he treated didn’t just need him for his surgical skills. They also needed the emotional support that the two of them working together could give them.
She stopped as she got to the door and then turned back toward him, curious now that she’d made the comparison between him and her father.
“Ian, do you ever do anything besides work?” she asked.
“My work is important to me,” he said as he reached up to take his white coat from the hook by the door.
“But do you ever relax? Let yourself enjoy life? Take time to play?”
“What? Are you worried about me, Dr. Wentworth?”
He reached for the door handle and she stepped back, the movement almost sending her into his arms for a moment. Her breath caught, freezing in her lungs. The warmth of his body teased at hers and her legs refused to move away from him. A second turned into two and neither of them moved away.
How had she missed this? She spent too much time studying people’s emotions and reactions not to have seen it. The speeding of her heartbeat when he was around...the magnetic push and pull between the two of them whenever they were together—they were all signs that she had ignored. Did he feel them too? Was that why he was always finding ways to avoid her?
“Some of us don’t have the time to play,” he said, breaking the silence between them, “and I never play with my co-workers.”
She continued to stand there, between him and the door, waiting to see any sign that would hint that he felt it too—this attraction that sent all of her vital signs rising.
He wanted test results? She’d give him test results.
She moved in closer, so their bodies were mere inches apart. She watched as his eyes drifted down to her lips, the look in them so hot that she wet them with her tongue. Oh, yeah, he felt it—and he wasn’t happy about it at all.
He jerked back from her. The moment was gone, but she had what she needed. Was this the reason they had such a hard time working together? This attraction that he seemed to want to ignore?
She turned back to him once more as she stepped out into the hall. She tried to keep a straight face, but managed to put just a touch of huskiness into her voice.
“Really, Ian? Than exactly who do you play with?”
The look on his face before she turned and left him was priceless.
* * *
It had been a week since he had met with Dr. Frannie Wentworth—or Dr. Frannie, as his patients called her. A week during which he’d struggled with the conversation they’d had and his own response to her.
He’d come out of it sounding like a royal jerk, who didn’t really care about his patients. But he did care. He gave his patients everything to help them recover. All his skills as a surgeon and all his diagnostic knowledge. That was all he had now—all he could afford to give.
Once he had been like the young psychiatrist, letting himself get drawn into his patients’ emotions and needs, but that wasn’t him now.
And then there was that other response. The one when for a second he’d almost held her in his arms and his body had taken over, leaving him in no doubt about what it wanted to do.
It was the giggle of a little girl, the sound so sweet, that had him stopping, and an answering laugh that made him turn around. He knew the room he’d just passed. He’d been consulted on the child’s case by her oncologist, and knew she was at the end of her third round of chemo and that the results were draining the child. Her parents were considering having a feeding tube surgically inserted, but he had not heard anything concerning their decision.
Looking through the cracked-open door to the room, he watched as the child, wearing a pretty pink-flowered bandana on her head, pulled a brush through the hair of the brunette psychiatrist he had been thinking about. Sitting on the bed with her legs crossed in front of her, dark hair flowing down her back, Dr. Frannie looked perfectly at home playing with the little girl.
Was this how she worked?
“You know your parents only want what’s best for you, Sarah. Is it that you’re scared of the surgery?”
Ian watched as the child’s mouth tightened and the look of enjoyment left her face.
“Amy had one of those tubes. She showed me. She said it was yucky and it hurt,” Sarah said.
“Did it look yucky to you?” Frannie asked.
“It’s a tube sticking out of her tummy. It’s gross. She said they used it to give her nutrition—whatever that is.”
“It’s what you need to make you strong again. What if I bring one of my dolls in to show you how it works? Would that make you feel better?”
The child scrunched her eyes, as if concentrating really hard, and then pulled the brush back through the thick brown hair.
“Maybe, but it’ll still look yucky. And Amy said it hurt when they put it inside her. She didn’t like it and I won’t like it either.”
“Is that why you told your mommy and daddy that you didn’t want to let Dr. Spencer put the tube inside you?” Frannie asked.
“Maybe...” the little girl said.
* * *
Frannie slid off the bed and turned around, looking back at the beautiful little girl who still held the brush in her hand. She fought back the tears that threatened to spill. This child had been through so much in the last two years. She’d only been in remission for a year before cancer had struck her small body again, and it appeared that this time it might win.
“Dr. Spencer is a real good surgeon. I can’t tell you it won’t hurt, but I know he will give you some medicine to help.”
Frannie watched as the little girl chewed on her bottom lip.
“Will it be that bubble gum medicine? I like the bubble gum one.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Spencer and see what I can do, okay?”
Frannie turned around and gave the little girl a hug, being careful not to get tangled in the IV line running to the child’s chest.
“Dr. Frannie, I know I’m real sick. I heard Mommy and Daddy talk about it and they were crying.”
“Yes, Sarah, you are real sick. That’s why the doctors are giving you this medicine that makes you feel so bad. They’re trying to make you better.”
Frannie released her and stepped back and took the child’s little hands in hers.
“All the doctors are going to do everything they can to help you get better, but your parents love you so much that it hurts them to see you sick.”
“I don’t like to see them so sad. I don’t want to make them sad. I’ll try harder not to cry when it hurts. Will that make them feel better?”
Frannie
