Fated Love Read Free Page A

rose and gave Honor a quick hug. "You know me, just can't mind my own business."
    "It's okay." Honor forced a smile. "Now, which room did you put the guy with the chest pain in?"
    "Number four. The EKG is by the bedside. The T-waves are peaked, but they're not flipped, so I think it's just angina."
    "Did he respond to that nitroglycerin?"
    "Yep. Felt better in thirty seconds."
    "Good," Honor said absently, glancing down the hall toward the locker room. "I'll be in with him for a while. Keep your eye on Dr. Maguire. She might have good hands, but she probably doesn't know anything about medicine. Don't let her go killing anyone."
    "Yes, boss," Linda murmured softly, wondering as she watched her friend disappear into one of the curtained rooms just what it was about Quinn Maguire that bothered Honor quite so much. She doubted that in the small world of the hospital and the intimate environment in which they spent much of their day that it would take very long for the answer to become apparent.

    Chapter Two
    Q uinn stuffed her street clothes into an empty locker, pulled on a pair of navy blue scrubs and Nikes, and, hoping to get on better footing with her new chief, went in search of Honor. She found her reading through a stack of papers in the staff lounge, a small, windowless room tucked into a rear corner of the emergency room. The space was unadorned and starkly fimctional—the only decorations were a bulletin board with the obligatory rules and regulations covering everything from waste disposal
to
bomb threats, and a large erasable 12-month calendar showing the staff's shift assignments. The furnishings consisted of a single grouping of end tables and chairs along one wall and a central table that looked as if it had been pilfered from the hospital cafeteria,
    "You said you wanted to go over some things," Quinn said as she helped herself to coffee from the warmer on the counter. It was her first and only cup of the day, and she fervently prayed it would be decent. She took a cautious sip.
Not bad at all. Maybe that's a good sign.
She and Honor were alone, and Quinn waited for an invitation before sitting down. "Is this a good time to talk?"
    "Any time that it's quiet for five minutes in a row is a good time," Honor said with a sort sigh, pushing the messages aside. Most of the time, she enjoyed the administrative aspects of her position, but the paperwork was never-ending. She gestured to the chair opposite her at the stained gray Formica-topped table. "I'm sorry that I didn't get to meet with you when you were here to interview in June."
    "So am I." Quinn kept her voice neutral and her face expressionless, wondering if they
had
met if Honor would have hired her. At the moment, the ER chief didn't seem too happy to have her on board. She'd been lucky that her previous chief had been able to pull some strings and get her an interview at one of the few university hospitals that still had an ER handling trauma. Most hospitals, like St. Michael's, had both a trauma unit to handle acute injuries
and
a separate emergency room for the treatment of medical illness. At PMC, however, the ER docs evaluated and stabilized even the level one traumas, only calling upon the surgeons for consultation or when the patient was ready to go up to the OR. It was as close as Quinn was going to get to an operating room for a while.
Face it. Maybe forever.
She pushed away that thought as well as the faint nausea that accompanied it. "It was kind of a rush deal."
    "Yes, the way you were hired
was
a bit unusual." Honor studied Quinn's deep blue eyes, searching for some suggestion of evasion or discomfort. The surgeon's gaze was direct and surprisingly serene. The tranquility was not something Honor would have expected of
any
surgeon, but particularly not of this one, especially not after having witnessed Quinn's aggressive handling of the trauma alert earlier.
What an interesting mix of contradictions she is. Or else she's a great poker