Page 17 of Mask and the Magnolia
THREE
ANATOMY LESSONS
ISAAK
“Ican assure you, Dean Reynolds, your daughter is in extremely capable hands.”
“She better be,”he grunts down the line.“If anything happens to her while she’s interning in that hell hole, I’m coming for you. You and that entire goddamn institute.”
Then he hangs up.
If I thought Carter Blackhurst and Donovan Ridgeway were intimidating, Byron Reynolds is downright scary.
Oddly enough, I don’t get the impression that he’s worried about his daughter’s safety, but that he’s more concerned about his own agenda. What that is, I don’t know, nor do I particularly give a shit, but I have to answer to all three of those men now, and that’s going to make my job that much harder.
A job that was already doomed to fail before I even set foot inside the institution.
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I sigh and lean back in my chair.
Why am I doing this?
Because, like some idiot with a death wish, I have busted my ass the last twenty years so I could end upexactlywhere I’m sitting right now.
My own big corner office with an incredible view, full of soft leather and rich wood furniture, decorated in calm, inviting browns and creams. Shelves lined with medical books and journals, the majority on human behavior and mental health, including a few I’m featured in. An entire staff of guards and nurses to oversee, the only other doctor on the ward is a colleague, an equal who single-handedly orchestrated my transfer because she believes in the same thing I do.
Dolly Ridgeway-Blackhurst—an omega whodidn’tjust fall into her pack name in order to maintain her own identity in a sea of domineering assholes—is exactly why I’m here. She’s been here since before she mated Carter, working this very ward as soon as she finished at the university, and while she has fought tooth and nail to make mental health the true focal point of this institution and not the almighty dollar like it has been for so long, her own sanity is starting to take a hit. Dolly is trying to retire, hoping she’ll be able to finally get out from under her alpha’s thumb and breathe a little, but she’s trying to make sure her ducks are in a row before she does.
I’m the first duck.
Once she’s confident, and hires a second psychiatrist with the same views she and I share, Dolly will be stepping away from everything here at Blackhurst Ridge except for her position on the board. And she’ll be leaving this entire floor to me.
The way she explained it when she first contacted me, it seemed like she was hoping to leave the stress behind and enjoy her grown children as they settled down, well before she thought she’d be too old to do either.
Dolly isn’t even fifty.
As a matter of fact, she’s just barely ten years older than me, and when I found that out, it felt like somewhat of a red flag.
Either this job is way more difficult than I anticipated and is far more taxing than I realized, or there was something she wasn’t telling me during our many video chats. Then we met in person, and I discovered it was a little of both.
This position, this career at such a renowned psychiatric facility is demanding and extremely challenging, something I knew going in, and Dolly didn’t make any bones about that. But it wasn’t why she’s ready to cash in on early retirement.
Sure, she does have two grown children, one of whom is supposedly going to be mating his omega by the end of the school year while the other is all but impossible to convince she needs to settle down, but I didn’t get the impression they were reason enough to leave this place behind. Not when it’s literally in Dolly Ridgeway-Blackhurst’s blood.
No, the nationally famous psychiatrist who proudly paved the way for people like me is ready to get the hell out of here for two very real, very loud and controlling reasons, and nothing more.
Carter Blackhurst and Byron Reynolds.
After the conversations I’ve had this morning, I can understand why, and I have no idea how that woman has been married to the former for the last thirty years.
But now I know why I’m replacing her.
Dolly is staying on long enough to help me acclimate, to make sure I’m comfortable with everything that is Blackhurst Ridge, and to hire someone else who’ll help me make this ward’s mission an unbreakable one because without sharing genetics with one of theholy trinity of Raevenwood,chances of survival drop significantly.
Not to mention, the doctor she was hoping would be the one to do that, Dolly busted giving her alpha a blowjob the morningof the transfer. It’s why neither of them were present when I arrived, or when the new patients—residents—were escorted onto the ward.
Needless to say, we’re already in a compromised position, now fighting the battle for an extremely unorthodox and dangerous type of treatment with a huge hole in our ranks, but I know Dolly is doing what she can to fix that. She even left this morning to get a head start.
If her brother wasn’t in charge of the other floors here, and sitting in for her while she’s away, I might have begged Dolly to take me with her.
