My Sweetest Sasha: Cole's Story (Meadows Shore Book 2) by Eva Charles Page A

chastising a naughty child for speaking out of turn. Alexa had been the recipient of that look many times, but this time she didn’t cower.
    “I’ll be in my office in an hour. Plan to stay a while. I have a lot to say.” And without another word, Alexa was dismissed.
    She wasn’t sure what annoyed Sue most, that she hadn’t gone to her first, or that she dared question the golden boy’s behavior. Either way, she’d misplayed this, and now there’d be consequences.
     
    * * *
     
    An hour later she knocked on Sue’s door.
    “Come in.”
    “Thanks for seeing me. I have a few questions about Dr. Harrington,” she said taking a seat. “Routine questions.”
    “There’s nothing routine about this. So let’s just put aside the bullshit and get right to it.”
    This was, of course, why it had taken her so long to talk to Sue. The woman was intimidating. She’d witnessed the petite nurse bring more than one surgeon to his knees with nothing more than a withering look.
    “Can you tell me about the incident in the operating room when the thermostat was disabled?”
    Sue nodded. “I was there when it happened. The room was hot—damn hot. Had been for at least a week. It had become nearly impossible to work in there. I complained to facilities—everyone complained. Every day the situation became worse, more dangerous. But they kept putting us off.”
    “Why wasn’t the room closed?”
    “We closed it when we could. But there was a multi-car accident on 95 with a lot of serious injuries. We needed the room. Cole showed up first, and he could have taken any room, but he took that one. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about his leadership.” Sue pulled her lips over her teeth, creating a tight, thin line across her face.
    “We kept patients’ body temperature down with ice packs, but as the day wore on, we became more and more concerned that someone on the team might become lightheaded during a procedure, or worse. Then it happened. A pregnant nurse, five months along, fainted in the middle of a surgery. No one even knew she was pregnant until she came to, and grabbed her belly asking if the baby was okay.” Sue shook her head.
    “Cole lifted her off the floor and carried her to the maternity ward. Then he came back, scrubbed in, and finished closing. When he was done, he grabbed a hammer off the tray and smashed the thermostat to smithereens. By the time we arrived the next day it was fixed. A few people vilified him, but he was a hero to every person down here.”
    “This is the first time I’ve heard the whole story. Dr. Harrington never mentioned the part about the nurse fainting.”
    “He wants Tori kept out of this. She’s a hell of a scrub nurse, and she needs the job. But I don’t take orders from Cole,” she huffed. “So now you know what happened.”
    “Thank you for your time,” Alexa said getting up from the chair.
    “We’re not done, yet. I have plenty more to say. I’ve been here for more than thirty years. Tom Hagel put me in charge when he became chair twenty years ago, and I’ve seen it all.”
    Sue gave Alexa an education in hospital politics, surgeons, and Cole Harrington. She explained what it was like to work in an environment where life and death hung in the balance every day. Where anything could go wrong and often did. And how important it was to have someone leading the team who could get the cart back on the horse and pull everyone on track without batting an eyelash.
    “Don’t let anyone kid you, I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, it takes big balls to cut through someone’s skin and stick your hands in their body, especially when you don’t know what you’re going to find in there. You’re too concerned about the arrogant surgeon, when it’s the one who hesitates, questions himself, that you need to be afraid of. Those are the ones who scare me to death.” She paused, letting her words sink in.
    “Humanity, with all its frailties,