Page 158 of Wicked Proposal
The seventh floor.Come to think of it, I haven’t been back there since my contract was made permanent. It’s where the hospital’s bureaucrats reside, scalpels traded for ballpoint pens and red tape.
Which means this can’t be good.
Calm down, Mia. Maybe there was a typo in your last patient’s chart.
Maybe they’re finally giving you that raise you asked for last year.
Or maybe they’re firing your ass.
Before my anxiety can win the Olympic gold for jumping to the worst possible conclusion in the shortest amount of time, I slam the brakes on my thoughts.
Then, when the elevator goespingat my floor, I fling myself out of there.
And collide with a horribly familiar white suit.
The scent hits me first. Expensive, artificial, sanitized, like the chemicals used at the morgue to mask the smell of death.
Then his laugh.
Grating. Mocking.Close.
He catches my forearms, “helps” me back upright. Only I can feel the way his hands linger, snakelike, feeling the soft skin of my inner arm before slinking away like silk.
“Speak of the devil,” he croons.
That’s my line, asshole.
“Brad.” I step back, my teeth gritted so tight I might need a trip to Orthodontics. “Fancy seeing you here. Again.”
“Excuse me.” An older man with gray hair and a pair of half-moon glasses steps between us. “Please refrain from addressing my client directly.”
“‘Refrain from’—?” I balk. “Smithers, youknowme.”
“I have no such recollection.” The man adjusts his glasses and fixes me with a cold, impassive stare. “Now, if you’d please step back, Ms. Winters.”
Swallowing my frustration, I do as he asks. One, because I don’t actually mind beingfurtheraway from Brad.
And two, because I know exactly who this man is: Theodore Smithers, the Baldwin family’s infamous shark lawyer.
Which begs the question of what the fuck he’s doing here.
A bureaucrat in a brown suit clears his throat. Someone who works for the hospital, though I don’t recognize him. “Seems like we’re all here,” he says. “If you’d kindly follow me, gentlemen, Nurse Winters.”
“Wait,” I say. “What’s going?—?”
Then I see him
Dr. Adams.
If the Chief of Surgery is here, it means this is bad. Like, earth-shatteringly bad. He loathes his bureaucratic duties like no one else. Doesn’t move from his OR unless the MRI machine is on fire or the hospital’s about to get sued into the ground.
And since I can’t smell barbecue…
I’m fucked, aren’t I?
“Gentlemen. Thank you for coming.” He shakes both their hands. “Nurse Winters,” he adds, sanshandshake and with the sourest tone I’ve ever heard.
Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-fuck, with a side of duck with an F. I have no idea whether my contract of employment includes an exclusivity clause, but clearly, it must, right? Because there can only be one reason we’re all here.
