Prescription: Love Read online

  “I’ve read your file,” he continued. “You’re extremely bright, capable, attractive and obviously ambitious.”

  “An adequate doctor?” she asked.

  The corner of his mouth hitched up. At least he didn’t appear offended. “More than adequate.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Taylor.” She realized that he had just complimented her appearance as well as her brain. Perhaps he really just wanted to hit on her. Fraternization between hospital staff members—and not only the single ones—wasn’t uncommon in a place where people worked long hours dealing with life-and-death issues on a daily basis. For a supervisor to show a personal interest in someone on a lower rung of the pecking order wouldn’t break any rules.

  “That young girl you just treated is afraid she might lose her baby.”

  Like a dash of cold water, his grim words snapped Zoe back to reality. “If you had bothered to look into Mrs. Martin’s face before you got down to business,” he continued, “I’m sure you would have seen that she needed a little Karo with the medicine.”

  He hadn’t been present during the actual exam, so the nurse must have said something to him immediately afterwards.

  “A little what?” Zoe asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “Karo Syrup,” he explained. “It sweetens things up.”

  Was Dr. Taylor one of those men who felt that a woman needed to be protected from anything as harsh as the truth, even when it concerned her own body?

  “Are you saying that I shouldn’t have been straight with Mrs. Martin?” Zoe demanded. “That I should have coddled her like an invalid or a child who needed to be spared from life’s harsh realities?”

  His blue eyes narrowed, screened by lashes several shades darker than his hair. “Of course not. She’s a grown woman and I’m not suggesting that anyone has the right to withhold the truth. But neither does she deserve to be bludgeoned with the possibilities.”

  “You know she could still lose that baby,” Zoe argued. “She and her husband need to be prepared.”

  He speared the fingers of one hand through his hair, leaving it in tufts that caught the overhead light. “I’m trying to remind you, Doctor, that our responsibility here is to treat the entire patient, not just an anatomy or a symptom. That girl was ready to shatter. Anxiety isn’t going to help her situation. Neither is guilt over what she may or may not think she did to bring this on. That’s all I’m saying. You could have taken another moment to explain that sometimes miscarriages just happen.”

  Zoe knew he had a valid point, but she couldn’t bring herself to concede. “I’ll be so glad when screening is available to measure the protein levels in early pregnancies and identify high risk,” she offered instead. “Someday we’ll be able to do a lot more than merely recommending bed rest.”

  Stuck here in the Gulch, he’d probably never heard of the research study she’d read about last week in The Lancet, a well-known medical journal, but she couldn’t resist the urge to show off.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Doctor,” he drawled, folding his arms. They were deeply tanned and covered with a sprinkling of fine gold hairs.

  “A link between miscarriage and low levels of MIC-1 certainly appears possible,” he continued. “However, we’re still a long way from using either it or its synthetic analogues in preventative treatments, despite what our colleagues in Australia may have discovered.” He glanced at an orderly pushing an empty wheelchair past the window. “Let’s hope their findings eventually pan out.”

  “Yes, let’s hope,” she murmured, impressed despite herself. Obviously the man didn’t spend all his spare time on horseback. “Is that all, Doctor? I should get back upstairs. I’ve got patients.”

  A muscle flexed in his lean cheek before he inclined his head and made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “Don’t let me keep you, Dr. Hart.”

  As Chris watched the young resident march away with her head held high and the tails of her lab coat flapping, he allowed himself one gusty sigh of frustration before turning back to the triage center. He knew from reading her file that she had finished med school at Berkeley near the top of her class, but he believed brains and talent to be only part of the equation that made a good doctor. Without heart and empathy for the people she treated, she would never be more than a highly trained technician—better suited to a research lab than the treatment of human beings. If he was to influence her in any real way while she was here, he’d have to find a path around her protective wall to the real Zoe Hart.

  And he’d have to do so without losing his objectivity, which would be no easy feat considering the powerful pull he felt whenever he got within sight of her.

  Glancing at the round wall clock above the check-in counter, he was relieved to see that his shift was nearly over. Dismissing the pretty resident from his mind, he went to find the doctor who was scheduled to relieve him.

  A little while later, Chris came out of the locker room wearing civvies and a heavy sheepskin-lined jacket as protection against the unpredictable March weather.

  “You have a nice evening, Dr. Taylor,” said a voice from somewhere above Chris’s head as he dodged the ladder erected in the middle of the hallway.

  “Hey, Willie,” he replied when he saw one of the longtime maintenance crew climbing down the rungs. “How’s your wife’s diabetes doing? You making sure she eats right?”

  A grin creased Willie’s leathery face as he stepped off the ladder. He’d been a bull rider until a hip injury had sidelined him a decade ago. “She’s doing good, Doc.” Willie hitched up his belt with the big silver championship buckle. “Thanks for asking.”

  “I’m working with a new pony,” Chris said, referring to the gelding he’d begun training to calf rope.

  A woman walked by them, trailing the scent of expensive perfume like a feather boa. She gave Chris an admiring glance over her shoulder that he returned absently.

  “A Quarter Horse?” Willie asked, his faded brown eyes lighting up with interest.

  “Black as a licorice whip. Come on over and see him when you get the chance,” Chris suggested.

  “I might do that.” Willie’s pager signaled him, so he folded up the ladder. “Sorry, Doc. Gotta go.”

  Chris headed out the door to the parking lot before something new could happen to reel him back in to work. Ever since word had gotten out about the strike at the Queen of Hearts mine, the E.R. was too often filled to capacity with the careless, clueless or just plain unlucky prospectors.

  As much as he loved being a doctor, he was happy to leave work behind him for another day. One of the advantages of living in a small Montana town was that the commute between the hospital and the farmhouse where he’d grown up with his parents and his three younger sisters took only a few minutes.

  The sound of Chris’s pickup truck coming down the long driveway alerted Ringo. The mixed-breed Husky raced down the porch steps with his tail wagging madly. Someone had dumped him on the road out front two years ago with a bullet lodged in his shoulder, but there was no lingering evidence of the injury when he ran alongside the truck.

  Someday Chris hoped to add a pretty wife and several brilliant children to his impromptu welcoming committee—all waiting eagerly to smother him with hugs and kisses. But until he met the right woman, one who could love the land and the lifestyle as much as he did, he felt no great rush to settle down. For tonight at least, attending to chores and hungry livestock would give him time to figure out a way to crack Zoe Hart’s hard shell.

  “Hey, buddy,” he called out to Ringo after he’d rolled down the window of his truck. “How was your day?”

  “I’m homesick,” groaned Aretha, a resident from the surgical floor, between bites of her roast-beef sandwich. “I miss my boyfriend.”

  Silently Zoe poked at her chef’s salad as she let the conversation flow around her. No matter which shift they worked, this round blue table was where the residents usually gathered whenever they came to the cafeteria.

  “Don’
t you live in Butte?” asked a redhead named Marty who had recently rotated out of the E.R. into Pediatrics.

  “Yeah, she does. Aretha gets to go home every weekend,” said a thin guy whose name Zoe had forgotten. He stopped drumming his fingers on the table long enough to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Boo-hoo,” he added sarcastically.

  Most of the residents and interns shared units in an old apartment building near the hospital, unlike Zoe. Thanks to her mother’s generosity, she rented a small place by herself in a nicer complex. She valued her privacy, but living alone meant that she only knew the others from working with them. Sometimes she felt like an outsider.

  “I heard that you had a private tête-à-tête with Taylor down in the E.R. yesterday.”

  It took Zoe a moment to realize that Barb Hiller was speaking to her. Perhaps because Barb was also a Montana native, like Aretha, she seemed to consider herself the self-appointed leader of the group.

  “Oh?” Zoe injected her tone with disinterest as she arched her brows. “Where did you hear that?”

  Barb’s smile didn’t reach her green eyes. “Around. You can’t keep secrets in this place.” She shrugged her plump shoulders. “Did he chew you out or what?”

  “Doc Taylor chewing out an underling?” echoed Marty before Zoe could reply. “Get real. As long as you know your stuff, the man’s a teddy bear.”

  Barb leaned forward, her gaze never wavering from Zoe’s face. “Well, maybe Hart doesn’t know her stuff.”

  Although Zoe hadn’t yet had the dubious honor of working with Barb, it appeared that the woman had some kind of grudge. Maybe she resented Californians. But her opinion didn’t matter to Zoe, who wasn’t here to make friends.

  “I manage.” Without bothering to defend herself further, Zoe began cutting her tomato into smaller pieces.

  After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Aretha asked if anyone knew of a good place in town to get her hair cut. Zoe tuned out the discussion that followed. Eventually Aretha got to her feet and picked up her tray.

  “Later, you guys,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the bussing station.

  Zoe continued gazing around the room as she sipped her lukewarm tea. The area was lucky to have a modern facility as Thunder Canyon General. She had heard that the money to build it had been donated by someone who had lost a family member because the hospital in Butte was too far away.

  The interior of the cafeteria was too stark for her taste, but it was clean and convenient. Its white floors were dotted with blue tables and lighter blue chairs. Booths ran along the wall and tall windows faced a courtyard. At this time of year, the outside eating area was empty except for a few benches and a silent fountain.

  Today the sky overhead was the same shade of pale gray as the Navy ships she’d seen docked in San Diego. When the snow melted and the temperature warmed up later this spring, the courtyard would be a great place to eat. The tables would probably be filled with people sharing meals. Perhaps there would be flowers blooming brightly among the evergreens, while water cascaded down the face of the fountain.

  Even though the view through the windows looked bleak today, it was vastly more attractive than the amateurish mural that someone had painted on one wall of the cafeteria. The trees and mountains had been depicted with clumsy brushstrokes, resembling a children’s art project gone awry.

  Deciding to forgo the whole-wheat roll that had come with her salad, Zoe was about to slide back her chair when Dr. Taylor approached the table.

  “How are you all doing?” he asked, smiling at everyone.

  Zoe froze, irrationally afraid for one heart-stopping moment that he intended on making another pointed comment about her lack of empathy with patients. Immediately she realized that she was being paranoid as well as unrealistic. Even though she hadn’t agreed with his comments yesterday, at least he’d taken the trouble to deliver them in private, unlike some doctors she’d worked with.

  Everyone at the table, including Zoe, responded to his greeting. As usual, he was dressed in light green scrubs with his stethoscope sticking out of the breast pocket and scuffed cowboy boots on his feet. His blue eyes were a startling contrast to his deeply tanned face, and his hair looked in need of a good stylist.

  “Would you like to join us?” Barb batted her eyes invitingly as she pulled back an empty chair next to hers.

  He shook his head with apparent regret. “Thanks, but I just wanted to invite all of you who don’t have late shifts tomorrow to come out to my place after work for spaghetti with some of the other E.R. residents.”

  He handed out sheets of paper. “Here’s a map, but it’s not hard to find. We’ll make it five-ish. Casual dress, of course, and bring your appetites. Not to brag, but I’m a pretty decent cook.”

  “Wow, sounds great,” said Vadivu, a soft-spoken resident from India, as she studied the map.

  “Free food.” The nameless guy’s comment drew a laugh. “Can someone with wheels give me a ride?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” said someone else.

  “How nice of you, Dr. Taylor,” cooed Barb, sending him another big smile. “I’ll certainly be there.”

  Dr. Taylor looked around the table, his gaze touching on Zoe’s. “You’re included, Dr. Hart.”

  “But I’m not in E.R.,” she protested. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  “Horsefeathers,” he replied. “I’ll expect to see you there, okay?”

  Caught off guard, she had no choice but to accept with an attempt at graciousness. “Of course. Thank you.”

  For an instant, his grin seemed to widen before his attention shifted. “Barb? Marty? Peter?”

  “Absolutely,” he replied, touching his hand to his glasses.

  Silently Zoe repeated Peter’s name, needing to distract herself from the idea of going to the E.R. director’s house for dinner. If he hadn’t put her on the spot, she would have come up with a plausible excuse.

  Her instinct told her to stay as far away from Dr. Christopher Taylor as possible. But now she was committed. If she wasn’t careful, she’d develop a crush on him—as Barb seemed to have already done.

  Chapter Two

  As Chris watched the rowdy group seated around his mother’s big dining room table wolfing down green salad, garlic bread and spaghetti, he tried to figure out a way to draw Zoe into the conversation. So far, she had been more of an observer than a participant as they discussed everything from the latest music CD to the dramatic increase of patients coming to the E.R.

  If Zoe was upset over his comments to her the other day, she would have to get over it. Everything he had told her was true; she was smart, but she needed to warm up and connect with her patients.

  “I think noncriticals should go to a walk-in clinic so they don’t clog the E.R.,” Barb said loudly, as Chris slipped Ringo a bite of garlic bread. The dog sat beside his chair on the braided oval rug. Its rich colors complemented the wood floor that he’d stripped and refinished, as well as the deep red walls he had painted the winter before. The last time his parents had visited, his mother had said she had always wanted to do away with the flowered wallpaper in this room.

  Marty, the redheaded intern from Spokane, took a gulp from his wineglass.

  “The only clinic in town isn’t set up for that,” he argued. Everyone else had nearly finished eating, but Marty was still plowing through a second helping of spaghetti topped with a healthy layer of grated Parmesan cheese.

  “Then we should build a walk-in clinic,” snapped Barb, tossing her napkin onto her empty plate. She had an opinion on everything from the shift schedule to the nursing staff, and she wasn’t afraid to share it.

  Tired of hearing her voice, Chris got to his feet and pulled out his wallet. “Well, I’ve got a twenty,” he said as he gave her an exaggerated wink. “How about you?”

  Barb looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “So when you said we, you didn’t actually mean it?” as
ked Vadivu.

  Barb flushed. “I was speaking facetiously.”

  “In the meantime, real people with real problems are overtaxing the E.R., as well as the rest of the hospital,” Zoe pointed out, speaking for the first time from her place at the end of the table facing Chris.

  She wore a soft blue sweater that hugged her curves like cashmere—not that he was any expert when it came to expensive clothes, since he lived in scrubs and jeans. The golden brown hair that she normally wore pinned up at work had been left loose tonight. Like melted caramel swirling over vanilla ice cream, the shimmering strands framed the creamy oval of her face.

  “These people and their children need help now, not later,” she added, leaning forward so that her tiny gold hoop earrings caught the light from the chandelier overhead. “How can the hospital turn them away?”

  Chris caught her gaze, sending her a smile of approval as he replaced his wallet and sat back down. “Zoe’s right. Until people have other options, the E.R. has no choice but to treat them.”

  Marty helped himself to the last two olives from a crystal bowl that had belonged to Chris’s grandmother. “What’s with the gold strike?” Marty asked, waving his hands. “Surprise! Hey, if I had a mine, I’d sure as heck know whether or not the thing was tapped out. It wouldn’t take some kid falling down the shaft during a blizzard, then popping back up with a nugget clutched in his hot little hand to clue me in.”

  “He didn’t pop up,” Barb interrupted. “Dr. Taylor’s sister rescued him. She nearly got trapped when it caved in.”

  The reminder sent ice sliding down Chris’s spine.

  “I hate to say that Marty’s got a point, though,” said Peter. “I wondered the same thing.”

  “Nor could Erik’s hand be described as ‘hot’ by the time they found him,” Barb added. “The poor kid was nearly frozen.”

  “Ha-ha,” Marty drawled. “I was speaking in the abstract.”

  “That’s where your mind usually is,” Peter replied, poking Marty’s arm.