Cate Campbell

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Therese. I appreciate that.”
    As she left the ward to go upstairs to see another patient, she wondered if Whitely had bothered to see Sister Therese postoperatively. She doubted it. She had heard him boast more than once that a surgeon should avoid close involvement with his patients. In this case, Margot was more than happy to have him keep his distance.
    She had just put her hand on the latch of the door to the children’s ward when someone called her name. “Dr. Benedict! Wait a moment.”
    Margot dropped her hand, and turned. “Good morning, Matron.”
    “Good morning, Doctor.” The surgical matron for Seattle General was an old-fashioned nurse with strict ideas about comportment of both nurses and physicians. She still wore the voluminous apron and long skirts of an earlier day. Her gray hair was rigidly controlled in a tight chignon beneath her starched cap. The student nurses in her charge trembled at the sound of her step coming through the wards, and even a doctor or two had been known to duck into a closet or stairwell to avoid being collared by the stiff-necked Nurse Cardwell.
    Margot herself, during her internship, had received a sound scolding from Matron for having dropped a surgical glove outside the operating theater and failed to pick it up and properly dispose of it. Nurse Cardwell’s steely eye still caused a quiver in her belly. “Is there a problem?” Margot asked, striving for a confident tone, but fearing that her voice quivered, too.
    Alice Cardwell, lips pursed, rustled toward her, carrying a sheaf of papers. Margot couldn’t recall ever seeing the nurse without something in her hands—instruments, files, blankets, an emesis basin. The pockets of her apron bulged with cotton, a stethoscope, a pair of bandage scissors. She reached Margot, and looked up into her face with a grim expression. “A warning, Doctor.”
    “A—a warning?” Margot hated feeling as if she were a student again, struggling to satisfy patients and supervising physicians and senior nurses who knew far more than she did. She recalled Nurse Cardwell’s skeptical tone when she’d addressed Margot as “Doctor” for the first time.
    She folded her arms, and stiffened her own neck, reminding herself she was a fully qualified physician with her own practice. She really shouldn’t be cowed by a nurse, no matter how competent.
    The older woman took her arm, and pulled her a step or two away from the door. Her fingers were strong and warm. “I wasn’t in the operating theater the other night,” she said. “But I heard about it from my nurses.”
    “Sister Therese’s appendectomy,” Margot said.
    “That’s the one.”
    “And what’s the trouble, Matron?”
    Nurse Cardwell’s eyes were like flint. “Dr. Whitely was impaired during surgery, I’m told. Your patient could have been seriously harmed.”
    “She could indeed. It was a very good thing I was present.”
    “Yes. But that’s not good enough, Dr. Benedict. You should have filed a complaint with the board of directors.”
    Margot’s heart sank like a stone settling to a riverbed. “Oh, Matron.” She sighed, and her neck bent as she rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “I didn’t think it would do any good. And the directors would be furious with me.”
    Nurse Cardwell raised one gray eyebrow. “This isn’t about you, Dr. Benedict. This is about your patient.”
    Margot dropped her hand, turning the palm up in a gesture of conciliation. “You’re right, of course. I know that. The board wouldn’t listen to me, though, Matron. And they would very likely revoke my hospital privileges.”
    “It’s not the first time Dr. Whitely has come into my operating theater under the influence.” Margot’s lips twitched at the words “my theater,” but she pressed them together. “You were able to protect your patient this time, Doctor, but what if you or some other physician isn’t able to do that next time?” Cardwell dropped her hand from

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