Doctor In The House. Marie Ferrarella

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      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.”

      CHAPTER 3

      “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.”

      Harold’s faded gray eyebrows drew together in one tufted, ragged line. “I don’t lie, Ivan. And in order for you to remain in the board’s good graces, you are going to have to at least appear to be involved with the residents.”

      A fate, Ivan thought, only slightly less worse than death. Or maybe it was a tie. “Couldn’t I just drink hemlock?”

      Harold spread his hands out. They were wide hands, capable hands, but not the hands of a skilled surgeon. He’d always envied Ivan that. But then, he was not at the top of people’s hate list, either. People liked him. In the long run, that balanced things out.

      “Fresh out, Ivan. Now—” sitting up, he straightened the files on his desk and moved the tray aside “—you have the rest of the day to bemoan your fate. Report to my office tomorrow morning at eight.”

      The dour look on Ivan’s face, the one that sent residents and attendings scrambling for high ground, returned. “I always thought I’d be shot at sunrise, not eight.”

      Harold laughed. “Don’t put ideas in my head, Ivan. Tomorrow, eight.”

      “Eight.” Ivan sighed mightily and then nodded, his slightly unruly mop of deep chestnut hair underscoring the motion almost independently. “Well, not that this hasn’t been fun, but I have a surgery to scrub in for.” He paused one last time to level a steely gaze at Harold. It was obvious that his seas were choppy. “If Mr. Dombrowski never dances again, it’s on your head.”

      It was hard to tell whether or not Ivan meant it. The man did not possess what passed for a typical sense of humor. Maybe it was time to start thinking about retiring, Harold thought as the door to his office closed, with Ivan on the other side.

      To reassure himself that he had done the right thing, Harold pulled over the dark blue folder and reviewed the pages in it again. He looked down at the picture in the file. The young blonde was smiling.

      “I’m sorry,” he said to the image. “But he really is as good as he thinks he is. And you’ll learn a great deal. Once you get over hating me.”

      

      THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Ivan briefly entertained the thought of picking up the phone and calling in sick. The idea died. Not out of some misplaced nobility on his part, nor did he revisit his resistance and find it suddenly appalling. What he found appalling was the idea of a resident living in his shadow and calling it hers. He didn’t call in to postpone the inevitable because he didn’t know how. Didn’t know who to call because in the twelve years he’d been with Blair Memorial, he had never done it.

      Sick or well, he had always shown up at the hospital. Even on the worst of days, he mustered on. Day in, day out. Ivan took no note of the months or even the seasons. Had Blair’s chief administrative assistant, a young woman aptly named Debi by her intuitive parents and afflicted with a case of terminal perkiness, not felt compelled to decorate the hospital halls, he wouldn’t have known what month it was. The woman felt some sort of obligation to celebrate every holiday known to God, man and the eternally vigilant greeting card people.

      If the woman had left well enough alone, he wouldn’t have even known when holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas came around. Except for his older brother John, who he hadn’t heard from in years, he had no family. No one to drag him off for the purpose of spending the holidays with them. Because of that, each day seemed identical to the one that had come before. Some days necessitated short-sleeved shirts, others generated a need for sweaters, but by and large, the days Ivan experienced were all the same except for the weather.

      Ivan switched on the TV just before he prepared to leave the apartment he’d been living in for the last twelve years. Living in Southern California, he was accustomed to periodically hearing the dire predictions of “the big one” coming, the earthquake of the magnitude that would destroy life and civilization as they all knew it.

      He СКАЧАТЬ