“You have been worrying me a little lately, beyond this thing with the Jennings case,” Ashley interrupted, setting her fork down. “I haven’t said anything because I hoped the course would correct itself.”
“Which it will,” Victoria snapped impatiently.
“Vic. It’s been a few months. You’re tired all the time. You’re not eating.” Ashley waved a hand between their lunches. She had a chicken Caesar salad, a strawberry protein shake, and a chocolate chip cookie. Victoria had only her green apple and a zero-fat yogurt that she hadn’t opened and wasn’t sure she wanted to. “The weight loss, thetemper…”
“What about my temper?” Victoria asked, her voice pitched dangerously low.
Ashley’s answer was brief and diplomatic. “It’s a little short lately. The scrub nurses are getting kind of sick of you. Have you noticed Melissa is scheduling herself more and more with me?”
That made Victoria sit back and blink. “What the?—”
“I don’t really know what’s going on. Just… something is, Vic. And maybe you might get something out of talking to this Dr. Monroe.”
“A psychologist. Hardly a real doctor.” Her temper fit momentarily subsiding to remember the morning’s events, Victoria rolled her eyes. “I can’t take her seriously. Her jumble sale office, a floral maxi-skirt for Christ’s sake. Ballet flats!”
“It’s just clothing, Victoria.”
“Says the surgeon who came in wearing Chanel this morning.” Victoria raised a knowing eyebrow. “You’re as much of a clothes horse as I am.”
“Well, maybe. But I’m not going to judge someone’s ability to perform a surgery or provide counseling based on what they’re wearing.” Ashley picked up her fork to begin eating again.
“It’s the entire package of her, Ashley, I can’t…” Victoria shook her head, thinking back to the little shrink, her slightly frizzy red hair, caught back in a ponytail. The cute but shabby rusty orange cashmere sweater that needed someone to take a pill comb to it. Her long cream-colored skirt with the green vines and orange blossoms and those goddamned green ballet flats on her feet. Everything about Dr. Anna Monroe projected softness, gentleness, approachability… which were not qualities Victoria encouraged in herself.
Especially not after…
Another annoying memory tried to swim to the surface from the depths of her psyche. Victoria closed her eyes and pushed it away again. “I don’t need therapy,” she asserted, pulling a long breath into her nose and holding it.
Dr. Anna Monroe and her aura of kindness were a threat, as far as Victoria was concerned. She wouldnotbe going back.
“Dr. Proctor. Dr. Ellis.” Elaine Martin’s greeting was pleasant, but Victoria detected a hint of determination underlying it that wasn’t usually present. This was unlikely to bode well for her.
“Dr. Martin.” Ashley smiled up at Elaine. Their relationship was a close one, Victoria knew, with Elaine having been Ashley’s mentor for many years. It was common knowledge that Ashley would be tipped for the Cardio chief job whenever Elaine chose to retire.
Victoria didn’t mind this. To be a chief of surgery had never been her career goal; all she had ever wanted was to perform surgeries, to figure out problems, to put people back together. The human body was a puzzle she loved taking apart and reassembling. And the more complex, the better, or at least, that was how it had been once…
Not this.Victoria gritted her teeth.
She zoned out as Elaine and Ashley chatted, toying with her unopened yogurt. In avoiding some thoughts, other unwelcome ones came bubbling back up… perforce, becoming welcome ones, in a way, she supposed.
Anna Monroe.
She didn’t want therapy. Absolutely not. Unnecessary, unwanted, a whole host of words starting withun. But she hadn’t stopped thinking about Anna for three hours now, and she wondered about that. Was it just her irritation at being sent to therapy at all? Or something more? Victoria turned thoughts of the schoolmarm-ish little therapist over in her mind, but came to no conclusion.
“Dr. Ellis?” Elaine’s voice broke through her wandering thoughts. “I wonder if I might see you in my office?”
Ah.Indeed, that little tonal harbinger in the greeting had not boded well for her after all.Sometimes, I hate being right.“Later this afternoon?” she inquired hopefully.
“Now, please.” The determination made a reappearance, and Victoria knew there was no getting out of this.
Feeling quite distinctly as though she were being called into the headmaster’s office in fourth form again, Victoria got to her feet.But I quit smoking years ago,she thought with a certain hysterical whimsy.
As she began to follow Elaine out of the lounge, she felt Ashley tuck something into the pocket of her lab coat. “For later,” she heard her colleague say.
In the hallway, she looked. Her unopened yogurt… and Ashley’s chocolate chip cookie. Victoria sighed and glanced around before throwing both into a nearby trashcan. She simply had no appetite.
With iron will, Victoria kept herself from fidgeting in her seat. They had been in Elaine’s office for several minutes, with the Chief puttering about, chattering about inconsequential things and seeming to not notice that Victoria was contributing precisely nothing to the conversation.
She gripped the arms of her chair and squeezed tight, keeping the urge to shriekget to the point!held firmly behind her teeth. She rather liked Elaine Martin, and did not feel the need to antagonize the woman. That said, she did have a number of surgeries on the board this afternoon, and time to make her rounds for them was running out.
