Strictly Business (3 page)

Nina closed the door to the exam room and
melted against it. She exhaled an unsteady breath as she skimmed a hand over her hair, ignoring the jab of several pens. She quickly checked the state of her scrubs. She couldn’t believe that she’d acted so impetuously—
like a sex starved lunatic!
Disgust stabbed at her.
And with a patient no less!
She’d never ever in her career engaged in romantic relations with any of her patients. It went against every medical ethic she was sworn to.

Spontaneous behavior was definitely not part of her
genetic makeup. Her friends always accused her of being overly analytical. She was methodical and predictable to the point of abject boredom. She liked to keep every aspect of her life neat and orderly. Her picture should be next to the word ‘nerd’ in the dictionary. Her strict discipline was what had gotten her straight A’s all through college and medical school, and what had given her the stamina to endure her grueling internship and residency.

W
hat had compelled her to such uncharacteristic behavior? How had her body ignited the way it had? Damn, she was still smoldering. Her skin was acutely sensitive and her body was still flooded with passion. She ducked into a bathroom to splash cold water on her face, taking measured breaths to clear her head and the threatening tears of regret and recrimination.

Continuing down the hall her mind grappled for explanations. She knew it had been a long time since she’d been intimate with a man; in fact it had been more than a year. Maybe that was it; maybe her mother and friends were right. Maybe she needed companionship, something to occupy her time other than work. Obviously she had some bottled up desires. Nina pursed her lips defiantly, her resolve returning. The last thing she needed now was to complicate her life. She didn’t need a man telling her what to do and when to do it as Charles Houliton III had attempted to do. Thank God she hadn’t married him. He was a controlling megalomaniac. Insipid as he was rich, he had wanted her home, attending to him instead of at the hospital healing the sick. He’d made it crystal clear that when they got married she’d have to give up her job, immediately start a family, and play social hostess.

Sure she wanted a family, but she also wanted to continue the career she’d struggled to hard to establish. While she dated, she could never find ‘Mr. Right’. Though, the ‘Mr. Wrongs’ and ‘Mr. No Way in Hells were available in abundance.

But she wasn’t the type to engage in casual sex. She had always lauded her strict control and rational thought.
Where the hell had they been tonight?

Her career
goals were about to be realized. Becoming a senior attending in the emergency room had been her aspiration for more than three years and now it seemed that it would finally become a reality. The board was scheduled to meet in a few weeks to make a decision. Nina braced an arm against a nearby wall and breathed a shaky sigh. She hoped to God that she hadn’t stupidly ruined her hopes and dreams tonight. Was this man angry enough to lodge a complaint? Just the accusation could be devastating to her career.
How could she have done something so wrong?
For all she knew he could be married. She hadn’t noticed a wedding ring, but the absence of one wasn’t truly significant. Many men didn’t wear one.

A mental image of the stranger she’d left in the exam room floated into her brain before she could stop it. Sparkling blue eyes glazed with passion and just a hint of amusement winked at her. She absently touched her lips as a wave of memories crashed over her, causing a sudden bubbling of heat at the tip of every nerve ending
.
Discipline!
She continued towards the chaos of the ER wondering how something so incredibly wrong could have felt so incredibly right.

The blinding sunlight of August burned Nina’s eyes when she finally emerged from the emergency room on Sunday afternoon. She squinted and groped around in the duffel bag slung over her shoulder for her sunglasses. Adjusting them onto her nose she turned to Sally who was in stride beside her. She too had just finished her shift and it was their afternoon routine to walk the few short blocks together to Nina’s apartment then Sally would continue on to the downtown train station on Fourteenth Street. Sally was squinting quizzically up at her, expecting an answer to the question she’d just
posed.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” Nina
responded apologetically.

“Oka
y.” Sally stopped in her tracks, her natty white nursing uniform blowing out behind her. “What’s going on? You’ve been acting very strange all morning!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nina tried to iron her voice flat.

She knew that Sally had the uncanny ability to read her moods. It was the osmosis of working so closely together for the past seven years. She’d met Sally when she was an intern and was grateful to her for showing her the ropes during those days of innocent uncertainty and scared-shitlessness as a young doctor. Sally was three years her senior and in a longtime relationship and always delighted to play the role of matchmaker, something Nina aggressively discouraged. Nina knew Sally would jump with joy at the news of her spontaneous encounter.

But she
wasn’t willing to share at this moment. She was still petrified by the potential ramifications. She wanted to go home, shower and jump into bed for a long relaxing sleep. At work she’d managed to stuff thoughts of the stranger somewhere into the crannies of her brain, especially as the ER had become increasingly busy. She’d been able to earnestly focus on her duties, but with the light of day came an awakening. The afternoon air seemed to scrub her head of the cobwebs she’d allow to obscure what had happened in the exam room.

Nina kept her stride
, but when she noticed that Sally hadn’t kept up with her she turned back to gently tug her friend along.

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“Bull!” Sally gave a gentle smile. “I’ve seen you have tougher nights than last night. You’re never tired. You’re usually a disgusting bundle of energy by now. I’m surprised you’re not running off to the gym. I’m telling you….if you had a man in your life you’d find better ways to utilize all of your pent up energies.

“Yes
, mom.”  Nina chuckled.

Sally shuddered visibly.
“
Please
do not call me that! I love your mom, but she is a few cards shy of a full deck! I’m definitely not as bad as Beth! Besides, I advised her to get the ‘my daughter needs to get
laid
’ tee shirt. Not the one that read ‘my daughter needs to get
married
’. That married crap scares men off! You gotta start slow!”

Nina’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t!”

Sally huffed with exasperation. “You’re missing the point!”

“The
point
is that I don’t need to have my life complicated,” she insisted. The thought of her best friend and her mother conspiring was too much to contemplate.

Sally
was usually the one who was on her side, the one who would deflect her mother’s crazy antics. They were both only children and looked to each other for unwavering support and understanding.

“Is something wrong?” Sally asked with genuine concern. “You’re rarely distracted. The last time I saw you like this was a year ago when you and that
Houliton the upteenth guy…”

Nina watched Sally’s face contort thoughtfully as an idea seemed to
sprout and blossom in her head. Her eyes widened like saucers and she issued a whoop that made a few hospital employees out for a smoke turn to look at them.

“
Oh my God
! Why didn’t I think of this before? That guy last night…”

Nina’s pace quickened as a heavy horror settled at the pit of her stomach.
She was so busted! Deny! Deny! Deny!

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with that hunk
that came in last night with the busted arm, would it?” Sally asked, chewing eagerly on her bottom lip. “You know as soon as I saw him I thought of you. He was such a hottie.”

Shit!
She wondered if Sally had purposefully assigned her this patient with an agenda. Nina wouldn’t put it pass her to play matchmaker.

“Who?” Nina hoped her voice was as matter-of-fact as she intended it to be.

Sally shook her head back and forth and clucked her tongue knowingly. “What happened? Did he ask you out? I hope to God you said
yes
.”

Did I ever!

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” She continued her feigned ignorance, but was so flustered that she didn’t notice who stepped into her path and she walked smack into him.

“Dr. Reynolds, excuse me, I’m sorry, I didn’t notice…” Nina said, taken aback by the awkward situation
, but momentarily grateful for the change of subject.

“It’s quite all right,
” Dr. Reynolds said flatly.

She
gazed up into the glacial gray eyes of her senior attending.

Even with h
er sunglasses on she caught a glimmer of the midday sun shimmering off his shiny Italian leather shoes and fashionable briefcase. He smiled down at her and Nina shifted uncomfortably. She’d never liked the way his smile never seemed to reach his eyes.

“How was your night last night
, Dr. Henley?” He asked the question and continued, not waiting for a response. “I keep telling you that your real calling is private practice. You have too much talent to be wasting it on the types that trickle in here in the middle of the night.”

Nina bristled. “The
types
that come in here in the middle of the night also deserve good health care, Dr. Reynolds,” she said tersely, and the warning bell in the back of her head started ringing. It warned that it might be politic to dampen her opinion in front of her senior.

“I used to feel as you do when I was young and naïve.” A smile slid to his lips. “I’ll keep trying to get you on my team.”
He took a quick side step and continued down the street.

Dr. Reynolds had been trying for the past year to talk her out of working in the emergency room and joining him in his very lucrative private practice. Not that she wouldn’t enjoy the money, but she didn’t see herself as the type to dress in designer suits, push Prozac, and listen to Biffy complain about how she caught the sniffles at the Hamptons last weekend because it was too windy on her yacht.

She loved making a real difference, loved knowing that she was able to change someone’s life for the better
. She’d spent many summers as a teenager working in her father’s office, watching him chase away the miseries of his indigent patients.

She’d grown to respect her father for the type of physi
cian he was. He mended the poor and the uninsured and also the well-to-do. He was a physician who espoused the indelible values of medicine and she wanted to make as difference as he did.

“What a jerk!” Sally spat. “Dr. Reynolds always acts as though we’re all beneath him. His face always looks like his drawers are too tight! Jerk!”

“Yeah, he gives me the creeps. Unfortunately that
jerk
will be one of the doctors deciding my future in a few weeks.”

“Don’t worry. You’re a shoe-in. You’ve worked hard.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“That guy’s all spit and polish. No substance. Money’s all he cares about. I heard that he just bought two new luxury cars and a
new house on the shore,” Sally informed, still staring after him.

“Wow, I guess his practice is doing better than I thought.
Humm…maybe a new car and house wouldn’t be so bad.” Nina rubbed her chin in mock contemplation and laughed when Sally playfully smacked her head, as if trying to dislodge any notion of joining Dr. Reynolds.

“I would never do it,
” she assured her.

“Good.” Sally’s face fattened with a wide grin. “So where were we?”

“Home,” Nina announced, glad to have arrived at the front door of her four-story brownstone. “Really, I’m just worried about the promotion, that’s all,” she promised and was inwardly relieved when Sally seemed to be placated.

“Okay…but you’re not getting off that easily. We’ll talk about this another time. I know you’re hiding something.”

Nina waved and disappeared, ignoring the suspicious scowl on her friend’s face. She decided not to wait for the claustrophobically tiny elevator in her building and jogged up the four flights to her one-bedroom apartment. Once bundled under her thick down comforter she slept fitfully, fantasies of hot fervent kisses and delicious caresses of sensitive flesh bumped around in her dreams until she awoke sweating and frustrated.

Two days later Nina sat in the nurse’s station hunched over a chart. She was finishing up some left over notes from the night shift when Dr.
Tanno walked up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.