Page 17 of Rules of the Heart

Well, they would see about that. If this patient died, Valerie would have Ella’s head on a platter for this. Brilliant surgeon or not, if her reckless disregard for rules resulted in a patient’s death, Valerie would crucify her.

Time dragged on. Valerie became totally immersed in her work of saving the patient’s heart. By the time she looked up, her aching feet told her that she’d been standing for several hours.

She startled when she saw that Ella was closing up the patient’s head.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m closing. I fixed it. His brain is fine. You’re welcome.”

Darrin was wheeling the CT scan away. Valerie ground her teeth, trying to bite back her furious diatribe. She managed to finish closing the patient’s chest before finally losing control.

“Ella. Clean up and then come to my office.”

Valerie scrubbed and stalked to her office to find Ella already waiting there for her and not even looking abashed at her behavior. Ella gave her a defiant look as she waited for Valerie to speak.

“Well? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

“The patient survived. My strategy worked. You’re welcome.”

“Fuck that, Ella! Your patient may have survived, but that was pure luck. You broke the rules, rules that were put in place to protect people. I am yourbossand youwillmind what I say.”

“You may be my boss, but your authority doesn’t supersede the oath I made, Valerie. I’m here to save lives, not to follow stupid rules. I’m not a surgery automaton you can control and force to follow orders; I’m a person with a mind of my own, andthat mind has saved a number of patients that no one else could save. Or did you forget that you called for me when you knew that your patient was dying? If you have a problem with my work as a surgeon, then I’m all ears.”

Valerie opened her mouth to continue shouting at Ella, and then closed it again. She dearly wanted to continue this argument, but the way Ella had put it was making it very difficult. No matter how hard she tried, Valerie couldn’t find anything to criticize with Ella’s actual skills as a surgeon. No, it was all the other chaos that surrounded her that drove Valerie mad.

She finally found another line of attack. “It’s not just about surgical skills, Ella. You’re not the only one in this department. We all need to work together here, and we can’t do that unless there are some common rules for all of us to follow.”

“I get that, Valerie, but your rigidity around sticking to those rules is just ridiculous. You need to learn to be more flexible.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do, Doctor Ashton!”

“Then don’t you tell me how to take care of my patients!”

Fuck, why did Ella have to be so sexy when she was angry? It made Valerie even madder than she already was, and she was practically boiling over with rage already.

Valerie didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t fire Ella—they needed her, she was sure of that much—but she couldn’t work like this, either.

Suspending her again was no good, either. Denying the hospital of a surgeon of Ella’s talents was just shooting herself in the foot.

Some of her anger abated as an idea came to her. “From tomorrow, you are to report to HR first thing in the morning, an hour before your shift is due to start. I’m sending you on a catch-up course of all the hospital rules. One month long. Let’s see ifspending some time learning the rules will teach you to follow them better.”

Ella’s expression morphed into one of outrage. “Are you serious right now? I’m not some school child you can put in detention!”

“Then stop acting like one! Youwillgo on the HR course and that’s the end of it.”

“Fine,” Ella snapped, “but don’t expect this to change anything. You can have me memorize all the rules you like, but I willneverput a rule above my patient’s welfare.”

Not for the first time, the idea of bending Ella over the desk and fucking her into submission crossed Valerie’s mind. She needed to get Ella out of here before she did something crazy like act on that urge and end up with a sexual harassment suit to deal with.

“Get out of here, Ella. I don’t want to hear anything else out of you until you can recite all the hospital rules word for word.”

Ella glowered at Valerie for a moment before spinning on her heel and stalking out, looking unfairly sexy as she did it.

7

Ella

Ella stomped through to the HR department with ill grace. She knew from asking around that she was the only person to be sent on this kind of punishment course. In fact, to her knowledge, such a course didn’t even exist.

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