Page 18 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)

Elias

“ W here is she?” I asked Luther.

Reggie’s name was not on the board, and I hadn’t seen her all morning. After how she’d looked in her apartment, unease clawed at my insides, and I felt a foreboding chill that whispered something was amiss.

Luther didn’t even bother to look up from the monitor. “On leave,” he replied, his words clipped.

She wasn’t here? It shouldn’t mean anything, but it did, because she’d been weak, drowning, and broken. I’d seen her this way once before when it all went down in Boston, and seeing her again like that after how strong she’d been no matter what was thrown at her made me feel guilty.

I had told Maren to lay off Reggie and let her do her job, but I knew my friend, and now she’d made an official complaint that seemed reasonable enough to me. Dr. Lee, an anesthesiologist who worked extensively with doctors in the cardiology department, didn’t see it like that, though.

“Reggie is a damn good nurse, but between you and your new attending, seriously, Dr. Graham, I don’t understand what you’re looking for.

Perfection? Doesn’t exist.” Dr. Lee caught up with me in my office, saying he wanted to bring up some concerns with regard to Maren’s behavior.

“She’s rude to Reggie, treats her…damn disrespectfully.

It reminds me of how you treated her when you got here.

Is this some kind of hazing ritual I’ve missed?

If we lose Reggie, we’re not going to be able to replace her.

You know, it’s not easy to hire nursing staff that qualified. ”

I assured Dr. Lee that I’d look into it, and I was trying to by first talking to Reggie to get facts, but she wasn’t there. Her absence suddenly felt like a thunderous void, not just someone taking a day off. Was Dr. Lee right? Had I finally driven her away?

What business did I have fucking her life up like this?

I should never have come to Seattle knowing she was here.

It was arrogance that made me think, well if she doesn’t like it, she can leave .

It was easy to feel like that when I hadn’t seen Reggie, but from the moment I saw her and spent time with her, I was reminded of the woman she used to be and still was—kind, compassionate, and amazing.

“Why would she be on leave?” I blurted, disbelief lacing my tone. I needed to talk to Reggie now . Damn it, I’d have to go back to her apartment, and there, she could avoid me by telling her concierge to kick me out.

“She’s got a lot of PTO! Hasn’t taken a day off for years. So, she took her ten days. Cindy approved it. She’s gone ,” Luther stated as he typed, still not looking at me.

“Where did she go?” I asked as I fought to suppress the tidal wave of emotions crashing within me—panic mingled with an unexpected shame.

I had driven Reggie away!

“I’m not her travel agent. Dr. Graham.” Finally, Luther looked at me—insolently.

“She didn’t mention anything to me,” I mumbled, more to myself than to him.

“Why would she?” Luther responded harshly.

He was right, and the truth of it stung.

“You have no idea where she is?” I knew I was pleading. I couldn’t help it.

“She’s not in her apartment,” Luther warned, “So, don’t go looking for her there. You did enough damage yesterday. Leave her alone, Dr. Graham. Between you and your fiancée…I’m this close to resigning if this is the kind of culture you want to have in your department.”

Fuck! Maren had been here eight weeks, and she was already causing problems. Attendings had complained about how she treated nurses and people below her. Nurses were complaining. I needed to deal with her .

“Dr. Graham,” Cindy called out to me as I checked the board to see where Maren was right now.

“Cindy.” She looked exhausted, her eyes shadowed, weary lines etching into her face. “Everything okay?”

She gritted her teeth. “Heard you were asking about Reggie. She’s on leave. I approved it.”

“Ten days, Cindy, while we’re struggling already?” I protested, barely concealing my frustration.

“She requested it; Dr. Graham and I, as a rule, don’t dictate when my people want to take the time they’ve earned,” she replied, irritated. This wasn’t the Cindy I knew, who was always stoic.

“We’re already short-staffed,” I pressed, a hint of desperation coloring my words. I wanted Reggie here so I could check on her and make sure she was okay because she hadn’t been just a day ago.

“We are,” Cindy acknowledged, each syllable deliberate, heavy with the unspoken truth: “And we would be even more understaffed if Reggie quit.”

“Then—"

“But she’s also dealing with a lot of bullshit. And I don’t blame her for needing space,” Cindy continued accusatorily.

“Look, an attending is allowed to file a complaint when they see an egregious?—”

She raised a hand to silence me. “I don’t understand why, then, other nurses aren’t getting complaints. Delaney actually left a central line port uncapped last week. That’s an infection risk—and no one said a word.”

She stepped closer, anger in her eyes. “Jasmine miscalculated a heparin drip. Almost doubled the dose. Pharmacy caught it, but still—not even a write-up. And Lowe called a wrong time-out on a cholecystectomy two weeks ago. They caught it right before the first incision. They got grace. Reggie got humiliated and officially written up.”

“You don’t agree with Dr. Loring?” I suppressed the need to sigh. Maren was still an attending. I still had to be professional.

“I believe,” she said caustically, her gaze unwavering, “that your department is fractured. And I’m tired of playing mediator between two attendings with personal history and a nurse who’s always expected to just roll with it.”

I had no retort, no words to counter her truth because she was right.

“Oh, and by the way—speaking of official complaints, expect one about how Dr. Loring handled yesterday’s post-op bleed.

” Cindy was almost toe-to-toe with me. Her attitude and tone were belligerent.

“She ignored nursing escalation for over an hour. The patient tanked in recovery before anyone acted. That’s not just bad medicine—it’s negligence, and I’m not letting it slide. ”

“I’ll talk to Dr. Loring,” I assured her.

“You do that, Dr. Graham, and if I lose the best surgical nurse I have…” She shook her head as if disgusted with me.

“Dr. Loring bringing up what happened in Boston and talking about it to everyone here hurts not only Reggie but all of us. How would Dr. Loring like it if everyone in the cafeteria discussed why her name disappeared from the Armitage grant after the abstract was accepted?”

“Cindy—”

“Keep your personal business personal ,” Cindy talked over me. “You let it into the wards, patients suffer. The fact that Dr. Loring is your fiancée should have no bearing on how she’s treated and allowed to treat others.”

I frowned. “She’s not my fiancée.”

“Well, you better tell Dr. Loring that because that’s what she’s telling everyone.” On that parting shot, Cindy spun on her heel and walked away.

Since Maren was on rounds, I went to my office and tried to get myself sorted.

I sat at my desk, not paying attention to my inbox, which was blinking with unread messages, rounds that were pending, and unsigned charts.

“Well, you better tell Dr. Loring that because that’s what she’s telling everyone.”

Cindy’s words echoed in my head. I hadn’t even processed half of what she’d thrown at me before that last line detonated like a mine in my heart.

Why the hell was Maren telling people we were engaged? Jesus! Like we didn’t have enough drama without that.

I rubbed both hands over my face, trying to drag some clarity out of the fog.

Cindy had hit every target she intended with me.

I had known that Maren would go after Reggie, even though I’d told her not to.

I had known, and yet I’d done nothing, letting Reggie handle it.

She had fallen apart. This was a taxing workplace to start with because we dealt with life and death—adding a difficult collegial situation only exacerbated the stress.

“ How would Dr. Loring like it if everyone in the cafeteria discussed why her name disappeared from the Armitage grant after the abstract was accepted?”

That was the second time someone had mentioned that grant. First Reggie and now Cindy.

I remembered Maren brushing it off at the time. “Politics! Too many hands in the pot here with the trial and the data. You know how grants are.”

She’d been irritated but not worried. I hadn’t pressed. This kind of stuff happens all the time in our line of work.

But Cindy hadn’t mentioned that grant to make conversation. She’d dropped it like a warning. A breadcrumb? One I hadn’t been smart enough to follow five years ago. This time, I picked it up.

I scrolled through my contacts and called Dr. Lars Klevberg, Chief of Cardiology at Mass Gen. He was an Armitage Foundation reviewer and had informally been one of Maren’s advisors.

I hesitated, thumb hovering. I felt foolish bringing this up. It was going to be nothing.

In which case, Elias, just have the damn conversation.

I hit call, and a part of me wished he wouldn’t pick up. I had a bad feeling about what was coming. And, like always, my instinct was to walk away before it got messy.

If you looked up “ avoids confrontation ” in the dictionary, you’d probably find my picture.

I’d always told myself that as a surgeon, I dealt with enough pressure in the OR, which was why I’d earned the right to avoid it everywhere else.

Over time, that excuse had turned into a habit. And eventually, a pattern.

Lars picked up on the third ring. “Klevberg.”

“Lars, it’s Elias Graham.”

“Elias,” he said, surprised. “Good to hear from you. How are things in Seattle?”

“Complicated.” Understatement of the year . “Listen—I need to ask you something. Off the record. About the Armitage grant. Maren Loring’s project. Five years ago.”

There was a pause, just long enough to make my skin itch.

“Why?” he asked, his tone suddenly more guarded.

“You know I hired her here and... ”

“I also hear you’re engaged. Met your old man the other day, and he said?—”

“Christ!” I muttered. “Lars, Maren, and I are not engaged. She’s just a colleague, that’s all. Look, she told me her abstract was accepted, and she was dropped due to some internal politics. But I’m starting to think that wasn’t the full story.”

Lars let out a slow breath. “It wasn’t.”

I stood up and began to pace my office.

“She took herself out,” he told me. “The committee flagged issues with data integrity. Inconsistencies in the patient samples. A few source files had been altered—someone had overwritten baseline data.”

I stopped mid-step.

“She blamed a research nurse,” he added.

I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Was it Reggie Sanchez?”

Another pause.

“Yes, Regina Sanchez. She was new, had just started at Stratford, and was quite inexperienced, so…we thought it was a genuine mistake.”

“But?” I coaxed.

“ But the internal audit didn’t back that up. From what I remember, the nurse had actually escalated concerns before the edits were found. If anything, she tried to stop it.

The floor felt like it tilted beneath me.

“Why wasn’t it made public?”

“Because Maren pulled out of the project before the committee could escalate it. It didn’t rise to the level of a formal ethics investigation.”

“And Reggie?” My voice sounded distant even to myself. Was this why Maren had it out for Reggie?

“What about her? She was cleared.”

I lowered myself into the chair, slow and heavy, like gravity had doubled.

Had Maren lied at the M it had been real! So, instead of standing by her, I chose the story that kept me safe. I let her fall—because I was afraid of what it would mean to catch her.

Everything I’d seen from Reggie since I came to Seattle—the way she handled pressure, how surgical residents deferred to her, how nurses looked to her like she was the anchor in every storm—it had all been right in front of me.

She wasn’t reckless. She wasn’t emotional.

She was the best nurse we had, and I’d let her be destroyed—twice, and each time, I’d chosen to protect my emotions rather than the woman I was in love with.

I was in love with Reggie!

My knees weakened, and if I weren’t already sitting, I would’ve hit the floor.

I was in love with Regina Sanchez, and I’d lost her.

After we’d made love in that on-call room, I should’ve kept her close, coddled her, and made up for all my screw-ups. Instead, I’d fucked her over some more by asking her to play nice with Maren.

Would she even give me a chance to make this right? Probably not.

But if she did?—

God help me?—

I wouldn’t waste it.