skirted one of the leather chairs and folded herself into it.
Was she thinner than when he’d first arrived in South Beach three years ago? Or maybe he was imagining things.
“I’m not sure what this is about.”
“Aren’t you?”
She tipped her head, sending several locks of dark hair cascading over one shoulder.
Maybe calling her into his office to have this conversation wasn’t such a good idea after all. But where else could he do it? Certainly not in the staff lounge.
The thumb of his damaged hand scrubbed over his pinkie finger; he wasn’t quite sure how to approach this. But if he didn’t drop the ax and something happened… “Whenever a doctor’s name appears on a chart, it’s entered into the system. If the computer finds a disparity between assigned hours and actual hours worked, it sends up a red flag. Do you want to guess how many flags you’ve generated in the last several weeks?”
“I’ve had a lot of free time and so I—”
“Try again.” He softened the words with a smile. He didn’t want to come across as a game warden.
Her chin went up and green eyes flashed. “Why are you asking those questions? If you have a problem with my work, surely that’s a matter for Human Resources.”
“Normally I’d say you were right and shoot it up to them. But the Emergency Department is the heart of Miami’s Grace Hospital. So it’s important to me. To the entire hospital.”
“My working a few extra hours would help that cause, I would think.”
“Yes. One would think. But that’s not always the case.” He dropped his hand behind the desk, unwilling to use it as an example of what could happen unless he absolutely needed to. “I need you to be at your best.”
“I haven’t been?”
“You’ve been a huge asset to this hospital. I’m sure you know that. I don’t want one of our best doctors burning out or going elsewhere.”
“I have no plans of going anywhere. At the moment, anyway.” Her eyes dipped to the edge of his desk before coming back up to meet his.
She was thinking about leaving.
“Are you having a problem on the floor? Is someone making life difficult?”
“You mean other than you?” She flashed a grin that traveled all the way to her eyes, crinkling the corners in a way that made his insides clench. But when he didn’t smile back, her mouth went back to neutral. “No. Of course not.”
“Why the sudden jump in hours, then?” He forced himself to concentrate on the subject at hand. There was no way she could deny that her habits had changed. He might be treading into forbidden territory, but it was his job to make sure this hospital maintained its reputation for providing stellar care.
She hesitated. “I’m going through a personal crisis right now. I just need to work through it, and this is the best way I can think of to do that.”
The familiar ring of those words made him tense. He’d gone through a personal crisis of his own a few years back. “Anything you care to share?”
Her head came up, neck turning a dark shade of red. “No. Yes…” There was a long pause, as if she was struggling to figure out a way to tell him something. “I’m divorcing my husband, and things have been difficult.”
He sat back in his chair, relief washing through him that her crisis had nothing to do with him. Not that he was happy she was getting a divorce, but the way she’d backed away from him when he’d tried to help her with those boxes had set an alarm off in his head. He’d racked his brain thinking of something he might have done to make her uneasy around him, but had come up empty.
“A divorce.”
Okay, so the matter-of-fact way he’d said that had probably sounded crass and unfeeling. He hadn’t meant it to. After all, he’d been through a divorce himself and had lived to tell the tale.
“I’m not sure how my hours are a problem as long as I’m not endangering anyone.”
He leaned forward. “Sometimes you don’t realize you are until it’s too late.”
“Are we talking about me? Or are we talking about your hand?”
“Excuse me?” Only then did he realize that his injured hand was resting on his desk, the almost useless fingers curled into a ball.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She was right. She shouldn’t have. Except the reason he’d asked her to step into his office had more to do with him than it did with her, and she’d just called him on it. He lifted his hand, turning it over and studying it for a few seconds. “Actually you’re right. I did call you in because of this. You’ve heard about what happened?”
“You know the grapevines. Not much escapes them.”
“Ah. I imagine not. And calling you in here isn’t personal. It’s professional. I don’t want to see anyone else ruin their career by working themselves to exhaustion.”
“I know my limits.”
He smiled to cover the churning in his gut caused by those words. He’d thought he’d known his limits too. How wrong he’d been. “Sometimes we only think we do.”
“Believe me, I have no desire to jeopardize something I love more than anything.”
He hadn’t wanted to either. But once Leticia died…
Swallowing, he stood. “I just wanted to bring it to your attention and ask you to stick to a more sensible schedule.”
She laughed and climbed to her feet as well, tossing those wild errant locks back over her shoulder. “I think ‘doctor’ and ‘sensible schedule’ are incompatible terms, don’t you? Are you going to write me up?”
“Do I need to?”
“I hope not, but that’s your prerogative. You can even fire me, if you want. I can always practice somewhere else.”
And now he could bring up an earlier thought. “You’re already thinking of doing just that, though, aren’t you? Leaving?”
There was a long pause. “I hope it won’t come to that. My—ex—works for the EMT company that services this area. If he makes things difficult, I might choose to move.”
He took a step closer, gratified when she stood her ground this time. “How can I help? The hospital, that is.”
“You can’t. It’s something I have to work through myself. I’ll either be able to face him and move on, or I won’t. Our parting was not the most amicable in the world.”
That made him frown. “Let me know if he causes trouble.”
“I
