glanced away from her screen to direct her gaze down the hallway. “He’s so sweet to all of us. In fact, everyone fancies themselves a bit in love with him,” she remarked.
“I’ve gotten that impression,” Sierra said wryly. “Given the way women act when he’s around, I’d bet he never spends an evening alone. I’m surprised he has the energy to come to work.”
The nurse laughed. “There’s where you’re wrong. He doesn’t date as often as you might think. Oh, there are a lot who’d give their right arm for a night with him, but he’s very careful about who he takes out. And he never sees anyone more than a handful of times.”
“Really.” Sierra wasn’t convinced, but Roma seemed to know what she was talking about. “I find that hard to believe.”
Roma shrugged. “It’s true. Dr. Donovan seems like a happy-go-lucky sort, but don’t let his winning ways fool you. There’s a lot more to our good doctor than meets the eye.”
Sierra watched as the X-ray tech walked away with a light step, her face beaming in obvious delight over her encounter with Trey. Meanwhile, he wore his own satisfied expression, which suggested he’d gotten whatever he’d wanted.
Just like David, she thought with some disgust. Everything was a game, nobody was anything more than a chess piece. Thank goodness she’d grown wise to such manipulations. She’d been a pawn once in her life. She wouldn’t be one again.
After finishing with his next patient, Trey strode back to the doctors’ office. He’d requested a CT scan for one of his patients with a debilitating headache and Lila, the X-ray tech, had promised the images would be online by two o’clock. It was five minutes till, so he didn’t expect to see them posted, but it didn’t hurt to check.
He accessed Joan Villiers’s computer file and, as he’d suspected, the CT scan was still pending. A brisk knock at the door heralded Roma’s arrival.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” the nurse remarked as she entered.
“What’s up?”
“Frances is here.”
“What’s wrong today?”
“Stomachache. Do you want me to give her to Dr. McAllaster?”
He thought a moment. “Yeah, but I’d better introduce them first, don’t you think?”
“Probably. Although I think the introductions are more for Dr. McAllaster’s benefit than Frances’s.”
“Right as usual.” Because he was curious, he asked, “From a nursing point of view, what’s your opinion of our new doc?”
Roma didn’t hesitate. “I think she’s doing okay. She’s a little tense, especially during traumas, but other than that I don’t have any complaints.”
“It’s her first day,” he reminded her. “She’s bound to be a little tense.”
“Hey, I wasn’t finding fault,” Roma protested. “Only making an observation which, as you said, is only to be expected. Now, if she’d come in all cocky and acting like a know-it-all, then I’d worry.” She patted Trey’s shoulder. “You done good, Doc, when you convinced them to transfer her to us.”
Pleased by Roma’s praise, he smiled. “I did, didn’t I?”
“According to the nurses on the fifth floor, they’re extremely upset because we stole her away.”
“It’s only for sixty days.” More or less.
“Yeah, well, they’re afraid they won’t get her back. According to them, she knows her stuff. Better yet, and unlike some doctors who shall remain nameless, she doesn’t treat them like they’re too stupid to live.”
“We were fortunate she came to Good Shepherd,” he commented, keeping the story Sierra had shared to himself. If she wanted everyone to know she was a widow—and she obviously didn’t if the information hadn’t circulated on the grapevine—she could divulge that news herself.
“Rumor says she didn’t want to be assigned to the E.R.,” Roma pointed out. “As you’re the one responsible for her transfer, I hope you intend to turn on the charm until she settles in.”
“Hey, I only made the suggestion,” he protested. “The decision came from people above my pay grade.”
“Be that as it may, if you hadn’t pushed for her, she wouldn’t be here.”
Roma was right. If he hadn’t waged his one-man war, his department would still be suffering from the lack of a physician. “Probably not,” he agreed. “We were lucky the upper echelon saw the situation from our point of view.”
Roma sighed. “I wish she’d applied for the E.R. post in the first place. Everything would be settled. As it is, who knows what her replacement will be like? “
The same thought had crossed Trey’s mind on several occasions. “I’m hoping she’ll grow to love us and will stay.”
“Hope all you want,” Roma said darkly, “but given how other physicians feel about E.R. docs, my money says she’ll run back to the fifth floor as soon as she can.”
Not if he could help matters… “I assume you’re referring to how the rest of the physicians look down on us because of the popular belief that we only decide on whether or not to admit a patient.”
“Yeah.”
It was a common stereotype, thanks to the nature of his profession. The people who presented themselves were either bleeding or sick and it was his job to either cure them or pass them off to someone who could, doing both as fast as possible. The department wasn’t called Emergency for nothing. Being the metropolitan city that Pittsburgh was, their ED never had a dull moment.
“We may not have an official client list like a private practice does, but we definitely have our regulars,” he mentioned.
“Like Frances.”
“Like Frances,” he echoed. “A lot of people list us as their primary-care physicians.”
“Probably,” Roma agreed, “but I’ll bet Dr. McAllaster feels as if she’s taken a step down in her career. Mind you, the nurses have a saying. ‘If the doctor ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy.’”
Trey disagreed. So far, Sierra hadn’t lost her temper or raised her voice and she’d been in various situations where it wouldn’t have been inappropriate. While staying calm was a great trait to exhibit in an emergency situation, over the past few months of their quasi working relationship, from what he’d seen, the woman gave the word unflappable new meaning.
“I think you’re wrong,” he said. “Sierra is too classy a lady to take out her frustrations on the rest of us.”
“She might be classy, but redheads can have fiery tempers.”
As far as he was concerned, calling Sierra a redhead was like describing the Perseid meteor shower as a few shooting stars, or the Grand Canyon as a big hole in the ground.
