Chapter 2 – Catalina #2
Craig Brooks is younger than I expected he would be—mid-forties, but with the harried, overcaffeinated energy of someone twenty years past that—buried behind a desk stacked with enough paperwork that I don't know how he locates anything.
He's sharp, though. Organized under the chaos.
And he's the only reason I have this job, because Hayes, a man who spent a decade on a circuit not unlike this one before he traded his boots for scrubs, made a phone call on my behalf when I told him I needed something else.
Anything else, after my whole life imploded.
Which means I cannot screw this up. Family favors carry weight with me. They always have.
Craig glances up and brightens, the way men in positions of comfortable authority tend to when a woman walks in and they assume the conversation will be easy.
"Oh, hey, Doctor Alba. How're things treating you this week? Broken Spurs are looking good, huh?”
“Fine.”
He nods, accepting the one-word answer without blinking.
People on the circuit are used to short, clipped communication. Grunts, chin lifts, half sentences. At least that’s one perk of this job: no one expects bedside manner from me. Good thing, because I never developed any, even after a decade in cardiothoracic surgery.
I can hold a beating heart in my hands, identify all its flaws and fix them with the gentlest motions, but small talk? No thank you.
I cut straight to it. “Are you aware that Jensen Grant rode tonight?”
Craig looks up, eyebrows pinching like he already knows exactly where this is going. “Of course I’m aware.”
The irritation is faint, but it’s there, and I’ve spent ten years reading micro-expressions better than most therapists manage in a lifetime. People call me cold and detached. I didn’t become a surgeon by being dumb, and idiots are the only people who mistake observation and awareness for coldness.
I choose my next words carefully, even though I don’t want to.
“Are you aware he had heart surgery six months ago?”
He nods again. “Yes.”
“He shouldn’t be riding.”
Craig sets the papers down slowly with the universal male ‘don’t start with me’ energy. It’s the posture that men seem to adopt right before they explain, at length, why the educated professional in the room can’t possibly know better than them.
“The last series doctor cleared him to ride.”
“The last series doctor was fired for stealing supplies out of an arena in Houston. I’d be curious what else he signed off on without reading it.”
His jaw flexes.
“I’m the new doctor on the circuit.” I keep my chin lifted, tone neutral but making my annoyance apparent.
Do you want me to do my fucking job or not?
He raises a brow. There goes the politeness.
And my answer. He doesn’t want me to do my job.
He wants me to shut up and hold a position because I’m either a diversity hire, a favor he owed to Hayes, or a pretty face to make the series look like they're embracing the whole cowgirl culture by hiring a female doctor.
"Doctor Alba." His voice drops into the patronizing register I've heard from every attending, every department head, every man who's ever needed me to feel smaller than the room. I don’t let it land.
"You're here to do a job. Keep my riders healthy.
Treat injuries. Guide the trainers. That's it.
Jensen's been cleared, he's our number one bull-rider this season, and half the people in those stands tonight bought tickets just to watch him ride.
Those are the people paying your salary, too. He's riding."
I don’t flinch. He wants a reaction from me. I give him nothing. They always want a reaction. That's why they raise their voices. They want to exert their power and control and get you to cower.
“I didn’t ask about ticket sales. I’m saying he had heart surgery, and you’ve decided his marketability outweighs the risk to his health by allowing him to continue riding.”
His mouth tightens. “That’s not what I said. Do you think I hired you to bench my best rider in week one? No. The last doctor cleared him. His heart’s fine. He’s riding.”
I swallow the retort sitting on my tongue. That I didn’t take this job to babysit a man’s ego while watching athletes die and get injured at the altar of Craig’s pride and ticket sales.
“Got it,” is all I say.
Then I turn on my heel and close the door behind me.
I already know how this goes. I’ve worked around enough men to know they don’t take women seriously unless they need something specific from us.
It doesn’t matter that I’m the one who fixed Jensen’s heart.
They’ll take the word of a fired male doctor over mine any day because that doctor told them what they wanted to hear.
And men like Jensen won’t care about the risk either. Because caring would mean admitting that someone else’s expertise outweighs his own gut feeling about his invincibility. He doesn't care about his life or the person who worked to keep him alive. He's selfish.
When you look like me—brown skin the color of coffee with a dab of creamer in it, an immigrant’s daughter, dark, tight curls, female—people assume I’m easily controlled and managed.
I’m a decoration until I prove myself useful.
They don’t care about the boards I passed on the first try.
The technique I pioneered during residency.
They don’t care about credentials or success rates or thousands of hours spent in the OR without food or water.
They don’t care that I’m the best at what I do and the most awarded.
Maybe I need to stop expecting them to see anything other than my outward appearance.
I left surgery in California not because I couldn’t handle it, but because I needed a break from being consumed by everyone else’s emergencies.
And because my long-term fiancé cheated on me in the most blatant, heart-stopping way that shook my sense of direction and trust. I refuse to blame him for the decision to leave surgery. I refuse to give him that much credit.
They say it's difficult dating a surgeon or a doctor, but it must have been hell dating me because not only did he cheat, but he cheated on me with someone I knew.
Someone he could control. Because that's what men like, right? Not a strong woman. I don’t have the perfect level of softness that attracts men.
Especially not ones with nose piercings and tattoos.
Not that I’d want to attract ones with nose piercings and tattoos anyway.
I took the Whitewood Creek job last spring to be closer to my little sisters, to put physical distance between myself and a hospital full of people who knew exactly what had happened to me in great, humiliating detail.
To breathe. But it turns out breathing isn't a part of my personality, and within four months I’d missed the precision.
The thrill and rush of it all. The feeling of being so undeniably necessary that nobody had room left over to discuss anything about me except my hands.
So, when I heard the Iron Horn Series needed a doctor, when Hayes suggested maybe I just needed a change of scenery so drastic it’d shock me back to my senses, I said yes before I'd even let myself think about what it would mean.
Something so far outside my comfort zone I'd go to bed with hives some nights just from the sheer unfamiliarity of it.
This week has been exactly that. And if Jensen Grant keeps throwing himself on top of pissed-off bulls, he’s going to need my heart surgeon training much sooner than he thinks. Except next time, I’m not entirely convinced I’ll be able to save him.
I duck my head and make my way back toward my temporary office, letting my expression fall into the mask I know best—calm, cold indifference. No caring. No emotions. It's all just anatomy.
Bodies are meant to be sliced open, organs exposed like puzzles waiting to be fixed. Flesh without souls that need fixing. Because the second you let yourself understand someone, you start making excuses for the way they let you down.
Don’t care.
That’s what I focus on. That’s what I’m good at.
Not caring.
Yep.
My hand still smells like his cologne.