Page 4 of Healing Her (Pulse Medical #1)

“ T ell me about Doctor Proctor,” Jen said to the chief as he showed her around the cafeteria.

“Whew…” He let out a long, low whistle. “You first, what’s going on there?”

“Nothing big, from my end. We went to the same bar last night. I got a little too into dancing, turned around too fast and bumped into her, spilled my drink all over her.”

“Oh, yeah, she would hate that.” He chuckled. “Listen. She’s a great cardiothoracic surgeon?—”

“I knew it,” Jen chortled. “I knew she was cardio.”

“She is. One of the best in the state.” Reaching for a coffee cup, Steve offered it to her. She shook her head. With a shrug, he filled it from the machine and tilted his head for her to follow him. “As a surgeon, she’s unmatched in her field. As a person, she’s…”

“Capable of pressing diamonds out of coal with her backside?” Jen asked sweetly.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Doctor Colton.” He winked. “But yes, I will admit that Doctor Proctor can be a little… oh, how can I put it? Standoffish. Rigid. Set in her ways.”

“Noted.” Spotting a fridge with an array of cold drinks in it, Jen grabbed a bottle of fizzy lemon water. “What’s her first name, anyway? You just call her Doctor Proctor and she wasn’t exactly forthcoming with a formal introduction when I tried to apologize to her.”

He laughed and picked up an absolutely enormous, very sticky-looking cinnamon bun. “Well, I’m afraid that tracks. She doesn’t easily forgive, that one. Anyway, she’s Doctor Ashley Proctor. Ashley, not Ash. Never, ever Ash. A resident tried that once.”

Now it was Jen’s turn to whistle. “Ballsy.”

“Indeed. You will be unsurprised to find out that he transferred out of our residency program and went all the way to Beth Israel.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow at her.

“Plastics?” she guessed.

“Plastics.” He led her to the checkout, where she picked up a container of melon and pineapple from the big ice bin. Taking everything from her hands, he scanned, paid, and handed her items back to her. “You’re a lot more conscientious about your diet than I am.”

“I’m not Chief of Surgery, you are, I think you’ve earned coffee and a cinnamon roll.

” She smiled as she followed him to a table.

“And I’m not that conscientious; I do still eat red meat more than occasionally, I drink, and I’m probably going to grab street tacos on the way back here after my apartment viewing. ”

“Smoking?” he asked.

“Never, but especially not…” She pulled out a chair and sat, turning her container of fruit over in her hands. “You know I’m a widow?”

“You mentioned it during your interviews. I didn’t want to pry.”

“Thank you.” Jen swallowed hard. Talking about Nina’s death hadn’t gotten any easier in five years. “My wife, Nina, was a pulmonologist. She became one because her entire family is full of heavy smokers. She lost so many of them to emphysema and lung cancer.”

“Oh. That’s rough.”

“Yeah. Nina never smoked in her life. Not once. She hated the smell, their coughing, the phlegmy tissues they all left in their wake… It got to a point where even the smell of mint mouthwash made her sick; they’d gargle so much of it to try and hide the smoke on their breath.

Not to mention the strong colognes they all liked. ”

“Jesus.” Steve’s eyes were round.

“But my lovely, wonderful wife, who only wanted to give the world the gift of how to keep their beautiful lungs healthy… cancer came for her. Because she’d grown up around so many smokers.

” She looked at him soberly. “You know that secondhand smoke kills. Well, it killed Nina. She loved her family, she tried so hard to educate them, but they still smoked. And they smoked around her whenever she visited.”

“Were new lungs an option?”

“Surprisingly, they were, she was the rare prime candidate at first. But you know how that works, Steve. There are so many prime candidates. And just not enough lungs. So we pursued aggressive treatment while we waited.” Blinking back tears, Jen could barely see the cafeteria, the bowl of fruit in front of her, anything.

“Unfortunately, the cancer was more aggressive. Transplantation had to be taken off the table. Chemo, radiation, it stopped helping. So, one day, Nina sat me down by her hospital bed and told me she was stopping the treatment. Stopping everything. She signed a DNR and went on hospice.” Despite her best efforts, a tear fell on the table.

She was grateful when Steve tucked a paper napkin into her hand.

“Within a month, my beautiful Nina was gone.”

He placed a hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Jen dabbed away her tears and sniffed. “Thank you. It’s still hard.

Because it was such a senseless death, it took so much away from the world, and it was preventable .

But her family, the people who were supposed to love and protect her, set her up for a death sentence from childhood.

” She sighed and looked up to the ceiling, trying to slow her beating heart.

“Sorry. Sorry. I still get so angry. They were my in-laws for over two decades, and they haven’t reached out to me since the funeral.

That was five years ago. I was civil to them the whole time she was dying, but they seemed to know innately that I blame them. ”

“I think it’s understandable.” He picked at his cinnamon roll. “So is Nina why you’ve gotten to be so ferocious about the world of transplants and organ donation?”

“In a roundabout way, yes. My goal is to save lives. I couldn’t save hers.

I couldn’t prevent it. But it was preventable.

And other deaths are preventable if we can get enough people to sign up for organ donation, if we keep pushing the boundaries of transplant research.

” Twisting the cap off of her water bottle, she carefully sipped at the bubbly elixir.

“I want my department to be on the cutting edge of research. Transplant methods, pharmaceuticals, the whole hog, Steve. I’m going to teach my surgical methods to the staff here. We’re going to save so many lives.”

“I’m on board, Jen. I have been since you gave me the rundown during your interviews.” Steve leaned forward and met her eyes with his earnest blue ones. “You know you’re going to have an uphill battle with some of our surgeons, though, right? You know that?”

“Ah, and we’re back to Doctor Ashley Proctor, Never Ash.” Jen cracked open her plastic bowl of cut fruit and popped a triangle of pineapple into her mouth. “You remember what else I told you during my interviews, Steve?”

He stared at her for a moment with a frown of concentration on his face. It was quickly replaced by one of apprehension. “Oh, no.”

“I do love a challenge.” She grinned sunnily. “She’s a challenge.”

Steve rubbed his head. “Please don’t make me regret this.”

Jen twirled her fork in her fingers. “I promise nothing.”

With a sigh, Steve rolled his eyes to heaven. “Oh, my ulcer. My gastroenterologist is going to have a field day.”