Doctor In The House

by Marie Ferrarella

• ISBN13: 9780373881413
• ISBN10: 037388141X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-11
• Publisher: Harlequin

Summary

Ivan Munro wanted to be feared, not loved... But Bailey DelMonico, his new intern, is determined to prove she isn't afraid of him--and more. In her own way, Bailey is as brilliant as Ivan--and people like her. Having realized she wanted to be a surgeon after several failed life experiences, she deftly absorbs a barrage of criticism from Munro without ever losing faith in her dreams. Or her conviction to show Ivan that no life is set in stone... But the more Munro fights against his intern's charm, the more cracks appear in his abrasive facade. Bailey soon sees that contrary to hospital gossip, Ivan has anything but a scalpel for a heart. Ever the optimist and always persistent, can Bailey now show Ivan that it's never too late to change... or fall in love?

Excerpts

Dr. Ivan Munro liked saving lives, liked making a difference in those lives. It was people he didn't care for. People with their endless complaining. People with endless details about their humdrum lives that he had absolutely no interest in. If he possessed so much as a thimbleful of mild curiosity regarding his patients, he would have gone into a medical discipline that required contact with those patients on a fairly regular basis. But such contact would have necessitated feigning interest on his part and he had never been one to lie or even seen the need to lie. Ever. For any reason whatsoever. The truth, any truth, was what it was and needed to be faced. No sugarcoating, no beating around the proverbial bush. Just shooting straight from the hip. He'd chosen neurosurgery as much as it had chosen him and he'd selected it for three reasons. The first was to heal, to pit himself against the power that delivered such a low blow to the individual on his operating table. The second was that it was the only way he could possibly make it up to Scott, even though Scott was no longer around to see the results. The last reason was distance. Neurosurgery afforded him distance. Once he tackled a condition, he could distance himself from the recovering patient and thus move on, leaving the chore of hand-holding to the patient's friends, relatives and/or referring physician, all people who were far better suited to the tedious chore than he. They were the ones who either wanted or felt compelled to establish and maintain a rapport with the patient. He'd been told, more than once, that he had the bedside manner of an anaconda. He took it as a compliment. Ivan could not,wouldnot, allow emotions to get in the way of his making a judgment call. Unfortunately, emotions or some sort of cursory display of them, was what most patients thought they both needed and were entitled to. His chief of staff, Harold Bennett, a man he grudgingly admired and respected, told him that was the way patients knew that they were in capable hands. They measured capability by the physician's capacity to act as if he or she cared. Ivan cared, all right, cared that he successfully eliminated the tumor, or reconnected the nerve endings, cared that he did no harm and only accomplished what he'd set out to accomplish: to make the patient better than he or she had been when they'd first laid down on his operating table. But as for verbally talking the patient through the steps of the surgery before it transpired to set to rest any fears that patient might have, well, that just was not why he got up each morning to come to Blair Memorial Hospital. Being "patient with patients" wasn't something he was any good at and he saw no reason to pretend that he was. He wasn't in medicine to forge friendships, only to save lives. "They call you Ivan the Terrible, you know," Harold told him over the lunch he'd insisted that his chief neurosurgeon share with him in his office. There was an ulterior motive for the invitation. It was that most painful time of year again. January. Time for the annual review where budgets were wrestled with and unpleasant decisions had to be made. It was a time to lightly sprinkle praise and to make a sincere call for improvement. This meant even from a man who clearlydidhave the ability to walk on water, but did not, to any and all who took note, possess so much as a single drop of humility. "I know," Ivan replied, his attention appearing to focus on his sandwich. "It's my name. Good sandwich," he commented in the next breath, infusing as much interest and feeling in the last sentence as he had in the first two he'd uttered. After almost a dozen years, Harold was skilled at tiptoeing into conversations with his chief neurosurgeon. "Funny, I don't remember seeing 'the Terrible' on your application form." "I didn't want to brag," Ivan replied in the semi-raspy voice that w