inhaled, his eyes never leaving the eyepiece.
“Here are mitotic figures, and here intercellular bridges. Not a good sign.” She pulled back from her microscope. “As you can see, there are variations in size of cells and nuclei, which adds up to squamous cell malignancy. I’ll have to study the rest of the slides to check the margins and figure out the cancer staging, but, unfortunately, the anxiously awaiting wife will have more to be anxious about.”
“Bad news for sure.” Jackson pushed back from the microscope, but not before one of his knees knocked hers, and it hurt her kneecap, feeling almost like metal. Maybe he was Superman in disguise? “I’ll get in touch with Oncology to get a jump on things.”
The situation caused an old and familiar pang in her stomach. Charlotte knew how it felt to be a family member waiting for news from the doctor. She’d gone through the process at fifteen, the year her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. That was the day she’d first heard the term metastatic and had vowed to figure out what it meant. And after that she’d vowed to learn everything she could about her mother’s condition.
“Is he young and otherwise healthy?”
“Yes,” Jackson said. “Which will help the prognosis.”
She nodded, though not enthusiastically. Her mother had been young and supposedly healthy, too. The loss of her mother soon after bilateral mastectomies had broken her family’s heart. Her father had never recovered, and within a span of three years of his downhill slide, he’d also died. From alcoholism, his self-medication of choice to deal with the emotional pain. She’d already stepped in as the responsible one when her mother had first been diagnosed, and after she’d died Charlotte had kept the family functioning. Barely. At eighteen, along with applying to colleges, she’d signed on to be the guardian of her kid sister and brother, otherwise they’d have ended up in foster homes.
Her mother’s cancer had changed the course of her life, steering her toward medicine, and later, with her never-ending quest to understand why things happened as they did, sending her into the darker side of the profession, pathology.
“Well, I’ve got to run,” Jackson said, bringing her out of her thoughts. “I’ve got a dinner I can’t miss tonight, and Mrs. Underwood to talk to first.” He stood and took a couple of steps then turned at her office door and looked at her again thoughtfully. “Do you happen to know offhand the extension for social services? I think the Underwoods could use some added support this weekend.”
Having put the desk light back on, she scanned her hospital phone list cheat sheet and read out the numbers, admittedly disappointed to know he had a dinner engagement.
“Thanks,” he said, but not before giving her a thorough once-over again. “Really like those earrings, too.” Then he left, leaving her grinning with warming cheeks.
Wanting desperately to read more into his light flattery than she should, she groaned quietly. The guy had a dinner date! Plus the man probably said things like that to all the women he encountered in his busy days. It had probably been drilled into him back in Georgia since grade school, maybe even before that. Treat all women like princesses.
Who was she kidding, hoping she might be more special than other women he knew? She was five feet nine, a full-figured gal, or had used to be anyway, a size ten, and not many men appreciated that in this thin-as-a-rail era. Besides, even if he did find her attractive, nothing could ever come of it. She’d pretty much taken care of that two years ago with her surgery.
Odds were most men wouldn’t want to get involved with her. She pulled her lab coat tighter across her chest. Her ex-boyfriend had sure changed his mind, calling off their short engagement. They’d been all set to go the conventional route, and she’d loved the idea of having a career, marriage and kids. Her mouth had watered for it. Then...
She’d cut Derek some slack, though, since her decision had been extreme and radical even. They’d talked about it over and over, argued, and he’d never really signed on. He hadn’t wanted to go there. He’d wanted her exactly as she had been.
The memory of her mother suffering had been the major influence on her final decision.
Her hand came to rest on her chest. The realistic-feeling silicone breast forms—otherwise known as falsies—she wore in her bra sometimes nearly made her forget she’d had a double mastectomy. Elective surgery.
She fiddled with Mr. Underwood’s slides, lining them up to study them more thoroughly.
She’d accidentally found her own damn cancer marker right here in her office. Along with the excitement and anticipation of getting engaged and the plans for having a family, some deeper, sadder dialogue threaded through the recesses of her brain. One morning she’d woken in a near panic. What if? She’d shivered over the potential answer. Then, unable to move forward with a gigantic question mark in her future, she’d had the lab draw her blood and do the genetic marker panel. The results had literally made her gasp and grab her chest. Her worst nightmare was alive and living in her DNA.
Knowing her mother’s history, the near torture she’d gone through, well, having preemptive surgery had been a decision she’d known she’d have to make. Why not take care of it before it ever had a chance to begin? She’d begged Derek to understand. He’d fought her decision, but he’d never seen what her mother had gone through.
Jackson appeared at her door again, making her lose her train of thought. He inclined his head. “You okay?”
“Oh, yes.” She recovered quickly, and he obviously accepted her answer since the concern dissolved from his face.
“Hey, I forgot to ask just now. Are you going to that garden party Sunday afternoon?”
Her old concerns suddenly forgotten, the hair on her arms joined the hair on the back of her neck in prickling. Was it possible that the handsome Southern doctor was actually interested in her?
“Yes. I kind of thought it was mandatory.” It was July, the newest residents would all be there and it was a chance to put names to faces.
“Good. I’ll see you there, then.” And off he went again, his long legs and unusual gait taking that Southern stroll to a new level.
For an instant she let her hopes take flight. What would it be like to date again, especially with a man’s man like Jackson Hilstead the Third? But he’d made no offer to go to the garden party together, and after all the thoughts she’d had just now, she wasn’t a bit closer to making her secret crush real. No way.
Feeling the fallout from rehashing her past, she exchanged the instantaneous hope for reality. There was no way anyone would want her. Not with the anything-but-sexy scars across her nearly flat chest.
She sat staring into her lap, letting the truth filter through her.
Dr. Antwan Dupree appeared at her door, a man so full of himself she wished she could post a “closed for business” sign and pretend no one was home.
“I brought you some Caribbean food from a little place nearby. Thought you might like to try a taste of your heritage.”
“I’m not from the Caribbean.”
“Yes, you are. You just don’t know it. Look at your honey-colored skin and the loads of wavy, almost black hair. Darlin’, you’ve got Caribbean brown eyes. There’s no question.”
“It’s
