Drake, he told himself. Mentally, he considered and discarded possible diagnoses.
“Anyone else have something to add?” he challenged his diagnostics team.
“She’s obsessed with that doll,” Dr. Phillips said. Dr. Phillips was the youngest and the chattiest, but her expertise in toxicology made her invaluable.
Like a parrot on her shoulder, Dr. Riser nodded in concurrence.
Dr. Riser had been doing a lot of that lately, instead of presenting his own ideas. Jason’s team had been picked with great care, but even the best partnerships became stale after a while. And Jason hadn’t picked Riser. The board had.
Dr. Riser was a neurosurgeon the hospital had brought in for an undisclosed salary. He regularly moonlighted for the neurology department.
The respiratory/pulmonary member of the group was missing today. Personal business, he’d said. Job interview, the rumor mill said. He was looking for a position with a higher success rate than their department.
Diagnostics was a last-ditch effort after all the other medical personnel had given up. Often the diagnosis came too late, or the patient couldn’t be treated. Pediatric diagnostics was hard on the ego as well as the soul if a doctor valued his success rate over saving individual lives.
Stephanie answered Dr. Phillips. “Wouldn’t you be fixated on your favorite toy, too? Surrounded by strangers, you’d be clinging to the few constants in your life.”
He could always count on her to bring in the human aspect of a case. His team was becoming too narrowly focused, echoing his weaknesses as well as his strengths. Stephanie was exactly who he needed on this case. And in his bed.
No. He did not need Stephanie Montclair in his bed. He wanted her in his bed, but he didn’t need her there.
What he needed was focus. Stephanie made that damned hard. He was fascinated by this strong, sexy, intelligent woman.
He looked around at the assembled doctors, his gaze deliberately sliding past Stephanie.
Turning Dr. Phillips’ observation on its side, he challenged, “Did anyone notice Maggie also chewed the sleeve of her nightgown and the edge of her blanket? Is it that she wants the doll, or does she just want to put something in her mouth?”
Drs Phillips and Riser easily nodded their agreement. Jason scowled, exasperated. He didn’t need any yes-men. Or yes-women. He needed independent thinkers. Loyal accord didn’t diagnose patients.
He added ‘obsessive chewing’ to the list, then pointed to the word ‘autistic.’ “Anyone get a better read on this?”
Dr. Phillips shrugged. “The girl is non-verbal, and she won’t look at anyone straight on. That indicates autism.”
“She screamed like a banshee the first time I went near her,” Jason added. “Did that happen to anyone else?”
“Maybe she just doesn’t like you, Drake. You know that old wives’ tale—children and dogs instinctively know the good guys from the bad guys,” Dr. Riser quipped.
Both Phillips and Riser laughed on cue.
Definitely too much group-think. He would need to change a team member soon.
“Actually, she’s opposed to all people touching her—except for Dr. Drake, right?” Stephanie said. Was she taking up the case for him, or just pointing out the fallacy in the other doctors’ observations?
In answer to her probing look, both Drs. Riser and Phillips nodded affirmation.
Stephanie drummed her fingers on the table. “Being non-verbal is also an indicator of a hearing deficiency. That could explain why she doesn’t look at the person speaking. She may be partially deaf and can’t figure out where the sound is coming from.”
Dr. Phillips smirked. “Dr. Drake checked her hearing and her reflex reaction at the same time.”
Stephanie would end up with a wrinkled forehead if she kept frowning like that. “What did you do?”
Dr. Riser answered for him. “Drake sneaked up behind the girl and dropped a food tray. The child jumped and turned around to look in the direction of the noise.”
Riser leaned back in his chair. “I thought the mother was going to take a swing at him. You may be a lot of things, Drake, but daddy material isn’t one of them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had lodged a complaint. That’s all we need with the lawsuit ongoing right now.”
Jason saw a look of pain cross Stephanie’s face. Was the department’s legal problems causing her that much heartache?
Dr. Phillips nodded. “The lawyers need to settle it soon. The hospital’s credibility is suffering.”
Jason couldn’t help but agree. His own caseload was the lightest he’d seen since he’d been at Sheffield Memorial. Normally he had to turn down more cases than he accepted.
“Not the whole hospital. Just our department,” Riser clarified. “I hear you’re helping out in the E.R. now, Drake. I could put in a good word for you with one of the specialties, if you want.”
Jason brushed off Riser’s offer, along with his condescending tone. “No need. I’ve already turned them all down.”
Being certified in pediatrics, internal medicine and surgery, Jason had been asked to assist on every floor of the hospital—by the same staff who registered complaints when he overstepped their bureaucracy to save their patients.
Instead, since his residency in an inner-city free clinic had more than prepared him for the E.R., he’d agreed to help out his friend and department head Dr. Mike Tyler. While the pace was frantic at times, the cases had been fairly routine so far, and once his shift was over he was done. No getting lost in late nights, researching until he was too exhausted to think.
The lack of complex problems to solve made getting over the infant’s loss more difficult. His modus operandi was to throw himself into his work. Or, for a while there, into Stephanie’s arms.
Now that option was gone, too. Hopefully, like the shortfall of patients, it would be a temporary problem.
It wasn’t just the sex.
They fit together mentally as well as physically. They laughed at the same obscure jokes, watched the same TV shows, liked the same food, and best of all they communicated on the same wavelength. Stephanie got him. She really got him. And he got her, too.
He’d never experienced that kind of compatibility before. He’d bet a back-rub, followed by a front-rub would fix them both right up without either of them having to say a word between them. If she’d just give their relationship a chance.
Relationship? That was a pretty strong word.
“Let’s get back to Maggie.”
Relationship. Put intimate in front of that and Jason could live with it. In fact he could live with it a lot better than he could live without it.
“Anyone have anything
