Chapter One
Grace
“Hey, heads-up, Dr. Jackass is on a rampage today,” Katie, a fellow RN, warned as she rounded the corner of the nurses’ station.
I picked my head up, wrinkling my brows at her in confusion. “Dr. Jackass?”
Her warmly tanned cheeks creased as she smiled. “I keep forgetting how new you are around here. It’s ’cause you fit in so well, Grace. Dr. Reynolds. Most of us refer to him as Dr. Jackass because … well—”
“He’s a jackass,” Rachel, the charge nurse, stated before she and Katie giggled. However, Rachel quickly recovered, putting on a stern face. “But we don’t say that, do we?” She leveled a look at Katie.
“Not out loud.”
I smirked at the banter.
“This will be your first surgery with Dr. J– uh, Reynolds, right, Grace?”
“I believe so,” I answered, standing and smoothing out the pants of the electric blue scrubs I wore.
“Okay. Well, good.”
I frowned. The pitch in her voice made it sound like it was the opposite ofgood.
“He can’t be that bad. He’s rated as one of the stars to watch in the city as far as plastic surgeons are concerned.” I held up the healthcare magazine I’d been looking through, which featured an article on Dr. Jacob Reynolds. I hadn’t actually read the article, having just picked up the magazine from my mailbox that morning on my way into work.
“They’re not wrong either. He’s one of the cleanest, most precise surgeons I’ve seen in the OR,” Katie complimented. “But he’s still a jac—”
She paused when Rachel cleared her throat.
“Well, I don’t need to be friends with him to work with him.”
“That’s true, and thank God for it. Poor Melissa couldn’t get along with him.”
“Who’s Melissa?” I remembered every nurse on our floor in the six weeks I’d been working here at Memorial Hospital and that name did not ring a bell.
“The nurse you replaced,” Rachel responded.
My eyes widened. “He didn’t—”
“No,” Katie started, shaking her head, “her leaving had nothing to do with him. She had her first baby and decided she liked being a mom more than she liked being a nurse.”
I nodded in understanding.
“Anyway, just know that Dr. Reynolds is not in a good mood today. This surgery was supposed to happen last week and had to be rescheduled.”
“Why?” I stared at Rachel.
Rolling her eyes, she exhaled on an annoyed sigh. “A freaking fourth year med student who was interviewing for the surgical residency program contaminated the sterile field.”
All three of us whistled in disbelief.
“Oh I bet the surgical techs had fun with that.”
“They were pissed,” Rachel answered.
“But none more than Dr. Reynolds.”
“I’d imagine so.”
