Chapter 2
THAD
Five hours.
Five fucking hours spent bent over the blown-out knee of the reigning Olympic gold medalist and current world champion alpine skier looking to stay on the slopes for another Olympic cycle. The first several made me seriously reconsider every life choice that led me to orthopedic surgery.
Not the surgery.
That had gone beautifully.
It had been the knee itself. It had been a damned mess.
Scar tissue everywhere. Like candy being tossed to kids along a parade route.
The scar tissue even had scar tissue. It encapsulated the hardware from one of the previous surgeries, of which there had been many.
Hardware intended to remain with the man through death and whatever came after.
Only that wasn’t the case. The instability that brought the world champion snowboarder to me and that looked questionable on imaging had turned into a “Holy fuck! What the hell did they do in here?” once I got inside.
The case was complicated, messy, and right up my alley.
I liked difficult, but I fucking loved complicated.
Give me the knee three other surgeons had already messed with. The shoulder nobody could get right. The athlete who’d been told good enough when good enough meant giving up half the shit they loved doing.
Routine paid the bills. Funded charities and college scholarships.
Difficult piqued my curiosity. Kept me interested.
Although at that moment, difficult and complicated could kiss my thirty-nine-year-old ass.
I rolled my shoulders as the OR doors swung closed behind me.
Something popped.
“Fuck, that felt good,” I moaned.
The nurse standing at the desk nearby laughed.
“Getting old, Dr. Vale?”
Slowly I turned my head. Mariska grinned like a hyena. Brave woman.
“Would you like me to remember you said that the next time one of you needs an orthopedic consult in the middle of the night?”
“Nope, because with my luck, it will be my oldest forcing me to make the call.”
I laughed. “How’s Levi doing?” I asked, bracing my forearms on the raised desk around the surgical unit’s nursing station so I could step away to arch my back. More cracking and popping filled the space between us.
“The season’s going great. The kid is going to be the death of me. I sit through practice after practice, watching him skate like he’s invincible.”
“He is. All hockey players are. No matter the age.”
“Even thirty-nine-year-old former NCAA Frozen Four champions?”
I laughed. “Yeah, even those of us who only lace up their skates a couple of times a month.”
She laughed, her head thrown back. “Oh, you mean the old fuckers! I didn’t know you were so self-aware, Thad. I love that for you.”
I growled at her.
“Gotta scoot. Tootles,” she said, twiddling her fingers in a wave while still laughing as she disappeared around the corner.
Thirty-nine wasn’t old, dammit. It was experienced. Distinguished.
Besides, I was still perfectly capable of doing everything I’d done at twenty-five, with the added benefit of knowing what the hell I was doing. And why I shouldn’t do the things I shouldn’t do.
My back occasionally disagreed with my opinion, giving me a second opinion while reminding me what a moron I was, but my back was an asshole. As were my hips, knees, and ankles, thanks to the years I spent pretending I was invincible like Levi and every hockey player I’d ever met.
I stripped off my cap and headed toward the locker room.
The surgery had taken longer than planned, but the reconstruction was solid. Barring complications—and the patient doing stupid shit because he felt better and decided six weeks of restrictions was merely a suggestion—he should have a good outcome.
Not a miracle.
I didn’t do miracles.
I fixed what I could.
Sometimes that meant getting an athlete back on the field.
Sometimes it meant telling one they weren’t going back.
Both were part of the job.
One was considerably more fun.
The other fucking broke my damn heart.
I retrieved my phone from my locker.
Sixty-three notifications.
Jesus Christ. Did the world blow up while I was in surgery?
I knew that wasn’t the case. This shit was the norm. Especially for surgeries during the workday. But, fuck me, sometimes it felt like five hours without Dr. Thaddeus Vale available to solve the world’s problems made up a national emergency.
Okay, maybe not the world, but with that many notifications, it certainly felt like it.
I dropped onto the bench in front of my locker while swiping the screen and scrolling through notification after notification.
I skipped responding to the emails. The intake team and my executive assistant would get through those, tagging my interns and residents. Anything they couldn’t handle, the fellows would.
Ignored the hospital notifications as well. Nothing but a bunch of bureaucracy that could wait. Being chief of surgery sucked.
The three messages from my office were ignored after a brief skim. Nothing pressing there either, just alerts that they had the fellows handle my appointments between their surgeries because I was still operating when the appointment times rolled around.
Phoenix.
That one made me pause and scroll back up to open it.
Phoenix
Maxie’s not feeling so hot. Scratchy, sore throat, headache, tired. Temp 99.4. Nothing major. Knew you’d want to know.
I frowned. Not because ninety-nine point four concerned me. Because Phoenix had texted.
He’d been running Halo House long enough to know the difference between someone who didn’t feel good and time to call Thad.
Then again, I’d also trained him well enough to include the temperature in the first message, so maybe I deserved this.
Me
Cough? Congestion?
The dots appeared.
Phoenix
Little congested. No cough. No stomach stuff. Eating and drinking.
Me
Anyone else?
Phoenix
Not yet.
At Halo House, not yet was usually the operative phrase.
Put that many people under one roof, and when somebody caught something, everybody caught something.
I’d learned that lesson the first winter I volunteered at the house. And if it was what I thought…one sore throat would become three.
Three would become six.
And six became Phoenix texting me at two in the morning to ask how much cold medicine one household could legally purchase before someone put them on a government watch list. It was way less than most thought.
Especially because Phoenix hit up multiple pharmacies whenever one turned him away.
Thankfully, my brother was on the police force and also volunteered at the house.
Me
Sounds viral. Monitor his temp. I’ll check him out later if he’s still feeling like shit.
Phoenix
Already told him you would.
I snorted.
Me
Then why exactly do you need me?
Phoenix
Prescription pad? And my handwriting is too pretty to mimic your hieroglyphics.
There it was.
Years of medical school.
Residency.
Fellowship.
Decades spent becoming one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country.
And to Phoenix, I was apparently a charitable prescription pad with legs.
Me
Asshole.
Phoenix
Don’t forget a pen.
Me
Oh, I won’t. All of yours are probably infected with the crud.
I’m billing you someday.
Phoenix
Send it to Halo House’s accounting department.
Me
That’s literally you.
Phoenix
Exactly. Good luck collecting.
I laughed and tossed the phone onto the bench long enough to pull my shirt over my head.
Phoenix knew damn well I wouldn’t take a dime.
Not from him.
Not from Halo House.
Not from anyone living there.
I’d started helping after the first charity event.
Phoenix approached me, saying he needed a doctor he trusted to oversee medical care.
Someone who wouldn’t look at the people who walked through Halo House’s doors and immediately start making assumptions about who they were, what they’d done, or how they’d ended up needing help.
One middle-of-the-night phone call led to my increasing involvement until I took on the role of Chief Medical Officer.
Anything that I couldn’t treat—physicals and vaccines and prescriptions and referrals and the occasional panicked text about a rash that turned out to be new laundry detergent were all well and good—got sent to a doctor in the network I’d built for Halo House over the years.
Plus, some residents had more specialized needs.
But no matter what, they all received the treatment they needed.
For free.
Whatever the doctors and clinics couldn’t write off as pro bono, I covered. Which either made me crazily philanthropic or a fucking terrible businessman. Probably a bit of both. But so be it.
My phone buzzed again.
Phoenix
Maxie says you’re not allowed to poke him with anything.
I buttoned the shirt I pulled on and grabbed my jeans before replying.
Me
Tell Maxie I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I have access to power tools, and I always need to practice using them.
Three dots.
Gone.
Back again.
Phoenix
He called you a cunt.
A laugh burst out of me.
Me
Now I definitely need to examine him.
Phoenix
I’ll warn him.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and tugged on my lab coat.
Maxie wasn’t dying. Whatever it was, Phoenix had it handled, at least until I could get there. Which wouldn’t be until after I dealt with the stuff here. And first on that list was a patient I needed to check on in recovery and a family I needed to update in the waiting room.
At the door to the lounge, I took a deep breath before pulling it open. Back to being Dr. Vale.
The large, stately brick facade of the mansion that housed Halo House came into view as I rounded the bend, my headlights slashing through the twilight. The home looked as beautiful and serene as ever. It should. I was hours past my intended arrival.
I walked into the house to find the handyman coming down the grand central staircase with his toolbox in one hand and a drill in the other.
Outside the OR, I wasn’t the least bit handy.
Like me, the handyman donated his time and craft to the cause.
Unlike me, he was an extremely skilled craftsman and could build or fix pretty much anything the house or the residents needed.
“Hey, Doc!”