Mary J. - First-Time Valentine

His eyes closed. “Good. I like the idea of throbbing for you.”

God almighty. Were you delusional last night, J.D., or just a total jerk? He couldn’t believe he’d actually uttered those words. To a doctor, no less. He owed her an apology, preferably before the operation. The last thing he needed was for her to cut into him with payback on her mind.

Across the O.R.’ s inpatient waiting bay, an old guy hacked as if his lungs were full of gravel. From out of nowhere a nurse hurried to raise the guy’s head, asking how he was holding out, and if anyone sat with his wife and did his son still work at the paper? J.D. groaned. The old home-week chitchat he could do without.

He checked the wall clock. 12:23 p.m. Eighteen hours since he’d tumbled down those steps that led to the parking lot across the hospital’s entrance lane.

Never in his life had he been this idle. Okay, admittedly the care so far had been excellent. Nurses, doctors and technicians were gentle and promptly got him whatever he asked for: magazines, water, juice…everything except an early surgery slot.

New York, that’s where he should be, in his plush office with its cherrywood desk and his proficient secretary. Hell, he hadn’t scratched and clawed his way to the rung of executive for Northeastern HealthCare by stopping to smell the Mayflowers.

He grunted. He’d be hard-pressed to find any flower in the concrete jungle where he worked.

“Hello, Mr. Sumner,” a soft female voice said before blue scrubs and her face came into view.

God, she was one appealing woman. And those dark eyes… A brown he couldn’t quite describe—until he thought of the fancy bag of hazelnuts his secretary had bought him last Christmas.

“How are you feeling?” Ella Wilder asked, unaware of where his thoughts traveled. This afternoon the bell of her pink stethoscope was tucked into a breast pocket.

“Bored as hell,” he grumbled.

She offered a quick smile. “Won’t be much longer. I have one surgery ahead of you which will take about thirty minutes.” Moving down to his iced knee, she marked the spot where she would do her work. “The swelling has decreased. That’s good.”

Her hair, he saw now, was a study of browns and blacks. Today she’d clipped the thick locks behind her ears.

She asked several more questions about his injury, ensured he was Jared Devlin Sumner, and had he taken his meds?

“I gave all that info to the nurse,” he said, annoyed as hell that through everything he couldn’t stop taking inventory of her body.

“We like to double check. It’s standard procedure.” She jotted a few extra notes on his chart. “Do you have family here, Mr. Sumner?”

“No.” Well, he did, but his old man was no one’s business. “This isn’t a big deal, is it?” He would never admit it, but the notion of having his flesh divided by a knife scared him witless.

Her expressive eyes held his. “Everything should go fine.”

“Should? Not sure I like the sound of that.” He tried to swallow past the fist in his throat.

Again the smile. He liked her mouth. The cute little body, the shape of her eyes…that great mouth…. Hell, he liked everything he saw.

“You’ll be fine, Mr. Sumner.”

“Maybe I’ll take legal action. Those stairs should’ve been de-iced.” All right, he sounded like one of his dad’s scratched records, constantly playing the same line over again.

One dark brow curved. “Were you wearing snow boots?”

“I had proper footwear.”

The brow remained high. “Not from what I saw last night.”

When he was wearing his five hundred dollar pair of Gucci loafers. “Fine. You’ve made your point,” he grouched.

She patted his hand. “You wouldn’t be the first to misjudge our weather.”

“I grew up here.” Now why mention that?

This time both eyebrows sprang. “Oh?”

“Long time ago.”

“And no doubt well before my time.”

He grinned. “I’m not much older than you, Doc.” Going with the years in med school, he estimated she was in her early thirties.

“According to your chart you’re seven years older.” Her cheeks flushed and she looked away. “See you in the O.R.”

“Hold on—you’re twenty-nine? Are you a real doctor?”

Her nostrils flared. “I finished my residency last year.”

“Should I trust you with my knee?” The flip tone contained his thread of worry, he knew.

“You can trust me.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“I’ll see you in surgery, Mr. Sumner.” She walked away, tidy in her blue scrubs—determination in her eyes.

J.D. swallowed. He’d offended her twice in less than twenty-four hours and he was going under the knife. Her knife.

And he’d forgotten to apologize.

Should I trust you with my knee? The words plagued Ella’s mind as she scrubbed in for his surgery.

Lord , she thought, if he only knew how close his question struck . Well, she wouldn’t think of it. She would not. Instead, she inhaled slowly and checked the equipment tray readied by the scrub nurse. Interning is behind you. You’re a doctor now. With excellent surgical talent. You know what to do .

Her counselor’s mantra, calming her pounding heart and the jitters edging into her fingers. One more deep breath ….

They wheeled Sumner in and she saw he was calm and slightly drowsy from the sedative administered twenty minutes before.

Shelly, the circulating nurse, went through the preoperative checklist again, ensuring he was the correct patient via his armband, X-rays, consent forms, lab results. Next Brad, Ella’s anesthesiologist, explained his role to her patient.

The pain will be gone soon , she told him mentally. On the monitor, she scanned Sumner’s vitals.

“Good to go,” Brad informed her. Patient was out.

“Let’s get started then.”

An hour later, Ella pulled off her soiled surgical gloves and tossed them in the disposable bin. She had repaired his damaged cartilage. He’d been lucky—the kneecap hadn’t shifted, and while the soft tissue had bruised, it hadn’t sustained severe injury. However, the fall had wreaked havoc on his right meniscus—torn the cartilage from its mooring—and after studying the X-rays last night and the MRI this morning, Ella had known J.D.’s repair would entail the arthroscopic surgery she had just performed.

Now he was on his way to recovery. She’d check on him in fifteen minutes, but first she needed a drink of water. Surgeries with their intense lights and stress always dehydrated her. In the small doctor’s lounge down the hall she found her internist brother, Peter, sitting at one of the two small tables reading several pages of a letter, a coffee at his right hand.

“Hey, Peter.” Ella reached into the fridge for the liter of Evian she’d brought that morning from home.

He gave her a glance. “El.”

She sat across from him, stretched her legs, took a long pull on the water and jutted her chin at the pages. “What’s up?”

“More crap from the state medical board. They’re claiming we’re unethical in our methods, that we’re focusing too much on coddling—their word—patients and not enough on speed of recovery and effectiveness of treatment.” He gathered the pages into the big brown folder marked Dr. P. Wilder, Chief of Staff. The word confidential had been typed above his name.

“Should you be telling me this?” she asked, hoping he would say no. She had no time or interest in crazy allegations, especially when they alluded to a political agenda. Having already heard the rumors and innuendos, she simply tried to focus on her work.