Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9) - J. R. Ward Page 0,64

Oh-my-God-are-you-okay him if they’d seen him take his breather.

Up in his place, he showered, changed into clean scrubs and his white jacket, and then grabbed his briefcase and hit the elevators. To beat the traffic, he took the surface roads through the city. The Northway was invariably jammed this time of day, and he made great time while he listened to old-school My Chemical Romance.

“I’m Not Okay” was a tune he couldn’t get enough of for some reason.

As he turned into the St. Francis Hospital complex, dawn’s early light had yet to break through fully, which suggested they were going to have clouds. Not that it mattered to him. Once he was inside the belly of the beast, short of a tornado, which had never happened in Caldwell, the weather didn’t affect him in the slightest. Hell, a lot of days, he came to work when it was dark and left when it was dark—but he’d never felt like he was missing out on life just because he wasn’t all I’ve seen sunshine, I’ve seen rain. . . .

Funny. He felt out of the loop now, though.

He’d come here from Yale Medical School after his surgical residency, and he’d meant to go on to Boston, or Manhattan, or Chicago. Instead, he’d made his mark here, and now it was over ten years later and he was still where he’d started. Granted, he was at the top of the heap, so to speak, and he’d saved and improved lives, and he’d taught the next generation of surgeons.

The trouble was, as he went down the ramp into the parking garage, all that seemed hollow, somehow.

He was forty-five years old, with at least half of his useful life in the bin, and what did he have to show for it? A condo full of Nike shit and a job that had taken over all his nooks and crannies. No wife. No kids. Christmases and New Years and Fourths of July were spent at the hospital—with his mother finding her own way for the holidays and no doubt pining for grandchildren she’d better not be holding her breath for.

Christ, how many random women had he fucked over the years? Hundreds. Had to be.

His mother’s voice shot through his head: You’re just like your father.

Too true. His dad had also been a surgeon. With a wandering streak.

It was actually why Manny had picked Caldwell. His mother had been here at St. Francis as an ICU nurse, working to put him through his years and years of schooling. And when he’d graduated from med school? Instead of pride, there had been distance and reserve in her face.... The closer he’d become to what his father had been, the more often she’d gotten that faraway look in her eye. His idea had been that if they were in the same city, they’d start relating or some shit. Hadn’t worked out that way, though.

But she was okay. She was down in Florida now in a house on a golf course that he’d paid for, playing rounds of scramble with ladies her age, having dinner with the bridge brigade and arguing over who snubbed who on the party circuit. He was more than happy to support her, and that was the extent of their relationship.

Dads was in a grave in Pine Grove Cemetery. He’d died in 1983 in a car accident.

Dangerous things, cars.

Parking the Porsche, he got out and took the stairs instead of the elevators for the exercise; then he used the pedestrian walkway to enter the hospital on the third floor. As he passed by doctors and nurses and staff, he just nodded at them and kept going. Usually, he went to his office first, but no matter what he told his feet to do, that was not where he ended up today.

He was heading for the recovery suites.

He told himself it was to check on patients, but that was a lie. And as his head became fuzzier and fuzzier, he studiously ignored the fog. Hell, it was better than the pain—and he was probably just hypoglycemic from working out and not eating anything afterward.

Patient . . . he was looking for his patient. . . . No name. He had no name, but he knew the room.

As he came up to the suite closest to the fire escape at the end of the hall, a flush shot through his body and he found himself making sure his white coat was hanging smoothly from his shoulders and