Navy Doc On Her Christmas List

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Ella chuckled. “Right, and we’d wager things like candy and stuff. I don’t have any candy.”

“How about a dare?”

She cocked her eyebrow. “Seriously? A dare? What’re you, like twelve?”

“You’re not chicken, are you?” Those blue eyes twinkled.

“No, but I am a professional and I have a reputation to uphold.”

Zac snorted. “Oh, yeah, I heard about that reputation. The bulldog, I believe it was referred to as.”

“Bulldog?” Her voice rose an octave and then she cleared her throat, annoyed by her nickname. “I’m hardly a bulldog.”

“It has nothing to do with appearance. Well, other than your height and the fact that you charge through. Tough.”

“Fine. I like that better.”

“You do have a lot more gumption than you did when you were younger. It’s refreshing.” He was giving her a compliment, but it embarrassed her instead. There was a reason she kept people at a distance and it was Zac’s fault.

It was easier than letting people in.

It was because of the way he’d humiliated her, crushed her hopes. The way he’d brushed her aside so easily that had made her work hard to overcome her debilitating shyness and stick up for herself. In a way she should thank him.

Still, the hurt was still raw, because Zac had been the one person she’d thought would never hurt her. She’d thought they were friends. And then more than friends.

“Medical school was tough. You don’t become a surgeon by hiding in the corner.”

“I never understood why you hid in a corner,” he said.

Don’t you?

“It’s hard to have a voice with a domineering mother.” She cleared her throat and changed the subject, didn’t want to talk about the way she had been. She was no longer that shy little girl in the frumpy clothes. The girl who was never comfortable in her own skin. The girl who was unpopular and shy. “So what did you want to bet on?”

“Snowfall. How many inches do you think?”

Ella snorted. “That’s a pretty pathetic bet.”

“What?” he asked, mildly outraged. “Why?”

“If we’re going to wager dares then you have to make the bet more interesting.”

“Like what?” he asked, leaning forward, those blue eyes and that devious smile making her heart skip a beat.

She drew a total blank. She had to think of something, but a resident knocked on the door.

“Excuse me, Dr. Lockwood?”

“Now’s your chance to prove you’re not so formal,” Zac whispered, but she ignored him.

Ella looked up. “Yes, Dr.—Yes, Ryan?”

The resident looked shocked. “Uh, Dr. Lockwood...”

“You can call me Ella when no one is around.”

Ryan the resident didn’t look convinced. “I have the liver enzyme panel of the patient complaining about chronic cholecystitis.” Dr. Trace handed Ella the tablet.

Zac leaned over her and whispered, “Was that so hard?”

“Shut up,” Ella mumbled, as she took the tablet.

“Pardon, Dr.—Ella?” Ryan asked nervously.

“Nothing.”

Ella frowned when she saw the high number of enzymes in the blood panel. It meant the liver was working too hard and soon it could cause inflammation to the pancreas known as pancreatitis, which was a worse infection than cholecystitis. And if there was a stone, fragments could break off a gallstone, blocking the bile duct or in very rare cases causing the gall bladder to rupture.

“Take the patient down for a CT scan. I need to know if there are stones blocking the bile duct. If the bile duct is clear, prep the patient for an emergency cholecystectomy by starting them on a course of antibiotics.”

“And if there are stones in the bile duct?” Dr. Trace asked.

“I don’t suppose Dr. So is in?” Ella asked hopefully.

“No, Dr. So is stuck in Boston.”

Dammit.

Ella could perform an emergency cholecystectomy as long as the bile duct was clear. If there were stones in the bile duct, the only way to remove them without doing an open laparotomy was to do an endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography or ERCP. An ERCP was a delicate procedure only done by trained surgeons, involving cutting into the sphincter of Oodi and sending a small instrument up the bile duct to crush or retrieve the stones.

Even then the ERCP came with complications and they weren’t always successful.

“Then we monitor the patient, give them morphine until Dr. So can return.”

“If the patient needs an ERCP, I can do one,” Zac said suddenly.

Ella was shocked. “You can do an ERCP? That’s a highly skilled endoscopic procedure.”

Zac nodded. “I know, but I was trained in a lot of different procedures when I was studying at Annapolis. I did a stint on a medical ship and since the particular medical frigate I was on couldn’t carry as many staff as a hospital that had specialists, surgeons on these ships were prepared for a lot of things. I can also do a crash C-section if need be.”

Ella was impressed and even Dr. Trace was looking at Zac with a gaze of admiration.

“Okay, Ryan, well, you heard Zac. Get the patient started on a round of IV antibiotics and down to CT.”

“Yes, Ella.” Dr. Trace took back the tablet and left the staff room.

“I’m impressed, Davenport. You really are a jack-of-all-trades.”

“Yeah, well, being on duty taught me a lot of things.” His expression changed and his brow furrowed, worry lines deepening, and he crushed the empty plastic cup in his hand.

What happened over there?

“I’m going to finish my rounds,” he said, standing up. “I know you’re here, but I’m officially on duty and I do have some rounds to attend to.”

Ella nodded. “Good. Once I hear about the patient I’ll have you paged, but if the bile duct is clear I can handle a laparoscopic cholecystectomy on my own.”

Zac didn’t look her in the eye. “Okay.”

That was all he said as he disappeared from the staffroom. The jovial, fun conversation was over and he was distant again. The wall was up and she wasn’t sure she should even bother trying to climb it.

Zac would never change.

And she was foolish to think he ever would.

* * *

“That is a nasty third-degree burn you have there. How did you get it?” Zac asked as he examined a patient’s forearm.

“Deep-frying the turkey.” The man winced. “Only my brother’s apartment in SoHo couldn’t really handle my deep-frying. We shorted the fuse and then the fat tipped over. I caught the turkey, though.”

Zac raised an eyebrow. “Deep-frying a turkey is a thing?”

“Oh, yeah,” the patient said. “I always deep-fry the turkey. Granted, my wife makes me do it outside, and we have way more property in Nashville, but my brother and his fiancée insisted we spend Christmas in Manhattan in a cramped apartment that they pay a ridiculous amount for.”

“Yes, that is true. Small apartments and large rents.” The burn would need to be debrided. There was a plastic surgeon resident at the hospital. The least he could do for this poor man was have his burn properly taken care of. “I’m going to page one of our plastic surgeons on call to help clean up the burn and then wrap it. Do you have a way home in this storm?”

“The cabbie could only get me so far and then I hiked in the rest of the way,” the patient said.

Zac nodded. “Well, you can stay here until the storm lets up and they clear the streets. If you’re not from New York you could get really turned around in this storm.”

“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.”

Zac turned to one of the nurses who had kissed him under that horrible fake mistletoe, but he couldn’t remember her name for the life of him. He’d berated Ella for not knowing or calling the residents by their first names and now he couldn’t remember this nurse’s name. So instead he plastered on one of those flirtatious Davenport smiles that he used to be famous for. “Nurse, can you page Dr. Onge to assist this patient?”

The smile worked and the nurse didn’t seem upset that he didn’t know her name.

“Of course, Dr. Davenport.”

“Thanks.”

He left the exam room as quickly as he could. He knew that women like that nurse were only interested in him because of his money, his name and his outward appearance. If they knew what a mess he was inside, they probably wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-foot pole.

Yes, they would. You said it yourself: money and prestige.

Prestige and the name. That’s all people saw in him, which was why he had been so adamant to head to Annapolis and get his medical training there, instead of at an Ivy league college. He had seen what marrying for money and prestige did to people in his parents’ circle.

His parents had seemed so happy, but obviously that wasn’t true. Even though he and his father hadn’t seen eye to eye on many things, it had shattered his whole world when it had come out that Hugo had had an affair. He couldn’t take it and instead of staying around for any of the fallout, the navy had been an escape for him. The navy had been his salvation, until that changed, and all he’d wanted was to be back in the safety of his family. Even though he hadn’t thought he deserved it.