Читать книгу The Doctor's Former Fiancee - Caro Carson - Страница 12

Chapter Six

The patients enrolled in PLI’s migraine study might not suffer from high blood pressure, but Lana was pretty sure hers was going through the roof.

She glared at her phone’s screen. Braden wasn’t going to return her last call, obviously. His executive assistant had sounded excruciatingly cool and competent, so Lana knew her message hadn’t been lost. Braden’s workday was apparently over, although his assistant’s obviously was not. Poor woman.

Well, Lana was no slave driver. She wasn’t going to call her own assistant this late at night and demand that Myrna rearrange her schedule to be here at eight in the morning, no matter what Braden demanded. Her blood pressure hiked up another millimeter just thinking about it.

She ought to lock the office door and go home. Braden could show up tomorrow at the time of his choosing, but she wouldn’t be here. He could stew in the hallway, calling her number in vain. Since not-for-profit hospitals didn’t provide their department chairs with twenty-four-hour assistants like Braden had, he’d be stuck listening to her voice mail. Even better.

The whole scenario sounded wonderfully vengeful—but Lana knew it was a fantasy. She wouldn’t do it. This wasn’t about her personal irritation; this was about patients who were suffering.

She had some sleuthing to do, stat. It was nearing midnight, and she needed to find a link between Marion MacDowell and the other enrollees. All patients had listed their other medical conditions upon entering the study. Lana had sorted those lists every which way, but nothing striking had appeared, no similarities in secondary diseases beyond the migraines.

Her stomach growled. She’d intended to battle her exhaustion only long enough to call Braden, set up a future appointment and then go home. Her new apartment was full of cardboard boxes. The headboard and rails of her bed were propped against the wall, unassembled, so her mattress was flat on the floor. Her great ambition for the evening had been to locate the box containing her microwave oven, heat up an organic frozen dinner and then flop onto that mattress for the night.

Instead, Braden had insisted that West Central return its data to PLI. She would have to wait one more day before giving in to her exhaustion. Patients were counting on her.

The rush of adrenaline was welcome. Knowing she’d be seeing Braden again in a matter of hours made her feel energized. Not because she was looking forward to seeing him, but because she was in competition with him. She had to beat Braden at his own game. The challenge was better than coffee.

“All right, Dr. Montgomery,” she murmured into the silence of her office. “Why did you put Marion MacDowell on this drug?”

She tapped her pencil at the corner of her mouth. Perhaps she needed to look at Marion MacDowell’s involvement from a fresh angle. The medicine may have been designed to treat migraines, but an unusual side effect might have been reported. Sometimes, a prospective medicine had a side effect that turned out to be more beneficial than the original effect. A prospective asthma medicine, for example, might unexpectedly cause low blood sugar and become a diabetes medication. It was a rare occurrence, but it happened.

Perhaps Dr. Montgomery had noticed that PLI’s migraine drug was causing an unusual but beneficial side effect, one that could benefit Marion MacDowell in some way.

It was a long shot.

It was also nearly midnight.

Lana started looking for frequently reported side effects of the study. At least one hundred patients had been enrolled during the six months before Dr. Montgomery had given the last slot to his friend. Lana began sorting her list again, this time by date of enrollment, then copying the side-effect data for only the first six months’ worth of patients, then...

An hour later, she glared at her still-dark phone screen. So far, she’d found nothing. At this rate, it was quite possible she’d still be here at eight in the morning, still wearing the same dress from today’s meeting. Braden would know she’d pulled an all-nighter.

She doubted he’d be shocked. They’d pulled more all-nighters together than she could count during residency. Having Braden by her side had made those years an adventure. They’d met every challenge together. Lana and Braden versus the evil attending physicians. Lana and Braden conquering forty-eight-hour workdays. Lana and Braden slipping into the storage room.

She closed her eyes for a moment and let her head rest on the tall back of Dr. Montgomery’s oversized leather desk chair. When she opened her eyes again, Braden was there, standing on the other side of the glass door, framed by pink paper hearts.

She was dreaming.

Braden opened the door without knocking.

She was not dreaming.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Lana stood immediately. Her pumps had been kicked off long ago, so jumping to her feet didn’t do much for her, size-wise. Braden walked past Myrna’s desk to stand before hers, hands on his hips, glaring down at her as if she were a disobedient child.

She was no child. “This is my office. I’m the one who gets to ask what you’re doing here.”

“I was just walking past the door,” he said, frowning at her. “Your lights were on.”

“At midnight, you just happened to be walking down this hallway of West Central?”

“Yes. My brother had a late dinner break, so I came by to see him.” He crossed his arms over his chest. He’d changed into a soft knit shirt and jeans, she noticed, the same clothes he’d always preferred, even when she and all the other residents were living in scrubs.

Jeans or not, he hadn’t come to pull an all-nighter by her side. He was having dinner with his brother. It wasn’t his job to find a reason to keep pentagab viable. He got to sit back, relax and wait for someone else to make the case for him.

Must be nice.

“While you were having dinner, I was working on pentagab.”

He only raised one eyebrow at her. “That’s not a particularly wise way to spend your time. The drug is dead.”

The man was a broken record on the subject. She threw her hands up. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about why your mother was taking it?”

“You’re investigating my mother right now?”