Practicing Partners (Maiden’s Bay #2)

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“WHAT IN GOD’S name is going on here?” Dr. Madan demanded.

It was exactly what Bran was worried about, returning to the hospital knowing Doctor Sebastian Hycliff would most likely be here. Although he hadn’t expected there to be an actual physical fight.

“Do I need to report the both of you to—”

“No, it’s fine.” Bran’s sparring partner raised a hand, stopping the wrath of Dr. Madan. “Isn’t that right, Doctor Jackson?”

Hycliff’s inflection on “Doctor” indicated he either thought the title for Bran was a joke, or a reminder of how Bran should’ve been acting. As if the same standard didn’t apply to him.

“Yes, Doctor Madan. We’re all done here.” Bran eyed Hycliff, who was making his way up off the floor, wiping his scrubs and checking his wounds.

Bran could barely look at Aubrie, who folded her arms across her chest, awaiting an explanation. He shuffled himself up off the floor and tipped his head toward the corridor. “Care to update me on Missus Donchik?”

Was it brushing off the fact he had a physical altercation with another doctor? Yes. Did he care about Mrs. Donchik’s health? Yes. But he also wanted to speak with Aubrie, away from the others who were around.

Hopefully, he hadn’t disappointed her too much. They had been getting along so well up to now. She uncannily got him to open up about Mom, for goodness’ sake.

Aubrie sighed. “Let’s clean you up.”

“I don’t want to see anything remotely like this again, you two. Are we clear?” Dr. Madan was not appeased until the two fighting doctors met her gaze and affirmed with a nod.

Bran looped his arm beneath Aubrie’s elbow. “Come on.” He pulled her away from the scene. He was happy to leave it behind them, but sensed Aubrie’s irritation that he took charge now.

“I don’t need much cleaning up, do I?” Bran stopped in the hallway, checking out his reflection in a window. It wasn’t as useful as a mirror, but good enough to see that his face looked pitiful, the bruise near his eye swelling and a lip twice the size it should be, affecting his speech.

“Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?” Aubrie said.

“Fine.” He deserved her anger or resentment or whatever negative emotions she felt and cared to dish out. “In here.”

He led her to a small examining room, an empty one used for overflow storage near the floor’s front desk. There were unopened boxes stacked near the walls, with a sink in the corner and an examining table wheeled to the side next to it. He kept the lights off, the side window allowing enough light in to make out everything but giving the room a blue-gray aura.

Aubrie checked the boxes and cabinets by the sink for anything to help, to no avail.

“There’s a real supply closet two doors down.” Bran dabbed his lip with the side of his hand.

“Wait right here.” Aubrie walked to the doorway and stopped, swiveling back to face Bran. “I don’t want to come back and find you in a tussle with someone else, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Aubrie could procure all the supplies she wanted from that closet, but what his face most needed was ice.

Bran exited the room and worked his way down the hallway, back to the main desk on the floor by the elevators. Two nurses worked behind the desk, with the addition of Dr. Madan. The conversation stopped, and they all glanced up, Dr. Madan resting her fist on her hip while she looked Bran over.

“I was wondering if I could get some ice?” Bran looked at each of the staff members, their mouths unmoving and eyes on him.

“I can get you some.” A younger woman stiffly smiled and disappeared through a door behind her.

“You need to vacate the premises immediately,” Dr. Madan said. “If Doctor Fredericks finds out what happened, and you’re still here with the bruises to prove it….”

Bran knew, no matter how well the facts might be supporting him against probation, that this would be enough to oust him. “I understand. As soon as Doctor Turnbridge patches me up, I’ll be out of your hair.”

The young woman returned with an ice pack.

“Thank you.” Bran gave a nod and hurried back to the makeshift storage room. Despite Dr. Madan’s anger—urging him to leave the hospital before Fredericks saw him—was she protecting him? Was she Team Bran in all of this?

Bran washed his hands, trying to wash away the bloody proof as much as he could.

Aubrie returned with gauze, cotton swabs, and antibiotic ointment. “Come sit.” She said it with a coolness. An authority to it.

He dried his hands off in paper towels and sat atop the examining table. “How bad does it look, Doc?”

Aubrie pressed her lips tight before answering. “Is this some sort of joke to you? You were in an outright brawl with another doctor.” She dampened the cotton balls with the ointment and pressed it to his lip. Bran suspected she didn’t feel bad about it burning.

“No, it’s not a joke. Although it wasn’t exactly unexpected.”

Aubrie shook her head, annoyed. “Here.” She grabbed his hand and placed the ice pack in it, then guided it to the side of his face. “You’re going to tell me what that was all about.” She worked through another cotton ball until all of the blood cleared up. “But before you do that, you’re going to tell me all about your probation.”

The word sucker punched Bran in the gut. How much did she know? Had she been talking to staff? He averted her gaze, tipping his head down. She was bound to find out about it, right? Did he really expect she’d step in this building and not hear whispers?

She touched his chin and lifted his head back in front of hers. “Silence is not an option here, Bran.” Even with her frustrated, and who knew what else with him, her touch sizzled.

“It was the risk of bringing Missus Donchik here. But I thought I’d take it, as it was her chance at the best treatment.”

“What’s going on?” That was Aubrie for you. To the point, no frills. No bullshit.

“There was a patient, a young woman. She came in with multiple fractures from a car wreck.” He could picture her, blonde hair dampened through with sweat. “She had to undergo multiple surgeries, which meant a lengthier time in the hospital. But over that time, I got to know her better.”

“I have a feeling where this is going.”

“It’s not what you think. Well, not exactly.” That was the problem, wasn’t it? His prior behavior. Everyone knew of his escapades, his dalliances with this nurse, with that staff member, that woman from the bar. “Nothing happened. Did she flirt with me? Yes. Did I flirt back? Maybe.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I knew not to get involved with patients.”

“Did you, now?”

He knew how he was perceived and why. But he took the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship seriously. “Look. I’ll admit that I’ve had my dalliances here and there among the staff. A nurse or two, physician’s assistant. But never have I crossed that line with patients.”

Aubrie’s confusion read as clear as the red EMERGENCY ENTRANCE sign at the front of the building. How could he expect her to believe anything now, when he hadn’t told her or Doc Bernie about the probation in the first place?

“What happened?”

Bran shook his head. “It was later. About a week after she was discharged, she contacted me. Came to see me here. I didn’t know at the time, and I should’ve connected the dots, but I didn’t.”

“Know what?”

“The other guy in the fight, Hycliff? She was his fiancée.”

“Oh, Bran.”

“Yep. She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t even question why I saw him stop by her room once.”

“So….” Aubrie’s hesitation worried Bran. “Something happened, then. Between the two of you?”

“You’re asking if we slept together?” He raised an eyebrow, and a slight grin grew. She cared about his answer. He turned serious again. “Just once.”

“And this Doctor Hycliff found out.”

“Firsthand.”

“Oh, Jesus, Bran.”

“The thing about it is, obviously, if I knew she was his fiancée, I wouldn’t have done it. But that part doesn’t matter right now. It was after she had checked out. Outside of the hospital, at her apartment.”

“But Doctor Hycliff reported otherwise?”

“He was upset, of course. So he reported that I was having an inappropriate relationship with her during her stay, which carried on after.”

“Surely they’d find out that wasn’t the truth.”

He lowered the ice pack to his lap, the bruise already changing from red to hints of blue and purple. “It’s under review currently. But there’s another thing you need to know about him. He saw me as competition the first day I walked in here. Not only that, but his family is a bit of a legacy around here. There’s a Hycliff Building in the College of Medicine, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know.”

Aubrie’s shoulders slumped, and she shook her head.

He knew the weight of it. If there was a worst man to cross, Bran had done it. “Now you see it’s an uphill battle.”

“Is that why you returned to Maiden’s Bay?”

“You can put it that way.” He stared at the window. “It sounds cliche, but it’s such a dog-eat-dog mentality here. And don’t get me wrong, I was all for it. I welcomed the competition, the pushing of each other to get better in our fields, with our skills, our hands, our knowledge. But after a while—”

“It gets old. It weighs on you.”

She had said it so quickly, knowingly. He stared at her, holding onto their common understanding.

“I wouldn’t think there would be a lot of that in pediatric oncology.”

Aubrie raised her eyebrows. “Maybe not so much, but in med school? Sometimes I think I had been so happy to be rid of those shark-infested waters that I didn’t fully think of the downsides of pediatric oncology. What it could do for the spirit, for the psyche.”

Bran saw in her eyes, the weight she carried was entirely different. But a weight, nonetheless.

“I need to have my name cleared, Aubrie. Whether I end up returning here or not.” He stared into her eyes, her gaze fixed onto his. He didn’t deserve her gaze, her time. Or the pull he felt ringing him in, pushing them closer. He needed to know she believed his words. “You believe me, don’t you?”

Her eyes looked down at her hands. “What matters is what your probation review committee believes.”

“That’s not completely true.” He reached up to her cheek, edging the back of his fingers lightly on her skin. She gasped, the sound knocking the wind out of him. “I care what you believe.” It came out in a whisper.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Aubrie snapped to, grabbing the ice pack and placing it back near Bran’s eye. “We’d better get going.”

Bran whipped himself out of the oddly perfect moment. “Yeah, Doctor Madan said as much.”

“If it’s any consolation, I get the feeling she’s on your side.”

“Doctor Madan’s a good woman. A great doctor.”

“Come on.”

Bran hopped off the examining table.

“You okay? Dizzy at all?”

“Nah,” he said. “He did look worse, though, didn’t he?”

Aubrie shook her head and chuckled. “What started it with you two? Did someone throw the first punch, or did the sight of each other throw you into a testosterone frenzy?”

“Hey, now, I’m not one to get into bar brawls.”

Aubrie took enough time to stop and give him a look of yeah, right.

“I’m not. If anything, I’m too friendly sometimes. You witnessed that when we first met.”

She chuckled again. “Okay, maybe you’re right on that front. So, what was it?”

Just the thought of Hycliff rounding that corner, giving his sly smirk. He hadn’t charged at Bran. He wasn’t even angry.

“When he walked by me, he whispered something into my ear.”

“A whisper? You’re telling me he said something, and that set you off? What was it?”

“He said, ‘Don’t worry, I put her back in her place.’”

Aubrie gasped, stopping in her tracks.

“Exactly.”

“What an asshole. Sorry, I’m not big into using that language, but—”

“It’s accurate in this case.”

“You should report him.”

“And then what? The fact that I swung at him first would come out, and then it’s over for me.”

“He knew that. He knew it would rile you up. Do you think he actually did anything to her?”

Thinking of that man hurting any woman made his mouth taste of bile. “I sincerely hope not.” Bran shook his head and met Aubrie’s eyes once more. “It’s not that I’m in love with her. I was never in love with her. I….” Need to shut up. He didn’t want Aubrie to think he had feelings for the former patient. Maybe in the beginning, yes. But Aubrie needed to know that his heart wasn’t taken.

No, that wasn’t true. His chest felt tight, a compression like Grace Donchik must’ve felt, his heart under a grip. It quickened his breath, clenched his throat, and hinted at excitement over a paralyzing fear. Walking behind Aubrie, this woman who’d helped him, listened to him, always given him a chance to explain himself, he realized something he’d been denying all this time. Hiding it deep down, not letting it surface, until now.

His heart was taken.