“Now will you answer my question? Did they arrest her?”
“They arrested her, yes.”
Maude pulled out her pad and pen. “What’s the charge?”
“Murder in the first degree.”
Maude stopped mid-puff. Then removed her vape pen from her mouth altogether. “Murder?Did you say murder?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Who did she kill?”
“Ross Hampton’s wife.”
Now Maude was dumbstruck. “Natasha Keating killed Hamp’s wife? Are you kidding me?”
“I kid you not. She’ll be arraigned tomorrow morning is what I’m hearing. Talk about trouble. She’s in a world of it now. Oops, the boss is back. Gotta go.” And he ended the call.
Maude, still so stunned she could hardly process what she’d heard, sat her phone on the table. Because right away, as soon as she heard Ross Hampton’s name, she knew Natasha Keating, her former boss, was being framed for a murder she did not commit. And she had to do something about it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The young, hotshot surgeon thought he was the main man at Saint Catherine’s until he got in the operating theater with the master. He thought it was going to be the highlight of his career when he was handpicked to assist the greatest surgeon of his lifetime on one of the most complicated cases he’d ever been a part of. He thought he was going to show Edmund Keating how it’s done. Instead, it was the height of his humiliation.
Everything he did he was ordered to redo. Down to the littlest stitch. Everything he suggested be done was rejected. It was just awful. Keating was a perfectionist who left his all on the operating table and everybody on that surgical team knew that. All except for that young hotshot. He didn’t know Keating could be that exacting. He had no clue. He found out the hard way.
Now, as he washed his hands and forearms alongside the big man at the scrub sink just outside of the O.R., and they were finally alone, he spoke up. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, Dr. Keating,” he said, “but I’m considered a great surgeon too. I did not appreciate being dressed-down in front of our subordinates.”
Edmund looked at the younger surgeon through the elongated mirror in front of them. When he didn’t respond, but continued to wash up, the younger man spoke again. “I did not appreciate the way you treated me in there.”
“Is the patient alive?”
The younger surgeon frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Answer my question.”
“Yes sir. The patient is alive.”
“Is he expected to make a full recovery?”
“Yes sir.”
“Is his prognosis thereafter expected to continue upward or flatline?”
The younger surgeon did not want to respond, but he knew he had to. Keating was his boss. “Upward. Sir.”
Edmund dried his hands, all the while still staring at the hotshot doctor. “That is precisely why I don’t give a damn about what you didn’t appreciate,” he said. Then he tossed the towel into the waste bin, and left the room.
The young surgeon, even angrier now, grabbed his own towel and threw it against the door that his superior had already closed. Then he yelled out,what an asshole, to nobody but himself.
CHAPTER NINE
“What a hottie,” said the newest addition to the nursing staff. She was nowhere near the O.R., and didn’t hear the surgeon’s angry outburst either, as she and her colleagues were on the far end of the fourth floor, at the nurses station, inputting data into computers and gossiping as they did.
At least that was what her colleagues were doing. But the new nurse was just standing there waiting. She’d just received word that the big operation was over and that Dr. Keating was notifying the family of its success. Then he would get dressed and head out. It would be her first in-person look at him. Which meant, she told the other nurses, that she would finally get a chance to see for herself what all the fuss was about.
“What fuss?” asked the charge nurse.
