Falling for Her Off-Limits Boss
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Luana DaRosa
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CHAPTER ONE
ALEXANDER ATTANO MEMORIAL. Emma’s heart skipped a beat as she read the letters, pulling into the car park of the hospital that would be her new temporary home. With four boxes containing her belongings and a wounded heart, she had left San Francisco to flee from the chaos her ex-boyfriend Rob had brought to her.
Emma closed her eyes and shook away the dark clouds forming in her head. She had to remind herself that she had made it. She’d got out. Her life was her own again. And she would make the best out of her time spent as a locum tenens anaesthetist.
What better way of spending the summer than in Chicago, learning from the world-renowned Mark Henderson? Emma’s heart skipped a beat when her thoughts drifted towards the famous surgeon who worked at the hospital.
When she entered the building the reception area was spread out right in front of her, with a middle-aged woman sitting behind the counter talking to a man wearing a white coat and dark green scrubs. The receptionist laughed at something the doctor said, waving her hand at him.
‘I will page you as soon as they arrive,’ Emma heard her say as she approached the desk, her eyes running over this man who would be the first colleague she got to meet.
His dark brown hair was just long enough to be styled, but the way he wore it looked wild and untamed, matching the five o’clock shadow covering his cheeks. As he turned around she caught his glance, the friendly spark in his hazel eyes showing the friendship he shared with the receptionist.
A shiver trickled down her spine as his gaze locked onto hers. His face was familiar. She recognised him. But who was he? How could she forget the name belonging to such a handsome face? Wait, was he...?
Emma caught her thoughts before she let them go any further. In front of her stood her first co-worker. There were many words she could use to describe him, and handsome shouldn’t be one of them. After Rob, she wasn’t going to let herself regard her colleagues in any other way than with professional courtesy. The moment their personal lives had become at odds with their professional ones he had conveniently forgotten what a true partnership looked like. Even their slightest disagreements at work had become an issue of huge proportions once they got home.
It had taught Emma a valuable lesson. Work and private life should touch as little as possible.
‘Thanks, Becky, you are a star,’ the handsome doctor said, and walked off. But not without looking at Emma again, smiling as he passed her.
Her stomach lurched, and she held her breath for a moment. As he disappeared, Becky waved at her to step closer.
‘Hello, dear, how can I help you?’ she asked, the friendly glow in her eyes remaining and setting Emma at ease.
‘My name is Emma Santos. I’m the new anaesthesiologist starting today in Oncology. HR told me to sign in at the front desk.’
Becky’s smile widened. ‘Why, yes, I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to Attano Memorial! I have your badge right here. Let me call someone from HR to sort you out for today. Too bad Dr Henderson just left, or he could have taken you with him.’
Emma snapped her head around, wanting to catch a glimpse of the man mentioned, but he had already disappeared.
‘So it was Mark Henderson!’ Her pulse quickened, and Emma slipped a hand inside her tote bag, retrieving the medical journal she’d brought from home. Mark Henderson smiled up at her from its cover. The unmoving image didn’t even begin to do him justice.
‘Yes, Mark leads the oncology department. But his focus lies within surgery.’ Becky was looking at the screen in front of her, oblivious to Emma’s amazement. She put a key card on the counter as she picked up the phone, dialled a number.
Emma picked up the badge, examining it. The excitement bubbling up within her was subdued by a nervous energy rearing its head from the pit of her stomach. In her new role as locum anaesthetist she would work side by side with Dr Henderson, a fact that already made her stomach lurch.
She had read all his research on pain management for different cancer treatments, and yearned for the chance to contribute her own knowledge to it. The devastation wrought by chemotherapy often required a fresh approach to traditional pain medication, and Dr Henderson was one of the top surgeons in that area. He was the reason she was most excited to start her role here. His proximity had set her nerve-ends on fire. Now she understood why. She’d been inches away from the man she’d once thought might save her mother.
When her mother had first been diagnosed with Gardner Syndrome, a rare type of hereditary cancer, Emma had read every single piece of research around the disease. She’d wanted to understand the odds her mother was fighting against. Back then she had just started her second year of med school in San Francisco, which had made the different texts and studies a lot more accessible to her.
While not specifically focusing on Gardner Syndrome, Dr Henderson’s research looked into types of aggressive colon cancer and how different treatments could be adapted to any specific case. His breakthroughs had given Emma hope that her mother might be able to get through the disease alive. A vain hope, as she now knew, but a few years ago she’d hung on to it with everything she had. To save her mother and also to save herself.
With a hereditary disease like Gardner Syndrome, chances were that her mother had passed the condition on to Emma. A potential diagnosis hung over her head every day, just waiting to drop. After her mother’s diagnosis her father had urged her to get tested for the gene mutation, to determine whether she had the disease as well, but every time Emma had come close to taking the test she’d pulled out.
First she had told herself that she needed to focus on her mother. She didn’t want to burden her with the thought that she might have passed this disease to her only child. But even after her death Emma hadn’t found the heart to find out the truth. Her father, along with her aunts, uncles and cousins, regularly teamed up to inundate her with messages and phone calls about having the test. She knew that eventually she would have to find out. For the sake of her future children, she needed to know.
When things had started looking more serious with Rob she had been so close to getting the test, wanting to know how it would affect their future. A future that was no longer.
Emma’s mouth went dry and she took those stray thoughts, stuffing them back into the box where they belonged. This was her fresh start, after having her heart and soul crushed by the man who had promised to love her. She yearned to learn and thrive. And put all that behind her.
Emma shook her head, straightened her shoulders, and found her smile again as the HR representative came to pick her up.
‘Try to get a bit more sleep.’
Mark smiled at his patient as he approached the door, giving him a small wave before he left for the nurses’ desk. He hadn’t meant to wake him up, simply wanting to check up on him before his regular shift began. This was one of the happier cases Mark had worked on and a rare sight in the oncology department. The cancer had been at its early stages, but in a tricky position. Difficult enough that the oncologist had asked Mark to do the surgery.
Not that he minded the more complicated cases. Everyone who needed his attention got it. From the moment he got a patient file up to the point when the patient walked out of this hospital, he considered them all his responsibility, and his colleagues were aware that he expected the same from everyone in his department.
He took down a few notes on the patient’s condition and headed for the nurses’ station. Theresa, the oncology department’s head nurse, stood behind the desk, so engrossed in whatever was on her clipboard that she did not register his presence.
He cleared his throat, but it didn’t grab her attention. ‘Good morning, Theresa,’ he said, with a slight smile that grew larger when she jumped, laying her hand over her heart and breathing a sigh of relief.
‘Goodness! Stop sneaking up on me,’ she said in a playful tone, rolling her eyes at him when he shrugged.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you. You were busy with your work, I swear.’ Placing his arms on the counter, he leaned in. ‘What are you working on?’
‘I’m checking the schedule changes for today before I put it up on the board. With our new anaesthesiologist arriving yesterday, we can stop stealing them from other departments.’
Her words caught him by surprise. The new anaesthesiologist had started yesterday? The locum position was to cover the maternity leave of their own anaesthesiologist. She had only left last week, and he hadn’t expected anyone to arrive so soon. Christine herself had only switched to the oncology department a couple of weeks ago. Now he needed to train a new doctor from scratch, when he knew exactly who would have been the perfect person for the job.
His left hand contracted into a fist and he glanced down. It had taken him a long time after the funeral to take off his ring. Even now, close to two years after Claire’s passing, the weight of the wedding band sometimes still lingered on his finger.
She had been an incredible source of knowledge and comfort to him when they were working together on their cancer research projects. Then she’d been diagnosed with cancer herself. But her prognosis was looking good. Mark had thought they would spend the rest of their lives together. Until her oncologist had informed him that she was taking a turn for the worse.
Mark had already started his own work rotation at that point, since Claire had been headed towards remission. He wished he could say that no one in the department had seen it coming, that her demise had come overnight and blindsided them all. But the truth was far worse. He’d missed her last moments in life because he had been too busy trying to find the breakthrough in cancer treatment that they had both been working on for the last years. He’d been trying so hard to save himself the pain of losing her that he’d lost sight of what it meant to be an adequate husband to his dying wife.
Mark had promised he would be there for her when she died, but in the end he hadn’t been.
The darkness that came with memories of his late wife was a familiar one, and the guilt of her death rested on his shoulders alone. It wrapped around him like a cocoon, blocking out any other emotion.
‘What can you tell me about the new person?’ he asked, to distract himself from his inner turmoil.
His question made Theresa lift her eyes from her clipboard. ‘Why do you want to know? Don’t think I haven’t heard your complaints about having a locum anaesthesiologist hired. But you know we desperately need someone. Dr Anderson won’t be back for another several weeks and you already scared away two replacements.’
Mark clasped his hands above his heart, feigning pain as he grunted, drawing a laugh from Theresa’s lips. ‘You think I’m the reason the new hires left? You wound me.’
‘If the shoe fits...’
‘I’m making sure they’re committed to our service. With our patients, stability is one of the most important things. If they see a different doctor each time, how will they develop trust in us? I know it’s not their fault, but that doesn’t change the fact that our patients need consistency.’
‘Her name is Emma Santos, and she came here from a private practice in San Francisco.’ Theresa sighed. ‘She has already arrived and is settling in for her first surgery this morning. You have one surgery with her later on—a tumour resection—so you can get used to each other then. I saw her pass by just moments ago. You should introduce yourself.’
Mark raised an eyebrow at Theresa’s words. She had arrived early on her first day. That was an attitude he could appreciate. ‘I’ll do just that.’
Mark set high standards for the care of his patients. Those standards were responsible for his department dwarfing the national average recovery time. The last thing he needed was a stranger by his side, poking and prodding at those standards. Compromising patient care was unacceptable, and he expected his colleagues to be on top of their game.
Despite his own shortcomings, the team looking after Claire had been an invaluable resource to lean on. He’d become familiar with everyone on her team, drawing comfort from their experience. They knew everything there was to know when it came to consoling patients and their families alike. That wasn’t something a doctor from a private practice could possibly know.
What was the chief of surgery thinking? Mark frowned. Locum doctors were no more than tourists, wanting to see the world while practising medicine. He had met enough of them to know he didn’t like these kinds of mercenary physicians.
But, since he was stuck with this temporary colleague, he planned on ensuring she understood what kind of service he ran.
Emma had arrived early for her second day at Attano Memorial—the first day she would actually get to do surgery. After announcing her arrival at Reception yesterday, she had spent almost all her time sitting in the HR office, signing contracts and waivers about the hospital’s safety procedures, code of conduct and other documents requiring her signature. After that, the HR assistant had given her the grand tour of the hospital, introducing her to some key figures.
It had disappointed her when Mark Henderson hadn’t been one of the important people for her to meet. He was the reason she’d come here rather than going back to Brazil for a couple of weeks before starting her fellowship—a choice that hadn’t come easy to her. Between med school, internship and residency, Emma hadn’t had time to make the trip back to Brazil to see her family. Her cousins called her often, filling her in on the latest gossip in the Santos clan, but it made her long to see her family again.
When things had started looking serious with Rob, she had tried to convince him to take a trip with her and meet her family. But somehow it had never been the right moment. Business had been more important, and he’d refused to lose any appointments, guilting her into staying even when she had planned on taking a trip without him.
Because of that she hadn’t been back to Brazil since her mother’s funeral. But this opportunity had been too good to pass up, and when she’d called her father to tell him about it he had been beyond excited for her to learn from the best there was. He had always been her biggest supporter.
After stuffing her things into her locker, Emma found the whiteboard the HR assistant had mentioned would hold the surgery schedule, and when her eyes found her name on the board she couldn’t help but smile. Her first surgery would be in ninety minutes with a Dr Shearer.
She typed the patient file number on the board into the tablet she had got at the nurses’ station. The patient file soon loaded, including all the history and notes from the oncologist.
Nodding to herself, Emma glanced at the board again. Three surgeries were scheduled in OR One, her operating room for the day. One of them in the afternoon with Dr Henderson. The prospect of working with him both excited and terrified her in equal measure. His reputation was for being strict, but that that came from a deep care for his patients.
She entered the OR and glanced around, letting the gravity of the moment sink in. The room was much larger than the operating theatres she had got used to during her residency.
Rob had convinced her to join him at his private practice rather than continue her residency at the hospital. She had believed him when he’d told her how much better it would be for her training. How romantic it would be for them to work together as a couple. When in truth he’d only wanted her close to him to exert control on everything she did, both at work and outside of it. Now she felt unprepared—deprived of the experience she could only have got in a hospital environment.
Emma swallowed to calm the insecurities bubbling up. She picked up the tablet and opened the checklist she’d written last night in preparation. She needed to be sure that everything was where it should be. Starting with the item at the top of the list, she circled the whole OR, checking every item, before a voice interrupted her.
‘What are you doing in here?’
The voice was deep, with harsh concern tightly packed in those six words. Stunned at the sudden ferocity, she raised the hand holding the tablet, trying to defuse his tone with a smile. Her eyes scanned the person standing at the door and widened as she recognised who stood in front of her.
Mark Henderson. Dr Handsome.
His jaw was taut, but beneath his stand-offish stance she spotted the man who smiled with such kindness on the covers of magazines. And, going by what she saw as she let her eyes drift down, those magazines could be medical journals or a swimsuit special. He wouldn’t look misplaced in either. His sheer masculinity commanded the room with no effort.
‘You’re Dr Henderson,’ she said, omitting the nickname she had given him in her mind. To her eternal relief, her voice didn’t crack. She’d only get one chance at making a good impression, and the way his eyes narrowed made her believe that chance hung by a thin thread. ‘I’m Emma Santos—the new anaesthesiologist.’
He did not move. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, the sleeves of his scrubs tightening as his muscles contracted, offering her a sight she wanted to look at longer but knew she shouldn’t. Especially not with this man. She knew he had so much more to offer than just looks.
Flames licked across her skin, spreading heat throughout her body. A reaction, she rationalised, brought on from meeting this important person and not from his sexy arms. And hair. And face.
Emma cleared her throat to push those thoughts away and lifted her tablet to show it to Mark. ‘In my old practice I always went through a checklist to make sure everything was in place before surgery.’
‘How far down the list do you go before you talk to the patient?’ he asked, in a tone she couldn’t quite identify. Not outright hostile, though she picked up on some apprehension.
This was not how she’d imagined meeting Mark Henderson would go. Instead of talking about the work they would do together, she found herself on the wrong side of unwarranted scrutiny over a surgery that didn’t even involve one of his patients.
‘I don’t see how that is any of your concern, seeing as the patient is not on your roster.’
There was a more delicate way to handle his intrusion, Emma knew. But there was no way she would allow anyone to come into her OR questioning her when they hadn’t even tried getting to know her before assuming she was terrible at her job.
‘I’m the head of this department. Every patient is my patient.’
Emma flinched at the sharp barb in his voice. Her eyes drifted down to her hands and she turned the tablet around, showing Mark the list. ‘Talking to the patient is actually at the very top of my list. But since I’m unfamiliar with her, and she doesn’t know me either, I’ve examined her chart to make sure I can do what you hired me to do without disturbing her. After a formal introduction I will be able to do the proper preparation and aftercare.’
She held his stare, uncertain if she saw some remorse mixed in with his surprise, or if she just wanted him to feel that way.
His stance relaxed, his arms slowly dropping to his sides. He let out a deep breath, and with it Emma could see the tension drift away from him.
‘That’s good to hear. I want to make sure every patient in my ward is familiar with the entire team that is looking after them.’ He paused for a moment, as if he was considering his next words. ‘When Theresa told me you had arrived early, I was expecting you to be with the patient rather than already preparing the OR.’
‘I thought, as a complete stranger to the patient, it would be rude to barge into her room this early in the morning.’
She met his eyes with a frown and straightened her shoulders as she prepared herself for an argument. There had been no ill intent in her actions this morning, and she had made that clear in her explanation.
The silence between them seemed to stretch out, then Mark nodded, acknowledging her words. To her surprise, a smile appeared on his lips, creating a flutter in her chest that caught her off-guard.
‘The residents assigned to oncology can introduce you to all the patients. They’ll be able to fill in any blanks as well. I’ll see you in surgery.’
Without giving her a chance to reply, he turned around and left through the scrub room, leaving her to contemplate her first encounter with the renowned Dr Mark Henderson.
Even if Emma had tried, it couldn’t have gone any worse.
If their first meeting indicated how their professional relationship would be, she could take comfort in knowing that it was only temporary.
