Chapter 4
Chapter Four
I am a badass warrior, and my worth is non-fucking-negotiable.
-From Remy’s Badass Bitch daily affirmations
Remy
The protein shake served its purpose, filling the empty cavern of her stomach.
She’d been going nonstop since swimming her daily laps at the community center at four thirty in the morning.
The yogurt and an apple, followed by her hasty inhalation of a cardboard-like fiber bar prior to her previous case, were paltry sustenance compared to her schedule.
She’d have to gulp down something more substantive later in the surgeons’ lounge or she wouldn’t make it through her last case and final rounds of the evening.
She’d been tempted to put off dealing with the Dr. Lynch issue until the following day, just so she’d have a moment to breathe and eat something semi-decent.
But she was reluctant to let it go even that long.
This wasn’t the first time the resident had been caught engaging in…
extracurriculars…during her shift. It had only taken one look at the young doctor’s mussed hair, puffy lips, and the hickey blooming on her neck to know what had prevented the woman’s timely appearance on the ortho unit.
Resigned to her least favorite part of her job—managing rogue team members—Remy had paged her resident after finishing her last case of the morning. Sammy Lynch had responded immediately this time, and Remy had frog-marched her wayward resident down to Brinder’s office.
He had an open-door policy, and Remy took full advantage.
Brinder was a strong chief medical officer, and she knew he would handle the situation.
Her trust in him, as well as the hospital president, was key to her decision to leave Johns Hopkins last year and join St. John the Evangelist, which was becoming a highly regarded academic hospital in Charlottesville under the leadership of Brinder and the president, Agnes Greco-Martin.
Remy knew she was fortunate.
Fortunate. And also so damn tired. It had been a chaotic week and she still had a long afternoon in front of her.
Remy sighed, rolling her shoulders to loosen the tight muscles.
Lucia slid in next to her at the scrubbing sink as Remy pressed a knee against the panel, turning on the water as she unwrapped the single-use scrub soap. “Did you get something to eat?”
“Enough.” Remy smothered a yawn. Soon adrenaline would kick in. It always did. “I downed a protein drink on the way to meeting with our next patient.”
Her PA nodded. “The room is prepped and he’s sound asleep.”
Her next case was a young hockey player, in to fix an ACL he’d shredded while faking out an opposing player.
A quick surgery, and then she had two more surgical cases—back-to-back knee replacements.
Then it was final rounds in the post-anesthesia care unit and a quick trip back to the ortho unit to check on an elderly knee revision patient whose heart had been throwing irregular beats most of the day.
She was hoping the increase in electrolytes and the potassium and magnesium in his IV she’d ordered would do the trick.
If not, she or the lead hospitalist on the unit would have to send him to the ICU.
“Excellent, Lucia.” Now, she was a top-notch PA. Unlike Truculent Troy.
Lucia leaned in conspiratorially. “I heard we have a VIP in the hospital today.”
Remy scrubbed higher on her arms, blinking against the image of Bash Wheatley that unfortunately, and to her great frustration, seemed to be burned on her retinas.
Tall. Maybe five or six inches taller than her own five-foot-seven.
And brawnier than expected. His biceps popped under the crisp white button down tucked into a pair of jeans that hugged muscular thighs.
Dark hair cut short in the back and on the sides, but left longer on top.
Huge brown eyes with eyelashes most could only achieve at the hands of a skilled makeup artist. That troublemaker’s grin, with a dimple in one cheek.
Of course she knew exactly who he was before Brinder introduced them.
Sort of hard not to. He was Hollywood royalty.
His grandfather and great uncle were stars from Hollywood’s golden era, and Bash’s parents were Oscar winning stars in their own rights.
As was his sister, Honor, whom she’d met several times since joining Evangelist. Suffice it to say, anyone with a pulse knew the Wheatley family.
And Remy, unfortunately, had a pulse. One that had beat at an unnerving pace from the moment she’d opened Brinder’s office door to find a ridiculously handsome movie star lounging sexily against a wall until…
Well…until now.
Remy hadn’t dated in years, and no one had truly caught her eye in a long time. But Bash Wheatley?
He was a charismatic, somewhat goofy…hunk of eye candy. And, unless she’d completely lost her powers of observation, he’d been flirting with her.
It had taken every ounce of her hard-earned skills to remain visibly unaffected by his charming babbling. Men like him were dangerous—on the surface, amiable and alluring. Underneath? Nothing good.
“Dr. Remington?” Lucia’s question jolted her out of her reverie.
“Sorry,” she offered, carefully washing her hands and each finger, pretending to focus intently on maneuvering the soap beneath her nails, when in reality, she could do this three-minute ritual in her sleep. “Just thinking through this case. But, I’m assuming you mean Bash Wheatley.”
Lucia actually tittered. Freaking tittered. Her rock-solid physician assistant, who’d risen to the ranks of lead orthopedics PA fueled by pristine performance—and who was usually as serious as a nun in church—giggled like a schoolgirl with a crush.
Remy sighed and ignored the uncomfortable roll of her stomach.
She wasn’t lactose intolerant, but occasionally dairy didn’t sit well with her when consumed on an empty belly.
The culprit in this case was likely a different diagnosis.
Slick, handsome men never sat well with her, either.
There lay danger, experience taught her.
Focus, Remy.
“I met him briefly, coming out of Dr. Desai’s office.”
“You met him?!” Ok. Now Lucia was squealing.
Remy finished her cleansing and dried off with the sterile towel, careful not to let it touch her scrubs. She silently stepped into the OR, performing one more hand sanitization with the special gel. “I did. It wasn’t a big deal.”
Liar. I am such a raging liar.
“Was he as hot in person as he is on screen? I’d love to run my hands through that hair.”
Donning her gear, Remy pictured his hair, artfully tousled. He probably spent an hour to achieve that casual look. “He was,” she paused, searching for a word that wouldn’t give away the riot of emotions that—coupled with the protein shake—roiled in her belly, “attractive.”
“Did you get to talk with him?” Now Lucia was practically panting. What had happened to her unflappable PA?
“Only briefly. I was in Dr. Desai’s office to handle something and he apparently was meeting Brinder for lunch.”
“Mmmmhmmm. I bet the two of them together could cause women all over the world to spontaneously ovulate.”
Remy said nothing. Her ovaries had long since given up the ghost, her ob-gyn midwife recently informing her she was officially menopausal. No more riding the crimson tide for her. And good riddance.
Lucia opened her mouth to say more, but Remy cut her off. “Let’s go. Our patient is waiting.” Hearing the business in her tone, Lucia immediately finished her own gowning.
In good news, Remy’s heart rate had finally decelerated to its normal state. But why had she been so…affected…by Bash Wheatley?
It wasn’t anything she wanted to examine closely, that was for sure. Chalk it up to the fact that he was attractive and somewhat glamorous, with undeniable magnetism.
In other words: dangerous.
Still, as her afternoon surgeries flew by, Remy couldn’t fully sink into her ballet. Her Zen garden had been invaded. Not by an arrogant, lazy PA this time. But by a sexy, cocky, charmingly goofy movie star. And she was not happy about it.
Thankfully, she never needed to see him again.