let out an exasperated sigh. “So you scale back for a while. I know a half-dozen third-year ob/gyn residents who would kill to work under the great Luke Jarrod.”
“Shove a sock in it, MacAuley.”
Luke swung his legs over the edge of the table, then waited out the renewed surge of pain. An accident his last year on the circuit had blown out his back. High-risk surgery had gotten him back on his feet. The brace he hated had kept him going through his last two years in med school. Years of back-strengthening exercises and therapy had gradually allowed him to shuck the brace.
After the accident his mentor at Stanford, Dr. Danton Stone, had done his best to tout him off obstetrics, telling him repeatedly about the toll a specialty like that would exact on his ruined spine. Dan was right, Luke thought with a pang of resignation. So, unfortunately, was Boyd. Much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t keep up his present pace much longer without surgery.
“All right,” he conceded with a sigh. “Give me a few months to scale back my patient load.”
Boyd shook his head. “A week, two tops.”
“Not a chance. I have a dozen ladies ready to go any minute now, almost all of them having potential for major complications.”
“You have a potential for major complications—like permanent paralysis if those wonky disks cut into your spinal cord.”
“Unlikely.”
Boyd snorted. “Lord save me from stubborn jackasses.”
“Stubborn, hell. I agreed to let you cut into me, didn’t I?”
“Fine. Let’s nail down a date.”
Ninety minutes and counting after Madelyn had walked into the ugly redbrick medical building, she was perched on the padded paper-covered table with the dreaded stirrups, waiting for Luke.
She had a lot of experience at that, she realized, fighting the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. Agonizing months of waking up every morning expecting her shy lanky bronc buster with the amazing blue eyes and irresistible smile to walk up the crumbling front steps of the shabby old house on Alamo Street, a wedding ring in the pocket of his Wrangler’s. Just like a movie she’d seen once—except that her hero hadn’t come in time.
Half out of her mind with grief, she’d sent him away, then regretted it with every atom in her body. If he loves you, he’ll be back, her pastor had told her over and over. But he hadn’t come back, and her life had gone on. Obviously his had, too. Very nicely, it seemed, she decided, glancing around for the umpteenth time.
Though the examination room was small, the signed lithograph of a lone rider silhouetted against a dying sun was by a famous Southwestern artist. The diplomas and certificates that marched next to the print were even more impressive. A bachelor’s in biology from Arizona State, a medical degree from Stanford. A chief residency at Portland General. A clutch of fellowships and honors. Not bad for a high-school dropout with lousy grammar who’d sworn up one side and down the other he’d never set foot in a classroom again.
A knock on the door had her pulse skittering. But it was Esther, the rotund nurse with smiling eyes, who entered. “Doctor just phoned from the hospital and he’s on his way,” she offered as she wrapped the familiar black blood pressure cuff around Madelyn’s arm. “Shouldn’t be long now.”
The sky was a solid gunmetal gray and the air smelled like rain as Luke limped across the grassy median separating Port Gen from the medical building.
In spite of the three cups of coffee he’d gulped down with the breakfast he’d grabbed in the cafeteria, he was still a little queasy from the meds he’d reluctantly taken to soothe the inflamed tissues in his spine. Though he’d showered and shaved, he still felt grimy and battered, pretty much how he’d felt after a day on the rodeo circuit.
Dorie Presley, his iconoclastic frizzy-haired receptionist, looked up as he slipped through the back door to his ground-floor office suite, her Celtic blue eyes sharply assessing. A transplanted Californian who had grown up in a San Francisco mansion, she was married to a surgical resident who adored her enough to overlook her haphazard housekeeping and lousy cooking.
Luke couldn’t care less about her lack of domestic skills. All that mattered was her ability to keep him organized and halfway on schedule, a skill he’d never mastered. She also made the best coffee he’d ever tasted, which meant a lot to a man who lived on caffeine.
“You look terrible, L.J.”
“Thanks, I needed that,” he muttered as he shrugged into the starched white coat he’d learned to wear because some patients had trouble trusting a doc who wore frayed jeans, scuffed cowboy boots and plain old cotton work shirts.
“This should help,” she said, handing a mug of the extra-strong boiling-hot French roast she’d started brewing the instant he’d called to say he was on his way.
“Darlin,’ you’re a pearl beyond price.”
He took a greedy sip, far too aware that he really should cut back. The chronic burning in his gut wasn’t exactly an ulcer, but it had the potential.
“How’s Mrs. Greaves?” Dorie asked, looping his stethoscope around his neck.
“Awake and thrilled with her twin daughters.”
“Congratulations, boss!” she said, grinning. “You beat the odds again.”
Luke allowed himself a private moment of deep satisfaction. Phyllis Greaves had lost four babies before coming to him. The Greaveses were nice people who would make wonderful parents. “Thanks, but most of the credit goes to Phyllis.” The determined lady had spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and never once complained. He admired her grit.
“Your messages are on your desk in order of priority. Nothing urgent, but Dr. Horvath at Rogue River definitely needs a return call before five.”
“Remind me, okay?”
Dorie’s grin flashed. “I live to serve, oh exalted healer.”
Luke snorted. “Do we have a full house or did some of my ladies get tired of waiting?” he asked over the muted ringing of the phone.
“Definitely stacked full, so don’t dawdle,” she said before snagging the phone.
While she dealt with the call, he slugged down the rest of his coffee, then patted his pockets, looking for his reading glasses before he remembered he’d left them in his locker at the hospital.
While dealing with a question for the patient on the other end, Dorie fished his spare pair from her bottom drawer and handed them over. He grunted his thanks before tucking them safely into his breast pocket, along with a pen he filched from the jar on her desk, and heading down the hall toward the examining rooms.
All four doors were closed, with patient charts lined up neatly in the Plexiglas slots on the wall. He stopped at number one. The folder was yellow and tagged in blue and red. A new patient, high risk, the only kind he had time to treat these days.
Moving his shoulders to relieve the tension that had started the instant he’d walked through the back door, he plucked the chart from its plastic slot and flipped
