Lucy Ryder - Falling At The Surgeon's Feet

His mouth turned up at the corners but his gaze was unreadable.

“Wanna share a cab?”

Holly quickly shook her head. She was suddenly eager to get away from him before she made a bigger fool of herself—which would be difficult after…well, everything that had happened.

“No. Thank you.”

He studied her silently for a couple of beats until headlights lit them up like they were on Broadway, signaling the cue for them to launch into a heartrending duet. But this wasn’t a Broadway musical and she couldn’t carry a tune to save her life.

He casually lifted his arm like a born-and-bred New Yorker and like magic the empty cab slid to a stop. Holly ground her teeth together. She usually had to step into traffic and risk serious injury before a cabbie deigned to stop. And then it was mostly to yell abuse at her for being a “crazy chick with a death wish.”

“You sure?”

She swallowed an odd sensation that felt very much like disappointment—but couldn’t possibly be—at his imminent departure, and nodded before she changed her mind. “I’m sure.”

After a moment he shrugged. “Suit yourself.” And leaning forward, he opened the cab door. Half expecting him to move aside so she could get in, Holly was momentarily distracted when he propped his arm on the top of the door and looked back at her, eyes dark and unreadable.

“See ya, Doc,” he said, and slid into the cab, leaving Holly to gape at the departing vehicle.

Chivalry, it seemed, even California celebrity style, was well and truly dead.

The following week Holly had nearly double the number of scheduled procedures and didn’t have a lot of time to brood. Her life was right on track with the plan and her goal was within sight. There wasn’t time—or the inclination, she reminded herself—to be thinking about wicked blue-green eyes, let alone getting the opportunity to scream.

But that was easier said than done, especially when she happened to look up during a breast reduction plasty to see a familiar figure in the observation room. Only this time he wasn’t sprawled bonelessly across the seats, head tipped back and eyes closed as his headphones pumped music into his ears.

With his long legs planted wide and his folded arms testing the seams of his black T-shirt, he looked like a modern-day pirate on the deck of his ship as he challenged the sea. And although his expression and his eyes were in shadow, Holly knew he was looking right at her.

She could feel the weight of that cool, assessing gaze and froze in familiar panic. It was only for an instant and scarcely noticeable by the people around her, but it sent her pulse racing and made her thighs tingle.

“Dr. Buchanan?” The calm voice of Lin Syu made her blink and suck in a fortifying breath. She dropped her gaze briefly to the attending surgeon, who was waiting for Holly’s next move with a raised dark brow.

Altering her grip on the miniature scalpel, Holly prepared to make the inverted T incision that would both lift and reduce the size of the breast once the excess tissue had been removed.

She carefully followed the guidelines already drawn onto the skin. The patient, a thirty-four triple-D, with back, neck and shoulder problems, couldn’t join her sports-crazy fiancé in outdoor pursuits because her heavy breasts caused discomfort, chronic pain and embarrassment. Kerry Gilmore had admitted that she’d spent her entire high-school years hiding her body and being unable to do things other girls did. Normal things like horseriding, swimming or joining the cheerleading squad. But it was the chronic pain that had finally made the decision for her.

She wanted her life back and Holly was preparing to do just that.

Exchanging the scalpel for surgical scissors, Holly carefully began separating the sectioned dermis from the breast tissue. The aim was to maintain a healthy blood supply to the nipple or it would turn necrotic. The drawback to any reduction was that large amounts of tissue were fed by a lot of blood vessels. Each time she nicked one of them, she waited while the OR nurse cauterized it and mopped up the blood.

Once the dermis had been properly detached from the breast tissue, Holly transferred it into the waiting hands of the attending nurse and went to work on excising the glandular and adipose tissue as per Lin Syu’s murmured instructions.

By the time they’d removed five hundred grams of tissue from each breast, Holly was ready for the next stage. She and Dr. Syu made several complicated knots around the areola before gently lifting the nipple into its new position and nudging the remaining parenchyma into place.

She then temporarily closed and stapled the skin flaps so she could assess the size, shape and position of each breast. The specialized operating table lifted the patient into a sitting position while Holly used the sizer to check the positioning before gently removing the staples and peeling back the skin flaps.

She attached strips of acellular mesh to the upper breast substance to strengthen the weakened muscles then patiently reconnected the mass to the dermal layers using a resorbable intradermal suture. This would reduce the pull of gravity and wound tension, speeding up recovery. It would also help keep scarring to a minimum.

She sutured the areola to the surrounding flaps before reaching for the staple gun for the final stage of the dermal resectioning procedure. When it was over she stepped back to allow the nurse to swab the wound sites with iodine in preparation for the daisy strips that would be applied around the areola in widening circles. They would serve a double function of protecting the wound from infection as well as provide additional support while the patient healed.

Five hours after the patient went under; Lin Syu supervised the insertion of the twin drains while Holly stripped off her mask, gloves and headgear.

“Excellent work, Dr. Buchanan,” the older woman said, finally lifting twinkling black eyes to Holly. “We’ll have you doing all our cosmetic procedures before long.”

Holly grimaced, as Dr. Syu had known she would, and moved away from the table—her part of the procedure currently over. She sent a quick look up to the observation-room window and wasn’t surprised to find it empty. Breast reductions weren’t that interesting unless you were considering specializing in plastic surgery. And since Dr. Hot Celebrity was rumored to have done hundreds if not thousands of boob jobs, he had probably only wanted to rattle her.

And succeeded. Darn it .

“As long as the patient is satisfied with her new size,” she said, stretching out cramped back and shoulder muscles as she moved toward the doors. She knew that she would have to perform cosmetic procedures but in this case it helped knowing she could restore someone’s self-confidence while alleviating their pain.

Dr. Syu followed, stripping off her gloves. “You just saved her from a lifetime of pain and discomfort, Holly. That she wants to wear a bikini on her honeymoon doesn’t make cosmetic procedures wrong.”

Holly stifled a yawn. “I know,” she mumbled, feeling somewhat chastened. “Besides being the object of curiosity and ridicule, Kerry Gilmore said she was tired of men making lewd comments about her breasts.”

“Well, that’s just juvenile and typical,” Lin said in disgust. “Anyway, as long as she follows medical advice and wears the support garment, she’ll be wearing her string bikini on her honeymoon come summer.”

She untied Holly’s surgical gown and waited while Holly returned the favor before saying over her shoulder, “You don’t have to like them but you also shouldn’t forget that cosmetics procedures—especially the big-bucks ones—help fund the reconstructions.”