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Part 17: A Glow of Satisfaction
Jarod placed his one-year-old daughter in her bed and silently watched her sleeping for a moment, before leaving the room. Going into the bedroom, he slipped in between the sheets and firmly wrapped his arms around Nicole, feeling as she relaxed against him. He kissed the back of her neck, loosening his hold so that she could roll over and look up at his face, as Charlie curled up in a ball on his feet with a satisfied sigh.
“Is she asleep?”
“Of course.” He kissed her again. “Do you doubt my ability to put our daughter to bed?”
She smiled, brushing his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “No, not really. I…”
“You were just being the concerned mother again, I know.” He laughed quietly. “I never knew you had it in you.”
“Hey, I did a pretty good job of mothering you when you were my patient.”
“I still am, officially,” he commented with a grin. “I got a reminder notice from your office last week to come in and have my eyes checked again.”
Nicole looked up expectantly. “And are you coming?”
“As long as I don’t get any nasty bills to be paid afterwards.”
Her face took on a hurt expression. “And how am I supposed to live if I don’t get money from my patients?”
“You could always ask your husband for a loan.”
”And would he give me one?”
“As long as it went towards a good purpose like feeding you and your daughter,” he smiled before becoming serious, lovingly stroking her cheek. “I hope I never have you on my list of patients.”
“I couldn’t be in better hands,” she told him.
He arched an eyebrow. “Flattery again, huh?”
“Sorry,” she laughed. “It slipped out.”
“I should hope so,” he smiled, running a hand through her hair. “Let’s change the subject. How’s your day tomorrow?”
“It’s pretty light. I’ve got surgery at eleven, but it shouldn’t take too long and I’d expect to be home by mid-afternoon.” She smiled. “That second neurological and optical surgeon has made my life a lot less busy.”
”At work,” Jarod added. “I have the feeling your home life is a lot busier now than it was before he was hired.”
“That couldn’t have been the reason he was asked to stay after I came back from maternity leave, could it?”
Jarod tried to look innocent. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No,” she assured him in mock-seriousness, raising herself on one elbow to look down into his face. “I’m sure you don’t.”
The group sat in the room, waiting for the doctors and discussing their expectations of the coming internship.
“You know,” one of the women whispered loudly to the others. “Apparently the head of this place, Dr. Crawford, is gorgeous.”
“Apparently,” another whispered back, with sarcastic emphasis on the word, “he’s also married.”
“And has a one-year-old daughter called Charlotte Ann,” a young man sitting nearby put in, hiding his smile at the disappointed look on the woman’s face.
“Are you sure?”
”I’ve held Charlotte and seen Dr. Crawford with his wife. Admittedly it was a year ago, but I’m of the opinion that he’s still pretty devoted.”
She eyed him. “How do you know?”
”He’s my mother’s doctor.”
“And how is your mother, Dr. Lyneham?” queried a voice from behind them and the group turned.
“Not bad, thank you, Dr. Crawford,” Mark replied seriously. “But, as she’s currently in a bed up on ward 21, surely you’d do better asking her, not me.”
“I have every intention of it, while we’re doing rounds,” Jarod told him with a grin. “But I have a few other things to organize first.”
“I believe it, sir.” He glanced somewhat nervously at one of the other doctors who had entered the room. “How are you, Dr. Shirer?”
“Fine, thank you, Mark,” the cosmetic surgeon assured him with a smile. “I’m glad to see you again. Obviously things are going well.”
”Better than they were a year ago,” Mark told him.
“I can imagine.” James winked at the younger man and then joined Jarod up on the podium while the interns took their seats in the room.
Jarod turned amused eyes on the young man as they approached the door of the room.
“What are you here, Dr. Lyneham? The intern or the son?”
Mark looked up at the doctor thoughtfully. “What would you do in my place, sir?”
The older man considered briefly. “I’d go in as the intern, but request the supervising doctor not to ask me for advice about treatment.”
“Then would you mind, sir?”
”Not at all.” Jarod gave him an approving smile, following the nurse into the room. “Good morning, Mrs. Lyneham. How are you today?”
“I’m feeling better than I was last night, thank you, Dr. Crawford.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.” Hiding his smile, Jarod indicated the man next to him. “My current intern, Dr. Lyneham.” He handed the medical file to the young doctor. “I think we’ll skip the usual medical history in this case.”
“Yes, sir.” Mark glanced through the folder, watching surreptitiously as the doctor gave his mother an examination. Stepping away from the bed, Jarod took the folder and looked over the notations.
“Mrs. Lyneham, I’d like to keep you in for a couple of days. I’m not expecting you to need surgery, but I do want to run a series of tests, and I think you’ll be more comfortable here than commuting every day. Is that a problem for you?”
“To be honest, Dr. Crawford, that was what I thought you’d say.”
“Good.” Jarod half-turned before looking back at his patient. “My wife suggested I offer the use of our spare room to your son, so he’s nearby. Would you be happy with that?”
“Well,” the woman shot him a startled but grateful look, “as long as Mark is…”
”Dr. Lyneham?” Jarod turned to Mark with a smile. “Would that be satisfactory?”
“Well, I…” The younger man regained his self-control. “Thank you, Dr. Crawford. I appreciate the offer.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Jarod smiled at his patient. “When we’ve finished for the day, I’ll let him come up to you for a few hours and stop by on the way out to the car.”
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Jarod picked up the baby as she crawled quickly along the hall towards him, laughing as the child immediately tugged on his tie. “Charlotte, I’m looking forward to the day when you can actually tell me what you don’t like about those.”
“Maybe you should let me choose your ties for you,” Nicole laughed, gathering the shopping bags that Jarod had dropped inside the front door. “Then she won’t have any cause for complaint.” She smiled at the young man standing awkwardly inside the door. “It’s lovely to see you, Mark. I’m so glad that you accepted our invitation.”
“It was very kind of you to offer, Dr. Crawford.”
“Oh, heavens!” Nicole rolled her eyes. “That could get as complicated as it does at staff meetings. Please, Mark, call me Nicole. It’ll make life a lot easier for all of us.”
“All?” Jarod raised an eyebrow as he began to walk toward the living room, Charlie padding at his heels. “Should I take that to mean Michelle and Sydney are here too?”
“Is that a complaint, Jarod? We can always leave again.”
“Not at all, Michelle,” he assured her with a smile, putting his free arm around her shoulders. “You know how much I love having you here.”
“Yes, it means you only have to do half as much work,” an amused voice stated from further in the house.
”For twice as many people,” Jarod retorted quickly, going into the living room. “So I don’t believe it could be considered an improvement, unless my mathematics is worse than it used to be.”
“That was always your weakest subject,” Sydney told him laughingly, and Nicole looked up with a horrified expression on her face
“You mean he had a ‘weakest subject’? All my expectations of his perfection…”
“You just want me to hand those genes on to our daughter,” her husband remarked in mock-hurt tones, as he sat down and waved Mark to a seat. “And considering I only ever did one math test, and I was only five at the time, I don’t know how Sydney could possibly be expected to remember that far back.”
“Ah, but what score did you get?” Nicole asked as she carried a tray containing glasses and a jug of juice into the room and sat beside her husband on the sofa.
“Ninety-nine percent,” Jarod responded with a grin. “I was getting a cold.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Sydney commented quietly.
“What did he get wrong?”
“The square root of three hundred and twenty six.”
“18.05547008527,” Jarod put in. “I missed the last seven and Sydney said that was wrong.”
“Not that you were a hard marker or anything,” Nicole told the psychiatrist, laughing.
“With his intelligence, he shouldn’t have made that mistake, even if he was sick.”
“But you got to check the answer with a calculator,” Jarod complained. “I had to do it in my head.”
“I gave you a nice, easy simulation to do as a reward.”
”The Hindenburg disaster.” Jarod snorted loudly. “Very easy.”
“You’ll startle your daughter, making sounds like that.”
“Not at all. She thinks I’m an elephant.”
”That’s not too far wrong,” Sydney muttered.
Jarod glared at him. “And what, exactly, do you mean by that?”
“Well, they do say that elephants never forget…”
“In that case it applies more to you than to me. A more painfully accurate memory than yours I’m yet to find.”
“Well, my ‘painfully accurate’ memory seems to remembering you suggesting, a little less than ten minutes ago, that you didn’t know how I could remember you doing a math test at age five. I think you’d better decide which way you’re going to go and stick with it.”
“I appear to be going into a corner, so I think I’ll change the subject.”
“Does that mean I won?” Sydney queried politely.
“Not at all. I’m graciously withdrawing from the argument which, as you told me at the age of nine, means that there are no winners and no losers, thus making life easier for everyone involved.” He leaned back against the sofa and grinned, his daughter beginning to climb up his chest. “It seems that you’re not the only one with a ‘painfully accurate’ memory.”
Nicole looked over at Sydney with a smile. “Were you in danger of actually losing an argument on that occasion?”
“I’d already lost it,” the psychiatrist confessed. “I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Well, the things you learn thirty-something years later!” Jarod raised an eyebrow as he looked at the older man. “If you’d told me that then…”
”You would have never let me forget it,” Sydney assured him. “Just like you won’t let me forget it now.”
“I might be feeling nice…”
Sydney snorted and Jarod grinned as the baby stared at the man, an expression of astonishment on her face.
“I thought I was one who did the elephant impressions. Charlotte clearly did too.”
Laughing, the psychiatrist stood up. “I’ll leave her to get over her shock and check on dinner.”
The surgeon raised an eyebrow. “You’re cooking?”
“Is that a problem, Jarod?”
“If I’d known before, I might have eaten at work.”
Sydney gave him a scornful look. “Nobody said I was cooking for you.”
“There are probably Pop-tarts in the cupboard somewhere. I’ll have those.”
“You’re setting your intern such a wonderful example…”
“I’m sure he’ll cope.” Jarod looked at Mark with a smile and held out the baby for the young man to take. “She’s grown up a lot since you last saw her, hasn’t she?”
“She certainly has, sir.”
“Please, Mark,” the doctor protested immediately. “I don’t think I can bear you calling me ‘sir’ in my own home.”
“But… Dr. Crawford…”
“Dr. Lyneham, what’s the first lesson of internship?”
“Obeying the supervising doctor,” the young man responded reluctantly.
“Then I suggest you do so. At the hospital, you can call both my wife and I by our titles, but while you’re a visitor in our home, I’m Jarod. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
About to respond, Jarod saw the faint grin on the younger man’s face and, with a laugh, stood up, Charlie leaping to his feet also, hopeful of a walk. “I’ve got to get a few things out of the car. Did you bring all your things in?”
“All but one.” Mark stood up with the baby girl still in his arms. “I hope you don’t mind, but I bought Charlotte a birthday present. I left it in the trunk.”
“Mind?” Nicole smiled. “Oh, Mark, what a lovely thing to do.”
“Well, it… seemed appropriate somehow.”
The young man was about to give the girl to her mother, but Jarod stopped him with a smile. “You stay here. I’ll get it – unless you’d rather I didn’t see it until she does.”
”Unless you can see through wrapping paper,” Mark replied with a laugh, “I don’t see that being a problem.”
“I knew there was something I never learned!” Jarod shook his head in mock-annoyance as he went towards the door. “Sydney, why didn’t you teach me how to do that?”
“I didn’t think it would ever be useful,” the psychiatrist remarked as he came back in the room with a tray, laughing as he heard the front door slam. Setting the glasses and the bottle of wine on the table, Sydney sat down on the sofa, looking at the intern. “Did you always want to study medicine, Mark?”
“Only since Dad got sick,” the young man told him quietly, sitting down in the seat he had formerly occupied. “Mom and I wanted to know what was wrong with him and the doctors wouldn’t tell us everything, so I started studying to find out.”
“And what was it?” Nicole queried.
“The same thing Mom’s got,” Mark replied softly. “She was diagnosed just a couple of weeks after Dad died.”
“Have you told Jarod?” Sydney asked him. “It might be worth running the tests on you, as well, to make sure that environmental factors aren’t contributing to it.”
“I’m not sure Mom’s ever said anything about it.” Mark looked up curiously. “Are you a doctor, too, sir?”
Jarod snorted with laughter as he came back into the room and Sydney sent him a look that was intended to be irritated.
“Something amusing you, Dr. Crawford?”
“Only the idea of anyone being that respectful,” Jarod grinned, sitting down as he placed the large package on the table. “But, if it’s any comfort, I reacted the same way when I heard someone say that to Dad, too.”
“Just because you never called me anything except my first name,” Sydney shot back.
“If you’re going to introduce yourself to me like that, what do you expect?”
“You haven’t even bothered to do the introductions here,” the older man told him sternly before he looked at the intern. “My name’s Sydney, Mark. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“You were a psychiatrist,” Jarod corrected with a laugh. “I had the impression that retirement was going to form a major part of your plans for the future.”
“We’ll see,” Sydney commented noncommittally, before eyeing his former student, a smile curling the corners of his mouth. “I’m sure that if I decide to work again, I’d find a situation easily.”
“I’ve never believed that connections should help a person to either get or keep a job,” Jarod told him virtuously.
“So that explains why your wife works in the next office,” the older man stated with a grin. “And I’d imagine you’re already planning which office to put your daughter in when she finishes studying.”
Jarod eyed the intern with a laugh. “I seem to remember somebody coming up with a similar idea almost exactly a year ago.”
Mark nodded, smiling as the baby girl in his lap, who had been steadily gazing at the box that was wrapped in brightly colored paper on the table, now reached out for it.
“Well, we know who she inherited her eagerness from,” Nicole laughed, moving the box to a spot on the floor. She watched as Mark carefully put the child down and Charlotte crawled over to the present, beginning to tear off the paper immediately.
Jarod got up from his chair to kneel beside the girl and, after glancing quickly at the picture on the box, looked at Mark with a grin. “You really did remember that conversation, didn’t you?”
“It was very memorable,” the younger man assured him.
“Why do you say that, Jarod?” Nicole queried, and her husband held up the box so that she could see the picture of the toy doctor’s kit.
“I thought it might be a little too old for her, but she can always use it later,” Mark put in, as Nicole laughed. “It seemed rather appropriate.”
“Very appropriate,” Sydney commented, watching the baby pick up each of the many pieces and look at them closely while Jarod gathered the plastic wrapping and moved it away. The other adults laughed as Charlotte reached up to put the toy thermometer in her father’s mouth.
“Do you think Daddy looks sick, or are you just showing him what it feels like to be a patient again?” Nicole asked her daughter, laughing again as the girl looked up and grinned, showing the dimples that she had inherited from her father.
“I’m quite easily able to remember what it felt like,” Jarod retorted somewhat tartly, after removing the thick plastic tube from his mouth. “All of my other senses had to work overtime to make up for the one that was on vacation.”
Mark settled into the chair at the desk with the textbook in his hands, but his attention, as it did on most evenings, wandered to his mother. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was too late for him to call her and his shoulders slumped slightly at the thought that he wouldn’t hear her voice again that night. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet and extracted the laminated photo of his parents and himself, examining it closely.
“I have something like that, too,” stated a soft voice from the doorway and the young man looked up to see Jarod watching him. “It’s helpful to keep something like that close to you, particularly in difficult times, isn’t it?”
Suddenly unable to speak, the younger man could only nod as he returned the item to his wallet. Jarod walked over to sit on the bed.
“I called the hospital ten minutes ago and the nurse said your mother was resting well. She had a good meal and hasn’t had excessive pain today.”
“Thank you,” Mark murmured.
“Sydney told me what he suggested to you earlier. Would you like me to run tests so we can see if there is some sort of environmental cause or intensification?”
“Do you think it’s likely?”
“It’s hard to say.” Jarod hugged his legs thoughtfully. “With this type of cancer, it’s not possible to say exactly what caused it. If there are environmental factors at work, we might be able to make things easier for your mother by putting her in a situation where she’ll be most comfortable.”
“And,” Mark was unable to suppress his own fear, “if I had it?”
“We could start treatment as soon as possible and have the best chance of success. I know that, when your mother was first diagnosed, she and I discussed you having regular tests, and I think, with such a history, they’re even more important.”
“I know.”
“I bet you do,” Jarod agreed. “If you like, I can arrange them for Saturday, so that they won’t get in the way of the internship.”
The younger man’s lips twitched. “I didn’t know doctors got weekends off.”
Jarod laughed. “We’re not working with illnesses or injuries that need us to be on call all the time, Mark. If you’d decided to do your shifts in Emergency, you’d hardly be sleeping, let alone having the chance to spend your nights here.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t,” the intern responded quickly. “I want some time away from the work, much as I love it, so that…”
“You can spend time with your mother,” Jarod finished. “And while I understand that, if you were to spend the nights there, she’d want to talk to you. That’s very natural but she needs to sleep as much as she can.” He eyed the faint shadows under the young man’s eyes. “So do you.”
Mark nodded, his eyes traveling to the clock that hung on the wall, and Jarod laughed. “Was that a subtle hint or an unconscious action?”
“Of course not, sir!” he protested vehemently. “You know that…”
“That you seem to have forgotten what I said only two hours ago,” Jarod interrupted firmly. “What was it?”
“I…” Mark looked up, his eyes fearful until he saw the humorous twinkle that Jarod was unable to keep out of his own eyes. “I’d like to say I forgot,” the younger man continued. “But I doubt you’ll accept that answer.”
“Not if the marks you told me that you received were the real ones.”
“Oh, they were,” Mark assured him. “Although if I’d been given a math test like the one you did, I would probably have been too scared to get beyond the third grade.”
Jarod snorted with laughter. “You didn’t have Sydney teaching you. Be thankful.”
“I am,” Mark replied quickly, catching the eye of the man standing in the hall, out of Jarod's view. Sydney placed a finger on his lips, and, as Jarod was eyeing the book Mark had been planning to study, the intern risked a rapid nod before he continued. “Was he really that bad?”
“You have no idea.” Jarod rolled his eyes before taking a closer look at the younger man, getting to his feet. “Okay, where is he?”
Mark gave him a look of innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“There’s a proverb about what people hear when they eavesdrop, Sydney,” Jarod stated firmly to the seemingly empty room. “And I hope you’re satisfied.”
“Only if that was the truth,” the psychiatrist told him calmly, stepping into the doorway. “I’ve never been afraid of hearing the truth about myself, even if it isn’t always positive.”
“Probably fortunate,” Jarod muttered, taking the baby girl that Sydney had been holding. “Otherwise I’d be in all sorts of trouble right now.”
“Who says you aren’t?” Sydney retorted. “I ought to write you another test and see if you’re better than you were then.”
“Like a good wine, I improve with age.”
“That’s debatable,” the psychiatrist told him. “But for now, go and improve yourself by putting your daughter to bed, like your wife sent me in to tell you to do.”
Jarod gave him an indignant look, picked up the baby who was crawling on the bed and went out of the room without a word.
Coming into the living room the next morning, Jarod found Mark on the sofa, reading a textbook and taking notes on a pad at his right.
“Did you actually sleep last night, Mark,” he laughed. “Or were you studying for the whole of it?”
The young man shrugged as he slid the notes into the book. “I don’t tend to sleep that much and I like to use the time profitably.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” the older man commented with a grin. “Hungry?”
“Not really,” Mark admitted.
Jarod eyed him somewhat severely. “Should I set you a course in healthy eating?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” the younger man retorted as he sat down at the table. “I know what I should be eating. I just don’t do it that often.”
“Well, at least you’re honest,” Jarod told him. “And I’d say that I used to eat badly as well, but I’ve decided not to admit that just yet.”
“Very sensible of you,” his wife told him as she walked into the room. “It’s a pity that I didn’t arrive at the same decision, isn’t it?”
“My own wife’s going to betray me?” Jarod shook his head. “I knew that I should have had second thoughts before asking you to marry me.”
Nicole widened her eyes, looking hurt. “And I always thought you loved me.”
Jarod gave her a look of astonishment. “How on earth could you arrive at that conclusion? I can’t think of a possible situation…”
“I can,” Mark interrupted, smiling as Nicole looked at him expectantly and Jarod rolled his eyes. “It was about a year ago.”
“I never expected my own intern to turn on me like this,” Jarod grumbled.
“I just thought a reminder might be helpful – “ Mark paused for a beat, “sir.”
Nicole laughed as she stood up and reached for her bag. “Mark, I can definitely understand why Jarod said you two were similar. I hope you both have a good day.”
Mark settled with the other interns into the back of the room, watching as various staff members took their places around the long table. Several nurses, their uniforms less than crisp, showing that their work for the day was almost over, sat down, sipping coffee and yawning. Finally Jarod walked in and took his place at the head of the table.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, could we get this show on the road?”
Rapidly the sound of voices in the room died down into an expectant silence, heads turning to the man. Once there was silence, he looked to the woman at his right.
“Can we get a quick overview of any dramatic changes during the night shift?”
“Yes, Dr. Crawford.”
The woman bent over the notepad before her, reading through details of a number of emergency medical procedures that had been carried out during the night and also several patients that had been admitted. Once she was finished, Jarod looked around.
“Any small details that people want to bring up? Complaints? Objections?” He paused, a hopeful hope in his eyes. “Compliments?”
“Keep hoping, Crawford,” laughed a female voice from halfway down the table, causing the other staff members to join in. Mark grinned also, seeing the looks of astonishment on the faces of the other interns around him.
“Thank you, Dr. Stevens,” Jarod retorted drily. “If you’ve quite finished disrupting this meeting…”
“I wanted to clarify something,” stated a quiet voice from along the table and Jarod looked over.
“Dr. Barnard?”
“As regards the houses that we have for families to use, apparently several of the cleaning teams aren’t sure whether that falls within their responsibilities or not.”
Jarod looked around at the assembled staff. “As I recall, we decided that it did. Anyone remember differently?”
“We decided that it was as important as the rest of the hospital,” put in another doctor from further down the table. “And so it was to be included in the schedules of the cleaning staff who were also assigned to the two top floors of the hospital proper.”
“Thank you, Dr. Meyer,” Jarod told him, nodding in that direction, before looking at a woman who sat in the corner of the room. “Mrs. Fox, will you please ensure that the cleaning teams are aware of this and assign it to the schedule?”
“Yes, Dr. Crawford,” murmured the gray-haired cleaner, making a note on the pad she held.
“Is that all?”
When the silence lasted for a few minutes, Jarod nodded. “Then I think we’ll bring this meeting to an end. Staff members responsible for interns, please make sure they knew where they’re going so that I don’t find any wandering down in the basement, like I did yesterday.” He met the eye of a girl sitting in the chair next to Mark, hiding his amusement as the young woman’s face reddened and she earnestly examined the floor. “Otherwise,” he continued, turning back to the staff, “I think we can get the day underway.”
Immediately there was a buzz of sound. Jarod caught Mark’s eye and nodded him over before he turned to grab Phil’s arm. “I’ve arranged a Board meeting for Friday night to discuss a prospective staff member whose application landed on my desk yesterday. I’ll be putting the notice up about it this afternoon, but I wanted to give as much advance notice as I could.”
“Why not tell Ann,” Phil joked. “And then it’ll be all over the hospital in about ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Dr. Barnard,” the woman retorted drily, having overheard the conversation.
“Truth hurts,” Jarod told her with a laugh. “But if you feel like using your usual grapevine to spread the word, Ann…”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she told him, seizing Nicole’s arm as the two left the room. Jarod laughed and then turned to where Mark was quietly waiting at his side.
“How’s your mother?” Jarod queried as they began walking toward the elevators.
“Not… bad,” Mark replied slowly. “But she looked more tired than she did yesterday.”
Jarod nodded. “She might need some adjustments to the medication that she’s on now.”
“Meaning more blood tests,” the younger man stated evenly.
“As you know,” Jarod told him, waving the younger man into his office. “We’re lucky to have all of the possibilities that exist today.”
“I’m aware of that, Dr. Crawford.”
“Good.” Jarod handed over a folder and sat down behind his desk. “We’ve got four patients to see after we’ve finished rounds this morning and then surgery at three this afternoon. I want you there for that.”
Mark looked up from the schedule, his eyes twinkling. “Will I be finishing it again, sir?”
“We’ll see,” the doctor told him, grinning. “You’ve ruined my surprise.”
“I had the chance to experience your surprise last year,” the younger man replied quickly.
“Very true.” Jarod stood up and took his white coat off a hook on the back of the door, pulling it on and then stretching out a hand for the folder. Mark handed it over, standing also, and put a hand in his pocket to ensure that his pen and notepad were still there as the men left the room.
“Dr. Crawford? Dr. Eubanks is here.”
“Thank you, Julia.” Jarod grinned at the young man sitting in the corner, turning off the intercom. “This is going to be funny.”
“He doesn’t know who you are?” Mark queried.
“He knows me, but not like this,” the older man retorted quickly, straightening his face as the door opened. “Wade, it’s good to see you again.”
The man stopped short in the doorway, his jaw drooping and eyes wide. “Jarod?!”
“Come on in, Wade.” Jarod waved at a chair. “Sit down.”
Wade remained in the doorway, staring at the other man in disbelief. “I thought you were a plastic surgeon!”
“I specialized. More,” Jarod told him with a shrug. “Are you going to come in, or continue hovering in the doorway, Wade?”
With a laugh, the man stepped inside and closed the door, sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk. “Is this what you’ve been up to since disappearing from our corner of the globe?”
“Not only,” Jarod retorted. “But I’m a little curious as to why you left there. What happened to all the supermodels?”
“You remember my weaknesses,” Wade laughed. “I’m not sure I like my boss knowing that much about me.”
“You haven’t got the job yet,” Jarod reminded him. “It’s got to come before the board first.”
“What, you won’t put in a good word for me?” Wade shot him a hurt look. “And we worked so well together!”
“We’ve got a resident plastic surgeon here,” Jarod stated, grinning. “I think you know him already. James Shirer.”
Wade laughed. “Considering I trained him, I shouldn’t have that much trouble remembering who he is.”
“So he said.” Jarod raised an eyebrow. “You’re teaching now, too?”
“I want to expand my horizons,” Wade explained. “After Christine Brandt was arrested, I took over most of her patients and started to realize how limited the work was – the same thing, day in and day out. That’s why I’m hoping to work in a bigger hospital with more possibilities.”
“Well, you’ll certainly get that here, but most of James’ work is with other surgeons instead of his own patients. He’s got very little work of the kind you were doing back in Beverly Hills, though that might increase somewhat now, if you get the job.”
“That’s exactly what I’m after.” Dr. Eubanks lounged back in the chair with a satisfied expression on his face. “I might even find a field that’s more interesting.”
“You?!” Jarod gave him a look of most-astonishment. “You’d leave all those poor supermodels in the hands of somebody less experienced and perfectionist? What is the world coming to?”
Jarod settled back in the chair, picking up the envelope that lay on his desk containing the results of tests that he had ordered for both Mark and his mother. Slitting the top, he withdrew the sheets of paper, running his eyes over the various pathological notations. His lips narrowed as he looked over the summary that had been written, raising his eyes to stare blankly at the wall opposite, his mind busy.
“What is it?” a soft voice from the doorway asked.
He looked up sharply to see Nicole standing there, her eyes full of concern as she watched him.
“I thought you’d already gone home.”
“I had,” she told him, walking into the office and closing the door before sitting down on the other side of the desk. “I got called back in when one of my patients had a relapse. He’s stable now,” she added, forestalling his question.
“And Charlotte?”
“She’s fine,” Nicole replied with a smile. “Michelle was feeding her when I left.” She reached over and put her hand on his. “What’s wrong, Jarod?”
“Mark’s mother,” he admitted. Sighing deeply, he handed the notes over to her. “I shouldn’t show these to you, but I don’t know how to tell him this.”
“Jarod, his father died of this and he knows how sick his mother is,” she reminded him quietly, not needing to read it to understand what he meant. “I’m sure it would be a lot easier to tell him than it might have been to other people.”
“But this is definite,” he stated flatly, standing and walking over to the window, staring blankly out of it. “He’s always been able to have hope before. Now it’s gone.”
She went over and slipped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his back, pressing herself against him. “The only thing you can do is tell him and be there when he needs somebody to talk to about it. And that is one of the things you do best.”
He nodded slowly, turning and wrapping his arms around her. After a few minutes of silence, she looked up at her husband. “How about Mark himself?”
“He’s not showing any signs yet,” he replied. “But I don’t think that will be as comforting for him as it would have been otherwise.”
“In a way, it will,” Nicole told him gently. “Not only will he be healthy enough to stay with her for as long as it takes, but she won’t need to worry about him and hasten everything.”
Jarod raised her head so he could look into her eyes, gently kissing her. “Is that the psychiatrist in you coming out again?”
She smiled. “Something like that.” Nicole brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I need to get back to Charlotte.”
He nodded slowly. “We’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Are you going to tell them tonight?”
“I think I’ll have to.” He sighed again. “No matter when it was, it would be a bad time. At least he’ll be able to spend tomorrow morning with his mother.”
Nicole kissed him gently again before going to the door. Looking back, there was a faint smile on her face. “Good luck, Jarod.”
