Читать книгу Doctor In The House - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 12

“Oh my God, that was incredible,” Bailey cried.

It was difficult to keep from shouting out the words as she walked from the operating room to the back area where the sinks were. Trying to steady her racing pulse, she took in a deep, measured breath. It didn’t help. Everything inside her had kicked into high gear. It was the closest to high she had ever felt.

Bailey looked at the man she had been assigned to with genuine awe. “You were incredible.”

Ivan spared her a glance that could only be described as “disinterested.” The other members of the staff walked by, oblivious to the scene, trying to put distance between themselves and Ivan the Terrible.

“Yes, I know.”

The sound of his voice, utterly devoid of any sort of emotion, penetrated the wild rush she was experiencing. Bailey could only stare at the neurosurgeon incredulously. He’d performed nothing short of a miracle. “How can you be so calm?”

One shoulder moved in a vague shrug. “Low blood sugar.”

“I’m serious.” She tugged her mask down lower until she could undo the ties at the back of her neck. “Don’t you feel a rush, a surge?” She searched his face for a hint of what she was describing. “Isn’t your heart just pounding?”

The disinterested glance only deepened. Flattery, even sincere flattery, which he presumed this was, was neither accepted nor rejected. It was allowed to float free through time and space, like an untethered balloon until it faded away. “I performed surgery, DelMonico. I didn’t make love to the man.”

The words threw her completely off. Bailey looked at the man whose fingers had performed nothing short of magic in the room behind her. Mild surprise gave way to amusement. “I didn’t know you made love.”

He threw his gloves away and removed the bland surgical cap he’d worn during the six-hour operation. Other surgeons, once they had endured and surmounted all the various trials and obstacles to get there, selected a cap in colors that had some sort of significance to them. Ivan’s was the same color as it had always been. Blue. He didn’t believe in donning peacock finery. He believed in surgery.

One tug separated the mask’s ties at the back of his neck and he threw the mask into a bin. “There are many things about me, DelMonico, that you don’t know.”

Interest sparked in those deep blue eyes of hers. “I’m willing to listen.”

“I’m not willing to talk.” He figured that was enough of a put-down. Instead, her mouth curved even more. Ivan flashed one of his more deflating looks. “Careful, DelMonico, or someone’s going to have to tie a rope around your ankle to keep you earth-bound. Why are you so exhilarated, anyway?” he asked, unable to understand her reaction. “You were just on the sidelines.”

Sidelines or not, she was right there, where everything was happening. “But I got to see—” she cried, then abruptly switched sentences, so pumped she was unable to finish one thought before leaping to another. “You had half his skull off—His brain was exposed!”

“They call it ‘brain surgery’ for a reason, DelMonico.” He shook his head, as if not knowing what to make of her, sincerely doubting that she was for real. “Maybe you should review your notes from Neurosurgery 101.”

It was her turn to shake her head, but unlike him, her smile was wide. “You’re not going to do it.”

Despite the fact that he wanted to change out of his scrubs, he paused a moment to ask, “Do what?”

“You’re not going to deflate me.” She was far too excited about what she had witnessed, far too enthused about the work that lay ahead of her, to become just like him. She’d never believed in aiming low.

Ivan clucked his tongue. “Pity. There goes my fun for the afternoon.”

Turning away from her, Ivan was surprised when he felt her hand on his forearm. He glanced over his shoulder and waited for an explanation for the detainment.

Self-consciously, she dropped her hand to her side. “How long?” she asked.

His patience was pretty well stretched to the limit with her. “How long what?”

She pressed her lips together. “How long before I can do something like that?” She nodded her head back toward the O.R.

“Oh, I don’t know.” He paused, pretending to think. And then his expression was dismissive as he raised his eyes to hers. “If you study very hard—maybe a century or two. Maybe longer.”

A slam like that might have sent her reeling—or spoiling for a fight. But she was beginning to read between the lines and get a handle on him. The insults were a smokescreen. No one was that nasty for no reason. “You don’t want me to like you, do you?”

His eyes narrowed, telling her how insignificant she was in the scheme of his life. “I really don’t care how you feel about anything, DelMonico.”

He believed that, she thought. But she didn’t. She’d been taught never to focus on the bad, only the good. And if an animal swiped at you, it was only because he was wounded. The challenge here was to discover what Ivan the Terrible’s wound was.

She folded her arms before her. “Well, you won’t get me to dislike you.”

Ordinarily, he would have turned and walked away without bothering to reply. But for once, curiosity got the better of him. “Not that, again, I care in the slightest, but why is that, DelMonico?”

The answer was simple. Because she wanted to be the best and in order to do that, she had to learn from the best. She had to learn from him. Everything was always better when conducted in an air of congeniality rather than hospitality.

“Because you did exactly what you said back there,” she told him. “You performed a miracle. That tumor looked like it was a miniaturized octopus with its tiny tentacles woven all in and out of gray matter, and yet you got it all.”

He’d leaned against the wall to listen to her and straightened now. “Very poetic, DelMonico. Maybe you should think about becoming a poet instead of wasting your time here.”

She wasn’t going to let him bait her. She felt too good, too psyched, to let him burst her balloons and make her plummet. “I’m not wasting my time.”

He leveled a penetrating gaze at her. “You’re sure of that?”

There wasn’t even a half second of hesitation on her part. “Yes.”

“Ballsy,” Ivan pronounced, more to himself than to her. “Maybe it won’t take you a century or two. DelMonico. Maybe it’ll just take three-quarters of one.”

She had just been given a decent compliment, Ivan the Terrible style. She viewed it as one giant step in the right direction. “I’m going to knock that figure down to something manageable,” she promised.

Ivan snorted. “You think that, DelMonico. You go right ahead and think that.”

The tone he used clearly declared that while she might want to delude herself, he knew the truth and the truth, the way he saw it, said that she would never be capable of performing the kinds of surgeries he tackled on a regular basis. He just didn’t see it being in her, no matter what she thought.

“I will,” Bailey called after him as he began to walk away. “Because I have a good teacher.” She raised her voice when he made no attempt to turn around and added, “You.”

“Ha!” was Ivan’s only response. He kept on walking until he disappeared through the opposite set of swinging doors.

Bailey turned on her heel, quickly heading around to the other side, to the locker room where her things were stored. For all the contact she’d had with the patient, she could have almost remained in the clothes she’d worn originally. The clothes she’d secretly hoped put her in a better light as far as first impressions went. She realized that she could have just as well worn a paper sack for all the difference it made to Munro, but it had been worth a try.

She grinned to herself. She’d seen her first brain surgery today. Despite the fact that Munro had relegated her to a far corner of the operating room, she had been able to witness the infinite skill with which he wielded the robotic instruments used to excise the tumor that had all but paralyzed the thirty-two-year-old patient.

She didn’t care how much the neurosurgeon ranted and raved, how much he tried to get her to throw her hands up and scream “uncle” just before she quit. There was no way she was about to do that.

“Get used to it, Ivan Munro,” she murmured under her breath as she walked into the locker room. “I’m going to stick to you like glue until I know everything that you do.”

The second she entered the lockers she began shedding surgical livery. By the time she reached the locker that had been assigned her, she was in her underwear, ready to grab her street clothes and put them on.

The trouble with that was, someone, obviously thinking they were performing a good deed, had shut her locker door and flipped the combination lock. A lock to which she didn’t know the combination.

“Damn,” she muttered when the lock resisted opening.

“Problem?”

The question came from the other side of the lockers.