room together...at least they reeked of surgical soap, nothing sexy about that.
Despite a near hiccup with Nettle, Preston was a professional in surgery. Somewhere in the back of her mind Dasha had known he would be, even if she’d irritated him just moments before. He took his work seriously. He took his patients and his duty to them seriously. Which was what made the situation at Davidson West, his last hospital, so confusing.
Something had to have happened. Something she needed details about. The missing details worried her.
