Under the Knife(39)

He clasped his hands behind his back and turned away.

You’re a little spitfire, lovely Rita.

Just like your mother.

“That’s an interesting story,” Finney said. He sounded curious. “Were you really like that?”

Rita swallowed. It was exhausting, trying to hold down two conversations at once, one inside her head.

“So … what do you think, Chase?”

“I think I don’t need to tell you how important this operation is, Rita.” He was still contemplating the C-arm. She noticed how rigid his back was, the tanned cords of his neck prying open the collar of his white shirt like thick fingers. The warmth had drained from his voice as abruptly as water from a bathtub. “Everyone’s watching you. Everyone. Are you really up for this today?”

No, some weak part of her tried to protest.

But she needed to operate on Mrs. Sanchez.

“Yes. Absolutely, Chase.”

“You realize if you screw this up—”

“I know, Chase.”

“—I won’t be able to protect you.”

Able?

Or willing, Chase?

“I understand.”

“Okay, then,” he said, facing the C-arm. He suddenly sounded very tired. “Okay, Rita. We’ll do it. We’ll move ahead. But we delay for two hours.”

He spun around and jabbed his index finger at her. “And that’s nonnegotiable. I want you to go take a shower and clean yourself up. And put on some makeup, for God’s sake. We need you to look good for the cameras. You have some with you? Makeup?”

“Yes,” she said, and bit her lip. Under other circumstances, she might have been more pissed about the makeup thing. Despite the pretty speech he’d just made, Chase’s intermittent, offhand remarks about her appearance—clothes, hair, makeup—betrayed a subtle if unintended sexism. Most of her male colleagues were like that, really—

(except Spencer, but don’t think about Spencer now, can’t think about him now)

—but Chase had on his own makeup this morning, so she had to give him a pass on that one.

He nodded. “I’ll keep the visitors occupied. Reshuffle the schedule and take them on a tour of the construction area first. We’ve got hard hats and everything.” He snorted. “The hospital CEO loves that goddamn hard hat. You can practically see his hard-on as he’s slapping the goddamn thing on his head. Especially when you give him a set of blueprints to go along with it.”

Chase didn’t much care for the CEO. The feeling, Rita had heard, was mutual.

“And … later, Rita, we’ll talk. You and I. You’re not off the hook yet.”

“I understand.”

His eyes roamed over her, troubled, and he stroked his chin. He opened his mouth, closed it, and tightened his jaw. For a moment, she was worried he would change his mind.

But then he said, “I like the glasses. Keep those. They make you look more authoritative. And intellectual. Besides, your eyes are a little bloodshot. It’ll be harder for people to tell with the glasses on.”

“Okay.”

He squeezed past the C-arm and out into the hallway, then stuck his head back through the narrow gap.

She sucked in her breath because suddenly he seemed sinister: a bodiless head, bathed in shadow and backlit by the bright lights in the hallway.

“Rita.”

“Yes, Chase.”

“Don’t make me regret this.”

“I won’t, Chase. I promise.”

He nodded, a single curt tilt of the chin.

Then he was gone.

Rita sank to the ground, and her knees hit the hard tile, the bone of each patella pushing against the floor through the thin fabric of her scrubs. It hurt. But she didn’t care. She just sat there, kneeling and breathing hard.

What’s happening to me? I shouldn’t be operating today. I know that. So why do I keep doing things I know I shouldn’t be? Saying things I shouldn’t?

The tears came, then, without any warning, or fanfare. She felt them trace warm rivulets down her cheeks; and in her chest she felt the approach of body-wrenching sobs, something she hadn’t experienced since her father died, when she was fourteen. She decided she would curl up into a little ball, right here on the cold floor behind the C-arm, and cry for as long as she needed to, and hope all this just went away.

Because why was she saying these things? Doing these things? Why was she so sure that she needed to operate, even as she knew deep in her soul she shouldn’t? What was wrong with her?

And then he spoke.

“Good,” Finney said. “Excellent. It’s nice to see Dr. Montgomery is such a reasonable man.”

Suddenly, the urge to sob, to give up and cry like the girl she’d been when her father died, was gone. She balled her fists and ground her teeth together.

Bastard.

Far down, down deep where all her anger-management classes had pushed it, the righteous anger seethed. It was no pet now, to be trotted out every so often to keep subordinates on their toes. No. Not now. It was raw, primal fury; and it overwhelmed—for the time, at least—her confusion and fear.

Smug bastard, she thought. You did this to me. I’m going to find a way out of this.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and, using the wall for leverage, pushed herself up.