Quiver (Revenge Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

clutched the bronze chip in her hand. The sharp corners stabbed at her palm and she tightened her grip, breathing in the scent of plastic and sanitizer that permeated the sterile operating room at Blackwater Hospital.
    She bobbed back and forth in her rolling chair, staring blankly at the state-of-the-art anesthesia machine before her. It was a machine she’d studied so thoroughly she could operate it in her sleep, so naturally she found her mind drifting, trying not to think about the dream that had woken her up that morning, two hours before she’d been set to check into Blackwater Hospital for day one of her four-year residency.
    She tried not to think of the face that had filled her mind in that dream. The only face from her past that didn’t make her sick. The only face she’d yet to see since she’d landed over a week ago.
    She wondered if he still lived on Shadow Rock Island. That green-eyed cop who’d breathed life into her all those years go. That long-haired cop she’d never seen again, but hadn’t gone a single day without thinking of at least once.
    When the surgeon on the opposite side of the operating table spoke, Veda’s eyes snapped up to him. “I’m sorry, Dr. Britler. Did you say something?”
    “Before we begin, I’d like to get one thing superbly clear, uh….” Dr. Britler faltered as a nurse wrapped a blue surgical mask around his nose and mouth, so all Veda saw was the widening of his cold gray eyes as he motioned to her with a gloved hand.
    Her spine straightened and she pointed to herself. “It’s Veda. Veda Vandyke.”
    “Veda….” Dr. Britler, who she’d only just met a few moments ago, took another unnecessarily long pause. LED lamps blazed from overhead as nurses milled all around him, preparing the room and the patient on the table for the upcoming procedure. A nurse slipped a pair of operating goggles onto Dr. Britler’s nose, slapped a plastic cap over his graying hair and helped him into his surgical gown. He held out his arms, showing his scrawny frame, his mask wobbling as he spoke. “Veda, I’d like to make one thing superbly clear. I couldn’t care less what they taught you during your time in med school at Stanford, nor do I need you to regale me on what I’m doing right or wrong in my operating room. In fact, I don’t care to hear from you, at all. This is not a team effort, nor is it a democracy.”
    Veda’s eyes expanded.
    “Push comes to shove, if a decision needs to be made about a patient on my table, I have the final say, regardless of whether or not it falls under the realm of anesthesia. You just sit there and look pretty, okay, doll?”
    Good lord. Insulted, minimalized and sexually harassed, all in under a minute. Veda and the young black nurse lining up the blades next to him shared a look. “Well, with all due respect—”
    “I’m so glad we agree,” he interrupted before she could interject, his eyes smiling.
    “O… kay…” She clutched the edge of her machine.
    Not even halfway into her first day of residency and she’d already found the hospital’s resident asshole.
    It was always the surgeons.
     
    —
     
    “God, I hate surgeons,” Veda grumbled around the cherry-flavored sucker lodged in the corner of her cheek.
    The young nursing assistant who’d helped Veda wheel the patient into a post-op recovery room frowned from the other side of the hospital bed. The patient still snoozed between them but was set to wake up any moment, and the assistant was ready with a red Popsicle the moment she opened her eyes.
    “Yeah, me too,” the nursing assistant said. “Surgeons? Blech. The worst.” Her eyebrows pinched together, but it only made her look ten times younger. It was more adorable than scary, the frown on her face. She’d pulled her long black hair into a high ponytail and curled the ends into spirals. Wisps of it had escaped at her cocoa-colored forehead. With full lips, a straight nose that was just a touch too wide for her