CHAPTER 11 #3
Tearing his gaze away, he picked up the last pastry, a masterpiece of hazelnut and chocolate, admiring its elegant decorative swirls.
“Well,” she began, “some choices I made early on might not have been the best.”
He sank his teeth into the decadent dessert, mentally calculating how much extra gym time this would cost him. “Which ones?”
“Choosing medicine.”
He nearly choked on the pastry. “What? You can’t be serious.”
“As serious as the cliché about the heart attack.”
“But you love being a doctor.”
“Do I?” Her smile was bitter, something he’d never seen on her face before.
“You don’t?”
Her smile faded to contemplation. “I’m going to be honest with you. Those who think doctors are highly rewarded and fulfilled by their work have clearly never been doctors.”
“But you’ve always dreamed of becoming a doctor. It’s what you said you wanted to do.”
“Yeah. I wish I’d known what’s involved. If someone had told me, I never would have done this.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded, shocked beyond knowing what to say.
“What is it that makes you unhappy? It can’t be taking care of people.”
She shook her head. “That’s the good part. It’s what comes with it that stinks.”
He leaned forward. “Tell me.”
“Well, for one, I got into medicine and found it full of red tape and bureaucracy, and I can’t even help people because the insurance companies deny most of what I try to do.” Her eyes flashed, and he could hear the bitterness and frustration in her tone.
He kept his gaze fixed on her face, a part of him struggling to wrap his brain around what she was confessing. “You said ‘for one.’ What else?”
“People hate us.”
“Jannie …”
“It’s true! They hate doctors.”
He shook his head. He couldn’t imagine anyone hating her, let alone the patients she tried to help.
“OK, not all of them. But many think we’re only after their money. Or that we purposely keep them sick—”
“Why would anyone think you’d do that?”
One corner of her mouth curved into a wry smile. “So we can get more money.”
His jaw dropped. “That’s insane.”
“It’s also true, unfortunately. All that studying and the hell I went through with internship and residency …” She looked down at her hands. “I never went into it for the money. My grandfather and dad made sure that all of us were set for life. Ian and I are also heavily invested in LarsAir, so …”
Well. Jannie was a billionaire, it seemed.
“I never would have thought that doctors had such professional dissatisfaction.” He didn’t know a single pilot who didn’t love what he did. Every one of them couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
“Oh, yes. Believe me, many of my friends feel the same way, but they also have to worry about paying off massive student loans and making a living.”
“So.” He took a sip of water. “What do you want to do?”
“What do I want to do?” she repeated.
“Well, yeah. Sounds to me as if you have some flexibility. And if you’re so unhappy …”
Jannie just stared at him as if she didn’t understand his words.
“What would you do if you quit medicine?” he asked.
“Quit medicine?”
“Yeah. Would you consider going into aviation?”
She gave a startled little laugh. “What?”
“Don’t laugh. Adam could always use more pilots.”
“Jet pilots. I’m just—”
“You,” he interrupted, leaning forward, “are a pilot, Jannie.”
“Sort of.”
He shook his head. “Not ‘sort of.’ If you wanted to, you could be flying a CJ4 in no time.” He saw that she found the idea crazy but didn’t dismiss it outright, so he kept talking.
“You get your instrument rating and your multi-engine, and then you only need 250 hours to get a commercial license. I’m fully confident that you could pass a check ride as second-in-command after you go through an SIC type rating course. ”
“That doesn’t sound like ‘no time’ to me.”
“Nine months. Seven, if you work extra hard.”
Oh, he had her attention; her beautiful eyes were fixed on him.
“How about you start with just your instrument rating? Get a feel for it, see if it’s an option.”
“I don’t know …”
He decided to go all in. “Ian went for it.”
Something flashed in her eyes. She raised her chin. Ah, there it is—that competitive spirit.
She was considering it; he could tell. His heart began to race at the thought of her joining LarsAir and moving to Las Vegas.
“Would I have time to get my instrument rating in four weeks?”
“Absolutely. In an accelerated learning program.”
She seemed to ponder this.
He waited with bated breath.
“I’m going to hate the taste of crow,” she finally muttered.
“Crow?”
“Yeah. Every time I take a lesson. Adam won’t say anything, but I’ll feel the I told you so.”
“Who says you have to get him involved?”
“I’ll have to ask him to recommend a flight instructor.”
Nick raised a hand. “Flight instructor here.”
Her eyes grew very wide, and her lips parted in a way that made him want to seize the back of her head and kiss her.
Slowly, Nick leaned in, watching her pupils dilate as he drew closer, closer, until his lips grazed the shell of her ear.
He paused briefly, then exhaled, sensing her shudder before he murmured, “And I can teach you oh, so many things that others can’t.”