In Too Deep: A Romantic Suspense Novel (23 page)

I liked Morrison. He was in his mid-forties and ugly as sin, but a nice guy. He had even had me over to his house along with a bunch of the other volunteers and med students the summer before for a barbecue, and I was able to spend three hours hanging out with his teenage daughter, who thankfully looked nothing at all like her father. "Thanks, Doc. I promise, I won't sew my fingers to anyone's scalp today."

Morrison nodded. "Better not, or else I'm just going to leave them there. Come on, Mrs. Wong in exam two isn't going to like waiting much longer."

The first three hours of my shift went well, and at ten, I headed over to the community health clinic. A partnership with a local charity, it was a huge tax write-off for both the hospital and the corporation behind the charity. The clinic provided low-cost community health care for the local area, and often gave away services to those who couldn't pay for them.

While noble in nature, the reality was I spent a lot of my time wiping stuffy noses and trying to explain to woefully unprepared, uneducated and uninterested parents that feeding your child real food from the supermarket instead of fast food and convenience store stuff would go a long way towards some of the problems they kept bringing their kids in for.

Their kids didn't need pills for their cold, they needed fresh oranges. Their anemic child would be a lot better off with some spinach or kale with their dinner instead of coming in for shots. Sadly, most of my lectures got nasty looks from parents, and not a week went by without someone loudly stating that I had a lot of nerve trying to tell her how to raise her children.

But today was vaccination day, so I got to give my right thumb a good workout. As I was sticking dose after dose of measles vaccine into little kids' backsides, I reflected that at least the clinic didn't have to deal with the affluent parents some of the private doctors did. I don't think I could have dealt with any soccer moms whipping out blog posts from anti-vax websites and trying to trip me up with 'facts' from Jenny McCarthy. We didn't get that sort of parent in the clinic. I suppose it was just trading one type of headache parent for another.

After two hours, the clinic closed down for lunch, and I headed back over to the ER after a ten-minute break where I exchanged a few text messages with Mark. I planned on taking my lunch after my shift was over, so I wanted to see if I could tag along with Dr. Morrison on any more cases. Instead, almost as soon as I waved to Cassandra, I heard the voice I was not looking forward to in the least. "Well well, back from baby butt duty, Pure-D?"

I hated Dr. Green's nickname for me. He's a good doctor, a clinical genius in a lot of ways, and one of the best in the entire state at what the ER docs jokingly called "meatball surgery," stabilizing patients and keeping them alive long enough for the other surgeons to take over.

I'd seen him take a teenage gunshot victim and in the middle of the ER, crack her sternum open, pinching the woman's pulmonary vein closed by hand while applying what amounted to super glue to hold it closed before she bled out. The girl ended up with a seven-inch scar that I'm sure would make her want to wear high necked shirts for the rest of her life, but she was at least alive.

Still, Dr. Green was an asshole with a juvenile sense of humor. My second shift in the ER, after mistakenly leaving my bra behind in one of the staff changing rooms, he had settled on my nickname. Dredging the back alleys of his mind, he tied in my bra size with my last name, and then some old movie or another he watched where a character uses the phrase "Pure-D white." And so my nickname was born. Since then, I've never taken off any of my underwear in the staff changing rooms.

At least I wasn't Dr. Green's only target of harassment. Almost every intern, volunteer, or doctor who couldn't threaten his position as an ER institution had something about them he could comment on. His list of complaints in HR was a mile long, and the one time I had gone up to talk to them, the woman who took my complaint just nodded. "Let me give you some advice," she told me after reading over my carefully handwritten form. "Glen Green is never going to get himself fired from this hospital unless you can find pictures of him with his dick out around the underage candy stripers. He's too damn good, and he's happy down there in the ER. The administration deals with him because he's pulled more miracles out of his ass in the past two years than most doctors do in an entire career. So they put up with him, and he knows he's never going to be promoted past head attending physician of the ER."

"It's still not right," I said, sighing. "This isn't some stupid medical TV show. What's next, he walks around limping with a cane and popping drugs, whacking people in the gut or back of the knee whenever he feels like it?"

The HR woman snorted and balled up my report. Before I could say anything, she tossed it in the trash. "I just saved your career, Miss White. Dr. Green is a total jackass, yes. But if this goes in his file, he's going to make your life a living hell until you complete your PA studies, and then he's going to torpedo your chances anywhere within a three state radius by slipping a very unflattering note into your student files right before you graduate. I've seen him do it before. So keep your head down, put up with his shit, and tell yourself that in about two years you can be done with him."

So I put up with it, Pure-D and all. "Clinic duty was fine, Dr. Green," I replied in my best professional voice. "I just wanted to get some more observations and work done around here until the end of my shift in two hours."

"So you can go get a bunch of micks drunk and give the evening shift work to do," Green replied, grabbing another chart and tossing it to me after glancing it over. "There, go pull your weight. Even a student could handle this one."

I didn't even reply, catching the chart on the fly and turning around. It was easier that way.

A
fter Sophie left for work
, I headed back to my apartment in the Park District to change clothes. As I drove, I found myself thinking about her, a small smile on my face. Besides being smart, she was more beautiful than she realized, with long brown hair and green eyes that grew darker when she was aroused. And the sex......

Distracted by the memories of the night before, I almost hit the truck in front of me, slamming on the brakes on my Mercedes just in time. The racing wheels reacted quickly, and I stopped just a few inches from the rear end of an F-150, the driver even opening his door to stick his head out and check there was nothing wrong. "My fault," I said, sticking my head out the window. "Gathering wool."

"Be careful, man!" the driver yelled back, slamming his door and stomping on his accelerator when the light turned green. I just let him go, he wasn't worth my trouble. Still, I drove the rest of the way back to my apartment carefully, parking inside the covered garage before taking the elevator up to the eighteenth floor. It wasn't the penthouse, but my condominium overlooking the Park was nice, and most of my neighbors worked in businesses far different from mine.

The guy above me was a venture capitalist, while the woman down the hall was a local television personality, who'd held a two person "welcoming party" in my condo with me about two days after I moved in. We barely spoke to each other now. After about the fourth time I turned her down for a repeat performance, she finally got the message. She wasn't angry or anything about it, although I could tell she was a bit peeved that I wasn't more star struck. Still, she had a steady stream of bed partners when she wanted them, and I had the same. She just wasn't my type.

After changing my clothes, I got ready for my morning routine. First, I monitored all of my investments, making sure there had been no major market changes that required my immediate attention. I didn't want to keep doing my job forever, you know, so I always took at least thirty percent of my freelancer fees and invested it, with a good mix of different investment vehicles. I could've retired a long time ago, but even when you're rich, you want more. Besides, I'm not so sure my employers would allow me to just walk away.

I decided to skip my typical thirty minutes of specialized cardiovascular work, but kept to my weight training and martial arts practice. I've set up a room of my condominium just for that, as keeping my body in peak condition is important for my line of work. As the sweat flowed from my pores, I could feel the stress flowing out of my mind as the tension built in my muscles, letting me think.

About halfway through my heavy bag work, I fell into that state that the Buddhists call
zen
, a kind of half-trance where my body just reacted, and my conscious mind could be somewhere else. That sort of stillness, even while moving, is the answer to the riddle
the more you seek it, the harder it is to find it
.

As my hands flew against the bag, I pondered the past twenty-four hours. Why had I chosen Sophie? I went to the club that night on business only, and planned on teasing the club girls just to give myself a good cover for being there. My original plan was to bring one of them to a hotel for a good romp in the sheets, maybe two if the mood struck me, nothing more, until I saw Sophie.

I certainly hadn't planned on having an hour long conversation about music and art with her in a VIP room, nor did I plan on giving her a ride home, returning back to her place after completing the night's work, and I
definitely
didn't plan to have some of the best sex of my life not just once, but twice. To top it off, Sophie was now the one person outside the very limited circle of my employers who had my personal cell phone number.

I still hadn't formulated any conclusions about Sophie, other than I wanted to see her again, and sooner than waiting until the following Tuesday. Unfortunately, I had neglected to get her cell phone number, and had to wait for her to call me at some point to get in touch with her. Regretting my oversight, I went into my kitchen to put together my post workout meal when my cell phone rang. It was a text message from Sophie.

I'm getting off work at about 2,
it read.
You want to come by the University ER and get some late lunch before I start work again this evening?

I checked my schedule quickly, and saw I had nothing except an expected phone call from a client.
I'd be happy to. Mind if I come down on the RIST instead of taking my car?

No problem,
the reply came after just a few minutes.
Looking forward to it. See you soon.

I chugged the rest of my protein shake and jumped in the shower, quickly shaving and changing into my normal casual
blend-in
clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, along with some Nikes. Grabbing my phone and wallet, I clipped my keys to the inside of my front pocket and headed out the door.

There's a bus stop right outside my condo building, and I was able to catch a bus down to the terminal quickly. From there, I used the city's light rail system (Rapid Intercity Service Train, or RIST) to get within just a few blocks of the hospital. The sun was out, the sky was beautiful, and I actually felt like whistling as I walked the short distance to the hospital ER.

What I saw when I walked in the automatic doors caused my blood to boil. It took all my self-control to keep a calm demeanor as I watched Sophie get blisteringly yelled at by some asshole doctor. "What the hell do you think you were doing, you stupid jackass?"

Sophie was practically in tears as the doctor, who looked like he was about forty, continued to berate her about what I quickly figured out was nothing important. Instead, it seemed he just wanted to harass her and get the perverse pleasure of trying to make her cry. "If you think you can act with such total lack of thought and become a PA, you are sadly....."

I couldn't take it any longer. Working surreptitiously, I made sure my face was covered from the security cameras, and made my way outside to a fire alarm, pulling it and walking around a parked ambulance before going inside calmly. The braying alarm caused everything to stop in the ER, as the source of the alarm was tracked down. A quick check found my pulled alarm, but with no damage. I knew the security guards wouldn't investigate too strictly.

My little trick did have the desired effect, however, as the doctor broke off to check on patients while the rest of the staff started taking the steps needed for a patient evacuation. Sophie was kept busy for the ten minutes it took the security guards to check the alarm source and call it off, but she was done by two fifteen. I figured it was better than being cursed out for what would have probably been about the same amount of time.

When Sophie came out of the staff room, her frown disappeared when she saw me. "Hey, Mark!"

"Hey beautiful," I said, accepting the hug she gave me. "How was your day?"

"Oh, nothing out of the ordinary," she said, taking my hand and walking with me out towards the parking lot. I noticed a few of the staff members giving us quizzical looks, but they didn't say anything. "Although that alarm at the end was a bit unexpected. The ER doesn't get prank pulls like that usually until the night shift."

I grinned and looked over at her. "I figured it was a good way to get you out of being yelled at."

Sophie stopped in the parking lot and looked at me, her jaw dropping for a moment before a smile broke out on her face. "Oh, you sneaky devil!" she laughed, giving my arm a quick hug. "That was perfect! But won't you get caught?"

"Nah," I replied easily. "I saw the security camera when I approached, and noticed that with the way the ambulance was parked in the bay, the pull was totally covered. There's no way they could have gotten a clear image of me, even if your security guards decide to investigate." I pulled her in tight and kissed her gently, her lips warm and welcome against me. "Besides, I think it was worth it. Who was that guy anyway?"

Sophie shrugged and waved it off. "Dr. Green, he's the senior attending physician. He's an asshole to a lot of people."

I let the subject drop, but remembered the name and the face, filing it away for later. "So, what would you like to do before you start your paid work? I'm not too familiar with what's in the area."