LITMIR.BIZ

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then went upstairs to change into her surgical attire. Within ten minutes the patient was on the table, being anesthetized. She moved to the left-hand side of the table and waited for the signal from the anesthetist to start. She could hear the monitors firing, her patient’s heart rate racing, just as hers was. She knew she could do it. Knew they wouldn’t have let her if she couldn’t. But there was something about being the most qualified person in the room, with no one to help her if she got in over her head, that was terrifying.

      She needed to set the tone. Everyone in the room was on edge because of the severity of the situation. The only way to bring people down was to lead by example, to stay calm. She could do that. She held out her gloved hand. “Knife.”

      She worked meticulously, creating an incision extending from either side of the metal shard that was plunged into the center of the man’s abdomen. She couldn’t just pull it out, she needed the shard in place to act as a tamponade for the bleeding until she could identify which organs and vessels had been damaged. She worked through the layers of the abdominal wall until she was able to place a retractor to hold open the wound and give her the complete visualization she needed.

      Damn, she thought to herself. The metal was extending into the transverse colon and the abdomen was completely contaminated, placing the patient at high risk for postoperative infection. Thankfully, the shard had stopped before reaching the aorta, which lay two centimeters below the tip.

      Typically this was when her attending would ask her what she wanted to do. Did she want to repair the bowel or remove a segment of the damaged bowel, and if she chose the latter, did she want to do a primary or secondary repair? She knew the answer, but this was thefirst time she was taking one hundred percent ownership of the decision.

      She called out to the circulating nurse and requested the necessary staplers and devices. Within an hour she was sitting in the recovery room with her patient, completing her postoperative orders and dictation.

      Her emotions were mixed. On one hand she was proud of her surgical accomplishment; on the other, she felt for her patient, who still had a long road ahead of him to full recovery.

      The automatic doors swung open and Dr. Carter walked in alongside the stretcher on which his patient was being transferred to the recovery room. He approached Kate, and she prepared to defend her decision to resect the bowel with delayed anastomosis.

      “Dr. Shepherd has just arrived and is going to take over the third room until things are clear. Thank you for your help today. Your patient has been formally admitted under my care, but you should consider him yours until he goes home.”

      “Thank you again.”

      “Don’t thank me. You proved yourself long ago.”

      She retraced her steps through the hospital, collecting her belongings from the various locations she had been. She had never questioned her decision to become a surgeon but in that moment she had never been more certain that she had made the right choice. She felt like the doctor and woman she wanted to be, confident and in control, and it was time for her to take control of all aspects of her life.

      She dug through her bag in search of her phone and the business card the hospital’s lawyer, Jeff Sutherland, had left her after the initial meeting. She dialed the number and waited as it rang.

      “McKayne.”

      “It’s Kate. We need to talk.” It was the understatement of the year, but what she needed to say she needed to say in person. She wasn’t going to take the easy way out over the phone.

      “I won’t dispute that.” His assuredness irritated her and she tried to stay on track.

      “Where are you now?”

      “I’m at my apartment—do you need the address?” Yes, she would need the address. Leaving a man’s apartment at three in the morning after an unexpected sexual encounter did not typically lend itself to remembering logistics, but it did remind her of the dangers of entering a lion’s den.

      “No. I mean I don’t need the address because I’m not coming over. Can you meet me at Gathering Grounds on Beacon Street?” She held her breath, waiting for his response.

      “I can probably be there in about an hour.”

      “Okay. I’ll see you then.” She pushed the off button, not wanting to prolong the conversation. She needed to keep every ounce of the confidence she had gained this afternoon for when she met Matt.

      Almost exactly an hour later Matt entered the coffee shop. She knew he was there the moment he walked through the door, and she watched him get a coffee and then join her at her table.

      “We need to speak quietly while we’re talking about the case.”

      “I don’t want to talk about the case,” she said, still quietly, her personal life just as confidential to her as the details of the lawsuit.

      “Okay, so what do you want to talk about?”

      “Us.”

      “You said you didn’t want to discuss the past.”

      “I don’t. I want to make things clear now.”

      “Kate, nothing is more clear. You want me and I want you.”

      He was right. She wouldn’t deny it. How could she when he had witnessed her response to him? Even as he spoke the words her body flushed with the memory of him. She swallowed hard and forced herself to remain focused. “That doesn’t matter.”

      “How can it not matter that every time we touch, neither of us can keep control?”

      “Because I can keep control, Matt. I don’t know you, I never did. But I remember what it feels like to be hurt by you and those memories are way stronger than any physical attraction that still lingers between us.”

      His face, which had been heated describing the passion between them, cooled, and she faced a steely expression before he spoke. “Do you want a different lawyer?”

      “No. You need to fix this for me, because I know you can. But while you are doing that I want you to forget everything else that is between us. The only relationship we have is of lawyer and client.”

      “The attraction between us isn’t going away, Kate, no matter how hard you try to control it or tell me to ignore it.”

      “But you are, Matt. When this case is done you are going to move on back to your high-society life and you’ll forget that I ever existed.”

      “And what if I can’t?”

      “You can, Matt, and you have. You just need to do it again.”

      Kate spent the remainder of the weekend trying to get caught up with life. Her work schedule made even basic life tasks seem like monumental challenges. Cleaning her apartment, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and sorting her mail were all luxuries saved up for a rare day off. Her student-loan statement was a grim reminder of the ruin she faced if they lost the case. She had no way to pay back that amount of debt, not to mention the money she owed her father, unless she was employed as a surgeon, and that was dependent on the case. Not to mention the pain of losing her chance to devote her career to women with breast cancer, women like her mother.

      She moved through the apartment, trying to restore the same order to her home life as she had her personal life, and eventually she felt more herself than she had since Matt’s return. She had done it. She had taken the steps she needed to protect herself and her heart. She would never let him hurt her again, because if she did she knew she wouldn’t survive it.

      Her sense of peace remained with her until Monday afternoon. Matt’s office called and scheduled a meeting for Thursday. The receptionist didn’t provide any details about why they were meeting. She could only assume it was to continue the conversation that had been cut short on the weekend. Two feelings filled her and neither was welcome. One was a sense of dread at having to relive the night of Mr. Weber’s death and her time with Mrs. Weber. The other was hurt that Matt hadn’t called

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