Chapter 2 – Catalina
A slow year for hearts.
I press my palms together hard enough that my knuckles ache, flexing each finger one at a time, checking that he didn't leave a mark on me with that gorilla grip of his.
He didn't. Of course he didn't. Jensen Grant doesn't leave marks anyone can see. Not on skin, anyway.
It doesn’t matter that his hands are massive—hands that could probably palm my entire head like a basketball—there was absolutely no reason for him to shake mine like he was trying to crush bone.
He doesn’t understand how to be gentle. He doesn’t realize his strength. He has no grasp of his own body.
A slow year for hearts.
Like I simply decided that business wasn’t booming so I packed up a decade of my life and drove it to a rodeo because nobody wanted what I was selling anymore.
Like the only reason a woman walks away from the top of cardiothoracic surgery in the state of California is because things slowed down and someone told me no.
I didn't hear no. I said it. I left on my terms. There's a difference, and I'm furious that I have to explain that difference to myself in an empty hallway because some six-foot-five cowboy with a nose ring made it all sound so simple. He wouldn’t know anything about blowing up the only career I ever loved.
I press my lips together until they go numb. The world doesn't care how good you are at something if you don't look like what it expects competence to look like.
There are three things I hate most in life.
One: men who think recklessness is the same thing as courage.
I learned the difference the hard way through years of hard work. Recklessness gets you cut open. Courage is what you do with the second chance you’re given afterward. Jensen Grant doesn't seem to know there's a difference, and worse, doesn't seem to want to learn it.
I remember the way it felt to cut through the skin and muscle in his chest to get to his heart. I always remember. And his was a particularly difficult and challenging case. But I'm the best heart surgeon there is in the country. Or at least, I was when I was still practicing.
I gave him the same instruction I give every single one of my patients who wake up under my hands. "Don’t waste this second chance. Take care of your heart. Live with the knowledge that you're at a higher risk of a stroke or arrhythmia now. You need to slow down."
He seems to have ignored that professional guidance entirely and done the complete opposite.
Back on the fucking circuit.
Riding in the prestigious Iron Horn series.
Throwing himself onto a one-ton animal like he doesn’t care.
Like he’s invincible. Like his heart wasn’t in my hands only a few months ago.
That’s not even recklessness. That’s contempt.
For his own life, and though I’d never say this part out loud, for my skills. For the hours I spent on fixing him.
I hate recklessness. I hate people who spit on their health and don't appreciate the gift that I’ve given them. And now I hate Jensen Grant.
Second thing I hate: tattoos and piercings.
I have too much respect for the human body to ever willingly mar and scar it, and even more respect for human anatomy to understand how stupid it is to voluntarily put holes in it all day when nature will take care of that on its own if you live long enough.
Stupid, tiny diamond nose stud twinkling in his nostril like it’s cute.
Or that ridiculous tattoo of bull horns stretched across his bare, absurdly broad chest. It's the same tattoo I had to slice through to get to his heart. I was careful not to mess it up, of course. And it’s not that I don’t find tattoos, or piercings, attractive... No. Stop.
I wonder how his scar healed?
And three is something I'll save for another day. When I’m a little calmer and not still smelling his cologne in these unfamiliar hallways in Austin.
Lucky me, Jensen Grant managed to check the first two boxes on my list inside one single conversation.
And it didn’t look like he was trying very hard.
I exhale slowly through my nose, the way I taught myself in residency when an attending would dress me down in front of a resident over a complication that I didn’t cause. I never caused the problems. But I stayed silent anyway. Unlike back then, I’m starting to rethink my silence.
Hayes, my sort of brother-in-law, and the chief of medicine at the small-town hospital I left behind, warned me about this. He told me I’d see things as the Iron Horn series doctor that I wouldn’t agree with as a surgeon. Things I’d want to fix. Things I’d want to prevent but won't be able to.
Being the series doctor means working with rough cowboys.
Athletes who don’t know when to quit, who see pain as a challenge instead of a warning.
These men aren't civilized like the rest of society. They’re willingly pushing their bodies to limits that will eventually crack.
They get high off the fear and live for the risk.
I get it. Being a surgeon in a demanding field is a lot like that.
Plus, I’ve worked with athletes before. And after my brief stint spent working in sports medicine, I was able to prove that theory true.
Athletes don’t know when to quit. They’ll call it entertainment and lose sight of the cost. Especially when it's at the risk of their own life.
I check my phone, because my anger needs somewhere to go and I refuse to give it to Jensen.
One text from my younger sister Daniela is on the screen.
She moved to Whitewood Creek, North Carolina almost two years ago and lives there with her husband Lawson Marshall running sales and marketing for his family’s egg farm and whiskey businesses.
Dani: How’s the first week of the new job going? Meet any hot cowboys yet?
My thumb hovers over the screen because now I’m thinking about Jensen and his tattoos again.
I type a quick response and hit send.
Catalina: It's going fine.
I slide the phone into my pocket before she can double-text something nosier.
The truth is there's nothing to share. I've been on the job for a total of five days and most of it was spent meeting the riders, combing through medical records that the last doctor left behind, and trying to make sense of the gaps and holes it seems he intentionally made. Because apparently that’s my job now. Fixing other people’s negligence on top of my own.
The less she knows, the better. Besides, she’ll probably read that “fine” and convince herself that I’m happy and having a blast. Probably imagine me riding bareback on one of the horses we cart around the series with us while wearing a cowgirl hat.
I don't think she's ever actually seen me happy before. Unless you count that one summer where our parents got us a puppy when I was thirteen. Or the time when I discovered a new surgery technique that the hospital I did my residency at ended up patenting. And even that, they couldn’t give me credit for.
A female with immigrant parents making a medical breakthrough? Bury the evidence!
There's a row of horse trailers parked along the back lot as I cut through toward Craig's office, and from one of them, a dog starts barking excitedly.
I don't mean to stop walking. I just do, for a second, watching some wrangler crouch down and let a blue heeler climb all over his boots like it hasn't seen him in a year instead of an hour. They look so happy together.
I was thirteen the summer my parents got us that dog.
A scraggly little thing from a shelter in Bakersfield that none of us could agree on a name for, so we just called him Perrito for two weeks until it stuck permanently.
He used to wait by the door for us every day at three-fifteen.
I think he understood how badly I needed someone to be waiting for me.
He'd launch himself at my legs the second I walked in like I was the best thing that had happened to him all day.
Nobody has looked at me like that since.
Not my parents-while proud, yes, but never delighted.
And definitely never my ex-fiancé, Davis.
I used to think I'd get a dog of my own when I was an adult, once I had a place that was mine and a life that allowed for it.
Davis hated them. Said the fur, the mess, the unpredictability of an animal in a controlled home would drive him nuts.
I let that be the reason I never did. I'm not sure it was ever really about the dog. I think he didn’t want me to have anything that brought happiness outside of my career.
I shake off that thought and push through the door to the arena's back hallway, badge swinging against my chest and setting a rhythm I try to get lost in. The Iron Horn series isn't set up like others. While normally bull-riding is a solo sport, every rider for themselves, this competition allows teams to enter as a group for a shot at the prize. My team is the Broken Spurs, which consists of five professional bull-riders who’ve been riding together for years, a few saddle broncs, bareback riders, barrel racers, and our team’s training coach, Dawson Reed.
Today we're in Austin. Tomorrow we’ll be in Denver.
The schedule rolls through my memory as I try to keep track of the jumps.
I’ve never had the opportunity to travel for work but that was one of the most attractive things about this job.
That and the shock of doing something wildly new.
Now I just need to get control on these athletes before we get deeper into the series, and someone gets hurt.
I come to a stop in front of Craig’s door. Take a deep breath and knock once.
“Come in!” he shouts.