Read Online PATIENT CARE (Medical Romance) (Doctor Series) by Bobby Hutchinson - Free Book Online Page A

I’m in this situation with Mom, I can really understand how tempting it is to pin your hopes on an alternative when medicine has failed.” Realizing how that sounded, she put a hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean—”
    “I know. I just wish there were something more I could do.”
    “Thank you, James. It means a lot to hear you say so.”
    He smiled. He was smiling more these days, Melissa thought. Maybe job action agreed with him. “I enjoyed our discussion with Rudy,” she added. “He’s an interesting man. And he’s your number-one fan.”
    James rolled his eyes. “He’s impossible. As a post-op patient, I told him to stick to a low-cal, low-fat regime. Did you see the food in that trailer? Every scrap is high fat, sugar-laden. Almost everything has meat and dairy. It’s a dietary disaster area.”
    “I heard him telling a buddy of his that now that you took out his gallbladder he can eat anything he wants, no more heartburn.” Melissa couldn’t help teasing James a little. “And Rudy said the other fellow shouldn’t worry about what he eats, either. You can whip his gallbladder out easy as anything if it starts giving him trouble. Sure you’re not drumming up business, Doctor?” She giggled at the horrified expression on his face. “And despite what they’re doing to my gallbladder, I did love the cinnamon rolls.”
    “Enough to meet me again tomorrow morning?”
    “Tomorrow it’s coffee cake, remember?” Why not meet him? It was the only time of the day she could really call her own. She’d actually had fun this morning.
    “Okay, James. I’ll be there, same time.”
    “I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter Nine
     
    James pedaled into the lot at six-thirty, and Melissa drove in on the dot of 6:45. He realized how tense he’d been, waiting for her. She gave him a cheery wave and a smile, and his morning brightened considerably.
    Rudy had coffee ready, as well as a plate with a giant chunk of oatmeal coffee cake, raisins bursting from its fat golden sides and nuts thickly studding the sugary crumbs on top.
    Just looking at it had made James’s mouth water, and even though he knew it was a coronary time bomb, he couldn’t resist.
    “’Morning, Melissa.” She made his mouth water, too. She was wearing a short silky dress the color of chestnuts, and her long, lovely legs were bare. Her fiery hair was caught back in its usual knot, but tendrils escaped and curled around her ears. He liked her ears. He liked her hair. He liked her freckles. He especially liked her breasts. In fact, he concluded as she sat down beside him, there wasn’t anything about Melissa Clayton he didn’t like.
    “’Morning, James. Rudy, thanks for the coffee. And your wife’s cake looks scrumptious.”
    Rudy beamed. “I’ll pass that along to Thelma. And she said to tell you the prayer group’s gonna start working on your mom right away.”
    “I’m grateful.” She sipped her coffee and took a nibble of the cake, then smiled at James. “I can’t believe you’re up and about at this hour of the morning. How come you’re not taking advantage of the time away from the operating room and sleeping late?”
    “Too many years of scrubbing for surgery at the crack of dawn. It messes up your circadian rhythms.”
    “What’s those, if you don’t mind me asking?” Rudy looked puzzled.
    “Oh, circadian rhythms are our biological clocks,” James explained. “The natural cycles our bodies go through in a twenty-four-hour period, when we feel like sleeping, eating, that sort of thing.” And having sex . Melissa’s presence triggered that circadian rhythm, all right.
    “Oh, like all that stuff about women’s clocks telling them it’s time to have babies,” Rudy said with a nod. “When Thelma and I were young, nobody worried over stuff like that. We expected to get married, have kids. It was the natural way of things. Still is, if you ask me. Only, nowadays you young folks put a lot of fancy names on it and set up