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Shocked, she stared at him. Horrified for his patient. For him. For the medical field in general. And back for Greg again. A doctor with something like that in his history...
That was something he carried with him forever. Like being somewhat responsible for a husband’s death...
How could she not have known such a monumental thing about him? The question seemed to be becoming a regular in her repertoire where he was concerned. And yet, she knew the answer. He didn’t know about Peter, either.
How could she have been so hurt by his initial paternity test request, hurt that he was doubting her, when she knew him so little?
How could she have been missing him these past weeks, when she’d never really known him?
“As it turned out, the mistake wasn’t mine,” he said. “A nurse hadn’t followed my orders. Medications had been administered wrongly. But that didn’t come to light until I’d almost lost my license. And there was talk of criminal negligence charges being filed.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t care about either of those things so much as you mourned for that woman and her family.” The words flowed naturally out of her. Because there was something she knew about him.
His gaze joined hers, held on gently. As he nodded, her heart leaped toward him.
And it felt like their messed-up situation got a little messier.
Chapter Six
Sunday’s scans on Brooklyn showed significant enough change to convince Greg that the child hadn’t received her medication the previous Monday in the emergency department.
“You saw my notes?” Elaina asked the second he showed up on her mostly deserted floor late that afternoon, looking for her.
Alone in her lab, she’d been on the computer, and had spun on her stool to face him as he approached.
He liked having her watch him.
Even though she was pregnant with another man’s child, starting a new life completely separate and different from his, he liked having her watch him.
She turned him on.
She had turned him on since the day he’d seen her come into the boardroom for the first meeting of the charting committee more than a year before. He’d shoved the feelings aside then. Immediately. Greg didn’t manage the feat as quickly today, but he did succeed, after a while. He needed her to have the paternity test run so that she didn’t keep looking at him with that sense of deep connection that he’d been imagining the last few times he’d seen her. He needed her to know that he wasn’t the father of her child.
“I saw your notes.” He repeated her words as his mind gained control over his body, focusing on his purpose for seeing her. Grabbing a stool from another countertop station, he pulled it over. “I’ve gone over Brooklyn’s chart from the first time she was in and I’m thinking that, while that mishap on Monday is a critical hospital mistake that must be dealt with, it also pointed out something crucial.”
Elaina’s nod didn’t surprise him. “She’s not getting the prescribed medication at home,” Elaina said. These words didn’t surprise him, either. “I was really beginning to suspect the child’s problems were purely psychological. But what we see this week is similar to weeks on home meds, and then there’s the change when we know for sure she got the meds here in the hospital... You were right to suspect there’s something going on with her parent.”
Her praise pleased him. In a personal way. He got over it. “Since we don’t have enough proof to do anything but convince the two of us, we need to determine how we proceed from here. With Brooklyn and her mother. And we also need to bring the other issue—Martha’s misconduct—to Bradshaw. Let’s go at that as a charting error for now, from our standpoint. If administration takes it further, they do.”
With him being the head of the committee, the call was his. Martha might lose her job. Probably should, though from what he could tell, the woman had been called on a triage emergency and had passed the meds to another nurse, who must’ve failed to administer them to Brooklyn. He’d been thankful to find they hadn’t been given to another patient, by mistake, but this kind of transferring the responsibility to another employee just couldn’t be allowed. Such activity alone, without proper chain of command charting, couldn’t happen.
“We should report it to administration immediately,” Elaina added as she nodded, squirming a bit in her seat and turning slightly away from him.
“I’ll do it as soon as we’re done here.”
She seemed uncomfortable in his presence—a problem recently new to the
m—and he wanted it gone. Just as he wanted to step in and offer his support.
She had a challenging road ahead of her.
And he had the time. The energy.
But he had no desire to go that route again. He desired her body. But he wasn’t going to settle for being the stand-in.
Been there, done that, too. Giving up his first semester’s tuition to help Heather. Putting off his own education for half a year.
“As far as Brooklyn goes, I’d like to have a consult with her pediatrician, with you there, as well. It will be up to him to order periodic scans and blood work to prove our theory. Althea will be told that we’re monitoring progress. Nothing more. I can think of no other way to go about this in a timely fashion. It should only take about a month, testing once a week...”
