2
Two years later
ROGER MARTELL stared at his doctor and tried reaching for humor. “That’s it? That’s why you dragged me in here? Geez, I thought I was dying!”
His doctor sighed. “Hypertension is a big deal. And if you don’t get it under control you will die.”
Roger flinched, a little frightened by the man’s flat, absolute tone. Sadly, he wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis. After all, he’d been fighting high blood pressure forever. His uncle and grandfather had both died from heart attacks before their fiftieth birthdays. And Roger was well on the early coronary track. But advances in medicine happened every day, right? He wasn’t desperate yet.
“Okay,” he said. “So this special new drug trial didn’t work.”
“Your pressure is higher than ever, Roger.”
“I know, I know,” he groused. This was his first drug trial, but his thirteenth medication. No matter what he did, his blood pressure kept going up and up. “There’s got to be another drug trial. Something really experimental? Seriously, Doc—”
“Seriously, you’ve got to stop relying on drugs and make some life changes. You’re three breaths away from a stroke, and before you ask…” He started flipping through Roger’s chart. “You’ve tried every medication possible, and some that I think were positively ludicrous. Looks like I’m your third doctor…”
“Fourth if you count the drug-trial people.”
His doctor sighed. “Look, I can’t even clear you to fly as a passenger in an airplane.”
Roger waved that away. “They never check that anyway.”
“Not the point.”
Roger closed his eyes and tried to remain calm. Sadly, the sight that came to his mind’s eye was his father in a treatment facility after his stroke. He hadn’t died like Roger’s uncle and grandfather, but he had lost the use of a third of his body. Roger tried to force away the panic that skated through his system. “I feel fine,” he said firmly.
“Do I need to outline all the reasons high blood pressure is called the silent killer?”
No, he didn’t need to hear that lecture again. “Okay, so what are my options?”
“Tell me about your exercise and diet.”
He knew this drill backward and forward, but he dutifully went through the litany. “I swim a mile and a half most mornings, I don’t eat red meat too often, and I know moldy bread does not count as a vegetable. Or olives in martinis.”
“Tell me about your job.”
Roger barely restrained his groan. “I love my job. I’m the CFO at a robotics firm owned by my best friend. He’s the brilliant inventor, I’m the business guy. I make sure his ideas get to market—”
“You do everything, run everything, worry about everything and the stress is killing you.”
“I’m not under pressure like those guys,” he said firmly. “They’re the geniuses who have to perform miracles every day.”
His doctor leaned back in his chair. “So you’re surrounded by geniuses under stress. No pressure there. No trying to keep up with their brilliant minds, no struggling against the melt-down of the day, no agony of trying to herd a zillion übersmart cats.”
Roger shut his mouth, fighting to keep his expression neutral. Yeah, he often felt like he was the only sane one in a freak show. Other times, he was just the dumb one in charge. His IQ was high, just not stratospheric high. Which at RFE meant he was a moron. “But I love my job,” he repeated.
The doctor sighed. “What about meditation? Yoga? There are some interesting guided prayers…”
Roger rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. So his doctor switched tracks.
“Look, you’ve run out of medical options. Do you understand? There’s nothing more I can do. You have to make some life changes.”
Roger threw up his hands. “Got any suggestions other than quitting my job?”
“Well, when was your last vacation?”
“Just a little bit ago. I went skiing in Colorado. At Christmas.”
“Christmas, as in nine months ago?”
“Um, I think so.” Or maybe it was two years and nine months ago.
“Take another vacation, Roger. Take it now.”
Roger nodded, wondering where in the hell he was going to fit a vacation into his work schedule. “Okay, a vacation. What else?”
“Change your life. Find out what stress is killing you and fix it.”
“But—”
“Whatever it takes, Roger. Do it now.”
THERE WAS SOMETHING really rewarding in being a fill-in office-plant girl, Dr. Amber Smithson thought as she watered a tastefully trimmed fern. Mandolin Hospital hadn’t had greenery, or at least none that she remembered. Back then, Amber had thought her work environment was clean and simple. Now she realized it had just been sterile and dead. Which was why she got a special thrill now out of helping corporate America find some green life in a very non-green world.
This wasn’t her real job. It was just a way to make ends meet and help out the real plant lady—Mary—who was in bed right now suffering from an extremely painful spell of rheumatoid arthritis. Mary was a good friend who couldn’t afford to lose her plant job. So Amber filled in, got to play with plants and, best of all, got to remind herself why she had left the high-pressure life of high-end medicine.
Right now she was in the lobby of RFE, a robotics firm with high-dollar products and mega-dollar research. Pressure was in the very air up here, just like it had been at Mandolin. They might not be working on human bodies, but they were gambling with big money and big ideas. No one could afford to fail and Amber could taste the edge of panic that infected the air. Just like it had at Mandolin.
But she was well free of that, right? she asked herself. For the last two years, she’d been exploring alternative medicine just like she’d always wanted. No one talked to her about liability, no insurance company told her how to treat a patient, and—sadly—no one paid her bills.
Yes, she’d survived all on her own, but her patients were more likely to pay in apple pie than in dollars. Her bank account was getting tight, and her family would only help out if she gave up all her “nonsense” and came back to traditional medicine—preferably at Mandolin. Up until now, she’d refused. But all too soon, an empty bank account was going to force her to make a difficult compromise.
But that wasn’t a problem to be faced now. No, right now was for plants, RFE and…yes!…Mr. Roger Martell. The CFO of RFE had just walked into the building, and Amber was perfectly perched behind a planter to spy on the gorgeous man.
He’d caught her eye months ago, when Amber had first subbed as plant girl. Hell, the man caught every woman’s eye. Tall, dark, stylish and a power executive in every way, Amber’d been secretly spying on him whenever she worked as plant girl. Just being in the same room with him made the air feel electric, as if every second of his day was filled with important decisions. God, he was everything she missed about her old life—the urgency, the power and the feeling that she was doing something vitally important. That was Roger’s aura in a nutshell, and naturally, he’d barely stepped into the front lobby when the receptionist started buzzing people.
“Roger’s back,” the woman said into the phone. “Yes, I’ll let him know.” She didn’t hang up as she handed the man a stack of pink message notes. “Ginny wants to meet with you in a half hour—”
“Hour and a half, at the earliest.”