Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(38)

Now, just as she was contemplating texting the Animal Farm with the news about Dorna, she had texts from Ma and HRH, both saying the last thing she wanted to deal with right now.

She read HRH’s text first. “She’s been sniffing around your patients.”

Gee, I wonder who he’s talking about!

Then Ma: “Can you swing by the Anchorage today? It’s important.”

Gee, I wonder what she wants to talk about!

Trisha absolutely did not have time for her parents’ Julia paranoia today. Julia hadn’t contacted her. Yash was fine. End of story.

Please please let it be the end of story.

“Is there a particular patient you’re worried about?” she replied to HRH’s text first.

“How is that relevant?” Translation: No particular patient.

“What is it you want me to do exactly?” That’s what she wanted to text. Instead, she went with, “I’ll be careful.”

“Look over your patient list for the past two months and let me know if you have any terminal cases.”

“Overkill, Dad?” Of course that’s not what she sent. “Sure.”

“Go home and check on Esha.” Translation: Your mother needs to play good cop and knock some sense into your head.

Trisha was annoyed enough that she almost didn’t tell him. “Dorna didn’t make it.”

She could practically feel the sadness in the silence that preceded his words. “I know. Sorry.”

Seriously? He’d known she’d lost a patient on the table an hour ago. A patient who was a close family friend. A patient she had hero-worshiped her whole life. And he’d got straight down to his badgering nonetheless?

“You okay?”

She would have been better if he had opened with that. “I’m fine. You?”

“She had a good life. We have to remember that.” She felt the pain in those words. Who would have thought a bunch of electronic characters on a screen could trap as much emotion as the sounds our vocal cords made? Dorna had been one of his closest friends and his tireless partner as they’d worked on advocating for inclusion in their workplace in particular, and their world in general.

“I’ll go see Esha.”

He didn’t respond. Not that she had expected him to.

“Bye! I love you too, Dad! TTYL!!” She tapped out the words, then deleted them with flourish as she grabbed her wallet and left for the Anchorage. She’d just come off a five-hour surgery, but energy was coursing through her. Of course HRH had known her schedule when he’d issued the order.

On her way out she stopped at the nurse’s desk. Anne, the clinic nurse and general admin chieftain, had a lump of surgical steel where others kept their hearts. Her bright smile died the moment she saw Trisha approaching. “I’ll call you back,” she said into the phone, “one of the surgeons needs something.” Yup, she dragged the word surgeon out like a piece of gum stuck stubbornly to her shoe.

Anne and her posse of clinic staff loved to use terms like “arrogant” and “brash” when it came to describing Trisha on those annoying staff surveys the department loved to do every year. Usually, Trisha didn’t disagree with criticisms lobbed at her. She didn’t care. She didn’t have time to babysit incompetence, and the competent staff liked her well enough. They’d even said so on the stupid survey.

“Do we have Emma Caine’s MRI results yet?”

“Hello to you, too, Dr. Raje,” Anne said before punching some keys on her keyboard, which was so curvy and padded that it could qualify as a prosthetic. Anne was wearing her usual carpal tunnel wrist braces that sat perfectly on the padded wrist support of the keyboard. Maybe it was the pain that made her so grouchy all the time. “The MRI’s done but Dr. Patel hasn’t read it yet. We should have them by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good. Text me as soon as they come in and if the patient or her family calls to ask about them, tell them they’re not in yet. Say it will be a few days.”

“You want me to lie?”

Good God, could one damn person just take her word for something! How much harder did she have to work for people to stop acting like she didn’t know what she was doing?

“No, what I want is for you to help me save a patient’s life. If you don’t want to lie, tell the patient you’ll have to check with her surgeon. But do not tell her that the reports are in. Please.”

Anne’s usually bitter-medicine face turned even more bitter.

“Thank you. And, Anne, raise the seat on your chair; it will take the pressure off the nerves at your wrist.” She had told Anne this a few times before, but she stubbornly refused to listen.

“Thank you, Dr. Raje.” She turned to her spaceship controls and went back to plotting world domination. Her chair stayed as it was.

On her way to the car Trisha tried calling Nisha again. Usually Nisha texted her twenty times a day, but it had been two days since she’d responded to Trisha.

“I’m coming over!” Trisha sent when yet again Nisha didn’t answer her phone.

“DO NOT COME OVER, I’M FINE!”

Was an allcaps response supposed to help her?

A lowercase message followed immediately. “Busy with Neel and Mishka’s trip. Relax.”