A Boss Beyond Compare

TOP-NOTCH DOCS

He’s not just the boss, he’s the best there is!

These heroes aren’t just doctors, they’re life-savers.

These heroes aren’t just surgeons, they’re skilled

masters. Their talent and reputation are admired by all.

These heroes are devoted to their patients.

They’ll hold the littlest babies in their arms,

and melt the hearts of all who see.

These heroes aren’t just medical professionals.

They’re the men of your dreams.

He’s not just the boss, he’s the best there is!

Now that her children have left home, Dianne Drake is finally finding the time to do some of the things she adores—gardening, cooking, reading, shopping for antiques. Her absolute passion in life, however, is adopting abandoned and abused animals. Right now Dianne and her husband Joel have a little menagerie of three dogs and two cats, but that’s always subject to change. A former symphony orchestra member, Dianne now attends the symphony as a spectator several times a month and, when time permits, takes in an occasional football, basketball or hockey game.

Recent titles by the same author:

ITALIAN DOCTOR, FULL-TIME FATHER

A FAMILY FOR THE CHILDREN’S DOCTOR

THEIR VERY SPECIAL CHILD

THE RESCUE DOCTOR’S BABY MIRACLE

CHAPTER ONE

“YOU can’t just walk out like this!” Walter Ridgeway stepped away from the end of the conference table where, only minutes before, he’d just merged two small medical facilities into one larger one. He walked toward his daughter. “We’ve got too many things going on right now, and I need you here.”

“I’m not just walking out,” Susan said, on a weary sigh. “And you don’t need me here right now. You just want me here because you need someone to bully.” That was said affectionately. Her father really didn’t bully her, but he was demanding, used to getting his way.

“So what’s wrong with having my daughter by my side? We’re a team, Susan. I depend on you.”

She laughed. He was so good at the art of negotiation, yet he was failing miserably here. And he knew that. Yet he didn’t give up, which was what made Walter Ridgeway so successful at what he did. No matter what the situation, he went at it to win. “You depend on yourself and nobody else, Dad. But you’re right, we are a team, and this half of the team needs a holiday.” It was overdue. In fact, the last real holiday she’d had had been, what? Nineteen years ago? She’d been fifteen and her father had taken her away to Switzerland to ski. Of course, it had been a business trip, too. For him, it had always been a business trip.

But that week in Switzerland had been the last time she’d had any kind of a holiday, and having one now wasn’t just overdue. It was long overdue. “Dr O’Brien told me that if I don’t take a little downtime he’s going to put me on stress pills.” Her father was a doctor, she was a doctor, yet for her medical care she still relied on the kindly near-octogenarian who’d been her doctor all her life. It galled her father a bit, seeing that Ridgeway Medical employed some of the best doctors in the world, but there was something nice about going to a doctor who knew her, one who cared. It was a personal kind of medicine she didn’t get to direct in her capacity as chief medical officer for Ridgeway Medical, which was why she hung on to Dr O’Brien so fiercely, even though he was in semi-retirement. For Susan, the old family practitioner was like a cozy warm blanket and a good, hot cup of tea. Comfort items, all of them. “So, I’m going to follow doctor’s orders and take a holiday.”

“After the Hawaii deal is sealed. Then you can have all the time you need.”

Ah, the same old story. She knew he meant it when he said it, but it never came to pass. Which was the problem. She didn’t thrive on tension and having every last nerve ending in her body stretched to snapping point, the way her father did. He not only thrived on it, he invited it—the more the merrier. But her temperament was a bit more subdued. “Which is what you said after the Atlanta deal, and after the Chicago deal. Now here I am, still no holiday and it’s three years later. I need to go, Dad. Just for a few days.” She had some thinking to do and she needed time and space to do it.

Stopping three feet short of his daughter, Walter crossed his arms over his chest. There was no give in his expression. Glowering all the way. So much so, anyone looking on would not have been able to tell that this was a father looking at his daughter. “You can be replaced,” he warned.

This was the same argument he’d used last time she’d wanted a few days away. Only this time it wasn’t going to work. He was a formidable man, but she had her own amount of formidability, too. “If that’s what you want to do…” Susan shrugged casually. “Then do it.” He wouldn’t, of course. And he knew that she knew he would not. But this was just part of the relationship, part of the long-standing dynamic they had going between them. Her father was a controlling man, and he was used to getting his way.

Today wasn’t going to be his day, though.

Taking in a deep breath, Susan took those three steps that separated them, kissed her father on the cheek, then walked out of the office, and out of the building, without a notion in the world of where she was going, or what she was going to do for the next ten days.

Grant Makela caught sight of her. This was the third morning she’d come to the beach. Same time, same spot, same stupid hat.

He’d noticed her that first morning, picking up shells. Pathetic little shells, broken bits and pieces. Yet she’d seemed so delighted by them. Almost like a child finding a treasure. He’d really hoped she would find something good washed ashore, but that rarely happened on this beach.

So the next morning, for whatever reason he still couldn’t explain, he’d bought a little mesh bag of shells from one of the local souvenir dealers, and dumped them in a pile near the spot where she’d been sitting the day before, hoping she’d return.

She did come back, and when she found those shells she scooped them right into her pockets. She was a woman who was thrilled with a simple prize, and she didn’t question anything about it. That showed an innocence Grant found appealing. At a time in his life when so many things were going wrong, that was nice. Even if only for a few moments in the morning.

“Don’t do it,” he muttered to himself, as he prepared to take his first wave of the day. “Don’t even think about getting involved with her.” No time, no interest… He was about to say no sex drive either, but that wasn’t the case. It was there. Just not so noticeable these days.

Turning back to the surf, Dr Etana Grant Makela kicked his sandals into the sand and took his first steps into the water. Three. That’s what he’d allow himself this morning. Three waves, then he had patients to see.

Her surfer had left the beach an hour ago, same surfboard tucked under his right arm, same bold strides across the sand she’d watched for three days. And now she was impatient to leave, too. Impatient, like her father, which was exactly why she didn’t get up and walk away. She was on holiday now. The one she’d fought for. She’d walked out the door, gone straight to the airport and come to Hawaii, since this was the site of their next meeting anyway. Yet, as much as she hated to admit it, the impatience with so much leisure time was beginning to trickle in. “Read a book, take a nap,” she said aloud, as a reminder. “Watch the surfers.” Even though not one of them held the same appeal as the surfer Adonis she watched every morning. He was perfection, and the rest were…unremarkable.

A group of five young boys running toward the water, all with surfboards tucked under their arms, did catch Susan’s attention for a moment, though. They were having so much fun. Young, probably college-aged, all of them taking a break, doing some surfing, looking at the pretty girls, probably drinking too much, sleeping too little. The follies of youth, she supposed, picking up her book and hunting for the page where she’d left off.

The follies of anything, that’s what she missed. That had been part of her confusion lately, and the whole reason why she’d come on holiday. There were things to think about, life decisions to make. Turning her attention to the book, Susan was staring at the page more than reading it, when, suddenly, something in the distance caught her attention. A number of people on the beach were running toward…well, she couldn’t make it out, but she could hear the far-off shouts, could see more and more people moving in that direction. Then people were huddling about something, and screaming.

The warning hairs on the back of her neck suddenly prickling, Susan jumped up, dropping her paperback into the sand, and started off toward the gathering group, which was growing larger by the moment. A few moderate steps, followed by a few faster ones, then she broke into a full run, her bare feet burned by the hot sand as she fought through the growing group, shoving herself to the front of it, where she nearly stumbled over a young man, probably not more than twenty years old, sprawled on his back. Mullet haircut, cartoon-character tattoos on his chest, he wasn’t moving.

Without a thought about it, her true nature took over. “Stand back,” she shouted, dropping to her knees next to the boy. “I’m a doctor.” Magic words. Everybody stepped back and the noisy crowd hushed, except for another young man who appeared to be the same age as the one in distress. Normal brown hair, no tattoos.

“Do something!” he cried. “You gotta do something.”

Susan did. She began an assessment of the boy in the sand. First discovery—no pulse.

“Board came back up and hit him,” the other young man said. “He couldn’t have seen it coming.”

Second discovery—no respirations.

“He went under, but he didn’t come back up right away. I went under looking for him.”

Third discovery—blue lips, ashen pallor, pupils unresponsive.

Time to perform CPR. “How long?” she asked her patient’s buddy.

“Huh?”

“How long was he under? How long ago did he stop breathing?”

“He’s not breathing?” the buddy sputtered.

“How long?” Susan shouted, trying to get through to him. “Tell me how long?”

“I don’t know. Maybe four or five minutes.”

He was right on the cusp of either living or dying and could so easily tip one way or another, she thought as she did a quick exam of his neck. Surfboard injury could mean head trauma or even a broken neck. She couldn’t move him if his neck was broken. “No more than that?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Could have been. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

She nodded, not satisfied with the answer. But wasting more time asking was futile.

Gently, she probed one side of the young man’s neck, then the other. Nothing visible, nothing to feel. No air moving in or out. No pain response to her sternal rub either.

Susan felt the boy tipping toward death, and she dragged in a shaky breath to steady herself. “We need to roll him over,” she said, bracing her hands to splint his neck. She needed the water to drain from his mouth so she could begin resuscitation. Yet she had to pay attention to positioning his body, in case there was a serious spinal injury. A wrong move could make him a paraplegic or a quadriplegic.

“Don’t over-think,” she whispered. No time to think. No time to weigh the options.

She gestured to three men standing in the crowd, watching. “You, you and you…I need you to help me get him over on his side. Slowly.” She pointed to the positioning she wanted from the men, then continued, “On the count of three, roll him gently onto his left side. No sudden movements, and don’t jerk him.” Brave words for what she was beginning to think the outcome might be, given all the options. But he was dead already as it was, and without moving him she couldn’t perform CPR.

That was always the dilemma—to risk further, possibly permanent injury to save a life. Something, in all her years of being a doctor, she’d never had to deal with. Something she’d never had to put to the test until this very moment, as she braced the boy’s neck with her hands, desperately wishing she’d had more experience in direct patient care. “One, two, three…”

In unison, the men moved the boy to his side and a substantial trickle of water drained from his mouth. But he didn’t begin to breathe on his own, sputter a bit of it out and gasp for a replacement of air, as she’d hoped he might. That did happen. Drain the water and spontaneous respirations began. But they hadn’t, and a huge thorn of dread jabbed her spine. “Okay, roll him back over, same way,” she instructed. “One, two, three…”

As the youth went back into the supine position, it was becoming obvious to the crowd watching on that they were losing ground. Time was almost gone.

Not to be daunted, however, Susan felt for a pulse in the boy’s neck…still nothing. Then the pulse in his groin artery. Nothing again. Absolutely nothing.

The full knowledge was assaulting her now. It was too long. He was probably already past the point of return, too long without oxygen, but, still, it could happen, couldn’t it? She’d read medical accounts of these situations, where better results were recorded. It might not be too late. It just couldn’t be…

Susan started chest compressions and prepared to do mouth-to-mouth breathing, too, when a stranger emerged from the crowd and took over that duty. For the next several minutes, the two of them performed CPR quietly and skillfully. It was a frantic scene in which the crowd had stepped even farther back and a few people who didn’t want to watch the final outcome had skittered away. No one standing around Susan and the stranger spoke either, no one moved. Susan almost wished they would make some noise, something to cover up the stark sound of silent death settling in, because with every chest compression that failed to produce a heartbeat, and with every breath the man across from her put into the boy that failed to draw out one of his own, her optimism diminished.

After five minutes of this, her arms were aching and burning, on the way to going numb. And nothing was happening.

But he was so young…too young to die. Somebody loved this boy…his mother, his father. A girlfriend waiting at home for him, making dreamy plans for their future. For the people who loved him, she wouldn’t quit.

But she knew the rules. Ten to fifteen minutes without any response whatsoever meant it was hopeless. In her heart she did know this young man wasn’t going to be resuscitated—her first patient in so many years she couldn’t even remember, and she could not save him.

Yet she still couldn’t quit. She looked plaintively at the man across from her, who was busy feeling for a pulse, and couldn’t read his face. Maybe, like her, he was hoping that with the next compression of the boy’s chest…maybe one more breath…maybe a miracle. Please, God, a miracle! “Don’t do this,” she whispered, as she continued to work frantically on the lifeless body. “Don’t die.” Empty words, but as long as she kept saying them there was hope. “Don’t die…”

“It’s time,” the stranger finally said. He reached across the body and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “We’ve done everything we can do. It’s time.”

This was her resuscitation, not his! He didn’t have the right to call it done. “Leave me alone!” she choked, shrugging off his touch.

“It’s been too long. You can’t save him.”

“Go to hell,” she snarled, continuing the chest compressions with a newfound strength and preparing herself to take over the rescue-breathing the stranger wasn’t going to do, as he was moving away now.

“You tried, but he was under too long from the start.” Behind her now, the stranger tried to take hold of her shoulders and pull her away, but she flailed out, struck him, and bent back over the boy for a round of mouth-to-mouth. Tears were streaking down her cheeks now. And her own breaths were coming in sobs.

“It’s not too late!” she cried, going back to her chest compression position once she’d delivered the breaths. But this time the stranger succeeded in grabbing her, pulling her firmly away from the lifeless form, as someone from the crowd stepped forward and covered the boy with a beach blanket.

Susan still fought the man who held her back, though. Tried to get away from him, tried to get back to her patient. But the man held her away, held her tight. Pulled her into his arms and locked her there in his grip.

“It’s time,” he said, his voice so quiet it wasn’t even a whisper. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing you can do for him now. He’s dead, and he can’t be resuscitated.”

He was right. She knew that. The doctor in her knew that. There wasn’t anything to be done now. The boy really was…

A sob so heavy it racked her entire body caused her to go limp in the man’s arms, and she was grateful for the strength in his embrace, and for the gentleness, even if from a stranger. She needed it. Needed something to hold on to. Needed someone to hold on to her.

Susan laid her head on the stranger’s chest and shut her eyes, listening to the sound of his beating heart, listening to the strength and vitality in it, taking comfort in the life she could hear, could feel against her cheek. “I tried,” she said, sudden heavy lethargy washing down over her. She was so tired now. Exhausted with a bone-crushing weariness like she’d never known in her life. “I tried to save him.” To her own ears her voice was thick, distorted.

“I know you did. But this wasn’t your fault.” He stroked her hair with the gentle hand of someone who cared. Of course, she knew he didn’t. He was merely a stranger on the beach, doing what any compassionate stranger might do. But she was glad for his attention anyway, and craved it for a moment longer.

“Someone needs to notify—”

“Shh. It’s not for you to worry about now. You did everything you could.”

Easy for him to say, because he hadn’t been the one who’d failed at the resuscitation attempt. He hadn’t been the one to let the boy die. She was the one who had started it and she was the one who’d failed. Which made this man’s need to calm her seem so…trivial. She didn’t want his compassion any longer. Didn’t want his arms around her any more, so she pushed herself away from him. “Don’t you think you’re taking this whole thing rather lightly?” she choked, pointing to the boy’s body. “He just died, for God’s sake! And you’re behaving like…like…” She steadied herself with a deep breath. “I need to see the local doctor and find out if I need to sign the death certificate since I’m the one who…” Who’d let him die. She couldn’t say the words out loud, though.

“Three blocks. That way.” He pointed in the direction leading away from the beach. “White building. South side of the road. You can’t miss it.”

She thought about thanking the man for his comfort but didn’t as he disappeared into the crowd when she took her last look at the boy. However it worked out from here, this definitely marked the end of her holiday.

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU!”

From his desk, Grant Makela smiled up at Susan. “Are you feeling better?”

“What are you doing here?”

“You said you had to come see the local doctor about a death certificate, so here I am, the local doctor.”

“Couldn’t you have told me that on the beach?”

“Would you have heard me if I had? You were pretty upset.”

“Were? I still am.” A lump as hard as the slick volcanic pahoehoe stone she’d found on her walk to the beach that morning grabbed Susan by the throat, threatening to choke her. She swallowed hard, willing the anxiety to dissipate, willing the memories of that frightful scene to break up and go away. Yet the more she tried to not think about it, the more she did. All the while, that abominable lump in her throat was enlarging to the point it hurt. And the tears starting to slide down her cheeks felt like drops of molten lava burning a sharp path from her eyes straight to her heart as she thought of how someone who’d loved that young man must have been crying the same bitter, stinging tears for him, too.

Of all the times to be silly, here she was, doing it in front of him. Dr Makela, according to the nameplate on his desk. “I, um… Could I just sign whatever I need to, so I can go back to my hotel?”

“You’re not driving, are you? Because I’m not sure you’re in any shape to drive so soon.”

She nodded, almost to the point of biting her inner lip to stop her emotions from gushing over.

“Well, maybe you should have a rest here before you go. Take a little time to calm down.”

“I’m fine,” she argued. “Just a bit…upset, like I said.”

“No,” he said in such a soft-spoken voice it caused her to shiver—the voice he’d used to comfort her on the beach.

It was amazing how quickly she’d come to like that voice, come to believe it.

“You’re not fine. And upset is an understatement for what you’re going through, judging by what I’m seeing. What happened out there…it’s not an easy thing. And what you tried to do…your after-effects are natural, and I’d really like for you to stay until you’ve had time to get over it, to recover.”

He did have a nice way about him, and she thought he was probably genuine in his concern, but right then she didn’t want concern. All she wanted was to be alone. “I’m a doctor. I know very well what I am.”

Dr Makela gave her a compassionate, patient smile. “I’m also a doctor, and I know very well what you are, too. You’re feeling like emotional hell. Your hands are shaking, your head is probably woozy and pounding like crazy, and you hate me at this very moment because you’d rather go off to yourself and have a good cry, and I’m not letting you do that. Am I right about that?”

“The papers, Doctor? I know there are papers to sign so please, just let me do that, then you won’t have to waste your time diagnosing someone who doesn’t want to be diagnosed.”

“But you do need to be diagnosed, Doctor…” He waited for her to divulge her name.

“Cantwell. Dr Susan Cantwell.”

“Medical doctor?”

In a manner of speaking, yes, as that’s the way she’d been trained. Technically, she was an internal medicine specialist. She also had a little background in general surgery, too. Both had been prerequisites for her position as medical director over any number of internists and surgeons. But here, after her failure, it seemed like such a bitter pill to swallow, admitting that she was a medical doctor. “Medical doctor,” she said almost under her breath.

“A medical doctor who’s not feeling so well right now. Would you like to go lie down for a while? I have a private room empty, and maybe after a little rest…”

“Apart from the humiliation at showing just how bad my skills are, Dr Makela, I’m just dandy!” she snapped. “Thank you for the offer, but I’m not in the mood for medical attention or sympathy right now.”

“I can’t say that I blame you. But you’re not in any shape to drive yet, and unless you want to go back to the beach and rest there for a while, you’re going to have to stay here, in the room I offered. I’d be remiss in my duties here if I allowed you to do anything else.” He gave her a straight-on, provocative stare. “And I’m never remiss.”

He was a little more insistent this time, his voice taking on a little harder edge. Forceful words, yet kind. Sexy eyes staring right through her. He was right about it, of course. She was in no shape to drive and she knew that. Her hands were shaking so hard she doubted she could even insert the key into the ignition. Just look at her! One failed resuscitation and she was a total wreck. Did he wonder about her emotional stability? Did it seem odd to him that a doctor would go to pieces the way she was doing? He’d been there, working on the resuscitation, too, yet he was the picture of tranquility, the antithesis of what she was. But he worked with patients, practiced medicine in its purest form, while she performed administrative duties and hadn’t seen a patient, other than in passing on a stroll down one of her hospital’s halls, since she’d left her residency.