Wedding Date with the Army Doc
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Lynne Marshall
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11
Chapter One
CHARLOTTE JOHNSON MADE the necessary faces to chew the amazing chocolate, nut and caramel candy she’d just shoved into her mouth between looking at pathology slides. Mid-nut-and-caramel-chew, she glanced up to see a hulking shadow cover her office door. Her secret surgeon crush, Jackson Ryland Hilstead the Third, blocked the fluorescent light from the hallway, causing her to narrow her eyes in order to make out his features. Be still, my heart, and, oh, heavens, stop chewing. Now!
Except she couldn’t talk unless she finished chewing and swallowed, and she figured he’d come for a reason, as he always did Friday afternoons. Probably because of his heavy schedule of surgeries on Thursday and Friday mornings. He’d ask her questions about his patients’ diagnoses and prognoses, and she’d dutifully answer. It had become their routine, and she looked forward to it. After all, as the staff surgical pathologist at St. Francis of the Valley Hospital, it was her job to be helpful to her fellow medical colleagues, even while, in his case, thinking how she’d love to brush that one brown, wavy lock of hair off his forehead. Yeah, she was hopelessly crushing on the man.
She lifted her finger, hoping her sign for “One moment” might compute with the astute doc, then covered her mouth with the other hand as she chewed furiously. Finally, she swallowed with a gulp, feeling heat rise from her neck upward. Great impression.
“Don’t let me interfere,” he said, an amused look on his face. “The last thing I want to do is come between a woman and her chocolate.” Obviously he’d noticed the candy-bar wrapper on her desk.
She grabbed a bottle of water and took a quick swig. “You’re sounding sexist. How unlike you,” she teased, hoping she didn’t have candy residue on her teeth. Of all the male doctors she dealt with on a daily basis, this surgeon was the one who made her feel self-conscious. It most certainly had a lot to do with his piercing blue eyes that the hospital scrubs seemed to highlight brighter than an OR lamp. She pulled her lab coat closed when his eyes surreptitiously and briefly scanned her from head to toe. Or as much as he could see of her with her sitting behind her double-headed microscope.
“Ah, Charlotte...” He sat down across from her. “How well you don’t know me. If you weren’t my favorite pathologist, I’d be offended.” Finally responding to her halfhearted “sexist” slur.
The guy was a Southern gentleman from Georgia, and she wasn’t above stereotyping him, because he was a walking billboard for good manners, charm and—perhaps not quite as appealing considering the odds in a competitive and overstocked female world, in California anyway—knowing how to relate to women. The word smooth came to mind. But it was balanced with sincerity, a rare combination. Plus there was no escaping that slow, rolling-syllable accent, like warm honey down her spine, setting off all sorts of nerve endings she’d otherwise forgotten. He spoke as though they had all the time in the world to talk. She could listen to him all day, and if she’d owned a fan she’d be flapping it now.
“Well, if you weren’t one of my favorite surgeons,” she lied, as he was her absolute favorite, “I would’ve eaten the rest of it.”
One corner of his mouth hitched the tiniest bit. “I think you already have, but don’t worry, your gooey-chocolate choice would be number ten on my list of top three favorite candy bars.”
Busted, she batted her lashes, noticing his spearmint-and-sandalwood scent as he moved closer. She inhaled a little deeper, thinking he liked to change up his aftershave, and that intrigued her.
“And since you brought up the subject of sexism, I’ve got to say you look great today. Turquoise suits you.”
He regularly paid her compliments, which she loved, but figured he was like that with all the women he encountered, so she never took them too seriously. Though she had to admit she longed for him to mean them. What did that say about her dating life? Something in the way his eyes watched her and waited for a response whenever he flattered her made her wonder if maybe she was a tiny bit more special than all the other ladies in the hospital. She liked the idea of that.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding as self-effacing as ever.
“Thank you,” he countered.
Their gazes held perhaps a second longer than she could take, so she pretended the slide on the microscope tray required her immediate and complete attention. “So what do you need?”
Intensely aware of his do-you-really-want-to-know? gaze—this was new and it was a challenge that shook her to the bone—she fought the urge to squirm. Yeah, sexist or sexy or whatever it was he just did with those eyes was way out of her comfort zone. So why did that look excite her, make her wish things could be the way they had been before her operation? Where was that invisible fan again? Shame. Shame. Shame. And she called herself a professional woman.
“Do you have the slides yet for Gary Underwood? A lung biopsy from yesterday afternoon. I’ve got an impatient wife demanding her husband’s results.”
“The weekend is coming, so I can understand her concern.” Charlotte hadn’t yet finished the slides from yesterday morning’s cases, but she was always willing to fish out a few newer ones for interested doctors. Jackson was as concerned about his patients as they came. Another thing she really liked about the guy.
She turned on the desk lamp, sorted through the pile of cardboard slide cases, each carefully labeled by the histology technicians, and found the slides in question. They settled in to study them, their knees nearly touching as they sat on opposite sides of the small table that held her dual-headed teaching microscope. She put her hair behind her ears and moved in, but not before seeing him notice her dangly turquoise earrings that matched her top. She could tell from the spark in his eyes that he liked them, too, but this time kept the fact to himself.
Yes, he was a real gentleman, with broad shoulders and wavy brown hair that he chose to comb straight back from his forehead. And it was just long enough to curl under his ears. Call him a sexy gentleman. Gulp. Very, very sexy.
Being smack in the heart of the San Fernando Valley was nothing new for an original Valley girl like her, but she figured it had to be total culture shock for a man from Savannah. Talk to me, baby. I love that Southern drawl. Why did she have such confidence inside her head but could never dare to act on it? She didn’t waste a single second answering that question. Because things were different now. She wasn’t the woman she’d used to be. Enough said.
In his early forties with a sprinkling of gray at his temples, Jackson had only been in Southern California for a year. Word was, if she could believe everything she heard from Dr. Dupree, Jackson had needed a change after his divorce. Which made him a gentleman misfit in a casual-with-a-capital-C kind of town. She liked that about him, too—the khaki slacks and button-down collared shirts with ties that he’d obviously given some time to selecting. Today the shirt was pale yellow and the tie an expensive-looking subtly sage-green herringbone pattern. Nice.
She turned off the desk light so they could view the slide better. They sat in companionable silence as they studied it. Hearing him breathe ever so gently made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Good thing she’d worn it down today. Hmm, maybe that was what he liked? Stop it, Charlotte. This will never go anywhere. Maybe that was why she enjoyed the fantasy so much. It was her secret. And it was safe.
She fine-focused on the biopsied lung tissue, increasing the magnification over one particular spot of red-dyed swirls with minuscule black dots until the cells came into full view. They studied the areas in question together. “Notice the angulated nuclear margins and hyperchromasia in this area?” She spoke close to a whisper, a habit she’d got into out of respect for the solemn importance of each patient’s diagnosis.
“Hmm,” he emitted thoughtfully.
She moved the slide on the tray a tiny bit, then refocused. “And here, and here.” She used the white teaching arrow in the high-grade microscope to point out the areas in question.
He inhaled, his eyes never leaving the eyepiece.
“Here are mitotic figures, and here intercellular bridges. Not a good sign.” She pulled back from her microscope. “As you can see, there are variations in size of cells and nuclei, which adds up to squamous cell malignancy. I’ll have to study the rest of the slides to check the margins and figure out the cancer staging, but, unfortunately, the anxiously awaiting wife will have more to be anxious about.”
“Bad news for sure.” Jackson pushed back from the microscope, but not before one of his knees knocked hers, and it hurt her kneecap, feeling almost like metal. Maybe he was Superman in disguise? “I’ll get in touch with Oncology to get a jump on things.”
The situation caused an old and familiar pang in her stomach. Charlotte knew how it felt to be a family member waiting for news from the doctor. She’d gone through the process at fifteen, the year her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. That was the day she’d first heard the term metastatic and had vowed to figure out what it meant. And after that she’d vowed to learn everything she could about her mother’s condition.
“Is he young and otherwise healthy?”
“Yes,” Jackson said. “Which will help the prognosis.”
She nodded, though not enthusiastically. Her mother had been young and supposedly healthy, too. The loss of her mother soon after bilateral mastectomies had broken her family’s heart. Her father had never recovered, and within a span of three years of his downhill slide, he’d also died. From alcoholism, his self-medication of choice to deal with the emotional pain. She’d already stepped in as the responsible one when her mother had first been diagnosed, and after she’d died Charlotte had kept the family functioning. Barely. At eighteen, along with applying to colleges, she’d signed on to be the guardian of her kid sister and brother, otherwise they’d have ended up in foster homes.
Her mother’s cancer had changed the course of her life, steering her toward medicine, and later, with her never-ending quest to understand why things happened as they did, sending her into the darker side of the profession, pathology.
“Well, I’ve got to run,” Jackson said, bringing her out of her thoughts. “I’ve got a dinner I can’t miss tonight, and Mrs. Underwood to talk to first.” He stood and took a couple of steps then turned at her office door and looked at her again thoughtfully. “Do you happen to know offhand the extension for social services? I think the Underwoods could use some added support this weekend.”
Having put the desk light back on, she scanned her hospital phone list cheat sheet and read out the numbers, admittedly disappointed to know he had a dinner engagement.
“Thanks,” he said, but not before giving her a thorough once-over again. “Really like those earrings, too.” Then he left, leaving her grinning with warming cheeks.
Wanting desperately to read more into his light flattery than she should, she groaned quietly. The guy had a dinner date! Plus the man probably said things like that to all the women he encountered in his busy days. It had probably been drilled into him back in Georgia since grade school, maybe even before that. Treat all women like princesses.
Who was she kidding, hoping she might be more special than other women he knew? She was five feet nine, a full-figured gal, or had used to be anyway, a size ten, and not many men appreciated that in this thin-as-a-rail era. Besides, even if he did find her attractive, nothing could ever come of it. She’d pretty much taken care of that two years ago with her surgery.
Odds were most men wouldn’t want to get involved with her. She pulled her lab coat tighter across her chest. Her ex-boyfriend had sure changed his mind, calling off their short engagement. They’d been all set to go the conventional route, and she’d loved the idea of having a career, marriage and kids. Her mouth had watered for it. Then...
She’d cut Derek some slack, though, since her decision had been extreme and radical even. They’d talked about it over and over, argued, and he’d never really signed on. He hadn’t wanted to go there. He’d wanted her exactly as she had been.
The memory of her mother suffering had been the major influence on her final decision.
Her hand came to rest on her chest. The realistic-feeling silicone breast forms—otherwise known as falsies—she wore in her bra sometimes nearly made her forget she’d had a double mastectomy. Elective surgery.
She fiddled with Mr. Underwood’s slides, lining them up to study them more thoroughly.
She’d accidentally found her own damn cancer marker right here in her office. Along with the excitement and anticipation of getting engaged and the plans for having a family, some deeper, sadder dialogue threaded through the recesses of her brain. One morning she’d woken in a near panic. What if? She’d shivered over the potential answer. Then, unable to move forward with a gigantic question mark in her future, she’d had the lab draw her blood and do the genetic marker panel. The results had literally made her gasp and grab her chest. Her worst nightmare was alive and living in her DNA.
Knowing her mother’s history, the near torture she’d gone through, well, having preemptive surgery had been a decision she’d known she’d have to make. Why not take care of it before it ever had a chance to begin? She’d begged Derek to understand. He’d fought her decision, but he’d never seen what her mother had gone through.
Jackson appeared at her door again, making her lose her train of thought. He inclined his head. “You okay?”
“Oh, yes.” She recovered quickly, and he obviously accepted her answer since the concern dissolved from his face.
“Hey, I forgot to ask just now. Are you going to that garden party Sunday afternoon?”
Her old concerns suddenly forgotten, the hair on her arms joined the hair on the back of her neck in prickling. Was it possible that the handsome Southern doctor was actually interested in her?
“Yes. I kind of thought it was mandatory.” It was July, the newest residents would all be there and it was a chance to put names to faces.
“Good. I’ll see you there, then.” And off he went again, his long legs and unusual gait taking that Southern stroll to a new level.
For an instant she let her hopes take flight. What would it be like to date again, especially with a man’s man like Jackson Hilstead the Third? But he’d made no offer to go to the garden party together, and after all the thoughts she’d had just now, she wasn’t a bit closer to making her secret crush real. No way.
Feeling the fallout from rehashing her past, she exchanged the instantaneous hope for reality. There was no way anyone would want her. Not with the anything-but-sexy scars across her nearly flat chest.
She sat staring into her lap, letting the truth filter through her.
Dr. Antwan Dupree appeared at her door, a man so full of himself she wished she could post a “closed for business” sign and pretend no one was home.
“I brought you some Caribbean food from a little place nearby. Thought you might like to try a taste of your heritage.”
“I’m not from the Caribbean.”
“Yes, you are. You just don’t know it. Look at your honey-colored skin and the loads of wavy, almost black hair. Darlin’, you’ve got Caribbean brown eyes. There’s no question.”
“It’s brown. My hair is dark brown. Both my parents were from the States. My grandparents were from the States. My great-grandparents were from the States. I’m typical Heinz Fifty-Seven American. The name Johnson is as American as it gets.”
“I see the islands in you.”
“And that makes it so? Must be nice to live in your world.” She suppressed a sigh. She always had to try her best not to be rude to the young, overconfident surgeon, because she did have to work with him.
“I’m just trying to help you get in touch with your roots. Try this. It’s rice and peas and jerk chicken. You’ll love it.”
“I don’t do spicy.” She opened the brown bag, pulled out the take-out container and peered inside. Black-eyed peas were something she’d never tried before, but the rice was brown, the chicken looked juicy and, since the doctor had gone to the trouble to bring the food, she figured she should at least taste it. “But I’ll give this a try.”
“When you eat that you’ll be singing, ‘I’m home, at last!’” He had an okay voice, but she wasn’t ready for a serenade right then.
“I doubt it, but thanks for the thought.” Her number one thought, while staring at her unrequested lunch, was how to get rid of Antwan Dupree.
Just as Antwan opened his mouth to speak again Jackson appeared once more at the door, which pleased her to no end.
Would you look at me, the popular pathologist? The thought nearly made her spew a laugh, but that could get messy and spread germs and it definitely wouldn’t be attractive and Jackson was standing right there. She kept her near guffaw to herself and secretly reveled in the moment, though inwardly she rolled her eyes at the absurdity of the notion. Popular pathologist. Right.
Antwan was a pest. Jackson Hilstead, well, was not!
“Give it a try, let me know what you think.” Antwan turned for the door. “You have my number, right?” He made a point to look directly at Jackson when he said that.
“Thank you and good-bye.” She’d never found swagger appealing. She’d also learned that with Antwan it was best to be blunt, otherwise the guy imagined all kinds of improbable things. The thing that really didn’t make sense was that he was better than decent looking and had loads of women interested around the hospital. Why pester her?
He nodded. “We’ll talk later,” he promised confidently, and did his unique Antwan Dupree walk right past Jackson, who hadn’t budged from his half of the entrance.
“Doctor.” Jackson tipped his head.
“Doctor.” Dupree paid the same respect on his way out. No sooner had he left than Charlotte could hear Antwan chatting up Latoya, the receptionist down the hall. What a guy.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Jackson said.
“Not at all. In fact, thank you!”
Jackson smiled and her previously claustrophobic office, with Dr. Dupree inside plus him now being gone, seemed to expand toward the universe.
“Spicy beans and rice give me indigestion, but I guess I have to try this now. I was actually kind of looking forward to my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
That got another smile from him, and she longed to think of a thousand ways to keep them coming. She also felt compelled to clarify a few things. “For the record,” she said as she closed the food container and put it back in the bag, “there is nothing at all going on between me and Dupree. He, well...he’s a player and I really don’t care for men who are full of themselves, you know?”
“He does like the ladies.” Jackson hadn’t budged from his spot at the door, and she began to wonder why he’d made another visit. “But in this case he does exhibit excellent taste.”
Really? He thought she was attractive? Before she let herself get all puffed up about his comment, it occurred to her that Jackson must have come back to her office for a reason. Maybe he wanted to ask her to go with him to the garden party? “Did you need something?”
“Yes.”
She mentally crossed her fingers.
“I was just talking to Dr. Gordon. He said he’d like to speak to you when you have a chance.”
The head of pathology, Dr. Gordon, was her personal mentor, and admittedly a kind of father figure, and when he called, she never hesitated. “Oh. Sure, thanks.” She stood and walked around her desk, then noticed the subtle gaze again from Jackson covering her from head to toe. If only she hadn’t chosen sensible shoes today! But she thanked the manufacturer of realistic-looking falsies for filling out her special mastectomy bra underneath her turquoise top.
Charlotte strolled side by side with the tall doctor down the hall. She pegged him to be around six-two, based on her five-nine and wearing low wedge shoes, plus the fact her eyes were in line with his classic long and straight nose, except for that small bump on the bridge that gave him such character. She forced her attention away from his face, again noticing his subtly unusual gait, like maybe one shoe didn’t fit quite right. When they reached Dr. Gordon’s office door, she faked casual and said good-bye.
When he smiled his good-bye, she secretly sighed—what was it about that guy?—and lingered, watching him leave the department.
“You coming in or are you going to stand out there gawking all afternoon?” As head of pathology, Dr. Gordon had taken her under his wing from her very first day as a resident at St. Francis, and she owed him more than she could ever repay. She also happened to adore the nearly seventy-year-old curmudgeon, with his shocking white hair and clear hazel eyes that had always seemed to see right through her. His double chin helped balance a hawk-like nose.
“Sorry. Hi.” She stepped inside his office. “You wanted to talk to me?”
He grew serious. “Close the door.”
His instruction sent a chill through her core. Something important was about to happen and the thought made her uncomfortable. He’d better not be retiring because she wasn’t ready for him to leave! She did what she was told, closed the door, then sat across from him at the desk, hoping she wasn’t about to get reprimanded for something.
He gave his fatherly smile, and immediately she knew she had nothing to worry about. “I’m not going to mince words. My prostate cancer is back and Dr. Hilstead is going to do exploratory surgery on me Monday. I want you to read the frozen sections.”
Stunned, she could hardly make herself speak. “Yes. Of course.” She wanted to run to him and throw her arms around him, but they didn’t have that kind of relationship. “Whatever you want.” His wife, Elly, had passed away last year, and he’d seemed so forlorn ever since. The last thing the man needed was a cancer threat. Her heart ached for him, but she fought to hide her fears. “I’ll go over those specimens with a fine-tooth comb.”
“And I’ll expect no less.” Stoic as always. Pathology had a way of doing that to doctors.
“Is there anything I can do for you this weekend?”
“Thank you but no. My son is flying in from Arizona for a few days.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Oh, wait, there is something you could do. I guess you could fill in for me on Sunday afternoon at that new resident garden party deal.”
“Of course.” Not her favorite idea, since she’d hoped she could find a way to comfort him, like make a big pot of healthy soup or something, but she’d planned to go to the Sunday event anyway.
The good doctor winked at her. “Whatever we find, we’ll nip it in the bud, right?”
“You bet.” With her heart aching, she wished she could guarantee that would be the case, but they passed a look between them that said it all. As pathologists, they knew when cancer reared its head the hunt was on. It was their job to be relentless in tracking it down, the surgeons’ job to cut it out, and the oncologists’ to find the magic healing potion to obliterate anything that was left.
Medical science was a tough business, and Charlotte Johnson had signed on in one of the most demanding fields. Pathology. She’d never get used to being the bearer of bad news. Usually the doctors had to take it from there once she handed over the medical verdict. She considered Jim Gordon to be a dear friend as well as colleague and any findings she came up with he’d know had come directly from her. The responsibility unsettled her stomach.
Now that she’d dealt with her own deepest fear—and Jim Gordon had condoned her radical decision two years ago at the age of thirty-two—she was damned if she’d give up being an optimist for him.
Come Monday morning she’d be ready for the toughest call of her career, and it would be for Dr. Gordon. Her mentor. The man she’d come to respect like a father. But first she’d have to make it through the garden party on Sunday afternoon, and the one bright spot in that obligation was the chance to see her secret surgeon crush again. Dr. Jackson Hilstead.
