Passionate Rivals Read online

  “You’ll get your chance. All you have to do is show them how good you are.”

  “All I have to do is tell them to go take a flying—”

  “Not today,” Syd said grimly. “Today we keep our heads down until we know what we have to fight.”

  Dani folded her arms and stared daggers at the lithe redhead who’d made the comment as she turned to give them a cold, condescending sneer.

  “She’s hot,” Dani said under her breath.

  Jerry smirked. “She’d tear your throat out, Tiger.”

  “Not scared,” Dani said.

  Maguire finally held up a hand, and once more, the room quieted, although the low hum of voices didn’t completely disperse this time.

  “I know this will be an adjustment for everyone,” Maguire said, “residents and attendings alike. But our census shows we have enough patients system wide and ample cases to provide appropriate training experience for everyone. There will be a revised organizational schedule for the various surgical services incorporating our new Franklin residents available later today. I expect our present residents to extend themselves to their new colleagues in explaining how our services run and assisting them in any way possible during the transition.”

  “My ass,” a male voice barked.

  “No way,” a female resident said just loud enough to be heard by those around her, but her comment didn’t carry down to the stage. “I’m not babysitting anybody.”

  Maguire went on, “Will the Franklin residents please wait here. The rest of you, we have a surgical service to run. Let’s get to it.”

  Maguire turned and walked off the stage, taking no questions. For a moment, no one in the room moved, and then everyone surged at once. Clumps of people clogged the aisles as voices rose in question or complaint. The doors behind where Syd was sitting banged open, and Emmett hurtled in, followed by the blonde who’d been with her outside the trauma unit earlier. The redhead who’d been making all the snarky comments met them in the middle of the aisle a few rows from Syd.

  “What did we miss?” Emmett said.

  The redhead shot another incendiary glare in Syd’s direction. “You won’t fucking believe this.”

  * * *

  “What are you talking about,” Emmett said, shifting so people could get around her to the exit.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Sadie repeated.

  “Come on, Matthews,” Zoey said, “what’s the deal?”

  Sadie inclined her head toward a group of residents Emmett didn’t recognize, except for one. Syd stood at the center of the scrum with everyone looking at her. Apparently she was their leader. No surprise there.

  “Come on.” Emmett tipped her head toward the back of the auditorium and threaded her way through the slowly moving, murmuring throng to an out-of-the-way corner. “Well?”

  “We just picked up twelve new residents, three in every year,” Sadie said. “Their interns are going to be second years along with our second years.”

  “Wait a minute,” Emmett said. “Every year? Three new residents a year all the way through?”

  “Yup.” Sadie almost smiled. “Including fifth year.”

  Zoey’s eyebrows climbed. “How the hell are they going to do that?”

  Emmett shook her head. She couldn’t see it. That would make eight residents in the fifth year. That was a big program for any hospital, and all eight would have to meet the minimum caseload to sit for the boards. That was a lot of cases. “There’s got to be some mistake. Maybe they’re holding them all back a year or something.”

  Sadie laughed, just a little smugly. “Um, that wouldn’t solve anything. Except for your year. Of course.”

  Emmett sighed. “Come on, Sadie. Give me a break.”

  “Nope. Too easy.” Sadie shrugged. “Anyhow, that’s not the way Maguire put it. According to the chief, we’ve got plenty of patients to go around.”

  Zoey snorted. “There’s never enough patients to go around.”

  “Yeah, well,” Sadie said, raising her voice, “the cases at PMC belong to PMC residents.”

  “Cut it out, Sadie,” Emmett said. “They’re not the enemy.”

  “Says who.” Sadie made a face, her shamrock-green eyes flaring. “Oh, wait—more names for your one-nighter list.”

  Zoey snapped, “Grow up, Sadie. Like you didn’t know—”

  “Enough, already,” Emmett said. “This is not the place.”

  “Fine.” Sadie abruptly swiveled and beelined out the door.

  “She is really in a twist,” Zoey said, laughing softly. “What did you do to her—hit her with your megaton charm bomb?”

  “Oh, leave off,” Emmett said.

  “Can’t help myself.” Expression suddenly somber, Zoey said, “So, what do you think?”

  “If Sadie’s right, that explains what all those new residents are doing here, but I don’t get why Syd is here. She—”

  “Ha! So you do know her. Come on, spill it.”

  Emmett grimaced. “Not now. Besides, it was all a long time ago, and I don’t really know anything about her.”

  Zoey gave her a long, hard stare. “You’ve got history.”

  “No, we don’t. Like I said, I was a medical student, and she was an intern. Our paths crossed while I was interviewing for first year spots. I barely knew her.”

  Zoey’s brow wrinkled. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense then. If she was a year ahead of you, she shouldn’t be here. Unless she got held back for some reason. Maybe she failed her boards.”

  “No. Syd was a superstar.” Emmett glanced past Zoey and locked eyes with Syd. She hadn’t meant to, but her gaze had traveled in that direction as if pulled by a magnet. Which was bullshit. She was just curious. Who wouldn’t be? All the same, she couldn’t look away. “You had to be the best to get into University…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Emmett said. Nothing was making sense. Syd had been an intern in one of the two best surgical training programs in the city, hell, in the entire country. PMC rivaled the University Hospital program for the caliber of the attendings and the caseloads but didn’t have quite as much research money as University Hospital. Hence, PMC fell a notch below University in prestige, for all that mattered. So why was Syd part of this group from Franklin? Franklin’s program was well-known for its strong community roots and wealth of surgical experience in everyday cases, but not much in the way of the unusual, once-in-a-lifetime cases they routinely saw at PMC. “Like I said, I don’t know anything.”

  “Well, I think you’re about to.”

  “Huh?” Emmett said absently, watching as the dozen Franklin residents slowly made their way toward the back of the auditorium.

  A voice from behind her said, “McCabe, my office.”

  Emmett didn’t need to turn around to recognize the speaker. “Okay, Chief.”

  Maguire moved past her and stopped the group of Franklin residents just as they reached the foyer at the rear of the auditorium. Emmett and Zoey hung back, watching. Maguire shook hands with everyone, said something Emmett couldn’t quite make out, and snagged one of the second year PMC residents who was also loitering nearby. A minute later, the PMC resident, wearing a reluctant expression, led the Franklin residents away.

  Zoey laughed. “Looks like Watanobe got snagged to play tour guide. If he misses the hernia he was supposed to do this morning, he’s going to be pissed.”

  “Probably a lot of people will be pissed for a while,” Emmett said. The Franklin residents disappeared, all except one. Syd and Maguire left together.

  “Uh-oh,” Zoey said. “Looks like you better get going or you might get left behind.”

  “Have I ever mentioned you are a pain in my ass?” Emmett said.

  Zoey’s grin widened. “Frequently. Call me as soon as you’re done?”

  “Yeah. I hope this doesn’t take too long. I’ve got a case.”

  “You hope,” Zoey said.

  Shaking her head, Emmett hustled out a
nd jogged down the hall in the direction of Maguire’s office. She had a feeling whatever was about to go down was going to ruin her day.

  Chapter Five

  Before Emmett made it halfway down the hall, a horde of PMC residents descended on her.

  “Are we really going to have three more residents in our year?” a second year asked, a panicked expression on her face. Three or four other junior residents, all of them looking so young Emmett was sometimes surprised they were even doctors, talked over each other in a chaotic downpour.

  “Are they going to cut three of us—do you think they’ll do it right away?”

  “Will they—”

  Emmett couldn’t remember being so fresh-faced, wide-eyed, and green. When she had arrived along with twenty-four other first years, she’d been scared and exhilarated and raring to prove herself. She remembered being more sure of herself than this bunch, but maybe that was just self-flattery tinctured by time.

  She pictured herself that first morning in early summer, sitting in the Strom Auditorium where she’d just been, feeling dwarfed by the size of the room, surreptitiously checking out the other first years, taking stock of her competition. Those two dozen eager, bright-eyed newly minted doctors were her rivals, and they all knew it. They all accepted it. They’d been forged in the fires of cutthroat competition since college. Premed had been a shark fest, everyone vying for the highest grades, the best recommendations, a chance at a stint in the best research lab, and choice summer externships in hospitals and clinics. Then came medical school and the fight to stand out on clinical rotations, the race to be the first one with the answer on rounds, the one who never went home from the hospital, the one with the flash. She’d had the flash, but she’d had the will and the grit to sacrifice too. Okay, and maybe she had a bit more of the shark to her. She couldn’t apologize for that. When you were elbow deep in a living person, fighting against the odds, you needed a bit of the shark.

  The junior residents looked younger by the second as mass anxiety grew into rising hysteria. Time to yank them back from the edge.

  “You heard the chief this morning,” Emmett said sharply. “Nothing’s changed—yet. Same ground rules. There’s always room at the top. So be on the top. You’ve all got services to get to. What are you doing standing around in the hall?”

  A ripple of unease shivered through the crowd, feet shuffled, hands disappeared into pockets, and shoulders hunched. She couldn’t offer them consolation or encouragement. That wasn’t what they needed. She couldn’t change the circumstances, and if they were to survive, they’d have to find their own way to climb to the top of the pile.

  “Yeah but…” one of the second years said cautiously.

  “What, Reynolds?” Emmett fixed the brunette with a hard stare. Reynolds was probably the weakest in her year. Smart, but she lacked confidence. Self-doubt was a cardinal sin for a surgeon. One of the first of many tenets the senior residents taught the first years was that a surgeon could be wrong, but never uncertain. Hesitation in an emergency killed far more often than a confident decision that might turn out to be wrong later.

  Simple rules to live by. To survive by.

  “If you want to make it through this program,” Emmett said, her gaze taking in each one of them in rapid-fire, “then you better hit the floors, find the cases, and prove you know what you’re doing. Things just got a lot harder. Sink or swim, people.”

  Backs stiffened, gazes sharpened, and the baby sharks pivoted and took off at a run. Emmett watched them go. The senior residents would have to be watching them a lot more carefully from now on. A whole new batch of fish had just been dumped into their waters, and the battle to stay alive was going to be bloody.

  She had a fight of her own to win, and she picked up her pace. As she rounded the corner to the chief’s office, a wave of déjà vu washed over her. Her midsection still ached from the shot she’d taken from Syd. Her whole body still vibrated from the sensation of lying under her on the floor, arms and legs entangled, the scent of…rosemary? yeah, rosemary wafting over her.

  “Hey, Gary,” she said to the hipster behind the desk in front of the chief’s closed office door. “The chief wanted to see me.”

  Gary lifted a brow, his gaze sharp behind his Warby Parker frames. “She’s waiting. Go on in.”

  “Thanks,” Emmett said, her throat suddenly and unexpectedly dry. Maguire was her secret idol. Maguire was the reason she was here. She’d had a good shot at a place at University Hospital, but Maguire, young, aggressive, hard driving, and with a reputation for being fast and fearless in the OR, had won her over. That’s what Emmett wanted to be—fast and fearless, the best of the best. With Maguire at the helm of a strong surgical department that was still small enough for residents to matter, and plenty of cases to give her all the surgery she could handle, PMC had been her first choice.

  Interviewers weren’t allowed to tell a candidate where they stood on their acceptance list, any more than a candidate was supposed to say where they wanted to go, but everyone knew the code. Three other surgical heads, including the one at University, had indicated interest. Maguire hadn’t given her any sign as to where she stood. None of the catchphrases—We think you’re a strong candidate for a program like ours, You’d make a great fit here, We expect you will rank highly anywhere.

  After the interview when they’d shaken hands, all Maguire had said was, “Think hard about what kind of training you want. Anyone who comes here will be asked to do more than they ever thought they could and will have to work harder than they would anywhere else, because the only way to be the best is to give more than you think you have to give.”

  Emmett had known immediately this was her place.

  Her place.

  She knocked on the office door, heard Maguire tell her to come in, and entered the chief’s corner office. Windows on one side overlooked the wide tree-lined avenue that fronted the medical center, and out the adjacent side a view of the parking lot and a rolling expanse of green park stretched for two blocks surrounding the hospital. PMC sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood, unlike the Center City hospitals. PMC was part of the community, and most of the staff lived nearby. PMC offered the best of both worlds—a high-powered trauma center and top-tier medical school, right where people actually lived. Another thing Emmett loved about the place.

  Two chairs sat in front of Maguire’s broad dark oak desk. A pile of journals sat in one corner next to a stack of patient charts, her laptop occupied the other, and two green file folders placed side by side filled the center next to a steaming coffee cup. Emmett eyed those two green folders, an uneasy feeling settling in her gut.

  “Have a seat, McCabe,” Quinn Maguire said.

  Syd already occupied the left-hand chair and Emmett took the right. Maguire leaned back in her black swivel office chair and took a sip of her coffee.

  “Introductions. Emmett McCabe,” Maguire said, nodding to first Emmett, then Syd. “Sydney Stevens.”

  Emmett turned to Syd and took her outstretched hand.

  Syd’s eyes met hers as their hands touched. Syd’s fingers were cool and dry and strong as they clasped hands. Emmett searched her gaze for a sign of challenge, or anger, or some hint of recognition. Nothing but cool appraisal, which she would’ve expected from anyone. Starting from zero, then. And where else would they start? They were strangers, after all.

  “Morning,” Emmett said.

  “Hello.”

  Syd smiled for a fraction of a second, and Emmett almost thought she heard again after the hello. Syd let go of her hand and turned back to Maguire, and Emmett mentally chided herself. Just her imagination.

  “You’re both fourth years,” Maguire said.

  The buzz in Emmett’s head grew a little louder. She could count the times she’d had a private meeting with the chief on one finger. She didn’t even need that one. She’d hoped, okay, expected a meeting like this when Maguire told her she’d be chief resident next year. This was not
the picture she had in mind. She didn’t need to look at Syd to feel the tension radiating from her still, tense form.

  “We’ve got less than two months before the new first years arrive,” Maguire said. “By then we need to have the Franklin residents integrated into our services so we can all concentrate on keeping the first years from drowning. I’ll expect the senior residents to see that happens—all the senior residents.”

  Emmett nodded. Nothing new here—part of being a senior resident was teaching the juniors how to be residents. The attendings taught by sharing their experience, and by example. That’s why the fight to get into the OR was so vicious—all the critical lessons happened there.

  “Ordinarily,” Maguire went on, “we wouldn’t be making any announcements about the fifth year until next month, but this isn’t usual circumstances.”

  Emmett couldn’t even hear Syd breathing the room was so quiet.

  “McCabe,” Maguire said, “you were slated for the chief resident slot.”

  Emmett’s gut tightened. The word were ricocheted in her brain like a gunshot. She waited.

  “Stevens,” Maguire said, shifting her gaze from Emmett to Syd. “According to your program director, you were to be chief also. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” Syd said calmly.

  “So,” Maguire said, “we have an embarrassment of riches and a situation we need to resolve quickly for the sake of stabilizing our program.” She leaned forward. “Our number one priority from this moment forward is to see that every PMC resident receives the best training possible. Every resident. This is the last time you’ll hear me refer to the Franklin residents. The only residents here are PMC residents. I expect that to be the case with everyone.”

  “Yes, Chief,” Emmett and Syd said in the same breath.

  Emmett had a feeling a sword was hanging over her head. Four years of hard work and sacrifice. She’d known when she’d chosen surgery, the longest, most grueling, most competitive training program, what she was getting into. They’d all known. No, that wasn’t true. No one could really know, no one could really be prepared, without experiencing the endless nights without sleep, the relentless pressure to excel, the constant need to make life-or-death decisions. They lived on the knife edge of failure—one wrong step away from catastrophe. Oh, they all knew what the textbooks said about diagnosis and treatment, they’d seen case after case, learned and studied and copied their mentors, but nothing could prepare them for the moment when they were alone in the midst of a crisis, when a patient’s fate came down to what they said with no one standing behind them, no safety net, no do-overs. In that moment, when they needed to push past the fear and reach deep inside for the strength and courage to act, they were alone.