plastic surgeon.
Kasey was impressed with Dr. Finch’s technique if not his bedside manner, and how he took great care with each stitch. If all went well with the healing process, Laurette would wind up with only a fine pale scar beneath her dark chocolate eye.
After the procedure was finished, she helped Laurette sit up. Vowing never to clean houses like her mother, she’d been a nurse since she was twenty-two, and four years later, when she’d become a nurse practitioner, she’d been initiated by fire when this clinic had opened. Nothing fazed her now. She’d worked with plenty of fussy doctors. Dr. Finch wasn’t fussy, just particular about how he wanted things done. Showing a serious lack of bedside manner, he obviously had no intention of sticking around to reassure the patient. Task done, he’d already shoved the surgical tray aside, ripped off his gloves and was halfway to the door without a single word. At least he’d disposed of the trash and the used needles into the sharps container on his way, she’d give him that.
“Thanks, Doc,” she said, tongue in cheek.
“Not a problem,” he said in a gruff tone. Just before closing the door, he turned toward the patient. “Ms. Meranvil, we’ll need to see you back in four to five days to take out those sutures.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Slam, bam, thank you, ma’am?
“One more thing …” He popped his head back inside the exam room. “Has she had a tetanus booster?”
“Already taken care of,” Kasey said, organizing the dressing. Sheesh, you’d think he could at least try to fake some patient concern! “Ms. Meranvil, I think you’ll be pretty as ever after these stitches come out,” she said as she lightly bandaged the wound.
After giving an encouraging smile to her patient, Kasey glanced over her shoulder. Jared had paused at the door.
“Agreed,” he’d said.
Those unreadable steel-blue eyes almost responded to his flat, partial smile. Or maybe it was just a nod with a grimace? Talk about not putting your heart into it. At least he was a top-notch technician.
Yet those eyes …
Feeling pulled into his stare, she forced herself to look away, back to her task at hand, just as the door closed. “There. I think you’re good to go.” She patted Laurette on the arm, already planning her revenge on Dr. Finch.
Despite his lack of charm, Jared Finch’s haunting eyes reappeared in her mind. There were far too many patients to tend to, so why get swept up in a remote and mysterious doctor’s gaze?
There was just no point.
Jared sat at the corner desk in the clinic office, typing his electronic chart entry, when Kasey reappeared. Fortunately, she left him alone to go about his business while she shuffled reports and folders at the adjacent desk. There was nothing worse than being interrupted by a chatty person while trying to concentrate. He cast a furtive glance at her from across the room. Dressed in scrubs and a lab coat, there was no telling what kind of shape she had.
“Since you need to see this patient again next week,” she said, ruining his hopes of blessed silence, “why don’t we send out a flyer to the neighborhood?”
He stopped typing in mid-word. “A what?”
“A flyer. We can do a one-day surgical clinic.”
He leveled her a look similar to that he gave his his son when he got out of line. Apparently it didn’t register.
“You know, since you have to come back to follow up with Laurette’s stitches?”
His dead stare stopped her for a moment. Ah, peace. He went back to the second half of that word in the report.
She cleared her throat. He tried to ignore it.
“You said yourself she has to come back in four to five days to have the stitches removed. What if there’s a problem? Do you want to leave that woman scarred?” He hadn’t sustained a dead stare this long since the last time his kids had ganged up on him about flying to a theme park in Florida. “Why not set up an open clinic for the local residents on Tuesday as you’ll have to be here anyway?”
He slowly lifted his eyes, sending her another warning glance.
“Did you know there’s a huge need for the underserved and minimally insured population in this area?” she said, undeterred. “And also, on the brighter side, you could chip away at some of the required hours for your month-long clinic rotation.”
He didn’t give a damn how good a saleswoman she was, he just wanted her to shut up so he could finish his report and get back to the hospital. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you one whole day to see your clinic walk-in patients. There. You happy now?” May as well take up her suggestion and get this volunteer time out of the way as quickly as possible. Now maybe she’d be quiet.
She tossed him a don’t-do-us-any-favors look before she commenced rushed clicking and clacking on the keyboard.
Yeah, he’d said the words, and they had seriously lacked enthusiasm, but he’d already gathered she was a smart cookie and wasn’t about to let an opportunity like this slip by. Now maybe he could finish this consult and head out.
“I’ll print up a flyer and hire some of the local boys to distribute them to the houses and on cars in the area.”
“Great. Whatever. Now, could you let me finish my report?” That got a rise in her brows, and more speedy typing, as he’d hopelessly lost his train of thought about the wording in the report.
His concentration thrown out of the window, he recalled on his drive through the neighborhood that the boulevard was lined with red-brick and mortar storefronts, and had an eclectic assortment of businesses. Many looked rundown. The place probably could use a day-long walk-in surgery clinic, and the sooner he got his volunteer hours done the sooner he could get back to focusing fully on plastic surgery.
“Maybe you should post flyers in the local business windows, too,” he said. “Though you may want to skip all the mortuaries—don’t want to send the wrong message.”
Quick to forgive, she laughed, and it sounded nice, low and husky. Almost made him smile.
“What’s up with that anyway?”
“The overabundance of mortuaries?” she said. “I think it must have something to do with having a hospital in the area since the late eighteen hundreds and the odds of folks making it out alive.” Unlike him, she could multitask, and never missed a beat typing and staring at the computer screen. “I guess the morticians went where they were guaranteed business. Though it does seem like overkill these days, pardon the pun.”
He nodded, stretching his lips into a straight line rather than a smile, and grudgingly admitted he liked her dry wit and Boston accent. Pah-din. “Yeah, so I figure if I’m volunteering time for the month, like you said, I may as well make it worth everyone’s while.” Code for get it over with ASAP. That’s what he was all about these days—meet his obligations as quickly as possible and move on. In another year he’d get his life back and begin his own private practice back home in California. Besides, he hated it when he ran out of things to do, preferring
