Forbidden Doctor - R. S. Elliot Page 0,32

the powerful medication and the thought of the girlfriend he had mentioned. Before I could ask him anymore, though, we were in the OR intake unit, and the young man was being taken from me. I wished him well and turned to head back down to the ER.

As was the custom of most time pressed interns, I took the stairwell—elevators were slow. After flying down one flight, though, I felt a desperate need to make a stop on the third floor. I opened the door and let my feet take me to the cardiovascular wing. I just wanted to see. It had been two weeks, and I had heard reports but hadn’t had the time to see for myself. With the awful injuries of a four car pileup and being ignored by the object of my affection, I needed some light in my day. I found the embodiment of sunshine in her room. She was smiling at her mother, sitting in a chair by her bed, and they were coloring together while they spoke.

Jasmine had gotten stronger. She had been allowed to venture to her chair and spent most of her day there, talking animatedly to nurses and doctors and anyone who would listen. She’d had a couple of people from medical journals ask to interview her and scheduled them for a time when she was home. It was amazing that home was in her future. She would need a portable driver and close supervision from the cardiac team, but Jasmine could go home. She would be homeschooled until she was as healthy as possible, at which point she could decide for herself if she would go to school. I had heard it all in the whispers, but it was nothing like seeing it for real.

The shadows were gone from under her eyes, and there was color in her cheeks. Even in the couple of weeks I hadn’t seen her, she’d filled out, fortified by hospital food and a working cardiovascular system. Of course, I knew there was always going to be fear surrounding her, but she was alive and healthier than she’d looked in a long while. I took a deep breath and figured if an eight-year-old girl could smile with an artificial heart in her chest, I could get over myself and get on with my job without pining over one of my bosses.

I headed back down to the ER and dove back into the work there. I paged the hand surgeon, took a load off of the trauma surgeons by attending to more regular cases, and reminded myself every five minutes that it didn’t matter if he chose to ignore me because I just had to get through the day.

That tactic worked for about four hours.

Eventually, all nine victims of the pileup had been attended to, the ER had returned to its usual hectic but functioning self, and I was told to go and get something to eat.

Instead of eating, I found an on-call room and collapsed onto one of the beds there. It was closing in on midnight, and I was dead tired, but the moment I let my head hit the pillow I couldn’t fall asleep. I only had thirty minutes, but my brain wanted to explore why Adrian might be ignoring me.

It was simple, really.

He had used me. The moment he’d brought up the board of directors with hesitant nerves in his voice, I’d known where it was going. He was going to tell me that I had to keep quiet on our rendezvous or risk the wrath of the board. I hadn’t wanted to hear it. I hadn’t wanted to hear that the man I’d lusted after and proceeded to sleep with—twice—had only used me for my body. I had left, and he hadn’t spoken to me since. Presumably, he wanted to put it behind him, to forget I even existed. It was a good deal easier for him to do when I wasn’t on his service. We still worked in the same hospital and saw each other regularly, but he had no obligation to speak to me, to mentor me. It stung, certainly, but my pride hadn’t allowed me to track him down like some desperate teenager and ask why he didn’t love me back.

When I’d woken up with my head in his lap, I’d known I was in trouble. My subconscious had hummed happily at being with him in such a calm way, just being near him and relaxing. From there,