Page 43 of Dr. Scandal Claus

"Wait a second!" he said, and his voice was raised. It startled me to silence, though he didn't sound angry at all—just loud. "Stop…" Nick cocked his head and narrowed his eyes in confusion. "I didn't change his prescription, Scarlett." He was shaking his head and I could have slapped him too.

"You did. I went to the pharmacy and they gave me a new medicine. Amplodine or something…" I was heaving for breath, trying to calm myself but stutter breathing and probably not making much sense.

"Amlodipine?" Nick asked, and now he sounded really confused. He lifted the tablet and unlocked it and started skimming it.

"The pharmacist said you sent it over. I tried calling but you didn't pick up. I paid for it and that's the night that person painted my car." I glanced around and noticed people still staring, a few of them talking in hushed whispers. This was new. It didn't feel like the angry stares we'd been receiving for months. This felt worse. Like they were seeing me fall apart and be vulnerable and they were cannibalizing my pain.

"Scarlett, I never gave an order for a prescription change…" Nick's voice trailed off and I watched his eyebrows go up, then his jaw dropped. "My God," he whispered, and his eyes met mine.

"What is it?" I asked, now suddenly feeling like I needed to cling to him. There was shock and horror in his expression.

"Listen, baby," he said calmly. "I need you to trust me, okay?" Nick looked around and lowered his voice as he leaned in and took me by my arm. "I did not change his prescription, okay? You have to believe that. If I was going to do that, I'd have had a conversation with you first. But I think I know what happened."

My heart was pounding against my ribs. "What? What happened? Is Ethan going to be okay?"

"I used some of his leftover blood to do a paternity test after you told me about him." Nick's voice was almost a whisper now. "I never told you, because I didn't think it was necessary. But I did. And I'm sorry. But those paternity results aren't here in his file. It would take the court days to run them again, but we don't have time for that. I need to make sure Ethan is okay first."

Nick pushed the tablet into my hand. "Sign this with your fingertip. It's consent to let me do the surgery. Without your signature, I can't do it. He doesn't have long, Scarlett. If he has to wait for another surgeon, he may die."

I stood there with the tablet in hand staring into Nick's blue eyes fearing the worst. How could I trust him? The scandal…and then Fiona's accusations. And Ethan was fine then his meds switched and now he wasn't. I felt frozen in time now. If I trusted him and he messed up, my son was dead. But if I didn't trust him and it took too long, my son could die anyway.

This couldn't be happening.

34

NICK

The scalding water and sterilizing soap burned my skin. I turned it up as hot as it would go to help myself concentrate. It wasn't Scarlett's response that had me worked up either. I could handle that. I knew when this surgery was over and Ethan was in recovery, we would sit down and talk, and I could tell her what I just discovered. And she would be shocked. But right now, I had to get my emotions under control and my mind focused.

Doing a septal myectomy on a patient Ethan's age should have been a last resort, not an emergency. But with what Scarlett told me and after having looked at Ethan's file more closely, I now understood why this was happening. Ethan had been getting worse slowly, which I knew was going to happen. People with HCM never recovered on their own, though with medication they could put off the worst of their symptoms.

But in Ethan's case he was continuously getting worse. I wanted to delay surgery in the short term to allow him to enjoy his holidays before we set something up. Scarlett knew this, which was why every time she freaked out that something waswrong, I reassured her that he was fine. I knew he would slowly deteriorate, but I knew we had time.

Then someone switched his medicine and…

I clenched my jaw and almost ran my hands across my scrub cap unconsciously. I stopped myself before ruining my scrub in, but I knew I had to calm down.

"Dr. Edwards," I heard, and I turned to see the scrub nurse step in to help me. She looked nervous. All of my nurses looked nervous. They all were following my orders as they should, not Marvin's. They all knew he had no real authority to step in and stop a surgery like this. He had to call the whole board. However, I had the power to fire any of them on the spot, but most of them just obeyed me.

If things went sideways, they knew I would be held responsible, not them. Though, that wasn't very encouraging to me. But at least if I was wrong, they were protected.

"Yes," I said, shaking my hands off. I took her sterile towel and lifted my foot from the pedal beneath the sink. The water shut off and I dried my hands and dropped the towel into the sink and turned so she could put my gown on.

As she tied me in and put gloves on my hands, I closed my eyes and imagined every single incision, every angle cut, each step I'd take to cut my child open and save his life—sternotomy to open the chest cavity and give me direct access to his heart, giving the nurse the retractor…I took a deep breath and blew it out. Next came the heart-lung bypass. It would be difficult knowing I had to stop his heart. My boy…Tears almost welled up, but I bit them back and took another breath.

Then came the aortic incision. My chest tightened but relaxed and my brain started to process each of the next steps. I could do this. I'd done it before and I would do it again. My blood pressure was lowering to normal, my heart rate returning to usual sinus rhythm, and I was ready.

"All set," the nurse said, and she backed away to allow me space to walk past.

This was the most important surgery of my life, and I wasn't going to let anyone get in my way or mess with my mind. I'd told Fiona's father off, and I saw her out there, but right now it was me, my scalpel, my son, and an emergency like none I'd ever faced.

"Excuse me, Dr. Edwards, but you may not go into that operating room." Marvin's boom behind me halted me in place. I turned around slowly, hands held in front of myself but away from my body to preserve the sterility. He had some nerve.

For a moment, I stared at him, wondering if he knew what was actually going on. If, like before, he was in on this with his daughter, he'd have a lot of hell to pay. But something told me he didn't really know. And maybe he didn't know last time either. I could see how one person could be so cruel and so sadistic that they'd try to ruin my life on purpose, but Marvin was a decent man. There was no way he'd do this to me a second time. Not without cause. And a jealous hurt daughter—who admittedly was old enough to know better—was no reason for him to attack me.

"I'm not interested in another scandal going down on my watch in yet another hospital. I know you're the boy's father, and you know state law. You are not legally allowed to operate on that boy." Marvin was unmoving, stoic, angry. There weren't enough men in this hospital to keep me from going into that OR and saving my son's life. It'd already been forty minutes. I had to do it now.

"Marvin, there is no proof that that boy is my biological child. I am dating his mother, and that is not against the law." I took a step closer to him, and I watched the nurse avert her eye and squirm a little. Even if I had to knock this joker out and rescrub, I was going into that room.