The Passion of Patrick MacNeill (3 page)
Read The Passion of Patrick MacNeill Online
Authors: Virginia Kantra
So why had Jack MacNeill's father come on to her?
It didn't mean anything, Kate decided, breaking eggs into a bowl. He didn't mean anything. She attacked the eggs with a fork. Obviously, he'd felt threatened enough by her assessment of his parenting skills to retaliate by turning on his flyboy charm.
Well, it wouldn't work. The days when she could be rattled by unadulterated male magnetism were in the past. Shy, plain, socially awkward Katie Sue from Blue Moon Trailer Park was Dr. Kathryn Sinclair now.
As if to give the lie to her words, the phone rang. With sinking feeling, Kate recognized her sister's soft, plaintive voice.
"Hey, sis."
She heard her own lapse into their childhood drawl and winced. Shifting the receiver to her other ear, she turned down the burner under the eggs. "No, no, it's all right. It's not too late. I was just making myself some dinner. What do you need?"
"I don't need anything, Katie. Can't I just call to say hello?"
"Sure, you can," Kate said heartily.
Too heartily.
"How are you?"
"Good."
"The kids?
Mama?"
"They're good, too. Katie—" excitement swelled in her sister's voice like a shiny soap bubble "—I got another job."
Well, Kate thought resignedly, transferring her eggs to a plate, at least it wasn't another man. A string of Prince
Charmings
had ridden through her sister's life, and none of them had stuck around for happily-ever-after. The last one hadn't even hung on long enough to see his infant daughter born.
"What kind of job?" Kate asked.
"Waitress down at
Newton
's Steakhouse.
Pay's not much, but the tips are going to be good."
"Hours?"
"Four nights a week.
That's all I can manage with Billy out of school. Mama's coming over to sit."
Kate rummaged for a clean fork and tried to remember what Amy had said the last time they'd discussed their mother. What could she say that would be supportive without her sister taking it as know-it-all Kate buffing in again? "I thought you didn't want her watching them any more. Something about Jenny's formula, wasn't it? Or Billy sassed her or something."
"Jenny's on premixed formula now."
Kate backed off. "Okay."
"And Billy's going to be good. He promised."
"Fine."
"You don't have to sound so discouraging."
Kate set down her fork and pushed her plate away, old hurts, old resentments rising like bile. Obviously, she'd said the wrong thing.
Again.
"I thought you'd be happy for me," Amy continued, aggrieved. "You're always telling me how satisfying it is to work."
Kate thought of the cases she'd seen that afternoon, the young mother maimed when a smoldering cigarette caught her mattress on fire, the baby scalded in a hot tub. She thought about little Jack MacNeill, and the burn director's probable reaction when he returned from vacation next week and found she'd put off one surgery and scheduled another. Satisfying wasn't quite the word for it. But she wasn't about to confess as much to her sister.
"I am happy for you," she insisted, trying to return to a rational plane. "I just thought you didn't want Mama watching the kids."
"It's not like I have a choice, is it?" her younger sister asked.
"Day care?"
Kate suggested tentatively.
"I can't afford day care."
Kate sighed. "If you need more money, Amy…"
"No! I didn't call asking for money. I don't want your money. I wanted to tell you about my new job, and all you ever do is
tell
me how I'm screwing up."
Kate felt a familiar kick of guilt. "Sorry. I didn't mean… I'm sure it will all work out the way you want it to. Congratulations," she added for good measure.
"Thanks. Are you coming out on Saturday? The kids would love to see you. So would I."
"Um, I don't think so." The phone line hummed. Kate tried to explain to the reproachful silence on the other end. "I'm on call this weekend, I have a paper to present on Monday, and Swaim gets back sometime early next week. I've been seeing his patients for him, and I want to make sure my paperwork's all caught up. I just can't make it."
"Sure," her sister said. "I understand."
But she didn't, not really. Kate could hear it in her voice, the disappointment that once again Kate was putting her duties at the hospital before her responsibilities to her own family.
"Maybe next week."
"Sure," Amy said again.
They chatted a few minutes longer, but the chance for any real conversation was lost. Frustrated, Kate hung up. She couldn't be the friend her sister hoped for, any more than she'd ever been the daughter her mother wanted.
It was true, what she'd told Patrick MacNeill. She wasn't free to pursue emotional involvements. For one thing, she didn't have the time. But it was more than that.
Face it, Katie Sue. You're a bust at personal relationships
. She should remember that the next time she was tempted to get involved with appealing little Jack MacNeill or his sexy father.
Kate pressed her hand to her stomach, staring disconsolately at her plate. It didn't matter that the toast was cold and the eggs were tepid. She wasn't hungry anymore.
* * *
"You want me to assist in the MacNeill boy's surgery?"
Kate heard the lack of enthusiasm in her own voice and struggled for control.
Gerald Swaim, director of burn medicine at
her an
impatient glance. He wasn't used to having his pronouncements questioned. A handsome man in his late fifties with a full head of silver hair and a massive medical reputation, he expected instant understanding from his students, instant compliance from his nurses, and instant adulation from women. He usually got all three.
"Do you have a problem with that, Dr. Sinclair?"
"No," Kate assured him.
Of course, she lied. Something about the boy who drew eagles and the man who flew airplanes threatened her hard-won and carefully-preserved objectivity. She didn't want anything further to do with little Iron Man or his father.
And yet her objections were completely unreasonable. She knew the procedure. In this case, she'd actually been the one to recommend it. More and more, as a senior fellow, she worked independently, but it wasn't uncommon for Swaim to request her presence in his OR. She should welcome the opportunity to observe his technique, to refine and perfect her own.
"
"Yes. And I'll want you to scrub in on the Helter case after that."
Kate nodded and made another note. Eight months ago, when Janet Heller was severely disfigured in a house fire, Kate had been part of the admitting hydrotherapy team. Pressure garments had done their work. Now Swaim would remove the thick, swollen red scar tissue and replace it with grafts of the patient's own skin. Kate was eager to assist a process that would help restore not only Janet's face but her spirits. Burn medicine demanded a lot from its doctors, but it paid them in dividends of courage and hope.
So Kate studied both cases and read up diligently on both procedures. She scrubbed in on Friday morning prepared to answer questions and admire Swaim's expertise.
They were forty-five minutes into the first operation when all that changed. Swaim had sutured the first graft into the crease of Jack MacNeill's ring finger. He was tying the long stitches down over the
glycerine
-soaked cotton packed into the joint when he made a muffled sound of impatience and stopped.
Kate's heart thumped. From her vantage point, everything was fine. She glanced from the monitors to the child's face, bleached above the faded dinosaur print of his hospital gown. Jack was okay.
The delicate instruments poised above the child's hand glinted as Swaim lifted them, stepping back.
"Are you prepared to do the next graft?" he challenged Kate.
Her surgical mask helped hide her surprise. "Of course," she said, and moved smoothly to take over.
She did the graft on the middle finger, anticipating Swaim would correct her, expecting him to stop her. He did not. She relaxed into the next procedure, letting her skill and training take over, repairing and creating with tiny pressures and sensitive movements, with sure joy and confident precision. She split, grafted and packed the crease of index finger and thumb, unconscious of the passing time, uncaring of the sweat that plastered her hair under her cap and ran between her breasts to soak her bra. The burn unit was always hot, the temperature adjusted to keep their patients warm. Destroyed skin could no longer do its job of regulating body temperature.
It was almost two hours later that Kate knotted the last suture and looked up to find Swaim avidly watching her. He nodded.
"Not too bad," he said grudgingly. "Wrap it up and put a bulky dressing over the top. I'm going to talk to the father."
Kate retrieved her jaw and found her tongue. "Don't you want to wait until the patient comes out of anesthesia?"
A mottled red climbed above the strings of Swaim's mask. "Wrap up MacNeill and scrub in for Janet Heller. I want you ready when I get back."
Fine, thought Kate furiously, staring at the surgeon's retreating back. She'd prefer to see the little boy on the table settled and recovered
herself
. She didn't want to talk to Patrick MacNeill anyway.
"Whew," the OR nurse muttered, once the door had closed safely behind Swaim. "What bug got in his briefs?"
Kate paused her binding of Jack's small hand in gauze. It wouldn't do to let the nurse see that she agreed with her. "It's a difficult case," she said primly.
The nurse wouldn't be discouraged.
"Well, you did all right, Dr. Sinclair. Wonder why he stopped. It's not like him to turn his surgery over to another doctor."
It wasn't, Kate acknowledged. Gerald Swaim, an accomplished surgeon at the height of his powers, was proud of his skill and jealous of his prerogatives. He might assign his
scut
work to the residents, but he rarely relinquished command in surgery.
Her pleasure in the perfectly executed procedure ebbed, replaced by a small, hard kernel of doubt. What had happened to make the department chief abandon his customary control? Had he simply been testing her, or had something gone wrong?
And, if it had, how would Patrick MacNeill respond to the news?
Chapter 3
A
t one-twelve in the morning, Kate emerged from her dinky office clutching her fifth cup of coffee and an armload of charts. The unit was never totally dark or entirely silent. The halls vibrated with a fluorescent hum and the blips and beeps of monitors. From behind closed doors, she heard a cough, a moan, a muted television. Laughter and chatter drifted from the nurses' station as they celebrated somebody's birthday.
Solitary Kate hadn't been invited, though she knew that if she stopped by the charge nurse would offer her a piece of cake. She turned the other way, down the hall, toward the patient rooms.
The kernel of doubt hadn't gone away. It swelled under her breastbone, a small, indigestible lump, a tiny hot spot that upset her stomach and her concentration.
She wasn't on call tonight. Roberts, the attending, had taken the
Only a burning in her gut.
Quietly, she depressed the handle to Jack MacNeill's room and opened the door.
A pale rectangle of light spilled across the bed to the raised footrest of the recliner on the other side. Between the tall metal guardrails, Jack sprawled with little-boy abandon, covers pushed down and arms and legs every which way. A teddy bear with a limp bow and well-loved plush supported his bandaged hand.
In the chair, facing his
child,
slept Patrick MacNeill.
Even relaxed in sleep, he looked hard and male and faintly dangerous. His wide shoulders crowded the oversize recliner to its limit. Ignoring her reaction to that long, well-muscled body' Kate slipped to the foot of the bed to check Jack's chart. But she couldn't dismiss the queer twist of her heart at the sight of Jack's face turned confidingly to his father, or the way Patrick's large hand protectively spanned his son's knee as they slept.
Don't let it get to you, Katie Sue
. She forced her attention back to the patient chart, angling it to catch the light from the door. Blood pressure, temp, intake and output all looked normal. Good. Stepping to the side of the bed, she reached for Jack's swaddled hand.
And then something made her look up, across his out-flung legs, into the deep-set, dark blue eyes of Patrick MacNeill.
"Is anything wrong?"
His voice, soft with caution and rough with sleep, reverberated inside her. Scolding herself for both her foolish reaction and the equally unreasonable apprehension that had goaded her here, Kate shook her head.
"No, I was just … I thought I'd just see how he was doing." Gently, she lifted the sleeping boy's hand. The bulky dressing covered everything but his fingernails. In the dim light from the doorway, his ring finger looked blue. Frowning, she snapped on her penlight.
At her swift intake of breath, Patrick straightened the recliner, dropping his long legs to the floor. "What?"
Kate didn't answer, suppressing her own alarm, concentrating on unrolling the ace bandage over the gauze. The child whimpered and was still.
"What is it?" his father demanded.
Jack's ring finger had definitely turned blue. His circulation was blocked. Kate cursed silently.
"Nothing," she said. "I can take care of it. I'll be right back."
A nurse server loaded with supplies was parked in the hall. She grabbed a pair of sterile scissors and hurried back to the room to find Jack awake and Patrick soothing him in his deep baritone voice.
"Hey, Jack-o.
It's okay, buddy.
Ssh
, now, it's okay." He'd lowered the guardrail to sit beside his son and hold him. The sight of the two dark heads so close together, the man's broad chest supporting the boy's narrow shoulders, made something quake inside her.
She drew a deep breath to steady
herself
and smiled at them both. "Hey, Jack, it's Dr. Sinclair. Do you want to introduce me to your bear?"
The child regarded her warily from under thick dark lashes. "He's Finn MacCool."
Kate blinked. She'd figured on something like Fuzzy or Teddy.
"Who?"
Patrick explained, unsettling amusement in his eyes.
"
Fionn
mac
Cumhail
, the Irish warrior hero.
From the
Fenian
poems."
"He killed monsters," Jack offered.
"Oh. Well, good," Kate said. Her own childhood hadn't included Gaelic poetry or heroes, but she understood and appreciated the talisman Patrick had given his son against the monsters that must lurk under his hospital bed. "Do you think he could help me out here?"
"How?"
Jack asked cautiously.
"Maybe—Mr. Cool?—could hold your left hand, like this, see? And I'm going to hold the other one. I want to take a look at your stitches."
With sure, gentle movements, Kate tucked the bear into the crook of the boy's left arm and took his right, uncomfortably aware of Patrick's warm bulk and watchful gaze. Jack didn't resist as she unwrapped the gauze dressing.
"Why?" Patrick asked from over his head.
Kate concentrated on Jack's hand, addressing her words to them both. "Well, see how this finger is a different color, like
it's
bruised? That means the vein has too much pressure on it from the little bandage inside. I'm just going to cut a few stitches."
The child's hand trembled in her own. "I don't want you to cut it."
"Not your finger," Kate assured him. "Just two stitches. Can you hold still while I do that?"
Patrick kissed his son's hair. "Sure he can."
"Is it gonna hurt?" Jack asked.
"No," Kate stated positively.
Jack sighed and turned his face into his father's arm. "Okay."
Patrick's dark blue gaze met hers over the boy's head. "We trust you."
His words touched her. His confidence flattered and scared her. Her breath lodged in her throat. Ignoring her stupid, totally involuntary reaction, Kate eased the thin point of the scissors under the dark thread of the first suture. "This will only take a second."
It took five. Patrick raised his eyebrows as she stepped back from the bed. "Is that it?"
Kate forced herself to smile. "That's it."
"It didn't hurt," Jack said.
Her smile came more easily this time. "Good."
"Now what?"
Patrick demanded.
Her pulse was pounding, as if her own heart could somehow force the blood supply back into the little boy's finger. He was just another patient, Kate reminded herself sharply. Not even
her own
patient. But her heart was not convinced.
"Now we wait," she said. "If that's all it was, the finger should… Yes, see,
it's
pinking right up. He'll be fine."
She replaced the gauze and the bulky dressing, careful to leave the tips of the boy's fingers exposed.
"All done.
Now in seven to ten days the other stitches will come out, and you'll be ready to start physical therapy."
She looked at the chart hanging from the foot of Jack's bed. She ought to make a note. But what would she write? The illustrious Gerald Swaim goofed in surgery, the attending physician missed the signs during rounds, and I saved the patient's finger and their sorry butts?
Her stomach lurched at the thought. No. She couldn't write that. She scrawled
Removed two sutures
on the patient chart and escaped into the hall.
It wasn't enough. She knew it wasn't enough. If one of her interns skimped on his progress notes like that, she'd be all over him like bacteria in a
petri
dish. But she wouldn't, she couldn't, write anything that could be construed as a criticism of the senior surgeons.
Anger burned under her ribs. Absently, she rubbed two fingers just below her breastbone.
The door behind her opened, and Patrick MacNeill care out.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "You were good with him in there. He's already asleep."
Kate straightened away from the wall, reaching for her professional composure. "Children are wonderful, aren't they? It's amazing what they can bounce back from."
Patrick's long, sensitive mouth compressed. Kate realized he'd probably watched Jack bounced too often in his short life.
"Yeah, wonderful."
He shook his head, as if to dislodge dark memories. "Can I do anything to thank you? Buy you a drink?"
Kate's shock of pleasure was followed by an equally automatic rejection.
"Oh, no."
Never get involved with a patient.
"No, thanks."
Patrick didn't appear impressed by her refusal. He didn't move, either. "Sure?"
Kate bit her lip against the tug of temptation. What about another doctor's patient? What about another doctor's patient's father? What harm could that do?
She tilted her chin to look up at this tall, dark-haired, handsome man. The fluorescent lights overhead grayed his healthy tan, emphasizing the tiny creases between his brows and beside his month. Lines of temper, she thought, and humor, of passions deeply felt and strongly controlled. It was an attractive combination. But at one-thirty in the morning he looked tired. Kate wondered if he carried the burden of concern all alone. She hadn't seen any other visitors crowding the family room, waiting to share his vigil beside Jack's hospital bed.
Maybe the man needed a distraction. Maybe he needed a break.
"Maybe a cup of coffee in the hospital cafeteria," she said. He grimaced slightly. "I've had the coffee in your hospital cafeteria. Seems like pretty poor thanks for what you've done, but if that's what you want…"
"That's all I want."
He shrugged. "Okay."
They started down the hall. She had to hurry to keep up with him until he noticed and adjusted his steps.
"Was that a usual complication?" he asked as they reached the elevators.
Honesty and caution warred within her. "Not unusual," she temporized.
"Dr. Swaim didn't tell me to watch for it," he said, punching the Down button. "He didn't tell me much of anything after surgery, except that it had gone well."
"Yes, it did," Kate responded without thinking.
He stopped just inside the elevator doors and pivoted to face her. "Wait a minute. You were there?"
Challenged with a direct question, she gave an honest answer. His concern for his child deserved that much. "I did—I finished the procedure," she admitted.
She felt the tension rising in him like a gathering storm. The air in the elevator practically crackled.
"And the blocked circulation in Jack's finger?
Were you responsible for that?"
Kate muttered something.
"What?"
"I said
,
I knew having coffee with you was a bad idea."
"Is that a yes?"
"No."
"Are you telling me you weren't responsible?"
Fatigue and worry ate at her. She couldn't be sure anymore if she were covering Swaim's butt or her own. She didn't want to say anything that could implicate the surgeon or jeopardize her own chances at an attending post. But sympathy for Patrick's burden—and pride in her own accomplishments—wouldn't let her keep silent.
"I'm telling you I didn't operate on that finger," she said carefully. "But I watched. The procedure went well. Everything looked fine. Sometimes unanticipated complications just happen."
"Like you
just happened
to stop by."
She was thankful when the elevator doors opened and stepped through them briskly. "I like to check on my patients."
He caught up with her in two strides. She felt his gaze on her as he weighed her response and then nodded, accepting it.
"All right.
Dr. Sinclair…" Reluctantly, she turned to face him. "I'm grateful."
His voice was earnest, his expression,
warm
. Kate's cheeks heated with pleasure.
She looked about seventeen when she blushed, Patrick thought, amused. The sight of the decisive lady doctor pink-cheeked with confusion woke a dormant sense of masculine satisfaction. He was going to have to watch himself. With a little encouragement, he might start grunting and thumping his chest.
"Especially since Jack isn't really your patient," he added dryly.
"If he were, I'd still check on him. I just wouldn't have coffee with you."
Her prim attitude tickled the hell out of him. He couldn't help himself. "No?
How about sex?"
"Mr. MacNeill—"
"Patrick," he said, mildly sorry about aggravating her after her competent intervention and her kindness to Jack. He must be more tired than he'd thought. He gestured toward the cafeteria line, empty except for the bored-looking server and an intern swaying on her feet. "What'll you have?"