Dr. NEUROtic Read online

  Not to mention that once I’d stepped inside of his office, another cameraman had already set up shop, filming anything and everything that occurred around him.

  What in the ever-loving fuck was happening?

  I felt like I was on Candid Camera or something. Any second, I wondered if a clown would jump out of a closet and scare the ever-living shit out of me.

  “Hey, Charlotte,” Nick greeted me from behind his desk, that all too familiar smile of his holding my attention hostage. “Hungry?”

  “Uh…” I muttered and glanced at the white elephants, otherwise known as a fucking film crew, standing in the room. “What in the hell is happening right now?”

  “I guess I forgot to mention that I’m currently being filmed for a docuseries about the hospital, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said through a surprised laugh. “I think it’s safe to say you never mentioned the fact that I’d be on camera while stuffing my face full of meat. Deli meat!” Jesus Christmas, Charlotte.

  Nick chuckled. “Don’t worry. They won’t be following us to lunch.”

  “Well, that’s good news.” A snort escaped my nose before I could stop it. Instantly, my cheeks heated, and I covered my face with my hand. Now is not the time to snort like a freaking pig.

  His big brown eyes locked with mine, and a hint of a smile crested his lips.

  It was cute. Really cute. But I resisted the powerful pull and sighed instead. I mean, a little heads-up would have been nice. Cripes, if I’d known I was going to be on camera, I might have considered brushing my hair or applying fresh makeup before leaving my office.

  I wasn’t looking for some kind of big break into Hollywood, but I’d prefer that my on-screen debut didn’t occur after speed-walking five blocks and sweating like a glass of fucking iced tea.

  Nick stood up from his desk and slipped his phone, wallet, and keys into the back pockets of his dress slacks. He glanced to the camera once as he was closing the distance between us, but any apprehension at a public display must have disappeared as he made it within striking distance. His arm was warm and heavy around my shoulder, and his breath felt like sex in disguise as he whispered into my ear. “You look beautiful, Charlotte. I’m sorry I was dense, but I’m glad I’m not anymore.”

  For a man who hadn’t dated since George W. Bush was president, he definitely had the capability of charming a woman. Signals weren’t his strong suit, but when it came down to saying the important things, he hadn’t let me down yet.

  “Me too,” I whispered back. “Though I should probably mention, I’m just here for the food.”

  He laughed, and with a hand to the small of my back, he led me out of his office and toward the main elevators of the Medical Arts Building wing. And, as we cleared the lobby doors, we finally lost our third wheel—the cameraman.

  Once we arrived at Mitch’s Deli, I scavenged a booth in the far corner of the restaurant while Nick rounded up our sandwiches and drinks from the counter—two pastramis on rye, a water for him, and an iced tea for me.

  He set our plates and cups on the table and slid into the cushioned seat across from mine.

  “So…” I started, and he quirked a brow in my direction, seemingly already anticipating my words.

  “I know,” he muttered as he added extra mustard to his sandwich and then offered the still partially full packet to me. I took it and likewise adorned my meat. “The cameras and film crew shit is ridiculous, huh?”

  “A bit?” I laughed and he grinned.

  “I didn’t want to do the show. At all.” He shrugged. “Looks like I got talked into it, though, doesn’t it?”

  I shrugged. He was involved all right. I had the thirty pounds in camera weight to prove it.

  Yes, I know cameras don’t actually add weight. Just visually. Yeah, yeah. Just go with it.

  “Of course, then I was so busy getting you to forgive me, and you know, occasionally working…” He smirked. “I kind of forgot they were there.”

  “How anyone could forget they were being filmed is a mystery,” I muttered, and he chuckled.

  “Considering this was the first day of filming, you’d be surprised how quickly you get used to those bastards.”

  “So…what kind of reality show is it?” I asked and took a small bite of my sandwich.

  “It’s a docuseries about my and two other doctors’ careers,” he explained after a quick sip of water. “Actually, I have Will and Scott to blame for roping me into it.”

  “Will and Scott?”

  “The other two doctors who are also being filmed.”

  “So, is it supposed to be like the real-life Grey’s Anatomy or something?”

  “Good God, I fucking hope not,” he answered. “The way our hospital executives and the producers from the show pitched it to us, the series is just supposed to be, like, a day in the life of a physician kind of thing.”

  “And Will and Scott are doctors, too?”

  He nodded. “Will is Chief of Obstetrics, and Scott runs the ER at St. Luke’s.”

  “Gotcha. So, between the seventy-hour work weeks and filming your first television debut, when do you find the time to enjoy yourself?”

  “Sixty hours, and I just started filming today, during work hours,” he corrected.

  I used my silence as a question and held him at the top of the loop until he broke.

  “Fine,” he acquiesced. “Sixty- to seventy-hour work weeks, and enjoy myself? What does that even mean?” he questioned with a soft smirk.

  “You know, like, grabbing some drinks with friends. Dancing. Movies. That sort of thing.”

  “Honestly?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well, the last time I grabbed a drink with friends was about three years ago at a medical conference. I haven’t been to the movie theater since Avatar came out in 3D. And the last time I danced was at my cousin Jimmy’s wedding about a year ago, and I was heavily under the influence of alcohol.”

  “Oh boy.” I winked. “I’m going to have to loosen you up, aren’t I?”

  He smirked but didn’t offer up any kind of answer. Instead, he reached his hand across the table and gently swiped something off of the corner of my mouth. The small hint of yellow mustard sat on his thumb as he pulled his hand back to his side of the table.

  But then, Nick Raines surprised the hell out of me.

  Fascinated, I watched as he slid his thumb into his mouth and sucked the mustard off of his skin.

  Hells bells, that was pretty fucking sexy…

  As soon as I walked through the automatic front doors of the hospital, the blinding light of the camera, held high on the shoulder of my new personal cameraman, Jorge, pierced my eye. I had three guys who were around most of the time, but Jorge… Jorge stalked me. From the moment they’d set up that morning, it had been clear that if cameramen were friends, he was to be my bestie.

  He didn’t speak, he didn’t question, he didn’t even acknowledge me in any way other than to trail patiently after me as I swatted at the light briefly and started the journey to my office. He’d been deathly silent all day, and a part of me wondered if he was going to be like this for the six or so weeks of filming we had coming down the pipeline.

  Ironically, even as the bearer of the question, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted the answer to be. Maybe the quiet would be nice. Maybe I’d slowly lose my mind, medical license, and life, one silent day at a time.

  It was a toss-up.

  After a nice lunch with Charlotte, the tang of the mustard I’d stupidly wiped from the corner of her mouth and sucked off my thumb still tingling my taste buds, I’d almost forgotten the completely claustrophobic feeling of losing my privacy—of exposing myself both to criticism and approval at the discretion of several million strangers’ judgment.

  I hoped it would get better the more we filmed, the more Jorge became like background noise along with the rest of the busy hospital, but I wasn’t sure it would. I’d been uncertain about The Doctor Is In
, a reality show following me and two other heads of department at St. Luke’s around our daily lives at the hospital, from the beginning. I didn’t like to invite people into my personal space, and I didn’t do it often.

  With the exception of Winnie and Lexi, I’d scarcely let anyone know anything about me.

  But I’d been pressured by both the board and my peers, and I was largely at the mercy of the hospital these days. It didn’t matter anymore that I was one of the most talented neurosurgeons in the country or that I had a nearly blemish-free backlist of patients singing my praises. I wanted to be in New York for my daughter, and I wanted the freedom I’d worked into my schedule here at St. Luke’s.

  They had me over a barrel, and they knew it.

  Still, every day I got to know more about my daughter validated any sacrifice I might have to make to stay at St. Luke’s. When I thought about Lexi sitting down at the table in my apartment, after pulling one of my medical books from my office, mind you, and opening it to a page about the frontal lobe to ask me specific questions with game show flare, reality show glory seemed like a relatively small price to pay.

  “Dr. Raines!” my nurse Carol called, just as I stepped inside the door to my office and turned on the light.

  “Yeah?”

  I didn’t even have my jacket off of my shoulders when she followed me inside.

  “I was just about to page you. I know you’ve got surgery scheduled for this afternoon already, but we’ve got an emergency downstairs. Blunt force trauma, and the scans are showing a bleed.”

  “Where’s Dr. Johnson?” I asked of the only other neurosurgeon on the floor today.

  “In OR two.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be done at noon?” I half asked, half stated. It’d taken me a few egotistical years in the field before I realized how much nurses really ran the fucking show. I might be trained in precision, but Carol was the one who dealt in details. I’d never be able to run this department without someone like her helping me keep track of shit.

  “The damage was a little more extensive than he was expecting, but vitals are still strong. He doesn’t see any reason that the extra two hours under should be a problem.”

  “All right,” I accepted, closing my eyes as I thought through my other options. Dr. Forrest was on call, but knowing the kind of lunchtime madhouse it was in Midtown at this hour, having just been out there myself, I didn’t think that was a good option.

  Carol waited patiently for me to figure out what to do. In real time, it’d only been a few seconds of stewing, but I always felt too slow. These decisions were life-and-death, urgent milestones of a patient’s life. To me, or Carol, it was an everyday nuance. I worked hard to keep myself firmly in the patient’s point of view.

  “Okay. Push back my two o’clock to four, and have Dr. Forrest come in and catch up on all the case details. I’ll take the emergency downstairs, and if I don’t make it out in time, Forrest can take the four o’clock with Sarah Clark.”

  Carol didn’t even chirp, turning quickly on her heel and exiting my office to execute the order. Unfortunately, as her presence disappeared, the obviousness with which I had a camera pointed right fucking at me grew. Apparently, now that I wasn’t fighting the good fight to get back in Charlotte’s good graces, the millions of future viewers seemed a little less invisible.

  Great.

  I tried my best to ignore it as I rounded my desk and shucked my coat, tossing it on the hook and pulling all of my personal items out of my pocket to lock in the drawer of my desk. I moved as quickly as I could out the door and down to the locker room to change into my scrubs.

  When I came out the door from changing, Jorge was there. In fact, I nearly ran right into the motherfucker.

  Goddamn, this was going to take some getting used to.

  “You’re going to have to back off in the OR, okay?” I told him as he followed me with nearly zero personal space. I could only imagine the camera five inches from my face as I put my hands directly in someone’s fucking brain.

  Jorge didn’t speak—I was becoming more and more convinced it wasn’t allowed—but he did nod. At least, I thought he did. Even the motion of his head was underexaggerated.

  Oh, well. If he didn’t comply, I’d have him thrown the fuck out, contract or not.

  Breaking into a jog, I turned the corner to the nurse’s station on my floor to find Carol holding out the file I needed like a quarterback holding a football for his running back.

  The image made me smile, but it also formed a weird pit in my stomach.

  Everything about football did these days. I’d told Charlotte that I didn’t have time for sports, and mostly, that was true. But there was another reason I didn’t immerse myself in all things athletic, and it wasn’t nearly as easy to explain.

  Winnie was married now, to Wes Lancaster, the owner of the New York Mavericks, and even more than that, my daughter called him Dad.

  Naturally, at first, I was jealous of the way he was with her. He coached and supported her foray into football, and I sat on the sidelines.

  Luckily, that didn’t last long. No, I realized pretty swiftly that I’d spent my daughter’s entire young life being a jackass with nothing more than money and a few sporadic calls to offer, and Wes had come along when she’d needed someone. He’d given her the structure and love of a father when I hadn’t, and I was grateful.

  It was, perhaps, the first truly adult emotion I’d ever experienced.

  But the twinge never went away, the swirling mist of what if and why not a power in my mind I couldn’t will away.

  My life could have been different if I’d been a quicker learner. If I’d realized the things I had now earlier on. But I also couldn’t go back.

  And if I had to let someone fill the voids my faults had left, Wes Lancaster had done a great job. As thanks, I tried carefully to avoid treading on the territory he’d built. Sports with Lexi could be his thing.

  As I read through the patient’s stats quickly, Fred Marratta, male, fifty-two, no history of smoking or cardiac distress, and no medical red flags on either side of his family history, the parameters of this surgery were shaping up to be manageable. I’d still have to take a good look at the scans when I got into the OR, but I didn’t foresee any glaring problems. This was a surgery I’d been through literally hundreds of times. It was never easy, but I’d learned which way the dominoes normally fell and how to counteract them when necessary.

  Gerry, a black-sneaker-wearing male OR nurse from way back, had everything set up as I stepped inside after scrubbing up, and Mr. Marratta got transferred from the bed to the operating table.

  I studied the scans closely, following the bleed to the source and satisfying myself with the initial plan I’d created. Surgery almost always required an audible, but where you started was nine-tenths of the success in deciding on one.

  Gloves on and at the ready, I stepped forward as a nurse placed my head lamp on over my surgery cap and stepped up to Mr. Marratta’s shaved and prepped head.

  “All right, everyone. Let’s save one life, not change many.”

  The reach of a person’s death was too extensive to fathom, and I knew firsthand. The death of my grandfather had shaped my early adulthood.

  I’d longed for financial security. Longed for how it felt before I’d been forced to carry debt. So that’s what I’d given my daughter. Money.

  Like a stupid fucking asshole.

  After a smooth but long surgery and forty-five minutes of making sure all of the scheduled surgeries were proceeding without a hitch, I made it back to my office and, in the privacy it provided, checked my phone. Early in my career, I’d scarcely bothered with it other than to answer a page, but now that I was here, and Lexi was here, I found I checked it every opportunity I got.

  She liked to text me all sorts of things at random, and I never wanted to miss the opportunity to acknowledge one. I was determined to be present.

  I smiled as I found a text from
her waiting on the screen and clicked to open the content.

  A picture of her doing her best gangster pose in front of a dance studio I recognized from the walk between my apartment and here filled my screen. I scrolled down after smiling broadly and read the text she’d sent to accompany it.

  Lexi: I finally convinced Uncle Remy to take a hip-hop class with me. He declined the opportunity to be photographed.

  Oh, shit. I could only fucking imagine Winnie’s brother Remy’s reaction to his new foray into the world of dance.

  Me: I will pay you twenty dollars if you procure a picture during class, no questions asked.

  Lexi: Really, Dad? Mom is paying me fifty.

  I shook my head at her swindling tactics.

  Me: Well, then, all together you’ll make 70.

  Lexi: Fine. But I’m docking the time of receipt of said photo for you by ten minutes.

  I groaned. Jesus Christ, only my daughter.

  Me: I’ll survive.

  Lexi: Of course, you’ll survive. Anticipation has no proven ill effects.

  Me: Aren’t you going to be late for dance?

  Lexi: I have fourteen minutes.

  I shook my head. Late wasn’t in Lexi’s vocabulary. It just wasn’t possible when your mind was that precise.

  Me: Get warmed up, then. I have to work.

  Lexi: Bye.

  I laughed outright before putting the phone down on my desk, looking at it…and then picking it up again.

  I opened a fresh message, clicked on the address box, and searched my contacts. C. H. A. R.