LITMIR.BIZ

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had a thin gold chain around her neck but she still wasn’t sure if she was dressed smartly enough. Freya had arranged a morning tea yesterday to introduce Abi to everyone and all the staff she had met had seemed extraordinarily beautiful and impressively well-dressed.

      She supposed it made sense given that the clinic serviced the wealthy and elite of Los Angeles society but she wasn’t sure how, or if, she measured up by comparison. She suspected both her wardrobe and her looks were severely lacking and decided she’d have to wow them with her medical talents instead.

      She found her way to her office, where she was greeted by Jennifer, the secretary who took care of her and Damien, and the news that Damien had requested an eight-thirty meeting.

      A white doctor’s coat was hanging behind her office door. Still unsure about her outfit, she took the coat off the hook and slipped it over her clothes. She would feel more comfortable and in control if she was already in scrubs but this would have to do. Perhaps she could engineer her diary to ensure she spent most of her time in Theatre—she felt at home in that environment and in that uniform. She checked her reflection in the mirror on the wall and saw that the coat had The Hills’ intertwined double H logo monogrammed on the breast pocket. Like everything else in the clinic, even the coats had been taken to the next level.

      Damien’s door was open. She took a moment to check him out before she knocked. He was wearing a different suit today, dark navy with a pale blue shirt and a red silk tie embroidered with blue fleurs-de-lis, but he still looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Abi pulled the white coat more firmly around her as she knocked and entered. Her whole outfit had cost no more than a hundred dollars; Damien’s tie alone had probably cost twice that.

      There was a coffee waiting for her and Damien slid it across his desk as she sank into the leather seat by the window. His office was identical to hers in size and also looked out onto an internal courtyard complete with a bubbling water feature that had a stunning metal sculpture as its centrepiece. Everything about this place was slick and professional and for the first time since the previous day Abi relaxed slightly. It would be nice to be associated with this clinic. This move could turn out to be a good decision and having something work out right for her would be a pleasant change.

      ‘Milk?’ he asked, making a reference to their unexpected meeting last night. His voice was deep but it lightened when he smiled. She’d noticed how it changed with his mood, from serious surgeon to friendly colleague to charming shopper, and she wondered which one was the real Damien.

      She nodded but Damien was already adding it for her. ‘Do you know how our patient from yesterday is? Clementine?’ she queried. She’d been worried all night about the young woman who’d gone into cardiac arrest.

      ‘She’s in a stable condition. I just spoke to Geoff, our cardiologist. He’s monitoring her closely but he’s happy. She wasn’t physically strong enough to undergo surgery so, in a way, this is not a bad outcome. She’s had a long-standing eating disorder that her parents thought was being managed but it appears not. Clementine needs to agree to get more help,’ Damien replied.

      ‘What was she booked in for?’

      ‘A breast enlargement,’ Damien explained. ‘James had been delaying her operation, telling her she had to put on weight because her body wouldn’t cope with an anaesthetic, but I have no idea if this episode will make any difference. From what I understand, she’s had intervention and therapy many times before. Freya is going to see her with her psychologist’s hat on—she has a special interest in patients who have eating disorders—but if Clementine isn’t receptive she’ll be transferred to another facility. Apparently Clementine wants to stay here and her parents have agreed so that will be the carrot Freya dangles.’

      James Rothsberg was the head of the clinic and also a reconstructive and plastic surgeon, and Abi was relieved to hear that he had put the patient’s well-being first but surprised to hear that Clementine had been scheduled for a breast enlargement. ‘Do you do a lot of cosmetic surgery here?’

      ‘We are in Hollywood.’

      ‘I realise that.’

      ‘It’s not all we do,’ Damien continued, ‘but you’re assisting me in Theatre today and it’s what’s on our list and what I wanted to talk to you about.’

      ‘We’re doing cosmetic surgery? That’s not what I expected.’ She was a specialist in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery but her experience was in the reconstructive side of things. Cosmetic surgery wasn’t her forte.

      ‘It’s awards season in Hollywood,’ Damien said as he shrugged his shoulders in his bespoke suit jacket. ‘The film industry awards are only twelve days away, which makes this our busiest time of the year. Everyone wants something done without anyone knowing about it. James can’t possibly keep up with the demand so I lend a hand.

      ‘Don’t worry, no one will know you’ve relaxed your ethics,’ he added, making her wonder if he’d had another look at her résumé and refreshed his knowledge of her background. ‘The celebrities don’t want anyone to know they’ve had surgical assistance to look their best on awards night. We have a lot of rather wealthy and sometimes reclusive patients who demand privacy and anonymity. They won’t mention your name and they expect the same consideration from you.’

      He smiled again and Abi’s breath caught in her throat. ‘All your recognition will come from your reconstructive work and there will be plenty of that. We have an arrangement with the Bright Hope Clinic to do some charitable work for the underprivileged children who are treated there and that, along with the other external referrals that come to us for reconstructive surgery, will keep you occupied most of the time. But this cosmetic work on the celebrities and their partners, and the Hollywood heavy hitters and their mistresses, wives and girlfriends, and the cash they are prepared to part with for the best medical care and for our discretion means that we are able to do that charity work, and I suspect that will appeal to you.

      ‘You will get paid for any charity work that you do but The Hills, by which I mean James, absorbs those expenses. We are strong believers in giving back to the community. It’s a win-win situation. So, does that make you feel better about today’s list?’

      Abi nodded. She hadn’t really thought about the ramifications of the clinic’s location on the client base but Damien’s explanation did ease her conscience. Besides, the surgical procedures were the same no matter what you called them. Although the surgeries were performed for different reasons, aesthetics or function, the actual operations were similar and giving them labels such as cosmetic or reconstructive was really just semantics.

      ‘Okay,’ Damien continued, ‘on today’s list we have two blepharoplasties, one neck lift, two liposuctions, a breast lift and an arm lift. I have to warn you, a couple of our patients are men. One is a very well-known actor who has decided to treat himself to a neck lift and the other patient has recently left his wife and is planning on unveiling his much younger girlfriend at the awards and he wants to take a few years off his face with an eyelid lift. But remember, discretion is something we guarantee at The Hills and I know it’s been written into your contract but I need to know that you can rock a poker face. It doesn’t matter what we think about cosmetic surgery, these patients have their reasons for undergoing this work and we need to be discreet and respectful.’

      Abi had plenty of her own insecurities. While she didn’t think she’d ever resort to cosmetic surgery, as her insecurities weren’t really physical, she could understand people’s need to change or to make a better version of themselves to boost their confidence, and she wasn’t going to judge them for their choices. She understood that different things worked for different people and she certainly wouldn’t criticise a patient’s decision, although, given the opportunity, she thought she might try to dissuade some of the people some of the time.

      She wondered what the clinic’s policy on that was. Was honesty considered the best policy or was the bottom line the main consideration? But she wasn’t going to ask that question on her second day. She would toe the line for the moment, there would be time to find out later just how much she

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