She raised her head at the nurse’s cry of alarm and the sudden quiet of the ER, and it was then that Caleb saw her face. He felt the life drain out of his body.
“She couldn’t breathe,” she explained in a hoarse, agonized voice. “Aerodermectasia.”
Aisha? His mouth could not even form the name.
She struggled to straighten herself, trying her best to mumble an explanation despite her suffering. Just as she leaned against the wall, however, he watched as her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed.
He would never know how fast he moved. No one saw him and he didn’t recall his sprint, but in the next moment he was by her side and lifting her up by her arms. Other nurses ran to lend him a hand, but a bark tore out of him. “Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare to touch her.”
Confusion and befuddlement spread across the ER like a disease.
Caleb lifted the exact replica of his dead fiancé into his arms and returned her to her bed.
“Get to work,” he yelled when the ER still remained eerily quiet, and in an instant, the chaos resumed in full force.
“Dr. Caleb, the little girl,” the Head Nurse alerted him, but he did not respond. He took his stethoscope from around his neck and began to listen to the beat of her heart.
“Dr. Caleb, the child’s condition is worsening.”
He looked towards his patient’s monitor. “Blood pressure 110 over 70; GCS- 6,” he muttered to himself.
“CT scan?” he called. “Where the hell is her CT scan?”
One of the residents hurried over to him with a laptop in hand. “Here it is,” he said. “There isn’t any serious damage to her arteries but she does have intestinal injuries.”
“You cannot be sure of that,” he retorted, returning his gaze to her face, his hands trembling from the shock. “Her wound is littered with shattered glass. There might be a damaged artery that you cannot see. I’m going into surgery right now.”
He shot to his feet and gave his instructions to the nurse. “Lead her carefully to OR 5. If the shard of glass even moves an inch within her abdomen, I will kill you.”
“Doctor Pace,” the Head Nurse called once again. “This patient might still be able to hold on for a while. However the little girl…”
He did not respond. He turned around and ran to the OR, his hands already unbuttoning his shirt. “Get me a pair of scrubs!” he yelled and a response followed.
“Yes, doctor!”
Caleb was not certain but just as he exited the room, he heard the endless, heartbreaking flatline tone of a monitor.
Someone had just passed away.
He didn’t look back. Instead, he quickened his haste towards the OR. Moments later, he was scrubbing his hands and seeing in his mind’s eyes the face of the woman he’d thought he’d lost forever. He had to save her life no matter the cost, or this time he would indeed lose her forever.
He rinsed his hands and hurried into the operating room.
***
Three surgeries later, and with the sun just about rising, Caleb walked into his office and allowed his legs to crumble beneath him. Dragging himself over to the couch by the corner, he climbed onto it and collapsed on his back.
He thought that he would fall instantly asleep but when minutes later he found himself recalling over and over all that had happened in the last few hours, he sat up and headed over to his cabinet to grab a bottle of sleeping pills. He popped them in his mouth just as the door flew open.
“Caleb, my father wants to see you,” announced a tall blonde. “He expected that you would have been by to check on him by now.”
Caleb raised his gaze to hers. “Don’t you know how to knock?”
For a second she appeared taken aback by his retort, but then quickly regained her composure with a snort. “Caleb…”
“Retrace your steps and knock,” he said. “Then wait for me to invite you in. And it’s Dr. Pace, not Caleb.”
He saw the shock in her eyes, and then the tears but he felt nothing but irritation. He swallowed his pills and took a seat behind his desk to watch her storm out, banging the door shut behind her. He knew that she would not return. A few seconds later, however, the door flew open once more, and when he saw who it was, he leaned into his chair and shut his eyes.
“Who was that?” The male nurse who had just entered watched the tall blonde clonk away in her heels, her bob bouncing around her neck. “She is so gorgeous...”
He turned to Caleb, and then shut the door behind him. “Hey,” he tapped loudly against the desk. “Hey! Why are you still here? Go home!”
When he was still met with silence, he headed over to the blinds and pulled it open, sending a burst of rays into the dim room.
Caleb finally opened his eyes and turned to the nurse in a squint.
“Get some sleep or you will collapse,” the nurse said. “And not in the hospital. Go home and make some use out of that ridiculously expensive lake house that you own.”
“Why are you here?” Caleb asked. “I left you in charge of Aisha.”
The nurse looked confused. “Aisha?”
Caleb corrected himself. “Miss Joan.”
“She is fine,” he said. “Her vitals are stable and in a few hours she should regain consciousness.”
At the report, Caleb shut his eyes once more and leaned in the chair again.
“The hospital is abuzz with your reaction to her in the ER,” the nurse said quietly.
Caleb did not respond so he took another approach. “The little girl died,” he said, “and everyone is calling it an unfair trade. They all say that you should have attended to her first. Her mother is still hysterical and has refused to leave, and I hear that her father will be arriving…”
“Kevin, I need to rest,” Caleb said. When the nurse refused to move, Caleb rose from his seat and left the office. He headed straight to the ICU and walked in to check up on Aisha. He read the monitor by her side, placed his hand on her forehead to feel her temperature, and then drew up a chair to sit by her.
He gazed at her face, now swollen from surgery, and the bandages on her arms. If he had harbored any doubt that she was truly Aisha, it had been dissolved as he had operated on her.
Her surgery had taken almost twice as long as it should have, and it had nothing to do with its complexity. For the first time in a long time, he had felt immense fear and dread as he had worked a knife along a patient’s intestines, second-guessing his every move, and double checking his every act. He’d operated on her as though it were his very own body he had been working on.
He could not wait until she awakened, as there was so much he had to ask.
“Aisha,” he breathed as he held her bandaged hand. Tears filled his eyes while an overwhelming bout of suppressed grief and the sickening feeling that this was all just a dream, rose to his chest. He sobbed like a child, just as he had the day he had received the news that she had passed away. After a long while, his exhaustion in body and mind finally caught up with him. So he laid his head by her side and finally drifted off to a deep and peaceful sleep.
Chapter 2
Joan could perfectly recall the accident.
She had headed into the city for a delivery and on her way back had fumbled with the old radio in her van. It had momentarily distracted her and in the next moment, she had raised her head to meet the collision of more than four vehicles across the road.
She had slammed down on her brakes but it was too late. Her van tumbled over and slid across the ground to crash into the back of one of the accident vehicles, shattering the glasses all around her.
The fear that had gripped her heart at that moment, shocked her awake.
A sharp pain originating from her abdomen and spreading all over her body greeted her. There was an intubation tube in her mouth and a needle stuck in her hand. She recalled the shard of glass… the suffocating woman by her bedside… and it all came back to her.
>
Her gaze moved to the full head of dark hair that laid on her bed, and she stared at it in exhausted confusion. She heard shouting in the distance and at its approach, the sleeping man began to stir. When he raised his head at the incoming noise, and his gaze met hers, she felt her heart plummet into her stomach.
For the longest time there were no words exchanged between them until finally, she asked. “Who are you?”
He looked confused. At first, he did not respond, but then just as he began to open his mouth to speak, a man dressed in a dark suit barged into the ICU with three nurses running after him.
“Where is he? Caleb Pace!”
The man turned away from her, and after a glance at the recovering patients in the ICU, turned to glare at the shouting man. He rose slowly to his feet and walked up to him until he was staring down at him, several inches taller than anyone else in the room. He slipped his hands into the pocket of his white coat and spoke. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The shouting man suddenly fisted the front of his blue scrubs and tried to jerk the doctor towards him. “You killed my daughter,” he spat, eyes bulging red with pain and face contorted in fury. “You better bring her back.”
The doctor looked at the nurses behind him. “Step out of the ICU,” he said and they all retreated. He turned his gaze back to the man. “Let go of me,” he said.
The man scoffed. “You still have the guts. Let go of you, or else what?” he asked. “You’re gonna call the cops? Go ahead. It will be a great head start for your incoming time in prison.”
The doctor’s voice was so calm that it made her nervous. “If you do not let go,” he said, “I will dislocate your arm this instant and no doctor will ever be able to fully fix it.”
She believed him, and after a few moments so did the man, albeit reluctantly. He loosened his grip on the shirt, and then stormed away, the nurses clearing a path for him. Dr. Pace calmly straightened his now wrinkled scrubs and then turned to look at her. She met his eyes.
“I’m Doctor Caleb Pace,” he said, and all she could do was stare.
Chapter 3
“Watch her for me,” Caleb said to Kevin and headed towards his office. When he arrived, he turned around to look at the nurses accompanying him. “Do you not all have patients to tend to?” he asked.
The two female nurses scurried away, but as the Head Nurse began to leave also, he stopped her. “Please come in, Nurse Kang.”
She nodded and they both went in to meet the man and his wife seated in front of his desk. The woman was sobbing quietly while her husband gazed angrily at the windows blinds.
Nurse Kang stood by the corner, while Caleb took his seat. As soon as he did, the man slapped a card on the table. Caleb glanced at it and read the title. He was from the medicine investigation board.
“Explain to me why you ignored my daughter for a patient that was not in a condition as critical as hers?”
Caleb leaned in his chair and folded his arms against his chest. “That other patient had a shard of glass sticking from her chest.”
“Don’t be smart with me,” the man snapped. “I know medicine too. As long as it was not moved, she could have held on for much longer.”
“I could not be certain of how much longer and I did not want to take the chance, so I did what I deemed appropriate in the heat of the moment.”
“What you deemed appropriate?!?” the man asked incredulously. “Do you even have a heart? Are you human?” His voice rose. “You should be in jail, not holding a scalpel. How could you pass over a child?”
Caleb turned to the sobbing woman. “Your wife was the one who drove an underaged child without putting her in a car seat. That was why, upon collision, she sustain such severe injuries.”
The man gazed at him in shock and then shot to his feet with a bang of his hand against the table. “How dare you!” he roared. “You bastard! How dare you point a finger at my wife?”
Caleb could take no more. He rose to his feet as well. “Please take whatever complaints you may have against my call with the hospital’s director. He will be turning in to work by 9 am. I’m going home.”
There was a shock of silence that followed him until he got to the door, but then he stopped and stared with compassion at the sobbing mother. “I am truly sorry for your loss,” he said and pulled the door open.
“I will destroy you!” the man yelled. “You and this goddamn shack of a hospital.”
Caleb shut the door behind him and headed home. On his way, he thought of the little girl and went over his decision, his heart heavy with the call that he had made. There was a very high chance that Aisha would have been able to hold on at least a while longer than the girl. However, she might not have survived up till the end of the child’s surgery and there was no other surgeon he could trust enough to handle it. She had literally come back from the grave, there was nothing worth the risk of losing her a second time. There was still so much that he did not understand.
In retrospect, it had been such a difficult choice to make but at the time it had been incredibly easy because the moment he had recognized her, he had lost all reason. He felt great remorse at his decision, but if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would take the same path in a heart beat. He was no hero and had never pretended to be one.
Aisha meant more to him than anything in this world. His reputation, his career, his very own life. He had no regrets, only a bitterness at the cruelty of life, and the insurmountable challenges that it constantly tossed in one’s path.
He sighed deeply as he walked into his home. Aisha had pretended not to recognize him, and he wondered why. She would have been able to thoroughly confuse him had he not operated on her. But he had, and he had gotten his confirmation that she was none other than his supposedly dead fiancé.
After she had graduated from a medical school which had come at a heavy price, she had as a note of celebration tattooed the caduceus- the medical symbol of two snakes winding around a winged staff, between her breasts. It had been a decision that she had come to regret so thoroughly. He had operated on her and seen it, and it had brought such joy and equally pervasive pain. There was no denying her identity now, so unless there was truly something wrong with her memory, her hoax or pretense would crash and burn with such tragedy. No one would take her away from him again, not even her.
Chapter 4
Joan watched the nurse as he checked up on her.
She sat upright on the bed while he inspected her vitals and wounds, and although she could see what he was doing, her mind was far from him.
Her insides were boiling with anxiety at the medical bill that she expected would be accrued to her. She had a fair estimate of how much it would all cost and it scared her witless.
“You keep sighing,” the male nurse whose name was Kevin, said to her, and she returned her focus to him. He was now injecting a drug into a syringe.
“I’m allergic to penicillin,” she said, her eyes on the small brown bottle and upon his startle, she turned her gaze to him. He retracted the needle and placed his hand on his chest in relief.
“You should have said so,” he almost cried. “Wait, how do you know this is penicillin?”
She shot him a small smile and turned her face towards the door. “When can I leave?”
“Your surgery was just two days ago,” he said. “You need to be monitored for a while. I’ll be moving you from the ICU as soon as I’m done.”
“I don’t want to stay for too long,” she said. “I have a job.”
He stopped to glare at her. “I think your health is at least a thousand times more important, but that could just be me.” When he saw that she was serious, he sighed. “Call your workplace and explain what has happened. You won’t be able to leave until your doctor discharges you.”
“Dr. Pace?”
“Yeah, him.”
She remained silent until the nurse was done.
“Do you have medical insurance?” he asked, and she shook her head.
He stopped and gazed at her. “Okay,” he said and disconnected her IV. He called over another nurse to assist him in pushing her bed and in no time they were on their way.
She was settled in a private ward and it alarmed her even more. She grabbed the nurse’s uniform. “Why am I here?” she asked. “I cannot afford a private ward.”
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