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“Thank you, Lizzy,” he said quietly.
She blushed. “It’s Elizabeth.”
“Call me Jon.”
Her teeth bit down on her lower lip.
And because things were looking so much better now, he pushed his luck. “I have another request that I was wondering if you could help me with.”
* * *
TALKING INAPPROPRIATELY to a patient? This was so unlike her; it was surreal.
The only thing that explained Elizabeth’s uncharacteristic unprofessionalism with Jon—with this patient—was that, silly as it sounded, her grandmother had called her Lizzy.
And her grandmother had died when Elizabeth was eight, the same age her nephew Brandon was now.
Fresh tears sprang to her eyelids. She bit down on her lip again. Control. Stay in control.
She was just so vulnerable now, ever since Ashley had told her about Brandon. She pressed her hand to her mouth, trying to stop the trembling.
The surgeon approached Mr. Farell. A professional athlete getting the most experienced doctor on staff...no surprise there. Elizabeth stepped aside, relieved to be able to step into the shadows.
Talking to the patients presurgery was the least favorite part of her job. She would as soon die as admit this to anyone, but she’d chosen anesthesia as a medical specialty because the bulk of her duties involved dealing with patients while they were unable to move or speak and therefore couldn’t interact or cause conflict with her. All that was required, interfacing-wise, was typically a five- or ten-minute consultation before the procedure. Right up Elizabeth’s alley.
But this man...Jon Farell...had just blown all her experience out of the water. Even now, as the surgeon talked on and on, regaling Jon, asking him questions, adding to his “cocktail banter stories” by interacting with a Captains pitcher, Jon kept glancing at her. Meaningfully, as if the two of them shared a secret.
She rarely stared at men. Her life was too private for that, Albert not considered. But this man...
She’d been fighting an urge to lean closer and smell him. Very strange, but she did understand the scientific principal behind it. Sex pheromones, it was called. The theory stated that Nature, in her infinite wisdom, ensured that people with complementary genetic traits were attracted to one another. Someone with a family tendency for diabetes, say, was attracted to someone else with specific immunity against it. A way for survival of the species, so to speak.
Scientifically, then, she wasn’t physically attracted to Jon Farell, but her DNA was.
Intuitively, it made sense. Jon was the physical opposite to her. He was athletic and strong, with ice-blue eyes. His face bore the fine, delicate features of Nordic ancestry, but mixed with something else—a blending of another culture that gave him bronzed, sun-kissed skin and long brown hair, mysteriously streaked on the left side with white. His hair wasn’t dyed white, but was naturally white, as in, the absence of color. Somewhere along the line, probably through blunt trauma, a small section on his scalp, about a quarter inch wide, had been injured such that he no longer had any pigment in the hair follicles.
Overall, it made Jon Farell look...beautiful. And with his warm, musically pitched voice, it gave him the mysterious aura of some past, mystical culture.
He set her workaday French and Scottish genes on fire. Which had probably contributed to her opening her mouth and admitting things to him that she would never in a million years tell anybody else.
It made him uniquely dangerous to her.
The aides prepared to wheel Jon’s gurney into the operating room, and she stepped forward, doing her job. As the rest of the team moved into position, she put relaxants into Jon’s IV line. Waited until those ice-blue eyes flickered closed.
She felt her shoulders relaxing. He was in the customary pose of her customary patients. He was no longer a threat.
“Lizzy,” he murmured suddenly, and she jumped.
“Yes, Jon?” She leaned closer.
“Please tell me afterward what the doctor said about the malignancy. Can you do that?”
“I’ll...”
But he was out. It was just as well.
They wheeled him into surgery, and she set him up to monitor him with her equipment. Waited while the nurse—that lucky woman—tied his beautiful hair up into a cap before placing pads on his chest and a cuff on his arm. Elizabeth eased him into unconsciousness by selecting a syringe and inserting the drugs into his IV.
He was truly out then.
Briefly, Elizabeth wondered how she could possibly communicate to Jon afterward, as he had asked, but she put that out of mind and went back to her customary, safe place. With deft hands—she’d done this hundreds of times, after all—she intubated him.
For the first time, she was touching his body, albeit with gloves on. She gently placed a tube into his airway to take control of his breathing during the operation.
Then she sat back at her cart behind the surgery drape and observed her machines. That was what anesthesiologists did.
He was not the famous Jon Farell now. He was any patient.
But still, when the surgeon isolated and removed the tumor at long last, she couldn’t help searching the doctor’s eyes.
Good news or bad?
And either way, how would she tell Jon?
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER THE SURGERY, and with Jon wheeled safely to the recovery room, Elizabeth hurried to the hospital day care center where her nephew and her sister waited for her.
In a private room, she gave eight-year-old Brandon a cursory checkup, questioned him and checked his vital signs.
The outgoing, towheaded boy showed no symptoms of renewed cancer. Nothing that Elizabeth could outwardly see. On the contrary, he seemed as energetic as ever—he fidgeted and had a difficult time sitting still. Elizabeth told him to wait for his mom in the hospital day care center, and then she led her sister to a long, quiet corridor, encased in glass, that overlooked the Boston skyline.
In the midday light, Elizabeth stared at the thin, stylishly dressed, older sister who was so different from her, it was hard to believe they’d come from the same parents.
Ashley paced back and forth, jittery, her high-heeled boots clicking on the floor. She was rubbing her arms as she walked. “It’s happening again.”
Elizabeth’s pulse sped up. “What is happening again?”
“I can’t take it,” Ashley said. “The tests...the trips to Boston...the stress of worrying...”
“Ashley, he seems fine. A normal, active eight-year-old. Give the tests a chance to ease your mind. What time is his appointment?”
“Twelve o’clock, and I can’t be there.” Ashley stopped pacing. “Lisbeth, I need you to help me with Brandon, just for today while we get through this.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Elizabeth said as calmly as she could. There was a reason she kept her family at arm’s length. Ashley’s appearance this morning was the least of it.
But her sister’s chin took on a stubborn tilt. “If Brandon is sick again, you work at the hospital. You’re the best person to help him.”
“I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion.” Five years ago when Brandon had been diagnosed with leukemia, Ashley had refused to allow Elizabeth to have anything to do with Brandon’s treatment. She’d been the devoted if slightly martyred mother who had hovered over him at every appointment.
Elizabeth’s reaction to the boy’s sickness, on the other hand, had been to study all she could about the illness. She’d consulted with Brandon’s doctors, and, as a medical student affiliated with the hospital back then, surreptitiously checked to make sure that he was getting the best and latest of care. All of it done behind the scenes, of course, with the guarantee of no attention drawn to herself.
“Ashley, I am not good with children. You know this.”
“You work with sick people,” her sister insisted.
“Brandon is not sick! He is healthy and he needs to get back to school!”
“You have a car,” Ashley said, hugging herself and staring out the window. “The school’s not too far from here...”
She didn’t appear to be listening to Elizabeth. Then again, she was Ashley. Even as a girl, she’d been fueled by emotion. A queen of drama. Born pretty, Elizabeth’s older sister had been the head of a clique of girls who’d ruled the neighborhood. Maybe that had been her coping mechanism to their chaotic home life. Elizabeth had coped by hiding in the public library, doing her homework or looking at National Geographic magazines. She had skipped two grades and had been accepted at college in Boston at sixteen, which had been her escape, and from which she’d never gone back.
Elizabeth tapped her foot. This meeting was unnecessary. She could spend precious time—time she did not have, since she was on duty and had a case to prepare for—explaining to her sister why she could not drive Brandon a half hour to school, in the opposite direction, and then back again, cutting out of her job at the hospital to pick him up. It didn’t make logistical sense.
But Ashley’s mind was not logical or ordered. Elizabeth needed to cut to the heart of the matter for her.
“What’s really going on here?” Elizabeth asked quietly. “Why can’t you sit with Brandon through his tests and then take him to school as usual?”
Ashley stopped pacing. But Elizabeth stepped closer and noticed her sister’s body was twitching. Her skin seemed clammy, and she smelled like...
No. Oh, no.
Their mother drank, but to Elizabeth’s knowledge, her sister never had.
Elizabeth certainly never did. She didn’t chance touching the stuff. That behavior was common, she had read, in children of alcoholics.
“Ashley?”
“I...have an appointment with a counselor today,” her sister confessed.
“That’s...good.” It was excellent, in fact. That showed Ashley was taking charge in an appropriate manner. If Elizabeth had the time, she’d delve into the how and where...check out this counselor and offer her sister medical advice.
Elizabeth glanced at her watch. In another minute the surgical nurses would be paging her. “Ashley, I really need to get to my next patient.”
Ashley’s thin shoulders straightened. She’d lost weight, Elizabeth noticed. “I’m leaving Brandon with you at the hospital today.”
“That isn’t possible.” The emotional response was elevating her pulse, but Elizabeth willed it away. “I have a full schedule of surgeries.”
“I know. I already talked to a nurse about the emergency child care program for employees that you have here.”
“You did?” Elizabeth said drily.
“Lisbeth, here is his insurance card and hospital ID.” Ashley shoved the patient cards at her. Then she tightened her jacket around her as if to close the pain inside. “Please kiss Brandon for me.” Her voice wavered. “And tell that lady ‘thank you’ for watching him while you and I talk.”
“Ashley—”
“I have to go!”
Elizabeth watched, gaping, as her sister hurried away down the corridor.
“What time will you pick him up?” she called after her, but Ashley just waved her hand and disappeared around the corner.
Now what?
Elizabeth racked the logical side of her brain. Actually, her entire brain was logical. She dealt in facts, not “what if” flights of fancy.
Fact one: Brandon needed to be escorted to his appointment. Thank goodness for the aides in the child care department. Of course she would normally accompany Brandon herself, but a patient receiving scheduled wrist surgery needed her care as his anesthesiologist.
She quickly dropped off Brandon’s insurance cards at the Emergency Hospital Day Care, and then rushed back to her post.
On the way, she passed the post-op room where Jon Farell would be recovering.
She wanted to slow. She wanted to stop in and see how he was doing. Catch a glimpse of those ice-blue eyes.
He might be lucid by now, and she had embarrassed herself enough already. Nearly losing her reserve and showing tears in front of a patient—it was so uncalled-for, so unlike her normal personality that the entire event had been...ludicrous.
She was Dr. Elizabeth LaValley, and she did not drop her veil of privacy for anybody.
Not even for men with understanding eyes and pheromones that smelled like heaven to her.
* * *
IN JON’S DREAM, he was sitting in a room, brightly lit by white light, on one side of a conference table. On the other side was a kindly, older man who looked familiar but who Jon couldn’t recall ever meeting. Max, his agent, was there, too, but he wasn’t speaking, he was just listening.
Jon seemed to be having an earnest conversation; he was telling the man what he was doing in baseball. He was trying to explain why it was imperative that he be allowed to continue.
“I’m not ready to stop,” Jon told the man. “I still have so much to do.”
He said a lot more to the man, too, but as soon as Jon spoke the words, he seemed to forget what he’d just said. He was trying to concentrate, but it wasn’t possible.
“I understand you,” the man said, something Jon clearly remembered. “It’s time to get serious.”
Yes! Jon understood exactly what he meant. He’d been coasting for too long. If he worked harder, he would be allowed to continue playing pro ball. He would not have to stop this life that he loved so much.
It’s time to get serious.
The thought filled him with hope. Even Max seemed to agree.
When Jon woke, his heart was pounding, the dream fresh on his mind. He knew exactly where he was. Inside a brightly lit recovery room. He felt groggy, his throat sore, his nonpitching hand numb. He looked down and saw it was bound in a thick bandage.
He tried to sit up, but nausea swept over him. He put his head back down. All of a sudden, he heard a child’s voice whisper next to him, “You’re Jon Farell!”
The nurse hustled over and bundled the child off.
Jon turned his head right, then left. “Where’s Lizzy?” he asked thickly.
“Lizzy? Is she the woman in the waiting area who keeps asking about you?” the nurse asked. “I told her that as soon as you eat some crackers and drink some ginger ale, we can call the doctor and get his okay to sign you out.”
“No. I want Lizzy. My...other doctor.”
