The Family Doctor. Bobby Hutchinson

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Название The Family Doctor
Автор произведения Bobby Hutchinson
Жанр Современные любовные романы
Серия
Издательство Современные любовные романы
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781472025852



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glanced at her and recognized relentless determination. His tone took on a pleading note. “Leslie, I’ve got a sore ankle, for cripes’ sake. Next of kin isn’t relevant. This is a total waste of time, in my opinion.”

      “I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s standard procedure.” She wanted to remind him of his own insistence on procedure, but she bit her tongue and added, “We find this the fastest and most beneficial way to proceed. Now, next of kin would be…?”

      His lips thinned and he scowled. “My mother, Dorothy O’Connor.” In an exasperated tone he rhymed off address and phone number before she could ask, and as quickly as she could, Leslie finished the rest of the questions on the form.

      “I’ll send Alf right in.”

      She closed the examining room door gently behind her, took a deep breath before she remembered about the stench, and hurried over to Alf Jensen, who was treating a Shriner who’d gone into defib.

      “We got trouble,” she said in a low voice.

      “You’re telling me.” Jensen applied the paddles and everyone stood back. When the monitor registered a heartbeat and the patient was stable, he sighed and turned to Leslie. “What’s up?”

      “Chief of staff’s in three, suspected fracture of the ankle. He’s mad as a hornet and wants an X ray stat.”

      “He’ll have to wait his turn. There’s only me and Sorenson and those new med students who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.” Jensen was noted for his colorful vocabulary. “And most of these Shriners are a hell of a lot worse off than somebody with a sore ankle.”

      “I know, but he’s the chief of staff, and he’s not in a waiting mood. Can you go in and have a word with him? Please?”

      With a short expletive, Jensen jogged over to three.

      An aide pushing a gurney said, “The patient rep is looking for you, Leslie. She’s over there at admitting.”

      Leslie saw Kate and waved a hand, conscious all of a sudden of the nasty stains on her green scrub suit and the fact that her hair was escaping from the clip on the back of her head. As always, Kate was perfectly groomed, her mass of auburn hair gleaming, a sky-blue summer shirtwaist skimming a slender but curvaceous body.

      Kate’s eyes, green as new summer leaves, took in the chaos. “Wow, looks like you’re having a busy morning down here.”

      “Whatever gave you that idea?” Leslie grinned. Despite the difference in their ages—Kate was a mere thirty-six—and the fact that Leslie would kill for such cheekbones and long legs, they’d become friends.

      Six months before, Kate had been an enormous help with a problem Leslie had had with one of the ER staff, another nurse who Leslie was sure was drinking on the job. During the meetings that Kate had set up to resolve the difficulty, it became obvious that she was an expert at conflict resolution. Leslie had discovered that she and Kate had the same irreverent sense of humor. They were both divorced, though neither lived alone. Kate had her stepdaughter, Eliza, and Leslie had her mother, Galina.

      “Phew, what a stench.” Kate wrinkled her nose at the smell that no amount of air freshener could disguise. “I thought you might have time for coffee, Les, but it looks like you’re swamped. Give me a call when it slows down and you can get away for a minute. I want to talk to you about a patient who was treated in Emerg last week.”

      “I’ll buzz you when it happens. Right now we’re up to our hips in alligators. Shriners with food poisoning and—” Leslie lowered her voice “—the chief in with what he insists is a fractured ankle. Slipped on a candy wrapper in the lobby, no less. Bet the cleaning staff are gonna get reamed out for that one.”

      “Tony O’Connor?” Kate’s eyebrows arched, and her green eyes widened. Leslie knew that Kate had had her problems with O’Connor.

      “The very one,” Leslie confirmed.

      Kate pursed her lips and gave a silent whistle as she glanced around at the loaded stretchers. “Lousy timing.”

      “You got that right.”

      “Did you get him to take his clothes off?” Kate asked in a whisper.

      “Damn.” Leslie snapped her fingers. “I knew I forgot something. What was I thinking?”

      “You weren’t thinking of me, that’s for sure. The laughter dancing in Kate’s eyes made Leslie smile. “How many times have I told you I’d like to know what’s really under those Italian suits?”

      “And how many times have I told you to just walk up to him and make a formal request?”

      Kate grinned and shook her head. “Tempting, but I’m chicken.”

      “Rubbish. You’re the bravest woman I know.” Leslie wasn’t joking about that. Where her job was concerned, Kate constantly and willingly put herself into the midst of conflicts that would have made Leslie run fast and far. “I’ve always thought you and Tony would make a striking couple.”

      Kate laughed. “I hope it wouldn’t get to the striking stage, but you never know.”

      They were giggling when a clerk came hurrying over. “Leslie, paramedics are arriving with an MVA, ETA seven minutes.”

      “It’s been such a quiet morning, it’ll be nice to see some action for a change.” Leslie rolled her eyes and waved a hand at Kate as she hurried off.

      CHAPTER TWO

      KATE LEFT EMERG AND HEADED back to her cubbyhole of an office on the second floor, thinking about Tony O’Connor and his injured ankle. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she found it difficult to feel any real sympathy for the man, and her lack of compassion embarrassed her. She’d been a nurse before she became an administrator, and she never wanted to lose her empathy for anyone in pain, be it emotional or physical.

      As patient rep, her job involved the resolution of conflict—she was the bridge between the system and the individual. She dealt with anger every day, she even gave seminars on anger management, and still she couldn’t entirely resolve the ambivalent feelings she had toward O’Connor.

      One of his first campaigns when he came to St. Joe’s last February was to try to do away with her position. She understood that budget cuts by the government were at the root of his reasoning, but he’d been unsupportive in the extreme, suggesting that having an employee whose sole function was to resolve patient and staff problems was both frivolous and unnecessary. Her salary was a waste of money, he declared openly at one meeting where she was present.

      Fortunately, she had powerful support on the hospital board as a result of a dispute she’d resolved just before Christmas that had saved St. Joseph’s from what might have become a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

      When he learned of it, O’Connor had grudgingly withdrawn his objections to her position. He no longer actively opposed her, but neither had she felt any positive support from him.

      At the time, she’d felt betrayed and deeply angry. She’d tried to let it go, but it was there, just under the surface, whenever she was around him, which was often. She saw him regularly at staff meetings, and they were on several committees together. It had been necessary many times to meet with him and discuss various concerns that had been brought to her attention involving patients and staff. Although he’d always been fair, he’d certainly never gone out of his way to be understanding, and she resented him for it.

      Why, then, was she so powerfully, physically aware of the damned man? Sometimes he had a way of looking at her from those unreadable brown eyes, as if there was no one but the two of them in the room. She was all too conscious of the graceful, athletic way he moved, and she’d noticed that his unruly dark hair curled a little above his collar, and his hands were big and muscular.

      It was such a waste. In Kate’s opinion, Tony O’Connor had been