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“The E.R. is this way.”
Electing to bypass the patients who were seated out front, Alix took him in through the side entrance, accessible only to the hospital personnel.
Just beyond the rear nurses’ station were two long rows of hospital beds, separated by partitions or floor-to-ceiling white curtains. Here and there were rooms where the more intense exams or stopgap surgeries were performed before patients were taken to the operating rooms on either the first or third floors.
Everything was in pristine condition. Blair prided itself on keeping up-to-the-minute and new. A nonprofit hospital, it relied heavily on the local community’s goodwill and philanthropic donations. Its sterling reputation afforded it both.
She gestured at the rows of beds, most of which had their curtains pulled shut, signifying occupancy. Alix glanced at the large white board to the left of the nurses’ station. Names and conditions were written in orange erasable marker.
“As you can see,” she told him in a clipped tone of voice she was unaccustomed to using, “we’re pretty full.”
She noticed that Donna and Alice, two of the day nurses, were at the desk. Both stopped working the moment Terrance came into their line of vision. Both women’s eyes lit up.
Some things never changed, she thought. Terrance had always been a magnet for female attention. To his credit it had never affected him. At least, not while they’d been together.
But then, who knew, maybe that had been a lie, too. Just as his words to her had been. He’d told her he loved her. And then he’d left.
Eyes riveted to Terrance, the nurses approached them as one. Alix took pity on them. “Donna, Alice, this is Dr. Terrance McCall. He’ll be joining us for a while. Dr. McCall, this is Donna Patterson and Alice Brown, two of our best.”
“How long a while?” Donna, never one to be shy, wanted to know.
“Time is a relative thing,” Alix couldn’t help saying. “What’s long to some is just a moment to others.”
Though he gave no indication, Terrance knew the comment was aimed at him. He smiled at the younger of the two nurses. “I plan on settling here in Bedford.”
Alice lost no time in flanking his other side. Alix had the impression of two women about to launch into a tug-of-war.
“Maybe you’ll need someone to show you around,” Alice offered eagerly.
He could feel Alix watching him. Terrance wasn’t about to allow himself to get distracted, although socializing with either woman would have been good for his cover. But with Alix here, the intended role of a carefree doctor who doubled as a ladies’ man was going to have to be rethought.
“I’m originally from Bedford,” Terrance told the two women.
“Nurse!” The head nurse, Wanda Monroe, called out the single title. Both women instantly turned to answer, knowing better than to ignore the imposing woman. Wanda was fair, but she brooked no nonsense when it came to the way the E.R was run. After her husband and grandchildren, the E.R. was her baby, her pride and joy, and she wasn’t about to have things go lax.
Alix glanced at Terrance as Alice hurried away beside Donna. “From what I hear, you just turned down a really good time.”
Terrance paused to study Alix. Was she deliberately trying to get him paired off with someone? Or was she just baiting him? “I’m not here to have a good time, I’m here to work.”
Alix looked at him, then shook her head. His eyes were as unfathomable now as they’d ever been.
“You’re just as much of a puzzle as you ever were. FYI, the lady who just bellowed is Wanda Monroe, our head nurse. You’d do well to stay on her good side, which, fortunately for us, there is a great deal of. She’s part mother hen, part martinet and the most competent nurse I’ve ever known.”
He looked from the light-coffee-complected woman to Alix. “That’s some testimonial.”
“She deserves every syllable. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to her.” Not waiting for Terrance to say anything, Alix led the way over to Wanda.
Terrance took the older woman’s hand and shook it, offering a disarming smile. Wanda, he’d noted, had been giving him the once-over from across the room. He wondered if he passed inspection.
Wanda returned his handshake, nodding in approval. “We can always use another set of good hands.” Wanda cocked her head, peering at his face. “Are you wet behind the ears?”
This was a woman who didn’t take lies well, he thought. But he had a feeling that she appreciated humor.
“Maybe a little,” he allowed.
Alix narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “I thought Dr. Beauchamp said you had a glowing record at Boston General.”
“I’m new here,” he pointed out.
He could always turn words around to his advantage, Alix thought.
“One E.R. is like another, more or less,” she heard herself saying.
She wasn’t ordinarily this annoyed, this distant and impatient, Alix thought with a touch of self-deprecation. But the sight of Terrance after all this time had sent her reeling. It had also sent her sense of humor into a tailspin.
“Don’t you listen to her,” Wanda contradicted gruffly. “They all have their own personalities. Just like doctors,” she added, looking pointedly at him. “Boston General, eh?” When he nodded, she said, “I hear it’s a fine hospital.” Wanda crossed her arms before her ample chest. “What brings you here?”
Terrance had discovered that when confronted with questions he couldn’t answer truthfully, it was best to keep his replies simple. That way there was less to trip him up later.
“I needed a change,” he told her.
“Of weather?” Wanda asked.
Terrance smiled, managing to completely charm her and every other women within a quarter-mile radius. Except for Alix.
“Yes.”
He was lying, Alix thought. Something else had brought him here. She could feel it. But lying or not, she reminded herself, it made no difference to her. His reasons for doing things had long since stopped being any business of hers.
Changing the subject, Alix nodded at the sign-in board. “Who needs attending, Wanda?”
Wanda didn’t bother looking at the chart. At any given moment she knew exactly what was going on in her E.R. and who was in which bed. She didn’t think of them as patients, or even by their last names. To her they were conditions in need of curing.
“Got your choice of a bad case of stomach cramps in bed K, possible urinary track infection in bed L, some woman complaining of the worst back pains she’d ever had in bed M or—”
The electronic back doors flew open as four paramedics charged in, pushing two gurneys between them. A much-battered woman lay very still on the first, a screaming child on the second.
“Incoming,” Alix announced, snapping to life. “Looks like you’re on, Doctor.”
Terrance wished she’d stop calling him that. She sounded so formal, so distant. He fell into step beside her, wondering if he could get used to the new Alix.
But he supposed that he had it coming to him.
He couldn’t afford to dwell on the past now. This was a bona fide emergency he had before him. Terrance prayed that the week he’d spent at the hospital in Boston was enough to refresh his memory about how to deal with whatever came his way.
“Oh, God,” Alix groaned. Her eyes were focused on the second gurney, on the child who looked to be just a little older than her own daughter. “What happened?” she demanded of the closest paramedic.
“Mother’s got a history of unstable mental behavior,” the man with “Jerry” stitched on his uniform pocket answered. Details came spilling out as quickly as vital signs ordinarily did. “Happened at the courthouse. She was despondent over a custody hearing. Grabbed the little girl and ran up to the roof. Jumped holding the kid’s hand.” He saw Alix looking from one gurney to another. “She’s DOA, Doc, just waiting for you to make the official call.”
“And the little girl?” Alix wanted to know, raising her voice above the screaming child.
The head of the second team rattled off the small victim’s vital signs. The readings could all be far better, but there was reason to hope.
“How is it she’s still breathing?” Terrance marveled.
“Kid fell on top of the mother,” he was told by the paramedic on the gurney’s other side.
“Probably saved her life,” Alix commented. She looked up. “Wanda?”
The head nurse understood her shorthand and pointed. “Room four’s free.”
Sliding her arms through the sterile, yellow paper gown one of the nurses was holding out for her, Alix never took her eyes off the child.
“You know the way,” she told the second team. Together they hurried down the corridor.
“Hey, what about Mom?” the first paramedic wanted to know.
Alix spared the dead woman a glance. “She wasn’t a mom, she was a monster.” She looked at Terrance. For a moment she thought he almost appeared lost. “I’ll leave the honor of calling it to you, Doctor. Welcome to Blair,” she added dryly.
With that Alix hurried alongside the gurney into Room Four to do everything in her power to save the life of an innocent child whose only sin was to have the misfortune of being born to the wrong woman. Mentally she recited a prayer as the doors closed behind her.
A moment later a man came tearing in through the same electronic doors that had parted to admit the two teams with their gurneys. Frantic, he grabbed the first person he encountered, an orderly who spoke next to no English and looked terrified by the man’s demeanor.
“My little girl, they just brought her in.” The man looked up and down the hall. Everything blurred before him. “She’s only two—”
There was barely harnessed hysteria in the man’s voice. Terrance looked up from the bloodied woman on the gurney. Even if he were the most skilled doctor in the world, he could do nothing for her now.
But there was something he could do for the father.
Placing his body between the gurney and the man, he stopped the latter from plowing into it. Terrance clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “They’ve taken her into the exam room.”
It took a second for the words to process. “Is she…is she…?” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the unutterable.
Terrance’s hand remained on the man’s shoulder, holding him in place. “She’s alive,” Terrance assured him.
“And my wife?” Utterly beside himself, the man was blind to the still figure that lay on the gurney directly behind Terrance.
Terrance noted that the man referred to the woman as his wife, not his ex-wife. There were feelings there, he judged, vividly brought out by the tragic events of the moment.
He wondered if there were doctors who got used to saying this. He knew he didn’t. “I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”
For a second Terrance thought the man was going to crumple before him at his feet. He seemed to get weak at the knees and sagged against Terrance as he saw the body of his wife.
“Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe Jill’ll finally be at peace.” There were tears in his eyes as he turned them toward Terrance. “But why did she have to try to take Wendy with her? She’s just a little girl, a baby.” His voice hitched badly. “She’s got her whole life in front of her.”
It never made any sense, but Terrance tried to find an explanation for him.
“Maybe your wife thought that Wendy couldn’t survive without her.” That was the most common psychological profile when it came to mothers who killed their children and then themselves. It revolved around a fear that the children left behind couldn’t really function in a world without the parent.
The man didn’t seem to hear. Instead he began to look around frantically, heading for the first curtained bed. “Where is she? Where did they take Wendy?”
Terrance drew him away before he could frighten a patient. “To Room Four for examination.”
He indicated the room Alix and the nurses had entered. The man hurried over to it. Terrance was right behind him, wondering if the man, in his grief, was going to have to be restrained. He cut him off before he had a chance to enter the room.
“They’re doing all they can for her. If there’s even an infinitesimal chance of saving your daughter, they will. Dr. DuCane’s with her right now, and they’re sending for an internal surgeon.”
At least, he assumed they were. Terrance knew he had to keep up a steady stream of conversation to distract the man. It was the best service he could offer in this situation. He knew how to treat common ailments, but what was going on behind the closed swinging doors to his right was beyond the scope of his expertise. Surgery for him meant removing pieces of glass from a cut or stitching up a simple wound.
Cushioned fall or not, the little girl they had just brought in was going to need some serious surgery—and someone who was up on what they were doing. That left him out.
Terrance thought of the lounge where patients’ family members waited for the results of operations. He’d passed it on his way in this morning. “Why don’t I take you someplace where you can sit down and—”
But the man shook off the hand that Terrance placed on his arm. “I don’t want to sit. I want to be right here. Right here,” he repeated numbly, “in case they need me.”
Angling around Terrance, he tried to get a better look through the windowed portion of the swinging doors. There was a ring of people around the table. He could make out the small form on the gurney.
“She’s so little,” he sobbed.
“Somehow they mend quicker when they are.” Terrance knew he was mouthing every platitude he could think of, but he needed to calm the man down. “She’s going to be all right.”
He saw the head nurse he’d met only minutes ago looking in his direction. He could tell by her expression that she’d overheard him. Wanda shook her head. His earlier training reminded him that he was violating a cardinal rule at the hospital: you never made promises you couldn’t keep.
But he knew how important it was to hand out hope, to offer it at least for a moment. Because he’d been on the other side of the operating room doors once himself, when his father had been the one the medical team were working over.
Small bits of precious hope, however unfounded, had kept him functioning and sane, had enabled him to keep his mother’s spirits up. And, eventually, had helped him cope with his father’s death.
It was the least he could do for the man who looked as if his whole world had shattered right before his eyes. The least and the most.
Down the corridor he saw Wanda waving to the orderlies who were taking the woman’s body away. He thought of directing the man’s attention to that, then decided against it. Instead, he stayed beside the father, whose eyes remained fixed on the activity around his daughter’s table.
“She’ll be all right,” Terrance repeated and prayed that Alix wouldn’t make him a liar.
Chapter 3
“Doctor, why don’t you go on in there now?”
Unnoticed—a remarkable feat considering her size—Wanda had come up behind Terrance and the little girl’s distraught father as they stood outside the examination room.
“I’ll take care of Mr.—” Wanda paused as she looked at the man. Her eyes were filled with understanding and compassion.
“Carey,” the man mumbled without seeming to be aware that he had said anything. He leaned his fisted hands against the upper portion of the exam room door, as if to somehow brace himself and help ward off the very worst.
“I’ll take care of Mr. Carey,” Wanda repeated, slipping a comforting arm around his shoulders. Though the man was taller than she, he seemed vulnerable and smaller. The events of the morning had diminished him.
Wanda glanced over her shoulder toward Terrance when he made no attempt to move. She made a slight movement of her brows, narrowing them quizzically, as she led Carey away to the lounge.
Terrance had no choice. Unless he wanted to arouse the head nurse’s suspicions, he had to go into the exam room. Feeling incredibly out of place, he pushed open the swinging door and entered.
The instant he did, a wall of noise and chaos reached out and grabbed him, sucking him into its midst.
Alix glanced up in his direction. There were tubes running into the little girl’s mouth and attached to both her arms. The readings didn’t look promising, but at least there was still activity going on.
“Nice of you to join us, Doctor,” she noted coolly. Several of the nurses exchanged glances. They weren’t used to Alix being anything other than warm and friendly. “Where have you been?”
“With her father.” Terrance’s answer was lost in the shuffle of people as behind him, another man entered the room.
“You called for a miracle worker?”
Terrance turned and saw the man who’d been sitting beside Alix in the meeting join the fray. Despite the obvious circumstances, the latter smiled warmly at her.
“You got that right,” Alix said. It was beginning to look to Alix as if the little girl might need more than just one doctor to help her make it. Alix rattled off a capsulized version of what had happened. “Mother jumped from the roof of the courthouse, taking her daughter with her.” It never did any good to try to distance herself from her cases. Her heart was too big to allow it, even though it cost her emotionally. “She’s got all sorts of internal damage going on, but she’s hanging in there. She’s a fighter.” Alix brushed the bangs away from the girl’s forehead. “Poor little thing.”
“Wendy,” Terrance said. Alix looked up at him sharply. “Her father said her name’s Wendy.”
“Well, she certainly wasn’t meant to fly, at least not without Peter Pan,” Reese commented, looking toward the closest nurse. “Call up to the O.R. and tell them to get a room ready immediately, Donna. Then page Dr. Owlsey. I have a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get here.” As the nurse ran to the wall phone, Reese looked at Alix. The orderly beside him was taking the brakes off the bed, mobilizing it for the trip to the elevator. “Want to come along?”
Alix shook her head. She knew she’d be of more use down here. “I’ll only get in your way. I’ll stop by later to see how she’s doing.” She smiled at him. “I’ve got faith in you, Reese.”
Terrance tried not to remember when that smile had been his alone to absorb. He clamped down on any extraneous feelings that threatened to seep through. Like the lady had said, the past was the past. There was no use in going there.
“Good to know,” Reese quipped. He looked at Terrance as he hurried beside the bed from the exam room. “Reese Bendenetti, internal surgery.”
“Nice to meet you,” Terrance called after the man. Reese, the bed and the two nurses and one orderly with him disappeared around the corner.
Terrance blew out a breath, realizing that he’d been in the midst of an adrenaline rush without knowing it. Ordinarily when he experienced one there were guns involved. And usually a drug bust.
With one drama now beyond her control, Alix turned toward Terrance, annoyance etched into her expression. “Where the hell were you?” she demanded. Shedding the yellow gown, she shoved it into a trash basket, her eyes blazing. “You were supposed to be in there with me.”
“I was.”
Typical. He was playing with words. Just as he always had. “From the beginning, Doctor.”
She was swiping at him. He figured he owed this to her. “I already told you. I was outside, comforting the father.”
Alix pressed her lips together to keep back choice comments. She’d never felt so out of control, so unsettled. “We have nurses for that.”
“I know,” he replied quietly, refusing to be drawn into an argument. “Wanda took him over. But at the time, it seemed like the thing to do.” Maybe if he complimented her, she’d back off. “Besides, you seemed to be on top of it.”
She never felt on top of it. She always felt that there was a little more she could do, even as her patients were pulling through. There was always the nagging concern that something had been overlooked, that her efforts weren’t enough.
But part of her success, part of the reason her patients did so well and their parents always returned to her, was that she knew how to make it seem as if she was on top of a situation. She knew how to make them think that she had all the answers even before the questions were formed. Knew how to make them feel confident.
She wished she could say the same for herself. It was all a ruse. She supposed that gave her something in common with magicians and actors.
“That’s no excuse,” she told him tersely. “You’re here to assist and learn our way of doing things.” She fisted her hands at her waist as she looked up at him. He was a good ten inches taller. “Or don’t you think you need to?”
The fire in her eyes had him feeling nostalgic despite the sharpness in her voice. There was a time when he would have warmed himself at that fire, rather than feel it as a threat. “I know better than to be lured into a fight with you, Alix.”
She resisted the temptation to tell him to call her Dr. DuCane. She wanted no more familiarity between them than was absolutely necessary. “Oh, really? I wouldn’t have thought you knew anything about me at all.”
Terrance looked around for someplace more private. “Look, I—”
Whatever he had to say, she didn’t want to hear it. There was nothing that could be said to whitewash what had happened six years ago.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and take the patient to Bed K?” It was not a suggestion, but an order, issued crisply. “I’ll be around if you need me.”
Terrance remembered how she used to say that to him when they were studying for their MCATS. She’d always been the better student. The familiar phrase brought a smile to his lips. “Just like old times.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing at all like old times,” she informed him tersely. “Bed K,” she repeated, pointing toward the general area as she walked away. “The nurse said he has projectile vomiting, so I’d stand clear if I were you.”
As Alix rounded the desk at the nurse’s station, Wanda made a comment. “Seems to be sparks flying between you and that new miracle worker.”
Alix punched her ID into the computer. A screen popped up, and she began a search for information she needed to treat one of the patients she’d admitted early this morning.
God, this was all she needed, hospital gossip. “No sparks, Wanda.”
The woman snorted. “Didn’t look that way from where I was standing.”
Alix slanted a quick glance in her direction. “Then I’d say that you were obviously standing in the wrong place.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Wanda’s tone was sing-songy and falsely deferential.
Alix looked up from the screen, flashing a contrite smile. “Sorry, Wanda. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“No,” Wanda readily agreed, “you didn’t. Need to talk?”
That was the last thing Alix wanted to do. The less said about Terrance, the better. “No.”
But Wanda wasn’t put off. Cocking her head, she crossed her arms before her ample chest. “I’ve got three kids and a passel of grandkids, Doctor D. I know when someone needs to talk.”
Alix looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. “Maybe I can’t.”
“Now that’s different,” the older woman allowed. “I can understand that.” She gave Alix’s shoulder a maternal pat. “But don’t hold it in too long, Dr. D., or you’re liable to explode. And I’m not cleaning up that mess when you do.” Her pseudo-serious warning faded as she studied Alix. Something was most definitely going on here. She was far too good a judge of human nature not to notice. “In case you’re wondering, he seems to have a good bedside manner.”
“No.” Alix’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “I wasn’t wondering.”
From the way Wanda smiled, it seemed she was willing to bet that Alix knew all about Terrance McCall’s bedside manner firsthand.
“I meant with your patient’s father. Just because they issue someone a stethoscope doesn’t mean they know how to handle people. Sometimes the best medicine they can dispense is a dose of hope, even if there’s not much available.”