Page 9 of Healing Her

The investment panel was due to convene in two days. She desperately wanted to get Oakridge the money to buy a perfusion pump. It would be invaluable to the program, a far better option than the special coolers and ice pack system thehospital currently used. Jen couldn’t believe they didn’t already have one. Or two. Two would begreat.

Somewhere deep within her highly-educated brain, there were better words she could use that would loosen the purse strings she needed. But she’d already been running on empty all day, and now, at nearly 9 PM, she had nothing more to give. She knew she should go home, but she just wanted to get a little more done.

Coffee. Coffee was what she needed. Both Bryce’s little coffee cart and the cafeteria were closed, but she remembered there was a decent enough coffee machine in the surgeons’ lounge. She’d get herself a cup of coffee, then DoorDash herself some kind of dinner. That would get her back on track. Tucking her phone into her pocket, she left her tiny office and wandered through the largely silent hallways of the surgical floor.

Sure enough, in the dimly lit lounge, there was a very large and fancy Keurig with a gratifyingly wide variety of pods, including, she noticed with delight, a few peppermint mocha flavored ones that must have been bought for Christmas. Quickly, she located a clean mug and got the coffee started. The festive odor of chocolatey peppermint filled the lounge as she scrolled through the DoorDash app, looking for something, anything, that sounded good. She was at that point of being hungry that she couldn’t make a choice, but she knew she needed to.

As the Keurig finished dispensing its Christmas-flavored elixir and shut off, the door to the lounge creaked open, catching Jen’s attention. Curious to see who else was night-owling it this evening, she looked up. “Oh,” she blurted out. “It’s you. Hello.”

Doctor Ashley-Never-Ash Proctor slipped through the lounge door, a sour expression on her face. Jen had made absolutely sure to steer clear of her since their confrontation three days ago, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see the womannow. While the patients and staff Ashley had lost her cool in front of had all received direct, personal apologies, Jen was acutely aware that she herself had received no such thing—and as the target of the ire, even if it had been partially deserved—well, she did feel she was also due at least a small apology.

And to her surprise, it looked like she was finally going to get one. “I saw you coming down here, and I wanted to get you alone,” Ashley began, her slightly curled lip and furrowed brow indicating the exact opposite sentiment.

With effort, Jen stifled the cheerful, mildly inappropriate quip she felt rising in her throat. Instinct told her it would not go over well.

“I wanted to apologize,” Ashley went on, and boy, did she make it look like those words were coated in acid in her mouth. “My behavior the other day was completely unprofessional. I shouldn’t have confronted you in front of everyone like that.”

“I accept your apology,” Jen replied with a nod. “Thank you.”

Silence stretched between them as she returned to her quest to locate a late dinner. Ah. Italian sounded very good right now. Baked spinach and ricotta tortellini.Don’t mind if I do, she thought happily as she punched her order in. Judiciously, she added tiramisu. Calories were good for her brain.

And caffeine. She remembered her coffee and turned to get her mug from the Keurig. Ashley was still standing by the door. “Can I make you a cup of coffee?” Jen offered, wondering why she was still there. “Or I’m ordering dinner, can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you,” Ashley replied stiffly. “I’m not hungry, and I can make my own coffee.” She walked over and began poking through the coffee pods.

Jen shrugged and moved to sit at one of the empty lounge tables. “Suit yourself.” She sipped her coffee as she finished off her order and sent it in. Covertly, she was also watching Ashleyas she moved around the coffee station. She looked tired, Jen observed. And very pretty. The green silk blouse she was wearing was very flattering in cut and color and paired well with the tight camel-colored pencil skirt that hugged her sleek curves. Wisps of her brown hair had escaped her tight French twist, softening her face despite the pinched look hovering around her mouth.

What would it take to get her to relax? Did she even know the meaning of the word? But as soon as she thought that, Jen dismissed it. The Good Doctor Proctor did at least have some notion of relaxation, or at least a sense of how people had fun. She hadn’t gone to the Indigo Lounge for a book club meeting, after all. Yet most of the time, she seemed absolutely uptight as hell.She must have a permanent migraine, surely.

Ashley looked back over her shoulder, face fixed into the same mild scowl she seemed unaware that she put on whenever she saw Jen. “What? Do you need something?”

“No,” Jen replied, and then, before she could stop herself, she corrected. “Yes, actually. Do you ever pull the stick out of your ass?”

“Excuse me?” The way Ashley’s jaw dropped almost to the floor would have made Jen howl with laughter if she didn’t know full well how that would escalate the situation. “How dare you?”

“It’s a genuine question. Crassly worded, I admit,” Jen said, pushing herself to her feet. She walked over and took the empty coffee mug from where it was hanging limply in the other surgeon’s hand and stuck it under the machine spout. “Isn’t it exhausting being such an uptight control freak? I know you must know how to let go, butdoyou ever?”

“This is preposterous,” Ashley sputtered.

“Yeah. But think of it as lancing a wound. I would like us to work together, we’ve got to get this bad energy out from between us in order for that to happen.”

“Uh, it’s not happening, because I’m not working with you. My patients will remain far, far away from your rogue door-to-door salesman pressure tactics.” A snort, an actualsnort of contemptshot out of that perfect, prissy nose. And that got Jen’s back up in a whole new way.

She could take bad attitudes, misfired tantrums, and even a frankly wild overreaction to having a drink spilled on oneself, but actual, palpable ignorant contempt for innovation and education in the so-important field of organ donation? That was too far. That hit too close to Jen’s tender widow’s heart, and she stepped right up to poke a finger into the woman’s chest. “It astounds me that a surgeon with your intellect, skills, and education can be so blindly, willfully ignorant. Why do you hate the idea of educating patients so much?”

“It is unnecessary to bring up the specter of organ donation to people who are already stressed about going into surgery.” The statement was delivered with such pomposity, Jen couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

But she was on a mission. “Well, for starters, it would help if you quit referring to it as aspecter, for God’s sake. Organ donation is a gift. I think even you know that.”

“Of course it is,” Ashley spat, with an eyeroll of her own. “And our patients know it is too. But they do get upset when it’s brought up unnecessarily.”

“It’s not unnecessary if we—oh, forget it.” Annoyance was bubbling much too close to the surface, and the one thing Jen felt she had over this rigid nitwit was that she hadn’t yet lost her cool. She was too hungry for this argument to go well.

But to her surprise, as she turned to retrieve her coffee, she felt a restraining hand on her left arm. “Stop right there,” came the impatient, irritated command. “You don’t get to walk away from me after you insult me, Doctor Colton.”

Jen yanked her arm away, disturbed that an electric thrill had shot through her at the touch and at the commanding voice Ashley had used. She shook her arm, trying to make the tingling stop. “Andyoudon’t get to order me around.”

Ashley stared down at her, mouth tight, eyes opaque. An odd energy stretched between them, making the hairs on Jen’s arms rise up, her stomach twisting with a strangely eager tension. She didn’t know what to say, but she opened her mouth and inhaled?—

---