CHAPTER ONE
There are three things you should understand about neurosurgeons.
Huge balls. Laser-like focus. Hero Complex.
Cutting into the human skull to operate on the brain required nothing less.
I stood at the sinks in the anteroom outside the operating theater at New York Presbyterian, cleaning my knuckles with a scrub brush. My new neurosurgery resident, Stuart, stood beside me, the plain blue cap and scrubs, safety glasses and binoculars giving away little about his personality, but he was a neurosurgeon and that pretty much said it all.
This was our first real surgery together since he started and I was interested in watching him perform. He would do all the grunt work – the incision, sawing the bone to remove a piece of the skull, then sewing up after. I’d do the parts requiring greater finesse – mapping the location in the brain using the CT scanner, threading the electrode into the brain and adjusting the voltage, ensuring we had it in exactly the right place. I’d oversee it all to ensure he did it properly.
I turned to him and watched as he scrubbed in.
“My nurses tell me you’re one of the youngest neurosurgery residents at NYP.”
“Besides you, you mean?” he said and gave me a smile, which was visible only as a narrowing of his eyes over his surgical mask. “You were even younger than me when you did your residency.”
I nodded. “I graduated high school early and finished my undergrad in two and a half years.”
“You were one of the youngest medical students at Columbia ever. Even more ambitious than me.”
I laughed. “From the looks of your CV, you’re no slouch.”
I felt Stuart’s eyes on me. "You know the nurses call you Dr. D."
I raised my eyebrows. After being at NYP for only a few days, Stuart felt secure enough in his status to bring up the OR nursing staff's pet name for me.
"Dr. Delish, right?" I said, grinning. "I've heard it all."
"Dr. Dangerous."
I laughed at that. "I’m surprised its not Dr. Demon. You must have been talking to my ex-wife’s friends. They hate me.”
“Oh, take my word for it – these nurses did not seem to hate you. Not at all,” Stuart said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “They seemed to see the dangerous moniker as a definite plus. There was a lot of snickering going on.” Stuart shook his head. "The ladies do love a bad boy."
I shook my head. "That they do. But you know, bad boys are just really really good at making women feel a little wild."
"Your dad was a legendary bad boy," Stuart said as he ran clear water over his soapy arms. "Flying planes, playing in a band, parachuting. Shock-trauma surgeon at U of Maryland. You're a lot like your father. The acorn really doesn't fall far from the tree…"
"I'm not like my father," I said, a bit too firmly. "And I'm not a bad boy. I'm a very good boy. Trust me. That's just their very active imaginations." I gave him a grin, holding up my hands and backing through the doors into the operating theatre.
Once inside, I was pleased that my favorite circulating nurse, Ellen, had my sixties music mix playing over the sound system. The nurses and technicians were moving their heads to the backbeat, which was such an important part of the British Invasion era music.
"On top of things, as usual," I said to Ellen and saw her brown eyes widen behind her surgical mask.
"Was there ever any doubt? " She handed me a sterile towel. “You have me well trained.”
"There was never any doubt,” I replied. “And it’s the other way around, Ellen. You have me well trained."
She laughed at that. "Whatever you say, Dr. D…"
Dr. D…
I was used to the friendly ribbing from the OR nurses I worked with on a regular basis. I never knew which moniker they meant by it. I hoped it was Delish but it could be dangerous or demon. She winked at me, but you never knew.
Inside the OR and in the halls of NYP, I was Dr. D, but outside, I was someone else entirely. Master D, to those who knew my secret life, a Dominant in Manhattan's BDSM community, specializing in B&D – bondage and dominance. I made the mistake of becoming involved in a BDSM relationship with a nurse when I first entered the lifestyle five years earlier, and that had almost ended in disaster.
Never again.
From then on, I kept my two personas separate, never letting them meet. My career in neurosurgery at NYP relied on it.
A few selections from the Rolling Stones played over the speakers. I developed a love of all things 60s from my father, who was perhaps the biggest influence on my life despite the fact he did everything he could to avoid being a father. He died as he lived – fast and loose, his private plane crashing in the wilds of Africa while on a trip to Somalia doing work with Doctors Without Borders.