Marie Ferrarella - Doctor In The House

It took Harold less than a heartbeat to find his voice. “On what basis?”

“She’s too pretty,” Ivan told him matter-of-factly. He turned his attention back to the last of his sandwich and his iced coffee.

“What?” The single word fairly vibrated with incredulity.

“Pretty,” Ivan repeated. “Attractive, comely. I believe the term ‘handsome woman’ would have been applied to her a century ago.” His eyes narrowed as he looked across the desk at the chief. “That might be more your style, anyway.”

He had to know Ivan’s reasoning here. “And since when do looks even remotely figure into the selection process?”

“A woman who looks like that—” Ivan pushed the closed folder even farther away from him “—is not going to keep her mind on her work. She’ll be too busy flirting with all the eligible doctors and would-be doctors.” He rolled his shoulders, mimicking the exaggerated movements of a femme fatale. “And they’ll all be buzzing around her like so many bees who’ve lost their way to the hive.” Wrists pointed down, he wiggled his fingers in the air to illustrate. “Want my advice.” It really wasn’t a question, merely a declaration. “Nip this in the bud before it even starts. Tell her ‘thank you but no thank you.’ Better yet—” his eyes glinted as a thought came to him “—refer her to Sloan Memorial,” he said, referring to another teaching hospital in the area. “Let them deal with her and the chaos that she’ll leave in her wake.”

Harold had leaned back in his chair, waiting the neurosurgeon out. When the silence finally came, he seized it. “Are you through?”

Ivan looked down at the paper that had held his sandwich. A dollop of the spicy mustard was all that bore witness to the pastrami extravaganza that had been his lunch. He smiled as he crumpled the paper and placed it and the paper plate onto the tray. “I guess I am.” He pushed back his chair, ready to leave.

“I didn’t mean lunch,” Harold informed him. “I meant with your tirade.”

The choice of words amused Ivan. There were obviously holes in Harold’s education. “That wasn’t a tirade, Harold. When I have a tirade, there’s much rising of hair at the back of the neck. Usually involving the necks of the people I’m tirading against. Believe me, you’ll know when I deliver a tirade.”

“I’m not considering hiring her at Blair Memorial,” Harold said evenly.

“That’s good to know.” Ivan began to rise to his feet. “Now, I’m afraid that I have to—”

His next words had Ivan sitting down again. “I’ve already hired her.”

The surprise on Ivan’s face melted away a moment after it appeared. He shook his head sadly. “Big mistake.”

Harold wasn’t through. “She is your surgical resident.”

“Bigger mistake,” Ivan declared. When Harold made no attempt to rescind his words, Ivan grew serious. And annoyed. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

“I’ve listened,” Harold informed him succinctly. “And like you’ve done so many times before, I’ve chosen to ignore what I’ve heard.” He leaned forward, trying to appeal to Ivan’s charitable nature—if such a thing existed. “There’s no leeway here, Ivan. She has an excellent grade point average—”

Biting back a choice expletive, Ivan waved a hand in disgust at the words. “Oh well, an excellent grade point average, that’ll save lives.”

“And she comes highly recommended.”

“By who?” he demanded, getting to his feet again. He shoved his hands deep into his lab coat as he began to pace the length of the overcrowded office. A stack of folders piled up in one corner toppled, sliding down like gleeful children on a sled sampled the first snows of winter in the mountains. “Some online dating service?”

“By professors at John Hopkins University,” Harold countered, turning in his chair to watch Ivan stride around the room on legs that had always struck him as being too long. “Professors for whom I have the utmost respect. She’s impressed every one of them.”

Ivan’s expression was nothing short of sour. He snorted as if he’d expected nothing less. “I won’t ask how.”

“Don’t be insulting, Ivan.”

“Insulting?” Ivan echoed. “You call this insulting? I haven’t even begun to be insulting.”

One of the reasons Harold Bennett had risen to his present position of chief of staff of one of the best hospitals in the Southwest was that he kept both his head and his temper during times of crisis. To see him angry was as rare as viewing the tail end of Halley’s comet. It was visible, but not very often.

But at the moment his expression was serious, closely bordering on angry. “If you do anything to make her leave, anything that will make her time here at Blair anything but informative and well-spent, I promise you, Ivan, there will be consequences. Consequences that you won’t like.”

Ivan looked at him, utterly unaffected by the prediction. “In other words, there’ll be no change from now.”

“Do your worst, Harold.” Ivan drew himself up to his full six-three height, which was quite a bit taller than his chief of staff. His imposing personality made him seem even taller. “I can’t be expected to do my job while babysitting your latest project. And why is she your latest project?” he asked suddenly, skillfully turning the tables as he mounted his offensive. The best defense was a strong offense did not just apply to football, but to life, as well. Ivan continued to fire questions at him, just quickly enough so that Harold couldn’t answer. “Did you lose a bet? Is she your goddaughter? Or perhaps Rachel’s grandniece?”

Harold pursed his lips. When it came to Ivan, he hated admitting anything. The neurosurgeon always managed to turn the information into a rapier that he skillfully wielded.

“Not that it has any bearing on this,” the chief of staff began grudgingly.

Ivan’s well-shaped eyebrows rose as if to coax the rest from him. “Yes?”

Harold knew that somehow, some way, Ivan would discover this on his own. It blunted the edge if he admitted it first. “I know the young woman’s uncle.”

Crossing his arms before his chest, Ivan leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Aha.”

“No ‘aha,’” Harold replied tersely. “That just happens to be an extraneous fact, one I know you with your unrelenting capacity to dig and burrow would unearth on your own in short order. I just want you to know that it doesn’t mean anything.” He saw the smirk on Ivan’s lips and felt compelled to defend his decision further. “I want only the best people working here at Blair.” He did his best to sound formidable and knew in his heart he fell short of the mark. “Which is why I’ve gone to bat for you so many times. If I hadn’t, you and I both know that your head would have been on a pike somewhere near the entrance of the hospital years ago.”

“Very medieval imagery, Harold. I had no idea you had it in you,” Ivan congratulated him, then paused at the threshold, the integrity that was his foundation keeping him from his exit. “So, in other words, I owe you.”

Harold snorted. “In any words you owe me.”

Ivan blew out a breath, a condemned man resigning himself to his firing squad. “And there’s no other way to repay the debt? Shine your shoes, take you to Disneyland? Wear a hair shirt for a week?”

Harold smiled, anticipating a truce. “The hair shirt has possibilities, but we can explore that at another time. I told the board that you were taking an active part in training our residents—”

Ivan allowed himself a smug moment. “In other words, you, Dr. Harold Bennett, chief of staff, our standard bearer of the truth, lied.”