Radclyffe - Turn Back Time

"No, go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say."

"Pearce, really...it's not import--"

"It is to me," Pearce said quietly.

Wynter let out a long breath. "Okay, here goes. It's just always seemed to me that doctors, and especially surgeons...often have more than the average number of children. You know--powerful men, the prestige of carrying on the family name, and all that."

"I know." Pearce scraped back her chair and twisted to the side so that she could stretch her legs out. She draped one arm over the back of her chair and gazed past Wynter out the plate glass window to the street where taxis lined up in front of the hospital. "You're right.

And you would have been right about us, too, except there was a small problem--Rh incompatibility. The first child, a boy, died as a result of it. Then I came along, and after that, there was one more miscarriage. I think they decided the risk wasn't worth another try."

Wynter closed her eyes for a second. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to blunder into this."

Pearce shrugged. "It's ancient history now."

She smiled as she spoke, but Wynter saw no warmth in her expression. There was more, much more, she knew, but she couldn't bear to explore areas that obviously hurt Pearce. She wanted to get them back to the lighthearted moments they had shared during dinner.

"There are three of us, all girls. My oldest sister is a stay-at-home mom who lives two miles from my parents, and my younger sister is a first year law student at Temple."

"Here in the city. That must be nice for you." Pearce pushed back at the specter of loneliness and disenchantment that accompanied thoughts of her family. "Are you from around here?"

"Not too far away. My parents have a working dairy farm in Lancaster."

"You're kidding."

Wynter pretended to take offense. "There are still real live farms in this country, you know, Dr. Rifkin."

"Yeah, but you don't strike me as a farmer's daughter."

"Really?" Wynter said playfully, enjoying the light that had returned to Pearce's eyes. "And why is that?"

"Well, for one thing, you're not a wide-eyed and innocent country bumpkin." Pearce narrowed her eyes as if in serious thought. "Well, maybe the country bumpkin part fit--" She ducked, laughing, as Wynter's napkin sailed toward her face. "Hey!"

"I'll admit to being naïve at one point, but believe me, I'm quite worldly now," Wynter said archly. She kept her tone casual, thinking that Pearce had no idea how naïve she had been at one time. Naïve enough to think that she had understood what direction her life would take, and she'd followed that path for far too long before she'd begun to question it.

"Seriously," Pearce said, leaning forward, turning the butter knife on the white linen tablecloth in a slow circle as if it were the hand on a clock, "if you'd told me that you'd grown up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the daughter of a family of doctors, with a summer home in the Hamptons, I would have believed you."

"Thank you. I think."

Pearce laughed. "Yeah, maybe that's not such a compliment after all. Listen, do you want cof--" Her beeper sounded, and she rolled her eyes. "I knew we were living on borrowed time." She glanced down and stiffened. "Fuck."

Wynter immediately rose, her voice tight. "The SICU?"

"Almost as bad," Pearce said, standing too as she sorted through her wallet for her credit card. "My father."

"What does he want? It's almost nine o'clock," Wynter said as she and Pearce hurried toward Talia.

"He wants to make rounds." Pearce handed her credit card to the hostess and then punched in the extension on her cell phone. After a second, she said, "Rifkin. Yes sir. Five minutes. See you there." She met Wynter's anxious gaze. "Yep. He wants to see patients."

"Now? Does he usually make rounds this late at night?"

Pearce shrugged. "He makes them whenever he wants to.

Sometimes if he's been out of the country and gets in at three in the morning, he'll show up here and want to go around. He calls, we go."

They sprinted across the street, dodging traffic without even giving the taxis, limos, and cars a second glance, then jogged through the fairly deserted lobby to the elevators. They made a quick stop at the locker room to shed their outerwear and grab their lab coats. As they rode the rest of the way to the twelfth floor, Pearce said, "When we get up there, you run the list for him."

Wynter wanted to object. The fastest way to make a bad impression on her very first day was to screw up on attending rounds. She'd taken the extra time to get to know the patients on her walk-through right before sign-out rounds, but there were still fifty new names to assimilate, and many of the cases were complicated. Plus, she didn't know the physical layout all that well. The last thing she wanted to do was lead the chairman of the department into a dead end somewhere.

Still, she couldn't object. It was Pearce's call.

"Okay."

They stepped off the elevator and Pearce led the way to the nurses' station. Ambrose Rifkin was already there, studying a lab report. He wore a perfectly pressed, spotless white coat over dark trousers, a white shirt, and a blue tie with thin red stripes. He turned to watch Pearce and Wynter approach, nothing registering in his face. When they were a few feet away, he said, "Everything quiet?"

"So far," Pearce said. "Do you want to see everyone, or just make spot rounds?"

Ambrose shifted his gaze to Wynter. "Since we have a new member of the team, let's see everyone."

Wynter hid her surprise. It would take close to an hour and a half for them to see all fifty patients, but apparently, time of day had no meaning to the chief of surgery. She took out her list and stepped up to his side. "Mr. Pollack is in room 1222. He's four days post abdominal hernia repair and..."

As Wynter and her father started down the hall toward the first patient's room, Pearce detoured to the storage area adjacent to the nurses' station and began gathering the supplies they would need. She automatically sorted through the rows of plastic bins stacked one on top of another from floor to ceiling, grabbing sterile gauze pads, tape, Steri-Strips, suture removal kits, and all the other supplies required for changing bandages and anything else that the attending might want done.

"Who's the new resident?" a female voice said.

Pearce turned slowly and faced the small brunette in the tight black skirt and scoop-necked beige Lycra top. A good deal of her cleavage was showing, and the outfit would undoubtedly fail to pass an "appropriate outfit for work" check, but Andrea Kelly was a ward clerk, and a very good one, and no one was going to complain about her style of dress.

"Don't tell me you don't know," Pearce said teasingly. "You who know all?"

Andrea stepped closer, running her bloodred nail-polished fingertips along the edge of Pearce's lab coat. "I heard there was a new third-year, but no one mentioned that you were going to be escorting her around personally."

"Just doing my job."

Andrea stepped even closer, sliding her hand inside Pearce's coat and around her flank to her ass, which she squeezed. She swiveled her hips as she insinuated herself tightly between Pearce's thighs and looked up through lowered lashes. "I can think of some other work to keep you busy."

Pearce was bombarded by images of Andrea writhing beneath her, her arms and legs wrapped tightly around Pearce's body, her nails digging into Pearce's back as she clawed her way to a screaming climax. The visceral memory, coupled with the pressure of Andrea's body undulating against hers, made Pearce close her eyes with a groan.

With her free arm she twisted her fist in Andrea's hair, her mouth against Andrea's ear. "You gotta cut it out, babe. I'm working here."