The nurse stepped aside to let her through, then handed her the cordless.
Susan tried to sound professional. “This is Dr. Susan Calvin.”
She recognized Mandar’s voice at once. “Dr. Calvin, this is Dr. Mandar.”
Susan’s heart felt as if it were trying to slug its way out of her chest. When he did not continue, she took a deep breath and began. “I’m wondering if you remember a patient named Starling Woodruff. She’s a thirteen-year- old white female on whom you performed an A-V fistula repair about two years ago.”
Mandar made a wordless noise that spoke volumes. Apparently, he did not recall Starling’s particulars, but he wanted Susan to continue.
“She’s been on the psych unit ever since because of odd behavior they attributed to brain damage from the surgery.”
Susan could almost feel Mandar’s ire rising. “That’s wrong. I have never damaged a brain with a fistula repair.”
Susan remained composed. Starling’s life depended on it. “I agree, Dr. Mandar. That was why I looked for other causes and discovered congestive heart failure.”
There was silence from the other end. Dr. Sudhish Mandar was listening, raptly, to a psychiatry R-1.
“Which is not responding well to medical management. The source of the failure is clearly still present, but Cardiology can’t find it. The only possible source, Dr. Mandar, is . . .”
“The original fistula,” he filled in for her. “I’ll be down this afternoon.” In an instant, the line went dead.
The moment it did, all the excitement of the moment hit Susan at once. She sank down on the nearest couch, not even noticing she was still in the patient area and that the boy on the next cushion was Diesel Moore. She felt dizzy, faint, and her hand trembled as she clutched the phone in white-knuckled fingers.
Diesel stuck his moon face into hers. “Dr. Calvin? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she assured him, though her voice sounded far away.
Kendall seized Susan’s arm and pulled her to her feet. Looping an arm around her back, he guided her toward the office. “Did I hear you say ‘Dr. Mandar’?”
Susan went with him without bothering to wonder where. He could have guided her to a slaughterhouse, and she would not have noticed. “Yes. Dr. Mandar. He’s coming down to see Starling.”
Kendall’s hand tensed on her arm. He did not speak again until he had taken her into the charting area and sat her down on a chair in front of one of the larger computer screens. “You talked Dr. Sudhish Mandar into coming down to see a patient?”
In an instant, all the residents in the staffing area, Stony, Kendall, Monk, and Nevaeh, were at Susan’s side, all talking at once.
On demand, Susan told them the story of her conversations with the hospital’s greatest neurosurgeon. Monk clamped a hand to his mouth. Stony laughed. Nevaeh merely stared at her through widened eyes. Kendall nodded knowingly and spoke first. “I’d heard the way to gain surgeons’ respect is to stand up to them. I’ve just never had the gall.”
Stony slapped Susan on the back. “Apparently, Susan has enough gall for all of us.”
“A whole bladder full,” Kendall agreed, and the others laughed. “I once watched her decapitate a neurosurgery resident. Should have figured she could handle the most important one in the hospital.”
Susan accepted the gibes good-naturedly, though she felt more nauseated than triumphant. She clutched her left upper abdomen. “At the moment, I think my gallbladder has boulders.”
Chapter 8
Susan spent the next hour spying on Sharicka Anson. So far, Susan had not spoken directly to the girl, nor had she introduced herself as the new resident. Once she did so, she would go on Sharicka’s radar and lose the opportunity to silently observe. Susan appreciated it when Sharicka roamed the halls or settled into the main room with the other children, as it gave Susan the chance to watch more closely from behind the one-way glass of the staffing area.
Engrossed in watching Sharicka surreptitiously smear and rip posters and artwork on the walls in strategic places, Susan did not hear a newcomer enter the staffing area and walk up behind her.
“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Susan Calvin, AOA.”
Susan whirled to face Remington Hawthorn. He wore surgical greens and disposable covers on his shoes. He had the same emerald eyes she remembered, the chiseled cheekbones, his dark blond curls wild from the operating room hat. “Well, well, well. Dr. Remington Hawthorn, Neurosurgery.” She played it cool. “About time you got here.”
Remington glanced at his watch. “Less than two hours. That’s pretty good.”
“Two
“Except you,” Remington pointed out. “You have more balls than an eight-peckered billy goat.”
Susan bridled at the half-assed compliment. “And you have the manners of that billy goat.” She passed him her palm-pross, with Starling’s chart at the fore.
Remington set the palm-pross on the desktop, without looking at it. “I’m sorry, Susan. You’re right. I made a huge mistake downstairs; you’re as good a doctor as any of my colleagues.”
“Damn right.” Susan did not know or care if she spoke the truth.
“Do they teach you condescension in your rotations, or are cads just drawn to surgical subspecialties?”
Remington gave the rhetorical question serious consideration before whispering conspiratorially, “Honestly, I think it’s a bit of both.”
Susan could not help smiling. Her anger dissipated.
“Give me a chance to prove I’m not as big a jerk as I seem.”
“Fine.” Susan reached for the palm-pross again, but Remington caught her hand. He did it with such ease and accuracy, he had clearly played sports in college.
“Over dinner. Tonight.”
Startled, Susan stared. The media would have people believe men no longer competed with their women, that they did not discriminate against competence, intelligence, or strength. To judge by her own sparse dating experience, the media had it wrong. Susan was not beautiful in a flashy manner. She had thin, pale lips, and her blue-gray eyes could turn downright steely. She was too thin, like her father, with little in the way of curves. Nevertheless, she had balanced features, youth, and a reasonable amount of grace. At the residents’ conference, she had felt an immediate attraction to Remington, one that his arrogance had destroyed. Now he seemed sincerely ready to make amends, and she saw no reason not to give him a second chance. “All right. When and where?”
Remington finally picked up the palm-pross. “We can leave from here. I’ll drop by when I’m finished.”
Susan suspected she would complete her work before he did, if only because the hours of the operating room ruled his schedule. “What time do you usually get done?”
“Six thirtyish?” It came out more like a question than a statement, as if he could change the time if it did not work for Susan.
Susan knew she had no real power over Dr. Sudhish Mandar. Remington would finish when his attending gave him leave. “Can you meet me in the charting room?” She described the location of the first-floor hideaway. “It’s a nice, quiet place to get some research done.”
“Works for me.” Remington saluted, then settled into the chair in front of the palm-pross, acquainting himself with Starling Woodruff’s history.
A thrill of excitement passed through Susan, but she played it cool. Snatching up an unused palm-pross, she headed for the other side of the staffing area to document her observations on Sharicka Anson. If Remington Hawthorn had any questions about Starling, she felt certain he would find her.
The charting room door opened at 6:43 p.m. Susan Calvin looked up from her
