Trey gave a wave of his hand, visibly impatient. “Let’s get back to the real subject at hand, Sheely.”
Callie proceeded to describe in detail each of Scott Fritche’s minor but time-consuming mistakes. “It’s not an enormous deal, Trey, though Leo’s done his best to make you think it is. We’ve both watched other residents, with more experience than Scott Fritche, do far worse with no unfavorable results. So you see—”
“What I see is that Arkis and Turner were right. You really did save Fritche’s ass in there, Sheely. Not to mention our poor patient’s cranium.” Trey folded his arms in front of his chest, but the gesture wasn’t a defensive one for him.
Oh, yes, he was infinitely gifted in the body language of intimidation. However, Callie wasn’t intimidated. Instead, observing the way his muscles rippled when he moved his arms, studying the breadth of his shoulders, she was…aroused.
She was practically ogling him! Callie caught herself and quickly averted her gaze, fixing it on the poster tacked up on the wall beyond him.
It was an advertisement for the Hospital Auxiliary’s Annual Springtime Ball, a popular fund-raiser held in early April, when the region’s weather was still more like winter than spring, despite the calendar.
Unlike those charity balls sponsored by exclusive women’s clubs, where the price of admission was astronomically high, thus limiting the guests to the social elite, the Tri-State Hospital’s auxiliary set aside a large block of tickets at lower prices, affordable to the hospital staff.
Everybody from student nurses to interns and residents, from the hospital administrators and lordly attending physicians to various corporate benefactors, politicos and the local pillars of society, attended the Springtime Ball. Somehow, the eclectic mix worked. Each year the ball topped the previous one’s record for ticket sales and attendance.
Callie had gone every year since nursing school. Often with Jimmy, sometimes with other escorts, always friends. This year she’d made no plans to attend. She couldn’t seem to work up any enthusiasm for going.
Her eyes darted to Trey. He was glaring at her.
“Sheely, if it isn’t too much trouble, could you stop drifting off and at least make a pretense of staying on topic? That would be Scott Fritche who endangered my patient in the OR. Remember?”
Callie’s eyes, dark as onyx, grew round as saucers. “The patient wasn’t endangered, honestly.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and took a deep breath. “I was right there, Trey, I knew what to do. Of course, I would’ve called for you the second before anything could have gone wrong.”
Trey straightened, looking even taller to her. “You know I expect my team to be like cogs in a perfectly run machine, Sheely. We simply can’t afford any mistakes and we can’t succumb to—”
“I know. And woe to the cog that slips, even slightly. Leo and Quiana and I—”
“This isn’t about you three, I know how good you are. You’re the best in the area. I watched you for six months before handpicking you myself for my team. But Fritche is another story entirely. If he’s no good, we’ve got to get him out of the neurosurgery program sooner rather than later, before he does irreparable harm.”
“Trey, before we go any further with this, maybe you should know that Leo holds a personal grudge against Scott Fritche. I don’t think I’d be exaggerating to say that if Leo could hurt Scott, he would. Oh, not physically. But he’d certainly settle for doing damage to Scott’s career.”
“Why?”
“Because Scott Fritche dated and then dumped Leo’s cousin Melina. She’s a student nurse here at the med center and was heartbroken when—”
“Sheely, this is not an episode of General Hospital. Please spare me the details of who’s dating and dumping who. I’m only interested in the welfare of my patients, and right now I’m trying to ascertain whether—”
“All right. Fine,” Callie said coldly. “Never mind gathering all the facts and coming to an informed conclusion. It’s clear that you’ve already made up your mind.”
“Sheely, you are—”
“I’m tired of talking about this,” Callie said, boldly cutting him off.
She turned and stalked from the lounge.
“Sheely, come back here.”
She ignored his command and stormed inside the empty women’s locker room. Mercifully, it had not gone the unisex route like the lounge. Each sex still had separate quarters to shower and change clothes.
Moments later a tall, pretty blond nurse joined Callie in an aisle of lockers, by the long bench positioned in the middle. “Sheely, Trey Weldon wants me to tell you that he has to talk to you. He said ‘right now.”’
Jennifer Olsen had been in the class behind her in Tri-State’s nursing school and currently worked in the obstetrics clinic, surrounded by expectant mothers. Jennifer made no secret of her ultimate goal, which was to have her own baby as soon as possible. Her more immediate goal, however, was to find a suitable man to marry and impregnate her. Preferably a doctor, with a sizable income.
At the same moment Callie wondered what Jennifer was doing up here in the women’s surgical locker room, Jennifer must’ve felt obliged to explain her presence.
“I came up to see if Karen wanted to go to the Squirrel Den tonight. There’s a bunch of us going.”
Callie knew Karen Kaminsky, an OR nurse who’d graduated in Jennifer’s class. “You must’ve missed her. She’s probably at lunch.”
“Oh. Hey, Sheely, you come to the Squirrel Den tonight, too, if you want, okay?”
Callie pictured the Squirrel Den, a relic from the city’s industrial dark age, a dank, smoky, gloomy place jammed with cheap old tables and booths. “Uh, thanks, Jen. I’ll try to make it,” she said politely. I just won’t try very hard, she added to herself.
“Sheely, about Trey Weldon, he—”
Callie sighed. “Tell him you didn’t see me in here, Jennifer.”
“But this place is too small for me not to see you. I wouldn’t want to lie to the man.”
“Certainly not,” Callie murmured dourly.
Without a doubt Trey’s credentials met, even exceeded, all of Jennifer’s requirements in a potential husband and father. Too bad, Jen, Callie thought darkly, you don’t fulfill the prerequisites for Weldon class status any more than I do.
Callie sucked in her cheeks and pointed at the window high above the lockers. “You can tell him I flew out that window on my broomstick. He probably thinks I’m capable of it. All I have to do is swap my surgical cap for my tall, pointy, black hat.”
“The doctor is always right, and when the nurse doesn’t agree, she’s a witch, hmm?” Jennifer was sympathetic.
“Exactly. Just a doctor-nurse disagreement. It’s nothing personal.” Callie felt the need to stress that.
