“You. What are you doing just standing there?” The low, authoritative voice froze everyone in their tracks. Orderlies, nurses, and interns alike wondered who was about to be flayed alive. Anu didn’t have to wonder. She knew. She was the one in the doorway of room 206, looking like a deer in headlights and holding a chart in suddenly sweaty hands, trapped between “Please don’t yell at me in front of everybody” and “Say my name just once.”
If you looked up “god complex” in the dictionary, ahead of any other brilliant medical mind in the country would be a picture of Dr. Vince McHenry. Anu was sure of it. The man was a nurse whisperer, a magician in the OR, and a neuroscience pioneer. He acted like he walked on water and raised the dead. Considering he’d saved countless lives, both with his hands and his research, he’d probably earned theright to have such a complex. It was just everything else he did that reeked of insufferable arrogance and privilege.
He was notorious. He magnanimously didn’tseduce the impressionable female staff at his own hospital, but the interns and residents at Mercy were fair game (they’d even made a Facebook group: The Vincibles). Then, there was all the talk of how he’d stolen the Chief of Surgery position right out from under Dr. Parker, who’d been working toward it for years. He drove a Jag, lived in a penthouse suite at the Grand, and voted Republican just to defend his tax bracket—while speaking at hearings for increased stem-cell research funding, which surely made his fellow party members stroke out. The man was a prick of the highest order.
He was a prick, and Anu wanted him so bad she could taste it: sharp and hot, like his smile. It was sheer insanity. Having a crush on an attending—on a department chief, at that—was right up there with hallucinating leprechauns. A product of a sleep-deprived resident’s fevered imagination. But she couldn’t help herself…slipping into the observation room to watch his surgeries, sitting in on all his lectures, offering to shuttle his films back and forth to Radiology so the nurses wouldn’t have to leave the hub. It was like she wanted to get as close to him as she could without being burned.
She could fool herself into thinking it was his surgical skill she admired, but it wasn’t his precision with a scalpel that she fantasized about. No, she thought about his hands. She was preoccupied with his lean, I-play-squash-on-the-weekends body, and his entirely too handsome face. Vince—she only ever called him Vince in her head—was dark haired and dark eyed and just shy of swarthy. If they were to compare, she knew he’d barely be lighter than her North Indian tan. He looked like he belonged on a romance novel cover; he’d been blessed with too many gifts. And she…was cursed. Cursed, crazy, completely obsessed. She’d been tempted to go in for a battery of neurological tests more than once, except that it would entail willingly walking into his domain.
Now, he was walking toward her. White lab coat hanging open, long legs encased in tailored pants that had probably cost more than her monthly rent. “Dr. Gupta. Charts don’t walk themselves to their destination. I asked for an update on Mrs. Stevens ten minutes ago.”
Anu was suddenly struck totally stupid. He knows who I am . Oh my God, he knows my name . She wasn’t naïve enough to think he went around assigning numbers to people, like House (a terribly inaccurate show and a total guilty pleasure), but it was still a shock to her system. “I…I’m sorry,” she stammered, knowing it was futile to explain that she’d only been pulled in for the consult because the patient was presenting with symptoms of arrhythmia and her cardio attending, Dr. Lincoln, was in surgery. Vince McHenry didn’t suffer fools or excuses…and Vince McHenry was looking at her like he was faced with both.
Marshaling her self-control, willing her knees not to knock
If you looked up “god complex” in the dictionary, ahead of any other brilliant medical mind in the country would be a picture of Dr. Vince McHenry. Anu was sure of it. The man was a nurse whisperer, a magician in the OR, and a neuroscience pioneer. He acted like he walked on water and raised the dead. Considering he’d saved countless lives, both with his hands and his research, he’d probably earned theright to have such a complex. It was just everything else he did that reeked of insufferable arrogance and privilege.
He was notorious. He magnanimously didn’tseduce the impressionable female staff at his own hospital, but the interns and residents at Mercy were fair game (they’d even made a Facebook group: The Vincibles). Then, there was all the talk of how he’d stolen the Chief of Surgery position right out from under Dr. Parker, who’d been working toward it for years. He drove a Jag, lived in a penthouse suite at the Grand, and voted Republican just to defend his tax bracket—while speaking at hearings for increased stem-cell research funding, which surely made his fellow party members stroke out. The man was a prick of the highest order.
He was a prick, and Anu wanted him so bad she could taste it: sharp and hot, like his smile. It was sheer insanity. Having a crush on an attending—on a department chief, at that—was right up there with hallucinating leprechauns. A product of a sleep-deprived resident’s fevered imagination. But she couldn’t help herself…slipping into the observation room to watch his surgeries, sitting in on all his lectures, offering to shuttle his films back and forth to Radiology so the nurses wouldn’t have to leave the hub. It was like she wanted to get as close to him as she could without being burned.
She could fool herself into thinking it was his surgical skill she admired, but it wasn’t his precision with a scalpel that she fantasized about. No, she thought about his hands. She was preoccupied with his lean, I-play-squash-on-the-weekends body, and his entirely too handsome face. Vince—she only ever called him Vince in her head—was dark haired and dark eyed and just shy of swarthy. If they were to compare, she knew he’d barely be lighter than her North Indian tan. He looked like he belonged on a romance novel cover; he’d been blessed with too many gifts. And she…was cursed. Cursed, crazy, completely obsessed. She’d been tempted to go in for a battery of neurological tests more than once, except that it would entail willingly walking into his domain.
Now, he was walking toward her. White lab coat hanging open, long legs encased in tailored pants that had probably cost more than her monthly rent. “Dr. Gupta. Charts don’t walk themselves to their destination. I asked for an update on Mrs. Stevens ten minutes ago.”
Anu was suddenly struck totally stupid. He knows who I am . Oh my God, he knows my name . She wasn’t naïve enough to think he went around assigning numbers to people, like House (a terribly inaccurate show and a total guilty pleasure), but it was still a shock to her system. “I…I’m sorry,” she stammered, knowing it was futile to explain that she’d only been pulled in for the consult because the patient was presenting with symptoms of arrhythmia and her cardio attending, Dr. Lincoln, was in surgery. Vince McHenry didn’t suffer fools or excuses…and Vince McHenry was looking at her like he was faced with both.
Marshaling her self-control, willing her knees not to knock
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