—to her way of thinking.
Chase was an exceptionally bright and ambitious man in a profession of bright and ambitious people. One of the smartest guys in a roomful of smart guys, and he knew it. He was a skilled and widely respected surgeon, and as political a beast as they came. The buzz was that he was first in line to take the Turner CEO job next year, when the current CEO retired. No doubt this job was the next carefully planned step in Chase’s grand plan for career advancement and world domination.
No way the auto-surgeon project would have ever moved forward without his support. Nothing in the OR happened at Turner without Chase’s blessing. If you were a surgeon here, any kind of surgeon, and you wanted something done, you sought an audience with Chase, and you received his blessing. Or you didn’t, and that was the end of it for you. Because his was the first and last word in surgery at Turner.
He was also a voracious competitor, driven to win in everything: publishing the most scientific papers on a particular topic, or performing more of a complex type of surgery than anyone else in the country, or winning the annual Surgery Department golf tournament. Chase was always keeping score.
It was a pride that could blind him to certain, disagreeable facts that might otherwise dispute his mastery of all things. She knew all this because she knew Chase as well as anyone she’d ever known. She rejected the term father figure as trite. It belied the complexity of their relationship, reduced it to cheap, pseudo-Freudian analysis. Yes, his presence in her life had, to an extent, replaced that of her father. But Chase was also many other things to her.
A silver-haired Olympian who’d spotted her talent from on high, swept down, pointed his finger at her, and plucked her out from the crowd.
(Out of trouble he got me out of trouble after Jenny Finney died he fixed things but don’t think about that now I can’t think about that now)
A mentor and confidant, the man behind the curtain who’d nurtured her skills, guided her career, opened doors, and introduced her to all the right people.
(He fixed things after Jenny Finney died so no one would know but don’t think about that now)
The man who’d nominated her for the auto-surgeon project and given her every resource she needed to make it work.
(He fixed things after Jenny Finney died)
Chase hated losing.
So, yes: That was the way forward for her.
“Chase. Look.” She reached out and placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “I know all of this, uh, looks weird.” She chose her words carefully. “Whatever happened, last night … well—I can’t completely explain it. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been working too hard, and that it finally caught up with me. But I feel good, Chase.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Really!” she said. “I can do this. I can do it safely. Besides, the auto-surgeon is going to do most of the work anyway, right? It passed all the cadaveric models, and the animal tests, with flying colors. I’m just there to set things up and let it do its thing. It runs itself. That’s what it’s supposed to do. Run itself.”
He squinted at her, hard, and clenched his jaw.
“Look, Chase,” she continued. “I’m not a, uh, media expert, or anything. But I have a feeling that if we cancel, it’s going to make us look bad. Like we don’t know what we’re doing, or that there are major safety problems. And the university president, and the dean, and whoever else is here—they’re not going to like it, either. If only because you’ve wasted their time.”
He squinted still harder, the horizontal slits of brown skin that encased his eyes almost squeezing shut at the mention of their superiors. She could all but hear the political gears in his brain grinding away.
“And if we postpone today, Chase, it’s going to put us behind schedule. Way behind schedule. Look how long it took us to find Mrs. Sanchez. She’s perfect for it: perfect anatomy and body habitus. If we cancel today, we’ll have to find another patient. I don’t know how long that will take. The Europeans are nipping at our heels. Fabius, in Lyons—”
“I know about Professor Fabius,” he growled.
She also knew that Chase in private often referred to Fabius as that frog bastard. As in: There’s no way in hell I’m letting that frog bastard beat me to the punch.
“Okay, then you know that Fabius is almost as far along as we are, with that EU consortium he’s heading up. We need to get this done, Chase. We need to get this done, and out there, ASAP. Or Fabius will be first. We can’t afford to wait. Not even a day.”