Pandora's Curse - v4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

a secret place she told no one about. She had to force herself to push back those feelings until she gained the perspective of time. Anika washed her hands in the scrub sink outside the trauma bay and changed into fresh scrubs in the doctors’ lounge, taking a moment to soothe her hair back against her head. In the mirror, her eyes were surprisingly clear considering what had just happened and that she’d just finished a twelve-hour Saturday-night shift. Heimann met her on her way out.
    “Go start your vacation. I’ll handle the police and the paperwork.”
    “Are you sure?” She was startled. Heimann wasn’t known for his bedside manner toward patients or coworkers.
    “Ja.”
    “Thank you, Petr. I owe you one.”
    Anika decided to go to her apartment for her shower rather than do it at the hospital. She wanted to avoid Dr. Seecht, her boss, at all costs. She threw the laundry that had accumulated in her locker into a shoulder bag. Since her apartment was across the street from the huge medical center, she’d wear scrubs home.
    Her mind was on the last-minute details she needed to finish before leaving for her trip. She had to get a key to her neighbor, a surgical nurse here at the Klinikum, so she could water the plants. She also needed to clean a week’s worth of leftovers out of her refrigerator. Then there was tomorrow’s trip to the town of Ismaning for her grandfather, and then on Monday it was time to leave for Greenland.
    “Dr. Klein, just the person I wanted to see.” Dr. Heinz Seecht had been waiting in ambush outside the women’s changing room. “I was afraid you had already left.”
    Damn
. Anika had been avoiding Seecht for weeks. She knew what he wanted to talk to her about, and she was hoping to delay it until after the Greenland expedition. If she could, she’d put off this conversation indefinitely. Seecht was about to box her into a decision she still wasn’t ready to make.
    “I was just leaving. My shift’s been over for a while.” A moment ago, she had been hyped up on adrenaline, but now she felt nothing but exhaustion. She crossed her arms over her small breasts.
    “Yes, I just spoke with Petr. You lost the patient.” It was said with condescension, as if the kid’s death had been her fault.
    Her body stiffened. “We did everything we could.”
    “I’m sure you did,” Seecht said absently. “Petr’s a good doctor.”
    By force of will, Anika remained silent. She and Seecht had been at odds since she first came to the hospital. He was nearly sixty and believed that only men made good doctors. His was an extreme form of sexism that was pervasive in Germany. However, now was not the time to lash out.
    “I wish to be blunt with you, Anika,” Seecht said as though he’d been any different with her in the past. “Your performance is not up to the Klinikum’s standards and hasn’t been since you first arrived.”
    Anika hadn’t suspected he’d take this tack and she was thrown off for a moment. She quickly recovered. Rather than let him complete his thought, she went on the attack. “It isn’t my skills as a doctor that are substandard,” she stated. “Every review places me near the top of all the trauma teams. I have been honored by the medical boards and I have been singled out by the mayor when his daughter came in with a ruptured appendix. I am more current on new techniques than anyone on your staff, and I did a year of ER work in Los Angeles before coming here. I saw more trauma in a weekend there than doctors here see in a month. So please tell me, in what way am I not meeting your standards, Dr. Seecht?”
    She took a deep breath.
    “I don’t question your surgical abilities.”
    You’re goddamned right you won’t,
Anika wanted to shout.
    A pair of technicians approached from down the hallway, and Seecht touched Anika on the elbow to lead her away. She resented the touch. He wouldn’t have done it to a male doctor. He wouldn’t even have done it to a male