Page 6 of Healing Her (Pulse Medical #1)

J en watched as Dr. Proctor walked off with Elaine Martin after her presentation.

They were an interesting mentor-mentee pairing, in her opinion.

Not that she knew Elaine terribly well at all, but her experience with her was that Oakridge’s head cardio surgeon was a warm, generous physician with a mild penchant for boundary pushing.

Not at all like a certain pedant for procedure with a stick so far up her backside, she should be producing some kind of fruit…

But after two weeks of covert observation, she did rather understand why Elaine had taken the younger surgeon under her wing.

Doctor Proctor had a reputation for being no-nonsense, a real stickler for rules, and frankly rather unpleasant to deal with, according to several doctors.

But of those doctors, the ones who had consulted on cases with her, or had worked on difficult surgeries with her, grudgingly agreed that her patients liked her.

Were grateful to her, even. They appreciated her care and it made them feel safe that she was so rigid about her surgical methods.

People did come from all over the state specifically for Ashley Proctor.

Clearly there was something there that Elaine saw worth nurturing and training despite their differences.

It made Jen even more interested in working with her.

She felt, however, that it was going to be an uphill battle to get in on any of the woman’s consults.

There were a number of lobectomies, coronary angioplasties, and even a balloon valvuloplasty on her docket over the next couple of weeks.

All prime opportunities for Jen to sit in and gently discuss organ donation education.

But judging by the look she’d seen on Ashley’s face in the presentation, she wasn’t going to get a chance to talk to any of the patients involved.

Jen sighed as she entered her little office and closed the door behind her. Yes, she had been paying attention to the prickly cardio surgeon while making her presentation. In the past two weeks since she’d been at Oakridge, she’d been paying very close attention to Dr. Ashley Proctor.

She sat in her desk chair and spun to stare out over the suburb of Oakridge.

It was time to admit that her close interest in Dr. Proctor went beyond the professional, and beyond the challenge of conquering an uptight rules fetishist. The woman was attractive.

And, given where their first meeting had taken place, Jen guessed she was some flavor of queer.

The woman was too rigid and uptight to be a straight woman hanging out at a sapphic bar for fun.

She’d gone for some specific objective, Jen was sure.

Which meant she was probably single, or at least in a flexible situation.

She was intelligent, well-spoken, good-looking, highly regarded in her field, probably single, and Jen just knew she was on the spicy, combative side if she ever let go the reins on her tight control.

Everything that had always been absolute catnip for Jen in a woman. Nina had been all of these things.

But Nina had also been open, generous, wore her heart on her sleeve, whereas Ashley was… well, Jen didn’t like to use the phrase uptight bitch generally speaking, but she really couldn’t think of a more accurate descriptor in this particular case. And that was everything Nina had never been.

And yet here she was, staring blankly out over a Los Angeles suburb, wondering how she could get Dr. Ashley Proctor to like her.

“All right. All right, enough,” she said aloud, spinning back around to face her desk.

She had a full schedule ahead of her for the rest of the day, starting with a pre-surgical consult with Priya Majumdar on a laparoscopic ovarian tumor excision.

It would be a delicate talk, she knew. This was a patient who’d been through some pretty intense chemotherapy, and now she’d had a reoccurrence of her cancer.

Bringing up organ donation could make her think that the hospital thought her prognosis was terminal, when in reality her odds were excellent.

It would be a slender needle for her to thread.

Jen checked her watch. Oops, she had to get a move on.

Today’s surgical roster was a tight one.

There was a nurse shortage due to some kind of over-allocation of vacation hours, some illnesses, and a lack of travel nurses able to come in so last minute.

She didn’t have a second to spare between chats, and absolutely none of them could go sideways if they were to stay on schedule.