Rushing Waters by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page B

afternoon when Will Halter, the chief resident, walked by her. He was proverbially tall, dark, and handsome, and they had dated for three months earlier that summer, with poor results. They couldn’t stand each other. In Juliette’s opinion, he had an ego the size of the building, and since she hadn’t been willing to cater to it, he had dumped her. He had dated nearly every nurse in the ER, even some of the married ones. She felt stupid for ever having gone out with him, but he was easy to fall for. Everyone did—patients, nurses, med students. He had a bedside manner that made patients nearly swoon over him, although Juliette was no longer convinced that he really cared about them and thought it likely that he didn’t. But she had to admit that technically he was a good doctor, even though she thought he was a miserable human being.
    And he liked her no better than she liked him. It made working together extremely difficult, without their mutual loathing becoming obvious to the patients. The nursing staff was well aware of it and, in most cases, of the reason why. And whenever he thought he could get away with it, Will Halter made snide comments to her, although he grudgingly acknowledged that she was a damn good doctor. He just didn’t like her as a woman. He knew she saw right through him and recognized him for the narcissist he was. She was fearless in her straightforward comments to him and in her challenges, when they benefited her patients, which drove him up the wall. They were barely able to be civil to each other, which was a problem they had not yet resolved and possibly never would. And as chief resident, he was her immediate boss. Juliette had made the situation clear to her supervisor, the director of the residency program, said they had a “chemical inability to work together,” and described it succinctly by saying they were allergic to each other. She had warned the director of it in case Will chose to sabotage her residency, which she thought he might be capable of, but he hadn’t so far. He just treated her disrespectfully, but he had never told any lies about her, which was at least something.
    “I see God has graced us with His presence today,” Juliette said acidly to the head admitting nurse at the desk, Michaela Mancini, after she saw Will in the hall. Michaela laughed at her—she was familiar with the situation and knew who Juliette meant.
    “I think he came on at four. We have a shitload of cases today, so it’s lucky he came in although he usually doesn’t work on Saturdays. Unless you want another dozen patients,” she said with a smile, and Juliette shook her head as she grabbed a chart.
    “I’m maxed out. Let him do a little work for a change.” He didn’t work as hard as the younger residents, but even Juliette agreed that his diagnostic skills were remarkable, particularly with their hardest cases. Her beefs against him were personal, not medical, and she knew she had to live with the situation.
    Juliette was a pretty blonde who wore her hair in a braid, lived in hospital scrubs, and never had time to put on makeup. She was passionate about her work and her patients and thought of little else. She was straightforward and dedicated, and unlike Will, she never tried to play the charming card, or operated from ego. Juliette came from a medical family in Detroit. Both of her brothers were doctors, as was her father, and her mother had been a nurse before she married Juliette’s father. And all of them had said that they had had at least one chief resident like that in their careers. They told her that her big mistake had been dating him, which made it look like sour grapes when she complained about him now, particularly since he had dumped her. And she knew they were right. She had no choice but to suck it up and hope he got bored with torturing her in time.
    As though talking about him had conjured him up like an evil spirit, the chief resident showed up at the ER desk five