Page 59 of Seduction
My eyes throbbed. Leonard’s surgery was less than two hours away. I turned up the speed again and ran faster. My body was tired but strong. As for my mind, as soon as the scalpel was in my hand and I was in the thick of a procedure with my team in tow, it became sharp and aware. I could generally go five days straight without sleep. On the sixth day, I would crash for four to five hours then wake up choking and gasping, unable to remember what made me do it.
The treadmill beeped and slowed. When it came to a stop, I had run six miles and was soaked in sweat. My body wanted to drag, but my brain felt invigorated. It was time to shower, dress, and take that damn tumor out of Leonard’s brain.
* * *
One and a HalfHours Later
My only surgeryof the day was on the horizon, and I was tooled up and ready to go. I knew what approach to take to get the aggressive cancer. I had spent months studying the growth. According to the morning scans, Leonard Moreau had followed the regimen I’d given him to a tee. The prescribed daily lifestyle changes had kept the cancer from metastasizing. Since Leonard had done his job, it was time for me to do mine.
I walked down the corridor, chin up, looking people in the eye, and nodding sharply at those I passed. I answered their greetings with a strong “Good morning” as I ran Leonard’s story through my mind. The forty-two-year-old male had become my patient the day after I arrived in New Orleans. Three previous doctors from separate medical institutions around the country had advised him that the tumor was operable but that there was a one hundred percent chance that removing it would make him blind. He would also lose all sensory function and some motor function. His growth had a mean-ass streak, expanding to other regions of his brain. He was lucky to still be walking and talking and able to search to save his own life. Leonard had two daughters. He wanted to live to be with them for as long as he could.
The patient had been on the verge of going bankrupt by the time he reached me, but he was fighting too hard to stay alive to be depressed about it. It just so happened that on his flight from Maryland back to New Orleans, Leonard suffered two seizures. Since he’d been tagged as a disabled passenger with high-priority special needs, he’d been put in first class. Some people called it luck, but I’d been a surgeon long enough to know that it was the will of God that Leonard had been seated next to Justin Jones, an oncologist and colleague of mine from Australia. As soon as their flight landed, Justin called me and told me Leonard’s story, including the in-flight seizures, and Leonard came directly to the hospital so I could take a look at him.
“Don’t worry about cost,” I told him.
I owned the fucking hospital. When I’d bought it, the facility was new and going under fast due to mismanagement. Si had called and asked if I was interested in buying it. He had said the board wanted to save face, so the quieter they could keep the transaction, the better. I made myself think like my eldest brother Jasper would, considering the pros and cons. The next day, we started the purchasing process. The record showed that Pete Sykes was the new owner.
I’d reached the part of the surgery when I envisioned myself being the cancer, traveling through the brain, wrapping myself around tissue, nerves, and blood vessels. The more aggressive I was, the more harm I wanted to inflict. I dared any surgeon to try to stop me, puffing my chest, gritting my teeth. I was a fucking rabid wolf coming for Dr. Sparrow.
“What are you going to do, Jake?” I muttered.
The brain was mightier than brawn. I was going to outthink the cancer. For the past six days, I’d been practicing an extraction technique, using digital technology. I’d been successful at removing the cancer from a 3-D graphic of Leonard’s brain sixteen times, after previously failing three hundred ninety-six times. I was more than ready to do it for real.
I stepped into the room, which housed the care station, and stopped in my tracks. There she was, standing with my team—Penina Ross. She was bright-eyed, beautiful, and seductive, and no way in hell was she going into that OR with me and the others.
* * *
I started walking again,stretching my neck from side to side, getting the prickling out of it. “Dr. Ross,” I said, losing control of my pitch. “What are you doing here?”
Penina smiled pleasantly. “I’m on your team today, Dr. Sparrow.” She sounded as if the previous night hadn’t occurred and not a stitch of her heart was broken.
I set my eyes on Deb, who stood beside her. The way she looked at me, she was daring me to kick Penina off my team.
All eyes were on me. I’d worked in enough hospitals to know that everyone knew I’d purposely avoided Penina Ross, and they were too intelligent not to know why. I might as well have announced that I’d been fucking her and we’d been practically living together.
It dawned on me that I’d been doing it wrong. I had to keep her close, be nice, and treat her like I did the rest. So I kept a cool head as I said, “Then let’s prepare to scrub in.”
After a short pause, my team started to disperse, including Penina. I fought the urge to call her, escort her to my office, and just fuck her so I could get it out of my system. I loved the way her skin glowed in the morning, and I could smell her from across the room. Her natural scent would fill the OR, making it harder for me to concentrate on Leonard.Fuck!I was fucked.
I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with sterile hospital air, the best kind of air.Penina Ross.Fuck, my dick was hard.
“Dr. Sparrow, are you all right?” Deb asked.
I opened my eyes and narrowed them at her. She had a way of looking at me as if she wanted to scratch my eyes out.
“Do I bother you, Dr. Glasgow?” I asked.
Her indifferent shrug was like another slap in the face. “You’re the surgeon of our dreams, but I don’t understand why you don’t like my residents.”
I avoided sniffing cynically. She meant one resident in particular.
Smiling warmly, I said, “I like your residents, Dr. Glasgow. You’ve done a fine job whipping them into shape.”
She slammed the flimsy file folder on the countertop closed. “Dr. Ross is our best. And I don’t understand how you don’t want to team up with the best.” A dare flashed in her eyes. “Unless you’re just that insecure.”
It was an insulting jab, but I’d come across Deb’s type before. She was an overworked employee who was emotionally tied to those in her charge as if they were an extension of herself. She had taken my decision to keep my distance from Penina personally, and I liked it and respected it. And also, she liked me, which was fine. She would get over me in a matter of months.
“Dr. Glasgow, I agree with you regarding Dr. Ross. I promise, I’ve heard you. I’ll do better.” I nodded sharply and headed for the battle with my team versus a Godzilla of a cancerous tumor.
