Free Destroy (A Standalone Romance Novel) by Claire Adams

safe, and always gleaming under the light. I
thought the gurneys must really slide easily on that floor.
    Tiffany was walking
beside me. She was all smiles for some reason. As usual, she hadn’t said a word
since she came in a couple of minutes after I did. Given that we had not
reached the surgeon’s lounge, she had time to tell me what was on her mind. She
seemed impatient to do so.
    “I met him in the parking
garage yesterday,” she said almost inaudibly. “He is wonderful.” She was
blushing.
    “Who is?” I asked quickly
as we flattened ourselves against the walls to let some orderlies push a man on
a gurney toward the first theater.
    “Our resident surgeon.
God, Hattie, you should have seen the guy. Just wonderful, I tell you.”
    “Did you two talk?” I was
getting curious. We resumed our walking down the corridor.
    “Just for a bit. You know
me. I’m not one to open my mouth in front of strangers.” She threw me a glance.
“But I tell you this: I’m never going to be late when we have to follow him on
his rounds or go to the operating theater with him. He’s just that good-looking.”
With that, we arrived in the lounge.
    The older fellow–a man in
his fifties, if not older, wearing black-rimmed glasses and an attractive smile
slicing a tanned face–stood up and came toward Dr. Kerry, right hand
outstretched.
    “Kerry,” he said, “Good
morning, my dear. Glad you got the troops all assembled.” He threw a glance
over Dr. Kerry’s shoulder to look at us. “I see they’ll be on equal footing
this year–six men and six women–a perfect team.”
    “Yes, Doctor,” Dr. Kerry
replied. “And good morning to you as well.” She smiled and then turned to us.
“Doctor Clemens, let me introduce you to our newly appointed interns…” By the
time she finished going through our names and qualifications, I bet Clemens had
forgotten half of us already. I was to be proven wrong later.
    I bent down to Tiffany’s
ear. “Is that the guy?”
    She shook her head just
as Dr. Kerry said, “And this is our Chief of Surgery, Dr. Albert Clemens,
ladies and gentlemen. Although you might not see him when you perform or assist
in a surgical procedure, you should be well aware that Dr. Clemens is aware of
every move you make.”
    Good
or bad, we will have to face the consequences of our actions, I
recalled telling Allie before we left New York.
    “Yes, Doctors,” Dr.
Clemens rejoined, “being a surgeon requires aptitude, skills, knowledge, but
most of all, it requires feelings. Always remember that you are not performing
an operation on a corpse, such as you did in your anatomy classes, but the
person under your knife is alive until one of us kills that man or that woman.
Make absolutely no mistake: you will be faced with a dying patient. You will be
faced with a patient who will die no matter what you try; no matter how many
times you try reviving him or her. If God decides it’s time for this human
being to leave this earth, there is nothing anyone of us can do. Right or
wrong, the life of that patient is in your hands until God decides otherwise.”
    Wow, I
thought, no wonder this guy is chief of
surgery. He’s not going to give you a by-pass when you need a new organ, is he?
Straight off the shoulder; we’ll get it!
    “Any question?”
    I looked down at the
floor beneath my feet. I had no question to ask. Frankly, I wouldn’t have dared
ask him anything for fear of, at worst, being kicked out on my ass or, at best,
meeting his mocking rebuke.
    “Okay, Doctors,” Clemens
went on, “in a few minutes you will meet your resident surgeon. He, like Dr.
Rosalind here, will show you how to behave in an operating theater until you
are ready to assist any of our surgeons and then perform an operation yourself.
And I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, he might sound like a purring pussycat to
you now, but he is not, far from it in fact.” He looked at us–one by one. I
felt as if he was dissecting my face and