Surgeons, Rivals...Lovers

Obviously he could find out information about her from other places, much as she’d done before arriving. He’d known who she was on first meeting, after all. And now he was spouting questions about procedure at her alma mater. He knew she had her sights set on Ootaka’s fellowship. The grapevine didn’t just extend from Caren and Tessa to her. It went the other way, too. Enzo had a grape on the vine.

And he could just go squeeze that grape for juice.

He rounded the gurney to stand on the other side of Mr. Elliot, giving the monitors a look, though he continued speaking quietly to her. “And you’re Caren’s friend.”

“Cousin,” she corrected. Correcting him was surprisingly satisfying. No doubt a holdover from the irritation she’d been nursing about his run ahead and smirky looming stuff.

He turned his eyes to her. “Did she give up her spot in the program specifically to free up space for you?”

“Of course she didn’t.” The hotly whispered denial sprang from Kimberlyn’s lips so fast she hadn’t even really considered whether he was correct before speaking.

Had Caren done that? It was like her cousin to do something altruistic and then lie about it to salve people’s pride, but… “She said she wanted the opportunity to go into the field with that professor and his mission to Cameroon.”

A nurse approached to get vitals—as she must every fifteen minutes—and Kimberlyn became all too aware of how crowded Mr. Elliot’s bedside had become. Her being there had been fine, but two surgeons bickering definitely wasn’t fine.

With energy granted by indignation, she stood, pushed the stool back out of the way and headed out of the ward. If he was going to grill her, he could do it somewhere else. The patient needed rest, and the nurses didn’t need the distractions in the already tight quarters.

He followed her out.

Once the door swung shut and they were alone in the hallway, she turned to face him.

“Why did you ask me that? It’s a… really… rude thing to say. Insinuating that I’m taking advantage of her good nature and maybe wrecking her career or something.” Confrontation. Yay. Was it too much to ask that they maintain a civilized competitive atmosphere based entirely on merits and… positive junk?

“I just want to figure you out.”

He didn’t look bothered to be called on his machinations. He looked relaxed, no longer smirking, and also as if his question wasn’t rude or anything to get worked up over. He didn’t even stand at attention now, leaning with one of those broad shoulders propped against the wall, arms crossed and weight shifted to one foot. A lazy angle made from his… admittedly nice… athletic lines and other angles.

Not what she was supposed to be focusing on. Kimberlyn forced her gaze back to his.

“And I want to believe that you are a decent guy despite having been told otherwise, but the only reason I can think of for you to ask me that is because you want to put me on the defensive. Make me uncomfortable in my new program.”

Mission accomplished. That, along with the sudden realization that she was doing exactly what strange men did to her: ogling his body. But that was her making herself uncomfortable.

When her eyes locked with his again, his brows lifted a little. Busted. But at least he didn’t comment on it.

“I’m curious about you. Most people don’t change programs in the final year. It’s too hard to rebuild your support system and reputation in a new hospital. Makes this seem like some kind of impulse decision. A short-term goal. Not a career choice.”

“Choosing trauma as my specialty, or choosing this fellowship as the one I wanted?”

He nodded. “Both. You just decided a couple months ago, right?”

“No. I decided before I began my fourth year in residency.” When she was in the hospital for other reasons besides work. The very thing she’d spent the whole day trying not to think about, and which she had no intention of revealing to him. Her stomach crunched and growled in a way that was part hunger, part nausea. Perfect. “But I really don’t owe you any explanations about my or Caren’s motivations. I’m here. I’m not leaving. You can’t intimidate me or scare me into changing course.”

“I’m not trying to do either, Davis.”

“You’re just trying to figure me out,” she repeated, disbelief making her fling her hand through the air. “Fine. Here’s all you need to know about me—I’m good at what I do. In fact, I’m so good at what I do I’m not going to play games with you. I’m not going to scheme or run ahead to try to get to Ootaka first to get what I want. That’s not who I am, and it’s not who I want to be. You want to help me figure you out? Because right now, after having had a day to think about it, I’m having a hard time being charitable in my assessment of your character. You were great on the scene. Actually, I was extremely thankful that you were there. But then you spent the day smirking at me from the gallery. And now this?”

Once she’d started, it got easier to say what she thought about his behavior, too easy. She’d feel guilty, but her words looked to bother him about as much as a sunny spring day bothered daisies. She knew that people were blunter up north, but dang…

Before she lost her gumption, she whispered hotly, “And just for the record, I know what DellaToro means. From the bull, or of the bull… and obviously it’s missing a final word.” The half-whispered words could’ve passed for a two-year-old with her first introduction to whispering.

He smiled at the end of her tirade, uncrossing his arms as he chuckled, which was at least better than all the smirking. “Feel better?”

“No!” A bit mean and snotty, actually. And immature, and ridiculous that she’d taken the long way around saying the S-word… Lame.

“Did you see that condition a lot at Vandy?” He asked again.

Back to digging for information…

“No.” Again she denied first and then had to pause and consider. He’d managed to rile her up, but that didn’t mean she had to stay riled. She could chill out. If she let that little fire he’d built in her gut go out, he might not see how emotionally battered the whole day had left her. Depriving him of information had started to seem like a valid survival tactic.

To give her mouth a chance to chill, she took her time leaning against the wall facing him, across the several foot divide framing the doorway bay into the SICU. “I saw it once at Vandy. But I have the symptoms etched on my brain. It was in the back of my mind before I even reached him. I expected it the second I saw him coming down chest first. You shouldn’t feel bad about not knowing at the time. It’s really easy to miss.”

There. That was more like her. Nice. Helpful. That’s the kind of person she wanted to be.

Enzo watched Davis’s expression go from angry to gentle in the space of a few statements. Too smooth and practiced to be real. “So I’m rude, and I’m guessing jerk also wouldn’t be far off your definition, but you’re still trying to make me feel better about my mistakes?”

She smiled at him, a real smile with just a hint of something bratty twinkling in her eyes. And it was adorable. “Just because you’re a jerk doesn’t mean I have to be one, too. Besides, you didn’t make a mistake. You just didn’t know the answer. There’s a difference.”

No difference. If she hadn’t been there, he would’ve made a mistake. That single thought had weighed on him throughout the long day. He had to do better than that. He had to be better than that. The only thing worse than standing in Lyons’s shadow was the idea of never exceeding it.

On a personal level, Enzo already knew he was a better man than his father—he took care of his family and had started trying to do that at four years old and hadn’t actually learned how to do it until his mother had remarried—but he had to be better than Lyons professionally, too. That was what the world judged a man by: his prestige. That’s why Lyons was known the world over, but the world had barely blinked a year ago when his stepfather had died.

It wasn’t so much he wanted Davis to make mistakes, but before today he’d always been the one with the answers. If he hadn’t known something, none of the other surgical residents had known it, either. And maybe none of the thoracic residents, or cardiac residents.

A successful trauma surgeon had to know a great deal about a number of specialties to handle whatever might come up in surgery. Like today. Cardiac tamponade… He wasn’t sure that a cardiac resident in his final year would’ve even gotten that—but she had and it had impressed Ootaka. And him.

“You’re sweet. You shouldn’t give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Sweet doesn’t survive long here. New York chews up sweet people and spits them out.” The words—the very idea—left a sour taste in his mouth. Right now, he was the main predator circling her because he had to have that fellowship.

He didn’t want to be the one to chew her up and spit her out.

It was in that second that he realized he was attracted to her. When she’d been pale beneath her tan at the scene, he’d still noticed she was pretty but not in a way he’d had time to think about.

During the hours watching her in the surgery, he’d had few physical details to form opinions on—most of her had been covered in the protective gown, mask and cap. He’d been able to see she had a fluidity of movement that spoke of control and precision… grace. And she had the mental endurance required to focus on a task for hours.

Seeing her now, when she was tired enough that her defenses were down and she was no longer concealed by OR green, he could appreciate the delicate quality of her features and the hints at the shape hidden by baggy scrubs.

“Is that a warning of your stance on this fellowship?”

No.

“Yes,” he said.

Ootaka’s fellowship was the best anywhere. He wasn’t just a trauma specialist; he’d completed separate fellowships in several subspecialties. Spending a couple years as his single student was like a crash course in Everything That Can Go Wrong in the Human Body and How to Fix it.

“So you sought me out to warn me about yourself? Or was that part of your study methodology to learn more about the condition and Beck’s Triad?” Okay. Now she wasn’t buying that she should see him as a threat, even though he’d admitted it. Either she was as confident in her abilities as he was, or she was playing with him. “I’m still kinda surprised you haven’t seen the condition in the past year.”

Earlier, at the accident and throughout the surgery, her accent had been suppressed. Now, tired after a long day, the more she talked the more he expected her to hand him a lemonade and invite him to the front porch swing.