Page 7 of Seduction
Penina Ross
His name was Dr. Jake Sparrow, and out of all the departments in the hospital, he was in mine—or better yet, since he was an attending, I was in his. I had managed to avoid directly interacting with him all day. However, whenever we were in the same room, I could sense his presence. I caught him staring at me numerous times. It was strange, though. It was as if he didn’t know he was doing it. For instance, when he spoke with Dr. Nassim, one of the fellows, while he listened, he stared at me. I tried like hell to avoid his eyes and escape the room as fast as I could.What is it about him?I’d never had such a reaction to a man.
My shift went along as it usually did. Most people didn’t like doing rounds as much as I did. There was something about entering a room and seeing hope in their eyes that I had good news about the patient’s condition. Even when I had not so good news to give them, I tried to make our encounter an optimistic one.
Along with the patients that were assigned to me the other day, I had picked up new ones after night call handed off their recently admitted patients. I read their charts and studied lab results and scans, wanting to know it all. After rounds, I was paged to the OR to perform my first endovascular repair of the day. Nearly every day, I encountered patients who bore stifling headaches until they ended up in the emergency room, barely hanging on for dear life. As a seventh-year resident, I could perform all surgical procedures without guidance. Only an attending had to sign off on the surgery. One day, Jake Sparrow and I would have to communicate, but that day wasn’t then.
My shift was almost over, and as usual, it went by so fast. I was standing at the electronic health record pod in the care station while charting when Zara and Deb, our chief resident, walked out of one of the conference rooms. I stared hard at Zara, willing her to look at me. But she kept her eyes down as she walked past everyone in the vicinity then up the hallway that led to the call room.
I was about to tear away from the EMR module to catch up with Zara and question her, but Deb stomped toward me. Her lips were pressed into a flat line, and the corners of her mouth turned downward.
When she reached me, she patted the counter twice. “Could you take Zara’s on-call night tonight? I’ll give you two days off for it.”
“Sure,” I said, still troubled by the mystery of whether Zara had gone through with her plan to quit.
“Thanks,” Deb said and walked away from me before I could ask what happened between the two of them. “Oh.” She stopped in her tracks.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m putting you on Dr. Sparrow’s service this evening. It’ll be good for you to pick up as many techniques from him as you can while you’re still here.” She checked her wristwatch. “He’ll be in surgery in forty-five minutes, OR seven. You should get prepped now.”
It felt as if my head were rising to the ceiling.No.I managed to avoid him all day, and now I’m going to be in surgery with him?My terrified eyes remained pasted to Deb’s back. I tried to think of something to say, but my mouth wouldn’t work. I wanted to take it back and say I couldn’t cover for Zara because I had a thing to attend that night and couldn’t get out of it.What thing?I couldn’t think of one.
Soon Deb was out of sight, and there was no turning back. I couldn’t avoid the mysterious, sexy, and quite rude new attending.
“You okay?” John Ness, one of the oncology residents, asked.
I hadn’t noticed him standing next to me and could only imagine how flustered I appeared. So I stood up straight, pulled my shoulders back, and decided to face Dr. Sparrow with confidence and professionalism.
“I’m fine.”
Really, I am.
* * *
I wasn’t fine.
I prepped for the assist on a decompressive craniectomy, which was when part of the patient’s skull would be removed to relieve the pressure of swelling in the brain. I had performed two of those surgeries by myself earlier that week. The odds of a patient dying were high. According to Melanie, the OR assistant who scrubbed in with me, Dr. Sparrow was on his eighth straight surgery and would appreciate a resident of my caliber scrubbing in to make sure he didn’t miss a step. He had been expecting Zara, but according to Melanie, I was the better option. Melanie and Zara had strange tension between them, so I thought it best not to comment.
“But Dr. Sparrow is top-notch,” she assured me. “He’s hands down the best surgeon I’ve had the privilege to work with.”
That made me feel better about heading into a critical procedure with him. I had to bring my A game. And it sounded as if he was a consummate professional who wouldn’t let the reason he’d stared at me so much get in the way of our working together. The patient’s name was Bruce Landy. His motorcycle had slipped on an oil patch, which caused him to skid off the road and tumble twenty-five feet down a ravine, and his surgery would be tricky.
But as soon as I walked into the operating room, Dr. Sparrow stared at me with his mouth agape. He didn’t look happy to see me. That was for sure. And I immediately felt my skin burn.
“What are you doing here?” he growled.
I couldn’t believe the scorn in his tone.What did I ever do to him but say hello?“I’m here for an assist,” I said.
“Where’s Dr. Agate?”
My brow furrowed. It sort of stung that he wanted her instead of me. “She’s not here, but I assure you—”
“This is not a teaching moment. You can leave,” Dr. Sparrow said and looked down to verify his instruments.
Stacy, one of the nurses, stopped taping the patient’s eyes to raise her eyebrows at me. I could tell she was curious about how I was going to respond.
I stood tall, planting my feet in a wide stance. “Dr. Sparrow, I assure you this is not a teaching moment. I’ve done this procedure on my own many times before tonight. I’m here to assist.”
