Until now, I hadn’t realized I let myself die with her. I would never forget Mr. Gorgeous and how he oddly saved me with each interaction we had this entire crazy weekend. Part of me wanted to miss the flight and spend the whole day in bed with him like he’d begged me to before we both finally fell asleep in each other’s arms as if we were the bride and groom from the day before.
No. I have to keep my head on straight. It was one night. The guy was obviously a player, and there was no way I was entering into some strange fantasy that anything more than sex with him could work. I didn’t need a train-wreck relationship. I needed to get moving again now that I was jumpstarted back into a life that I’d closed myself off from.
There was a whole world out there I’d blocked, and doing something daring and sexy like I did last night was pretty much my swan dive back into life.
Chapter Five
Jake Mitchell
One Year Later
I stood in the nurses’ station, listening in on reports for my patients while flipping through their charts to ensure their recovery was moving along well after the two surgeries that I’d performed this week.
I tuned out the giggles and lack of professionalism coming out of Jackie’s mouth—the one nurse who kicked ass in her job, yet grated on my nerves whenever there were newbies around. Unfortunately, I had interns standing on each side of me, so I couldn’t tell Jackie to shut the fuck up.
Now certainly wasn’t the time for messing around. The interns needed to take this part seriously. They could find out more about how I functioned as the chief of the cardiovascular unit of St. John’s at a different date. Hell, most of them probably wouldn’t last anyway.
“Dr. Mitchell, do you have anything to add? Or are you too busy for all of us this morning?” the RN said as my eyes roamed over Mr. Jackson’s chart.
Did the woman seriously call me out like a first-grade student who wasn’t paying attention to her class? Four other doctors were standing here doing the same shit as me—checking our patients’ charts for shit’s sake.
“You worked the graveyard shift as the charge nurse, did you not?” I eyed her, noticing the deadpan looks on the other nurses’ faces standing around her.
“Yes,” she said, placing her hand on the counter, her silver and short curled hair glistening under the fluorescent lighting of the nurses’ station. “Is there a problem?”
“I gave the order for Ms. Davis to be brought to this CCU floor from the SICU before I left last evening. Why am I not seeing her charts here?” I asked the single-most-important question on my mind since arriving.
“Her charts aren’t with us.”
Are you fucking kidding me? I thought, gritting my teeth in anger, knowing this bitch dropped the goddamn ball and gave herself one less patient to care for. Well, I guess the interns were about to learn very quickly that I didn’t put up with shit on my ward.
“Nor is she,” I said, preventing myself from slamming my patient charts onto the desk before me. “Nurse O’Brien said she was calling down to you to have Ms. Davis transported to this floor for monitoring, and she was to be here so I could check in on her this morning when I arrived. Care to explain why you believed leaving my patient in the care of the SICU staff was okay?”
“Dr. Mitchell,” her eyes were wide under my glare, “I just—it wasn’t like—we were full and understaffed last night.”
I narrowed my eyes at her lie, then looked over at Glen and Rose, the two RN’s rolling their eyes at her answer. “Is this true? Were all of you understaffed, and room 394 couldn’t accept a new patient?”
Glen gave me a look that told me I needed to figure out the charge nurse was not only lying, but she also refused my order so she could sit on her lazy ass all night long.
“She was Jackie’s transfer. We were busy but not necessarily understaffed, of course, Doctor Mitchell,” Rose said while Glen looked as annoyed and pissed as I was. Must’ve been another shitty night with Jackie acting like she owned the place.
“We’ll talk about this formally later,” I said. “Report to my office after the shift change, and I’ll have Sandy push back my first patient this morning.” She went to talk but halted when I inhaled deeply. “It’s negligence on your part to ignore any doctor’s orders, and there are few people on earth who loathe insubordination more than I do,” I said severely. “I will not tolerate it whether or not you’ve been with our medical group for over twenty-five years. If I order something, I want it done when I arrive the next morning unless there is a valid excuse as to why it can’t be done. I will not have my patients’ lives hanging in the balance because you think you know better than everyone else.” Her cheeks were turning a shade of red that might’ve made me feel bad if it were any other circumstance. Unfortunately for Nurse Test-My-Patience, I was not in the mood. “While we’re dealing with the topic of the best care for our patients, I would like you to transport Ms. Davis here personally, and then you can help prepare her room. And while you’re finally doing as instructed, I’ll be coming up with some bullshit excuse as to why I’m an hour behind with my office appointments today.”
“Yes, doctor.” She straightened her scrubs and held her head high. She might’ve been a combative old bat, but she knew I was right. And she knew that shutting up was best, lest I decided to continue to humiliate her in front of the interns.
“The interns will accompany you,” I stated, unsmiling at her. “Explain to them that I do not tolerate laziness from my nurses while you apologize for being late in bringing Ms. Davis to her new room for care.”
She stomped off, the young interns looking unsure of how to act after my tirade. Fuck this shit. I did not tolerate laziness or power nurse shit in the slightest. Now a charge nurse who acts like it’s her family—not mine—who funded the entire cardiac wing of this hospital is calling me out, more than likely because three of the interns were cute and she wanted to act like she pulls strings? Fuck that noise.
Old-bat Nurse Jackie was convinced I’d fucked an intern once, and the money-hungry intern I turned down saw an opportunity to cash in on my family’s money, so she didn’t hesitate to play along with that narrative. My family lawyers backed my ass up on that fiasco—sadly, it didn’t result in Jackie’s termination too. Only Selene’s.
Fuck. What a way to start my morning.
“Doctor Mitchell,” the voice of Doctor King was humored when he called my name softly, “I know you’re pissed, but you realize she doesn’t work for you, a doctor, right?”
I smirked. “Of course, I know that. Being as smart as she is, yet completely unmindful to a doctor giving a nurse an order, just shows she knows she fucked up and got caught. Perhaps there’s more she doesn’t want to be exposed about her practically taking the night off last night?” I arched my eyebrow at the cardiologist.
“Well, there are rumors.”
“That shit is my brother’s problem. He can uncover the HR issues she’s getting herself tangled up in because she wants to mess around with Dr. Daniels in ER,” I said as Dr. King and I walked farther down the hall, away from the nurses’ station.