Free Family Practice by Marisa Carroll Page B

sure the employee files hadn’t been damaged in the office flood, and she couldn’t resist taking a peek. When had it happened? How? She wondered if they would ever be comfortable enough with each other for her to ask or for him to tell her.
    “I really am sorry for that remark about overfed tourists,” she said.
    “Don’t worry about it. I’m a PA, remember. I can’t go out and practice medicine on my own. I have to go along to get along. I’m used to dealing with M.D.s and their God complexes.”
    “I suppose you are.” There was no use denying the truth of what he said. Physician’s assistants were required to be affiliated with an M.D. or a hospital to practice their profession. “Regardless, I don’t care to think of myself as one of those God creatures. It still doesn’t make it right.”
    “If had to guess, I’d say I struck a nerve. Playing doctor on a cruise ship? Is it what you really want to do?”
    His question startled her into an honest answer. “I’m considering it. I have some time to decide.”
    “You realize the committee will probably ask you to stay on. They’d be fools not to. You’re a good doctor. But if you’re determined to go, it will influence the patients I assign to you. I can work with just about any M.D. I get handed, but some of our patients aren’t as flexible. They’re older. They don’t adapt well to change. They’ve already lost Gail, and she was the physician here almost from the day the clinic opened.”
    “Everyone is aware I’m only here temporarily.”
    “It won’t stop them from being upset when you leave.”
    “I understand. I’ll try not to get too close.”
    He blew out a breath. “That’s not what I was getting at.”
    “Wasn’t it? It doesn’t matter. It’s a good reminder. I’ll keep you informed of my plans.” She pulled her laptop in front of her and opened the lid. “We should get started. I’m ready when you are.”
    He hesitated a moment, staring down at his coffee mug before raising his eyes to her face. “Okay. We might as well get this out of the way up front. I would appreciate it if you take...a few...of my more...”
    “ Difficult patients?”
    “You could call them that.”
    “More specifically, your difficult female patients,” she finished for him.
    “Yes.” He pushed his coffee mug aside and picked up a pencil, twirling it between his fingers as he avoided her gaze. She had been prepared to stand her ground when the subject came up, but she found the sudden look of discomfiture on his face and the slight reddening of the skin of his throat disarming. “The, um, the ones of a...certain—”
    Good heavens, he was blushing. Zach Gibson, uncomfortable, embarrassed, knocked off his stride. She felt sorry for him but it was difficult to keep a smile from sneaking onto her face. Her mother had been right. He was being... sexually harassed was probably too strong a term...but certainly he was uncomfortable in at least a few patient relationships. “Premenopausal? Hormonally challenged?”
    “You’re enjoying this,” he said, his eyebrows drawing together above those incredibly blue eyes. The color was hard to describe—twilight on a summer day just before moonrise, maybe? Oh, man, what had gotten into her? She sounded as besotted as the women they were discussing. That was not acceptable. “It isn’t only women doctors who find themselves in uncomfortable situations with patients. Let’s just say a couple of them have...boundary issues...”
    “Bonnie stays with you in the exam room, doesn’t she?”
    “Of course, but let’s just say they’re inventive. I suspect they check her schedule, have emergencies on her day off, that kind of thing.”
    “I see,” Callie said.
    “In different circumstances I’d refer them to a women’s clinic or an ob-gyn, but that’s not what you do in a rural practice. We’re here to make health care more accessible, not more difficult. And that’s not a dig at your