Page 50 of Best Kept Vows (Savannah’s Best #6)

Reggie

“ S he’s not going to be in my OR,” Dr. Elias Graham said sharply, his tone as precise as a scalpel.

He didn’t even look at me when he spoke. Instead, his cold blue gaze was locked on Cindy Liu, the head of nursing, as if I weren’t standing right there in his office while he insulted me.

The son of a bitch hadn’t even asked me to take a seat.

A slow, controlled breath kept my pulse steady. I had spent years mastering the art of composure under pressure, and I wasn’t about to let Elias Graham undo all that because he had his boxers in a twist.

“With all due respect, Dr. Graham.” Cindy adjusted the glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.

“Reggie is one of the most skilled surgical nurses on this team. She was handpicked for the cardiothoracic rotation because of her experience and expertise. Removing her would be a disservice to both the department and our patients.”

Elias exhaled sharply, crossing his arms over his chest. He finally deigned to turn his gaze on me, and the weight of his animus pressed against my ribcage like a vice.

Once, I’d loved this man. Held that beautiful face in my hands as I kissed him. Had held his hand as he’d gone through the grief of his losing patients. We’d been friends and lovers—but when he betrayed me, we became nothing…no, we became worse, we became enemies .

“Trust me, Cindy, I’m doing both the department and our patients a favor by getting rid of her.”

I refused to flinch.

I also refused to speak.

If the hospital didn’t want me, so be it. I wasn’t going to beg for my job. I’d done that at Stratford Hospital in Boston and had gotten nothing for my efforts but a deep sense of shame that I still carried. I’d never go through that, never put myself through the humiliation.

“Reggie has been a surgical nurse for almost a decade, Dr. Graham. She assisted in over two hundred cardiac procedures last year alone, including multiple Bentalls, CABGs, and heart transplants. Her record is spotless. So, unless you have a clinical reason for removing her from your OR….” She gave a causal one-shoulder shrug.

“Because, Dr. Graham, this feels more like a personal issue than a professional one.” Cindy’s voice was flat.

She wasn’t prone to hysterics or temper tantrums, which was why she was so good at what she did.

His jaw tensed, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face. Regret? No . Elias Graham didn’t do regret.

He hadn’t changed much, physically, at least.

He was still the beautiful-looking man he’d always been. Tall, broad shoulders, blue eyes…he could give Dr. McDreamy a run for his money.

Women always threw themselves at him even before they found out he was a surgeon.

I hadn’t.

Maybe that’s why he pursued me. Maybe that’s why we slipped into something that felt like a relationship—something Elias was known to avoid.

But when I needed him most, he cut me off like necrotic tissue.

All it took was his ex, Dr. Maren Loring, walking through the door.

Between the two of them, I lost my job—and the man I thought I could count on.

FYI. Losing the job hurt more.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

“Cindy, let me be clear. I’ve worked with Nurse Sanchez in the past, and I won’t have her incompetence jeopardizing my patients.”

Incompetence !

I’d heard that word before—five years ago, in a cold, fluorescent-lit conference room in Boston, my world fell apart. Eli sat across from me and said nothing as Dr. Loring, his co-attending, threw me under the bus for a fatal mistake that had been hers.

I remembered everything.

The patient had been a 56-year-old male, status post-CABG—coronary artery bypass graft—on post-op day three. The early signs of cardiac tamponade—the rising CVP, the hypotension, the muffled heart sounds. I had paged the attending on call, Dr. Loring, immediately.

She had dismissed my concerns. Said it was mild post-op pericardial effusion, nothing urgent. “Stay in your lane, Nurse Sanchez. We’ll keep monitoring.”

We didn’t get the chance. Thirty minutes later, the patient coded. By the time they cracked his chest in the OR, it was too late. The pericardial sac had filled with blood, compressing his heart until it could no longer pump.

It had been a preventable death.

But when the case went before the Morbidity there was no mention of the page I’d sent and definitely not even a hint of how the attending had dismissed my concerns.

“She should have escalated sooner,” Maren had lied smoothly, her voice full of clinical detachment.

I turned to Eli, expecting him to back me up.

We were seeing each other—not seriously, just stolen moments in supply closets, late-night coffee runs, and whispered conversations in the on-call room for over a freaking year.

But that was not why I wanted his support.

No, we’d worked together, and he knew me as a professional.

“I know Dr. Loring, and I know how she works,” he said flatly.

Then, he broke my heart by listing the errors I had made in his presence, saying that was ample evidence that I had messed this up.

“They need a scapegoat, and you are it,” Kajal Patel, the head of nursing and my boss, told me, misery in her eyes. “Attendings take care of other attendings. You know that. And Dr. Loring and Dr. Graham are in a relationship…so…. I’m really sorry, Reggie.”

There’d been rumors about Maren and Elias being seen together, but I’d ignored them. I shouldn't have. I trusted Elias. I didn’t even ask him about them.

But when it came down to it, Elias had chosen her side and told me without me ever asking him if our not-so-serious affair had also been not-so-exclusive.

That was the day I learned two things: medicine wasn’t fair, and neither was Dr. Elias Graham.

Cindy cleared her throat. “If there’s a concern about Nurse Sanchez’s ability, I’d like to hear it.”

Elias looked at me, and I stared back emotionlessly. I wouldn’t give the pendejo the satisfaction of seeing me rattled.

“If I could legally do so, I’d be happy to forward you an M that’s your choice, but you can’t keep her out of rotation.

If you want that, you’re welcome to take it up with Dr. Reddy in administration—or better yet, with Dr. Cabrera.

But I doubt either of them will take kindly to you sidelining one of our best nurses over a personal grudge. ”

Dr. Cabrera was Elias’s boss and the Chief of Surgery.

“This is not a personal grudge,” Elias snapped.

Cindy’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t become mean, she didn’t smile.

She stayed stoic . “Dr. Graham, you’re new here, Reggie is not.

She’s admired for her professional prowess.

I don’t know you , but I know her . Do you want a his-against-her situation?

It’s a bad way to start with the nursing staff who you need on your side to be successful at Harper Memorial Hospital. ”

My boss was a badass! She ran the cardiac department with an iron fist, and not even the new head of cardio was going to mess with her. I wanted to go on my knees and thank Cindy. If she’d been my boss in Boston, maybe things would’ve been different.

Silence stretched in the room.

I could almost hear the battle waging behind Elias’s eyes.

He didn’t have a professionally provable reason to fuck with me.

He also knew Cindy was right.

Getting on the wrong side of the nursing staff never helped an attending, which he would be on if he continued his vendetta against me. Whether he believed it or not, I was respected here and had mentored several of the new nurses.

Regardless of how good he looked and knew how to use his dick, they’d side with me and not the new dude. The reason was simple. If he could get someone with my skills and experience thrown out of his OR, everyone was in danger.

When he finally spoke, his voice was lower but no less sharp. “Fine. She stays. But I decide who scrubs in for my cases. She won’t. You make sure of that, we won’t have any problems.”

It was a petty, predictable move. But I had worked too damn hard to let his grudge dictate my career.

“She’ll be on rotation,” Cindy insisted, unfazed. “You want to postpone surgery because you don’t want to work with a competent nurse; that’s your prerogative, and you can explain your reasons to Dr. Cabrera.”

She rose then.

She was pissed as hell.

Cindy protected her nurses from doctors with a God complex, which most of them had, especially in the cardio department, because they made hearts beat again.

Whatever!

“Nurse Sanchez, may I request you to wait outside?” She smiled at me to let me know I wasn’t in trouble.

“Yes, of course.” I stepped out, shut the door behind me, and lingered nearby—close enough to listen in but far enough to pretend I wasn’t if I got caught.

“These are my nurses,” Cindy spoke in her toneless voice. “They are my responsibility. I know each one of them. I know what’s happening in their homes and their lives. I also know who’s good at what and where they slip.”

“This is my department, Cindy, in case you missed the memo,” Eli, bless his stupid heart, said arrogantly.

Attendings would never learn that nurses ruled the hospital, not them.

“And in case this is the first hospital you’ve ever worked in, you know that pissing off your head of nursing is one way to screw yourself over.

I don’t know what Stratford was like, but here, we respect one another, and the way you spoke about Reggie in front of her was disrespectful, so take the advice of someone who’s been here longer, shape up, Dr. Graham. ”

“Thank you, Cindy; I’ll take that under advisement.” He wasn’t backing down.

Foolish, foolish, man , I thought gleefully.

“Also, I know what happened in Boston,” Cindy stated.

That made me straighten. I didn’t think she’d talk about it.

She knew because I had told her as soon as I heard Elias was coming to Harper Memorial. I had warned her that he would want me kicked out and even asked if she preferred I resign. She told me she would handle Dr. Elias Graham as she did all ‘ these entitled surgeons .’

“What does that mean?” Elias demanded.

“It means that I know you were in a relationship with Reggie, albeit casual. We don’t have a no-fraternization rule here, but I would prefer it if you didn’t piss in the nursing pond.”

I giggled at that.

“So noted.” Eli’s voice was cold.

Cindy was dressing him down like a toddler. I wish I were in there because I’d have loved to see his reaction to being smacked down.

“And from the little I know, it appears that when push came to shove, you and other attendings blamed a nurse for something that could never be their fault.” Cindy seemed to have no intention of not speaking her mind.

“She’s supporting the attending. She’s not the attending.

If you’re expecting that kind of situation here, where you can pawn your mistakes on the nursing staff, think again. ”

“Be careful of the lines you cross with me, Cindy,” Eli retorted acidly. “I’m head of this department, and I’m sure Dr. Cabrera would rather lose you than me.”

“If that time comes, Dr. Graham, I’ll be happy to resign.

And speaking of crossing lines, you crossed the first one when you attacked the competency of one of my nurses in front of her without discussing it with me.

If you want to take a shot at Reggie, do it outside the hospital so I can let her handle you without worrying about hospital protocol.

You do it here; I’ll be the one who’ll get in your face. ”

Eli dropped his voice, so I couldn’t hear his words.

Finally, Cindy said crisply, “Have a nice rest of your day, Dr. Graham.”

“You too, Cindy.”

I stepped away from the door and waited for my boss.

Cindy saw me and arched an eyebrow. She knew I’d listened to their conversation.

“You know what you have to do?”

I lifted my chin. “Yes, ma’am. I’m going to have to make myself indispensable.”

Elias opened the door right then and looked at Cindy and me.

His gaze held mine for a moment. Then, without a word, he turned and walked briskly down the corridor, effectively dismissing us both.

As I followed Cindy to the nurse’s station, my heart pounded—not with fear, not with doubt, but with something dangerously close to satisfaction.

Let him underestimate me. It would make proving him wrong that much sweeter.