"Have you seen the pictures?"
"Of his heart? Yeah. I want to send them to the boys at Columbia for a little look-see. You can ask them what they think when you're there."
She gave that one a pass. "His blood wouldn't type."
"Really?"
"If we can get his consent, I think we should do a total workup on him down to the chromosomes."
"Ah, yes, your second love. Genes."
Funny that he remembered. She'd probably mentioned only once how she'd almost ended up in genetics research.
With a junkie's rush, Jane pictured the inside of the patient, saw his heart in her hand, felt the organ in her grip as she saved his life. "He could present a fascinating clinical opportunity. God, I would love to study him. Or at least participate in studying him."
The soft beeping of the monitoring equipment seemed to swell in the silence between them until moments later some kind of awareness tickled the back of her neck. She glanced up. Manello was staring at her, his face grave, his thick jaw set, his brows down low.
"Manello?" She frowned. "Are you okay?"
"Don't go."
To avoid his eyes she looked down at the bedsheet that was folded once and tucked under her patient's arm. Idly she smoothed the white expanse—until it reminded her of something her mother had always done.
She stilled her hand. "You can get another surg—"
"Fuck the department. I don't want you to go because…" Manello pushed a hand through his thick dark hair. "Christ, Jane. I don't want you to go because I'd miss you like hell, and because I… shit, I need you, okay? I need you here. With me."
Jane blinked like an idiot. In the last four years there'd never been any suggestion that the man was attracted to her. Sure, they were tight and all. And she was the only one who could calm him down when he lost his temper. And okay, yeah, they talked about the inner workings of the hospital all the time, even after hours. And they ate together every night when they were on duty and… he'd told her about his family and she'd told him about hers…
Crap.
Yeah, but the man was the hottest property on hospital grounds. And she was about as feminine as… well, an operating table.#p#分页标题#e#
Certainly had as many curves as one.
"Come on, Jane, how clueless can you be? If you gave me a thin inch, I'd be inside your scrubs in the next heartbeat."
"Are you insane?" she breathed.
"No." His eyes grew heavy-lidded. "I'm very, very lucid."
In the face of that summer-night sultry expression, Jane's brain took a vacation. Just flew right out of her skull. "It wouldn't look right," she blurted.
"We'd be discreet."
"We fight." What the hell was coming out of her mouth?
"I know." He smiled, his full lips curving. "I like that. No one stands up to me but you."
She stared across the patient at him, still so dumbfounded she didn't know what to say. God, it had been so long since she'd had a man in her life. In her bed. In her head. So damned long. It had been years of coming home to her condo and showering alone and falling into bed alone and waking up alone and going to work alone. With both her parents gone she had no family, and with the hours she pulled at the hospital, she had no outside circle of friends. The only person she really talked to was… well, Manello.
As she looked at him now, it occurred to her that he truly was the reason she was leaving, though not just because he was standing in her way in the department. On some level she'd known this heart-to-heart was coming, and she'd wanted to run before it hit.
"Silence," Manello murmured, "is not a good thing right now. Unless you're trying to frame something like, 'Manny, I've loved you for years, let's go back to your place and spend the next four days horizontal.' "
"You're on tomorrow," she said automatically.
"I'd call in sick. Say I've got that flu. And as your chairman, I would order you to do the same." He leaned forward over the patient. "Don't go to Columbia tomorrow. Don't leave. Let's see how far we can take this."
Jane looked down and realized she was staring at Manny's hands… his strong, broad hands that had fixed so many hips and shoulders and knees, saving the careers and the happiness of so many athletes, professional and amateur alike. And he didn't just operate on the young and in shape. He had preserved the mobility of the elderly and the injured and the cancer-stricken as well, helping so many to continue to function with arms and legs.
She tried to imagine those hands on her skin.
"Manny…" she whispered. "This is crazy."