Manny rubbed his stubbled jaw. What a lie that was. He hadn’t bothered to shave, and he was in a fleece sweatshirt and blue jeans. Hardly pinup material.
“Let’s cut through the pleasantries.” Manny took another pull on his latte. “What do you have to tell me.”
Goldberg’s eyes shot off in all kinds of different directions. Until Manny took pity on him.
“They want me to go on a leave of absence, don’t they.”
Goldberg cleared his throat. “The hospital board feels that it would be best for . . . everyone.”
“They asked you to be acting chief, yes?”
Another throat clearing. “Ah . . .”
Manny put his mug down. “It’s okay. It’s cool. I’m glad—you’re going to be great.”
“I’m sorry . . .” Goldberg shook his head. “I . . . This just feels so wrong. But . . . you can always come back, you know, later. Besides, the rest has done you good. I mean, you look—”
“Fantastic,” Manny said drily. “Uh-huh.”
That was what people told folks they felt sorry for.
The pair of them drank their coffees for a while in silence, and Manny wondered if the guy was thinking the same thing he was: Christ, how shit had changed. When they’d first been in this place, Goldberg had been as nervous as he was now, just for such a very different reason. And who’d have predicted that Manny would be getting benched. Back then, he’d been gunning for the top and nothing was going to stop him—or did.
Which made his reaction to this request from the board a surprise. He actually wasn’t all that upset. He felt . . . unplugged somehow, as if it were happening to someone he’d once known, but had long since lost touch with: Yeah, it was a big deal, but . . . whatever.
“Well—” The sound of his phone ringing cut him off. And the clue as to what really mattered to him was in the way he scrambled like his fleece had caught fire to get the thing out.
It wasn’t Payne, however. It was the vet.
“I have to take this,” he said to Goldberg. “Two secs. Yeah, Doc, how is—” Manny frowned. “Really. Uh-huh. Yeah . . . yeah . . . uh-huh . . .” A slow grin grabbed traction on his face and took over, until he was probably beaming like a headlight. “Yeah. I know, right? It’s a fuckin’ miracle.”
When he hung up the phone, he looked across the table. Goldberg’s eyebrows were scaling the heights of his forehead.
“Good news. About my horse.”
And that pair of brows went even higher. “I didn’t know you had one.”
“Her name’s Glory. She’s a Thoroughbred.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“I’m into racing.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah.”
And that was about it for the personal convo. Which gave Manny a sense of how much they talked about work. At the hospital, he and Goldberg had gone for hours talking about patients and staff issues and the running of the department. Now? They didn’t have much to say to each other.
Still, he was sitting across from a very good man . . . one who was probably going to be the next chief of surgery at St. Francis. The board of directors was going to do a nationwide search, of course, but Goldberg would be chosen, because the other surgeons, who spooked easily and thrived on stability, knew and trusted him. And they should. Goldberg was technically brilliant in the OR, administratively proficient and way more even-tempered than Manny had ever been.
“You’re going to do a great job,” Manny said.
“What—oh. It’s just temporary until you . . . you know, come back.”
The guy seemed to believe it, which was testament to his kind nature. “Yeah.”
Manny shifted in his chair, and as he recrossed his legs, he glanced around . . . and saw three girls across the way. They were probably eighteen or so, and the instant he made eye contact, they giggled and put their heads together like they were pretending that they hadn’t been staring at him.