JAKOB CALLIN LEANED over the bed of his patient, a teenager who’d been involved in an accident involving fireworks, and tried to decipher what the boy was saying. The reconstruction process on his jaw would be a long and arduous one. And the burns on his face would require some painful debriding and, very likely, skin grafting. The meds had eased some of the pain, but that combined with shock meant that he was trying to talk when he should be lying quiet. But he would have plenty of quiet days when his lower jaw was immobilized after surgery, leaving him to speak between clenched teeth.
“I want go rom...”
“Your room? You’re already in your room.”
The boy’s eyes shut, and he shook his head, his right hand going up to his face. “Rom...” he tried again. “Go rom.”
Jake took the boy’s hand and pressed it back onto the mattress, trying his damnedest to work out what he was getting so upset about. Maybe about his looks?
“We’ll do all we can to make sure that your face is restored—”
“He’s not worried about his face right now. He’s worried about not getting to go to prom next week with his girlfriend, who is right outside this room.”
The soft female voice came from over his shoulder, making him glance back. The slight accent caught him off guard, even more than her irritation, which was thinly veiled. Very thinly veiled, judging from the way her brows were pulled together in a sharp V.
He looked back at his patient who was now nodding his head.
So that’s what he was trying to say. How had she...?
And what was she so irritated about?
Although he should be used to that by now. His ex’s growing frustration every time he’d said “let’s give it some time” when she’d wanted to start a family had soon sounded the death knell to their relationship. Frustration had soon given way to manipulation and then anger.
“Right now, you need to concentrate on healing, Matt, okay? Do you want me to go out and talk to your girlfriend?” He hesitated. “What is her name?”
“Gracie. Her name is Gracie,” came the voice from behind him. Again.
This time he didn’t look. But surprisingly, and despite the impatience he’d seen in her expression, her face was already imprinted on his brain. With hair the color of his daddy’s mahogany cigar box—the one Jake kept on his desk as a remembrance—the swirls and curves of those shiny locks had led his gaze straight to her face. Which was...beautiful. Even when she was angry. Or maybe because she was angry.
He kept his eyes on his patient. “Do you want me to talk to Gracie? Or maybe you’d like to see her for a few seconds.”
This time the kid shook his head with a vehemence that told Jake everything he needed to know. He’d seen that look before on any number of his patients who didn’t want their loved ones to see them like they were. Most didn’t even want to look at themselves in the mirror in the beginning. Jake always did his best to change that.
“Okay. I get it. I’m sure she’ll understand, though. Do you want me to talk to her?” he asked again.
The boy gave a hard nod, but his eyes stared at the ceiling, not coming back to meet his.
Matt wasn’t sure the girlfriend would understand. Jake wasn’t sure, either. But hell. He hoped she would.
He swiveled on his stool to face the nurse who’d, in effect, scolded him. He was right about what she looked like. With delicate brows and cheekbones that seemed a mile high, she was a plastic surgeon’s idea of perfection. Only Jake didn’t deal in perfection. Not anymore. He simply did everything in his power to help his patients get back to living their lives in a way that caused them as little physical or emotional distress as possible.
Since this woman seemed to have definite ideas about what he should do, he arched a brow at her and inclined his head toward the other side of the room. He got up from his stool and moved to the area he’d indicated, halfway surprised when he turned and saw that she’d followed him.
“So do you want to go out and talk to Gracie, or do you think I’m capable of that, at least?”
Color rushed into her face, and he realized he’d embarrassed her. It wasn’t his intent. He’d been trying to make a joke at his own expense. But then again, he didn’t have much luck with that, either, when it came to talking to women, it seemed. At least not judging from the way his ex-girlfriend—a model—had chosen to break things off, moving out of their apartment when he’d been away at a conference. Looking back, he could see how poor of a match he and Samantha had been. He’d finally realized he’d been taken in by a pretty face—someone more interested in the status symbol of dating a doctor and what that could give her than she’d been in him as a person. He was pretty sure the having children angle had been her way of manipulating him into staying when it looked like their relationship was beginning to fracture. She’d obviously never expected him to say no to the request.
Whatever the reasons, he never wanted to go through a messy breakup like that again.
“I’m sorry if I...” The nurse’s words trailed away, that same slight accent coming through that had caught his attention before. He was around people of all nationalities so he should be used to accents. But this one was a little different from what he was accustomed to, he just wasn’t sure how.
“No. I’m sorry. We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. You’re new here at the hospital?”
She hesitated. “Sort of. I’ve been here for two weeks, but in the scheme of things, you could say I’m new. To the hospital, anyway, although I’ve lived in Texas ever since I was his age.” She indicated their patient on the bed.
“Sorry not to have welcomed you to Westlake Memorial before now, then. Have you been in this department the whole two weeks?”
If so, he wasn’t sure how their paths had not crossed yet.
“Yes. We’ve worked together on a couple of other patients.”
Hell, he was slipping. He normally prided himself on noticing the little things and chatting with the nurses he worked with. But evidently not this time. “In that case, I’m sorry again.” He glanced at the badge hanging from her lanyard. “Eliana Pessoa?”
She corrected the pronunciation of her last name, although this time she smiled. And those high cheekbones carved out hollows beneath them that made his mouth go dry.
Get it together, Callin.
“So what do you suggest we tell Gracie?”
“The truth. But I wouldn’t make any promises you can’t keep about his appearance.”
“I don’t do that, since every patient’s body reacts differently to surgery.”
There was a pause. “Yes, it does.”
Something about the way she said that made him glance at her a little closer. Maybe a little too close, since she looked behind her before taking a step back. “Well, I need to check on a couple of other patients. Are you sure you don’t want me to talk to Gracie?”
“I’ve been doing this a while and haven’t had too many complaints, so I think I can do it.” He smiled to soften the words.
“Okay, then. I’ll see you later.”
With that, she walked toward the door, a hitch in her step that was as faint as her accent, and something that he probably wouldn’t have caught if he hadn’t been staring at her.
Before she walked out, she looked at the patient. “I’ll check on you in a bit, Matt. Try to get some rest.”
The boy somehow managed to give her a thumbs-up sign, which made her smile again before she swept out of the room.
What had just happened here?
He wasn’t sure, but it seemed he’d just met a nurse who advocated for her patients as strongly as he prided himself on doing. Not that Westlake wasn’t full of nurses who did everything possible to help the patients under their care. There was just an empathy...an understanding to her manner that caught his attention.
Or was it her looks?
Was he really that shallow? Hell, he hoped not, although Samantha had caught his attention for the exact same reason. And he didn’t like it.
So he was going to do his best to tread lightly around Eliana Pessoa. Because another thing Jake prided himself on was learning from his mistakes. No matter how painful that process might be.
Elia was glad to be out of there. She wasn’t sure why, but being around Dr. Callin made her jittery in a way that made her grumpy. She was pretty sure some of that had come through when she’d addressed him, but it was either that or let him get under her skin, where she wasn’t sure she could shake him off.
The fact that he couldn’t even remember working with her those other times shouldn’t make her feel invisible. There were enough nurses coming in and out of rooms that it was probably hard to keep them all straight. And from what she understood, he was a plastic surgeon who had shifted over to specializing in burns and reconstruction from traumatic injuries. Like Matt’s, though the teen’s burns were almost as significant as his shattered jaw. That was one thing she hadn’t had to deal with as a child when she was in a burn unit in her home country of Portugal and undergoing surgery after surgery. Despite all of that effort, her right leg looked and behaved quite a bit differently from her left one. But at least it was still there. Things could have been so much worse.
She lowered herself into a chair in the hospital’s Mocha Café and took her first sip of coffee. Hot and sweet, the espresso didn’t have quite the bite the ones that her mom made for her at home had, but it was still good. Or maybe she’d just become Americanized.
Stretching her leg out in front of her, she tried to relieve a little of the neuralgia that being on her feet all day caused while, at the same time, keeping a slight bend in her knee so as not to aggravate the contracture that the scarring from her burns had caused. She couldn’t straighten it all the way, and her last doctor had told her that after all this time, things were pretty much set in stone unless they went in and did some cutting and regrafting. There was no guarantee that it would help, since her body didn’t deal kindly with scar tissue—a result of genetics.
She took another sip of her coffee, relishing the heat that washed down her throat and hit her stomach. Resting her chin on the palm of her free hand, she took another sip, letting her eyes close.
She was bone tired. She still had two hours left of her shift, but her nursing supervisor had taken one look at her as she came out of Matt’s room and had told her to take a break. Elia hadn’t argued. She hadn’t wanted to watch Dr. Callin go over to talk to Matt’s girlfriend.
Maybe she shouldn’t have specialized in burns in nursing school. But it was where she felt like she could do the most good. She’d gone through some of what her patients were experiencing, although maybe not to the degree that Matt would, since the reminders of her injuries were hidden from view. So many of their patients didn’t have that luxury. Some were even fighting for their lives.
She sensed more than felt someone’s presence and opened her eyes to find Jakob Callin had entered the room and glanced her way.
Deus! Just what she needed...for him to find her practically asleep. Although she hadn’t been really. For Elia, “resting her eyes” wasn’t a euphemism for sleeping. It really did help to shut out the world for a few moments and quiet her soul.
He changed his trajectory and headed toward her. She braced herself, bending her right knee until her legs were together under the table. She didn’t know why she was wary of him noticing something like that, but she was. When she was dressed she could pretend she wasn’t different. And she wasn’t, in so many ways, but even after all these years she still got self-conscious about it, which was why she rarely ever wore a swimsuit or shorts, even in the middle of a Dallas summer, when the heat could take your breath away.
When she’d arrived in the States, there had already been so much different about her besides her leg: her grasp of English, being the new kid in a school where friendships were already formed, wearing yoga pants instead of gym shorts to PE classes. So there was a tiny part of her that felt that people were looking for any sign of weakness, even if they weren’t. It made her strive to excel in everything she did, including her job.
Dr. Callin arrived at her table and glanced down at her. “Just wanted to say I’m sorry for not properly welcoming you to the team. Sheryll confirmed you’ve been here for two weeks already. That’s not like me.”
Had he not believed her?
“It’s okay. Really.” Another thing Elia tended to do was stay in the background where she was less likely to be noticed. So it was pretty unlike her to go up and challenge someone who was in authority over her. But Matt’s case had touched her heart, for some reason. Maybe because she was willing his girlfriend to stick it out with him. To not care that he might look a little different—once all of the surgeries were over and done with—from the guy she’d first been attracted to.
While Elia had never actually had a man drop her once they found out about her scarring, she had caught them avoiding touching those areas, probably in deference to her feelings. And one of the men she’d dated had actually kept the covers pulled up over their legs whenever they’d made love. All it did was make her even more self-conscious. She’d stopped seeing him soon afterward.
Well, it didn’t matter, because she wasn’t dating Dr. Callin.
“It’s not okay. Do you have time for me to join you for a few minutes? Sheryll said she’s already given you the rundown on the department, but I’d like to get your thoughts on a few things.”
So maybe she was going to be lambasted for challenging him in public. Although she didn’t really see it that way. She’d merely been helping him understand what the patient was saying. The way she’d wished people had been able to understand her when she’d first arrived at her new home in Austin. Matt was going to have to learn to talk all over again once his jaw was reconstructed, especially if his tongue had been affected by the explosion.
“Um...sure.” If she said no, he was going to wonder why. And she was going to have to work with him. No matter that he made her insides tuck and roll for some reason.
With thick hair—already peppered with some gray—that was swept up and over his forehead, bright blue eyes and some scruff on his jaw, the man was an imposing figure. He looked strong and sure and in control. And for someone like Elia, who in her twenty-six years had gone through life events where she felt completely out of control, he was intimidating, even though he probably didn’t mean to be.
“Great. I’ll be right back. Do you want anything while I’m up getting my coffee?”
“No, I’m good, but thank you.”
When her dad, who was an engineer, had been approached to work for a company in the States, he’d traveled back and forth from Portugal to Austin for close to a year before her mom had said enough was enough and that if he liked his job that much, they would relocate so they could all be together. And so began the second big upheaval in her life. First her leg. Then leaving behind her friends and everything she knew.
But she didn’t regret the move. She missed her relatives in Castelo Branco, but she went back to visit her home country every couple of years, usually jigging her holiday time so it coincided with her parents’ when they flew to Portugal.
She watched Dr. Callin as he walked and ordered coffee, which was handed to him in a big American-sized mug rather than the much smaller demitasse her own espresso had come in. She drained the rest of it, grimacing when the now lukewarm liquid hit her tongue.
When she’d decided she wanted to work in a hospital with a burn unit, the huge hospital in Dallas was the obvious choice. Her mom had been afraid her career would make her relive the trauma of being burned over and over, but surprisingly it didn’t. It made her feel stronger, if anything, like she was turning something terrible into something useful by helping people who found themselves in a position like the one she’d been in throughout her childhood. And strangely, it sometimes helped when people found out she really did know what it felt like to undergo some of those not-so-fun procedures.
He was headed back to her table, so she took a deep breath and braced herself for a barrage of questions about why she’d chosen the field, etc.
He slid into the chair across from her, and the click of his cup as he set it down on the table seemed extraordinarily loud, even though it hadn’t been. And the silence that followed seemed horribly, terribly empty. She racked her brain to think of something to say.
“So how long have you been at Westlake?”
His cup stopped midway to his lips as if surprised by her question. “I’ve been here ever since I started med school.”
Of course, that made sense. Westlake Memorial was a big teaching hospital. She’d actually been surprised to be hired on by them, since they probably could handpick their staff just from the students who came through their doors. But she’d been top of her class, too, even though the school she’d gone to wasn’t quite as prestigious as the one attached to Westlake.
He took a sip of his own coffee. “And Sheryll tells me you’re originally from Austin?”
That made her smile. She knew she still had an accent so there was no way that he thought she was born and raised in Austin. “Not originally, no. I was born in Portugal, but my dad got a job in Austin, so we moved to the States when I was just starting high school.”
“And you didn’t want to go back after you graduated?”
The question surprised her. “My closest family members are here, although I go back to Portugal to visit when I can.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything for a minute. Suddenly she regretted slugging back the rest of her coffee. At least it would have given her something to do with her hands. She wished he would just get to the point of whatever he wanted to say to her. Did he drink coffee with every new staff member?
“We normally have cake for new staff members.” He smiled as if reading her thoughts. “Maybe that’s what threw me and why I didn’t realize you had just come here. But Sheryll said you asked her not to do anything special.”
In reality, Elia hated being in the spotlight. Her family already knew not to signal waiters when it was her birthday. The thought of a group of strangers gathering around her table and singing “Happy Birthday” to her wasn’t her idea of fun, although Tomás loved it. Her mom had once told her that she’d wanted a big family with lots of children, but that it hadn’t been in the cards, since she’d ended up having a hysterectomy in her early thirties due to endometrial cancer. It had been caught early, though, and her mom had been cancer free ever since, thank God.
She shrugged. “I figured I could get to know people on my own terms.” Feeling she needed to add something more, she said, “I’m really happy to be at Westlake.”
“And we’re happy you’re here.” His smile grew. “And you really saved my bacon when you helped me understand what our patient was saying.”
Okay, so by context she understood what he meant by saving his bacon, but she’d always thought it funny how different languages had expressions that made little or no sense. Like falar pelos cotovelos in Portuguese. It meant to talk too much, but translated literally it meant your elbows were doing the talking.
“I remember what it felt like not to be understood. But I’m truly sorry if I spoke up where I shouldn’t have.” She was doing her best not to notice how his smile softened the hard lines of his face. How it was the tiniest bit crooked, the right side tilting slightly higher than the left, or how it made little crinkles radiate out from the corners of his eyes. It was damned attractive.
“No, you should have. I like to think our unit is a team. We help each other out as needed. So if you ever think I’m not seeing a situation like I should, please bring it to my attention.”
“Okay, thank you. Anything else I should know about the burn unit?”
“I want input. If you’ve heard about a new treatment that has some pretty solid studies behind it...that you think we should try on a more difficult case, feel free to speak up. We all have our own little groups where we talk about work and interesting articles or information gets passed around. I want our team to stay cutting-edge. To excel, for the benefit of our patients.”
So he wasn’t just looking to be on top. She could respect that. In fact, she did respect it as long as they didn’t just turn out to be empty words. Time would tell. But she really did hope he was telling the truth.
“I will.” And she would. Even though she didn’t like being in the spotlight, she did want what was best for her patients, so if she thought another technique would work better, she wouldn’t hesitate to say so. Well...she might hesitate, but she would speak up.
But what she wouldn’t do was get too attached to that smile or do her best to make it reappear whenever she was around him. Because to do that was to head down a dangerous path. And she’d already seen where those roads led time and time again. They led to heartache and the fear of loss.
No, Jakob Callin’s smile was best saved for those who would appreciate it for what it was. The simple movement of muscles over a scaffold of bone. It might transform his face, but in the scheme of things it meant very little. And she would do well to remember that.