Radclyffe - Crossroads

“I’ve got the kids on Sunday and I promised them a barbecue. If you’re free—”

“Uh…thanks, really. But I’ve got some stuff around the house I’ve been meaning to do for months. I think it’s home-repair weekend.” She didn’t spend a lot of time socializing with her colleagues—fortunately her schedule gave her an easy excuse to pass on dinners and department get-togethers. Friendships didn’t come without a price, and she was just as happy not to have even casual ties. She’d rather invest her energy and time in her patients. Those relationships were short but intimate and intense, and then everyone moved on with their lives. If she never made a long-term investment, she’d never be disappointed or, worse, devastated by loss.

Ned nodded as if anticipating her answer. “Okay, but if you change your mind, we’re only ten minutes from you.”

“Appreciate it, but I think I’ll be knee-deep in sawdust for the foreseeable future.” She wasn’t lying. Her second year on staff, she’d purchased a once-stately old Victorian opposite the small park a few blocks from the hospital. She could walk to work, and if she had an emergency in the middle of the night, she could be on-site in less than fifteen minutes. Somewhere in the last hundred and eighty years, the second and third floors had been divided up into apartments and then later reconverted, leaving many false walls and odd corridors that divided rooms in haphazard fashion. She’d been slowly working to restore all the original architectural details. She enjoyed returning the place to its lost grandeur. This spring she’d started exterior work and still had half the wraparound porch to go.

“Have a good weekend,” Ned said over his shoulder as he went off down the hall.

Hollis checked her watch. Mary Anderson was likely to deliver in the next two or three hours. She ought to be home by one and could get in a few hours’ work on the back porch, a bike ride before dinner, and maybe even get out on her Harley for a quick run after that. She was planning to pull up the pressure-treated wood someone had put down on the porch and replace it with stained oak planks. Some of the posts on the banister also needed replacing, and she had to find a carpenter who could cut her new ones to match.

Happily reviewing her plans for the day, she pushed open the door bearing her name in plain black letters and stepped into the anteroom adjoining her office. Her secretary allowed no one through without an appointment, and the single chair in front of her desk didn’t do much to encourage drop-in visitors. When she was at work, she wanted to work, not kill time with meaningless gossip.

“Hi, Sybil. Anything doing?” Hollis kept walking toward her office, not expecting Sybil to have much in the way of news. If there’d been anything important, she would have paged her. Sybil Baker, forty-five and looking thirty, twice divorced and “done with men,” had been with her since she’d taken the position at the hospital. She had been the executive assistant to the chairman for five years before Hollis arrived but didn’t like juggling all the departmental meetings that went along with the job. She preferred taking patient calls and scheduling office hours. She was also very good at settling down anxious patients and their families, leaving Hollis to concentrate on her clinic and delivery schedules. Hollis was the envy of every doc in the department.

“Actually,” Sybil said, and Hollis slowed, “your ten o’clock appointment is here.”

Hollis frowned. “I’m not scheduled to see anyone.”

Sybil gave her an odd look. “I thought you knew. You have a meeting about the midwife clinic?”

Hollis clenched her jaws, biting off a retort. God damn Dave. He could have warned her. “I didn’t know it was today.”

“Oh,” Sybil said, looking relieved. “That’s why I didn’t know about it. I was afraid you’d told me and I forgot to put it in your book. She seemed certain, so I thought it was best to have her wait in your office.”

Hollis glanced at her watch. Ten fifteen. Great. She disliked keeping anyone waiting—she ran her office hours as close to on schedule as she possibly could, and her patients often remarked how unusual that was for an obstetrician. There were times she was late or missed office hours altogether, but only when she had an unexpected delivery. Otherwise, she wanted her patients to know that she would be there when she said she would be there, for any reason. And that extended to other appointments she made. She’d missed a critical appointment once in her life, and she’d be paying for it until the day she died. She’d vowed then it would never happen again.

“Hold my calls,” Hollis said. “What’s her name?”

“Colfax. I won’t bother you unless it’s L and D.”

“Thanks.” Hollis pushed on through into her office. “I’m so sorry for keeping you waiting, Ms. Colfax.”

The woman in the chair rose and turned to face her. Hollis looked into the deep green eyes she remembered so very clearly. She could remember, too, the last words Annie Colfax had said to her before requesting another doctor. I never should have trusted you.

*

Annie had started out with reservations about this politically mandated project, and when she’d seen Hollis Monroe’s name on the office door, she’d known it wouldn’t work. She’d spent the last twenty minutes while she was kept waiting formulating her reasons why. Only now she couldn’t think of a single rational argument—anger blanketed her mind with a thick red haze.

Hollis Monroe was just as Annie remembered—arresting blue eyes, thick, tousled black hair, toned body. Her slightly rumpled scrubs gave her a faintly renegade air. She could see Monroe on the quarterdeck of a pirate ship, sword in hand and a victorious smile lighting her handsome face. At the moment, the surgeon appeared supremely focused, her intense gaze fixed unwaveringly on Annie as if nothing else mattered except this moment and what was happening between them. A rare skill that probably endeared her to patients, but Annie wasn’t endeared.

She’d always known she’d run into Hollis someday. Fortunately, hospital trips for her were rare. Her whole focus as a midwife was to provide safe, individualized, supportive birthing care at home or in an equally natural setting. On those rare occasions when a patient developed perinatal complications, she arranged their transfer to the nearest hospital if they had no pre-arranged obstetrician, but beyond the phone calls to exchange medical data and her report to the paramedics, her involvement with the hospital establishment ended then. She had hoped this new assignment wouldn’t require her to spend much time at PMC, and she’d hoped even more that she wouldn’t have to deal with Hollis Monroe for a long time to come. So much for hopes, as if she hadn’t learned that a long time ago.

“I’m afraid this won’t work.” Annie grabbed her briefcase. She wanted out of this room and away from the woman who reminded her of one of the worst days of her life. “I’ll find a replacement and have the clinic contact you.”

“That might be a little premature,” Hollis said, suddenly wanting to prove Annie Colfax wrong—despite the fact she’d been of the same mind not ten minutes before. Annie’s abrupt assessment and thinly veiled animosity bothered her more than they should. If the hostility had been purely professional, she might have dismissed it, but she knew it wasn’t and she didn’t know how to redress the past. She’d never had a chance to establish a relationship with Annie. At the first opportunity, Annie had requested another physician, as was her right. Hollis had accepted the decision and stepped aside. She’d understood the decision at the time—Annie was devastated by her unexpected surgery and terrified for the safety of her child. Annie needed to have control of her life, and if firing Hollis and blaming her for the outcome of her precipitous delivery would give her that control, Hollis couldn’t argue. Now so much time had passed she didn’t know this woman, and any explanation she might have offered would have to remain unspoken. “Why don’t we take a few minutes to discuss things. I just found out—”