Shock and dismay cut through the layers of confusion and snapped him to attention. His gaze lifted to meet her stare.
“Don’t be so surprised,” she said just a bit too sweetly. “I think a man with your …”—she paused to give him sweeping glance before meeting his gaze once more— “talents deserves to return to a position worthy of his skills.” Vikki smiled. “Daddy agreed, and you know he’s got a little bit of say in how things are run around here. But I won’t give all the surprises away.”
He hated surprises. Worse, he hated anything he got that he didn’t earn or deserve.
Then there was the question of what she got out of this. Plenty was his guess.
“Oh, who am I kidding? I never could keep a secret.”
“Unless it would keep me off death row,” he snapped.
Her unexpected—unwanted—presence, combined with feeling like he was a bug under a microscope and the nausea he’d been fighting all morning created a pounding pulse in his head. His temper flared.
“The answer is no. No to dinner. No to whatever you and your father cooked up for me. Anything that might have been between us ended the day you testified at my trial.”
“Trey, really.” Her gaze swept the horizon. “Must we do this here?”
His eyes narrowed. She had to be worried about him making a scene. In her line of work, rumors were gospel by the time they got to the press, and a fight with the newly released Dr. Brown was just juicy enough to end up in the gossip columns by tomorrow.
Why would she risk the fallout for a supper invitation? He didn’t get it.
And he was done here.
“Trey Brown. It sure is good to see you.”
Interruption welcome, Trey tore his attention away from Vikki’s white-lipped frown to see Charlie Dorne storming toward him with the speed befitting a man who was a college running back less than a decade ago. His coattails flying, his horn-rimmed glasses askew, Charlie’s hand was already outstretched in greeting and his smile could be seen across the room.
While much of the surgical staff at Turner Memorial had pretended him out of existence during his trial and subsequent incarceration, Charlie hadn’t. Charlie had attended the trial when he could and sent him words of encouragement when he couldn’t, always assuring Trey he was praying for him. The guy had even taken the trouble to send him a Bible for the duration of his jail term, refusing to take it back when Trey admitted he had no need for the Lord.
The Bible lay under the Chronicle in his backpack, well used and with his own notes scribbled alongside Charlie’s in the margins of each page. His life had been changed because of that book, and because of this man.
“Hey, Charlie.” He checked his watch. Five minutes to spare before his meeting, and so much still left unsaid. “Good to see you too,” he added, and it was. Especially as Charlie’s presence meant he wasn’t alone with Vikki.
Ignoring Vikki, the orthopedic surgeon closed the distance to slap him soundly between the shoulders. “First day back?” He reached to pump his hand like a dry well. “I knew they’d get you back here once the judge heard all the evidence on appeal and declared you innocent.”
Innocent. Not exactly what the paperwork said. Thus far Trey could barely consider the word in relation to himself. No matter what the state of Texas declared, and no matter what evidence had been entered in his behalf, a young man was still dead. And he’d held the weapon that killed him. Even if things had been different and he’d never faced jail time, Trey knew he’d have carried that guilt around for the rest of his life.
“That’s not exactly how it happened, but the end result was that the truth came out.”
Unused to being ignored, Vikki cleared her throat. Loudly.
Dorne, larger than life, wore a smile so broad it had to be genuine. It faded a bit when he turned to stare at Vikki.
“Charlie, you remember my, um, friend, Victoria Rossi, don’t you?”
“Sure do.” But the doctor’s usual East Texas charm was missing from the greeting.
An awkward silence descended.
“Trey.” Vikki’s nails clamped on his forearm. Her eyes cut to Dorne in a sign Trey recognized. As if he was going to get rid of the other doctor to be alone with her.
His one saving grace was the fact she wouldn’t make a scene in front of Charlie.
He shook her off. “We’re done here.”
But she wasn’t. She leaned in again.
“I made reservations at the Lancaster,” she said, voice low.
“I said no.” He turned, but could feel her seething beside him. Charlie had the good manners to pretend interest in an awful painting hanging nearby.
“You’re a smart man, cowboy.” Now her voice had a dangerous tone to it.
Cowboy. If indeed he still were just that, life would be much simpler.
“Too smart to pass this up. If you want to stay on the fast track to chief, you’ll be there.”
Trey watched her walk away, her words, almost a threat, ringing in his ears. When she disappeared around the corner, he faced Charlie, now leaning against the wall watching.
The clock over Charlie’s head told Trey he was almost late for his appointment with the chief. An appointment he suddenly did not want to attend. After his stint in prison, he knew the cost of mistakes. But thinking about stepping into the chief’s office made him want to vomit.
Unlike Vikki, Charlie had appeared at just the right moment.
“You got a minute?”
“Sure.” Charlie pushed off the wall. “But don’t you have someplace to be?”
The elevator dinged, and Trey pressed past his friend to step inside. “Yeah, but I’m having second thoughts about showing up now that I know what it’s about. How about I reschedule and buy you breakfast instead?”
Chapter Five
Trey’s phone call to the chief’s office was blessedly brief. He left a message with the chief’s secretary that he was meeting with a colleague and needed to reschedule. He would have to face the chief soon—he wasn’t officially back on the payroll yet.
A few minutes later Trey and Charlie grabbed a small table in the far corner of the hospital coffee shop on the basement level just as a couple of EMTs vacated it. While Charlie unloaded milk, orange juice, one sausage biscuit and a donut from his tray, Trey watched the crowd and stirred a second packet of sugar into his coffee, trying to sort his thoughts into words.
Trey stared past Charlie to the bank of elevators on the opposite wall and the throng of nameless strangers milling about. His phone sounded, and quickly he squelched the noise without looking. He’d told the chief’s secretary she could leave the new meeting time on his voice mail.
And if it were anyone else, they could wait. His conversation with Charlie was way overdue.
“I read that Bible you sent me.”
Charlie raised his glass of milk in mock salute. “Good for you. Guess you had plenty of reading time.”
That’s what he loved about Charlie. Anyone else might have danced around the topic of his incarceration, but not this guy.
His gaze settled back on Charlie. “Took me awhile, but I got it, this me and Jesus thing. Thank you.”
With a chuckle, the surgeon reached to give Trey a high five. “Well, all right.”
“Yeah,” he said through the steam coming off his cup.
The doctor leaned back in his chair and gave Trey a sideways look. “You’re not considering letting Vikki lead you back to that old life, are you?”
“No!”
He shook his head. “But?”
“But …” Trey paused to consider his words. “I need some advice.”
Charlie leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table. “Sure.”
Working up his courage, he gave voice to the fear dogging him. “Have you ever felt like you don’t deserve it?”
“It? Oh, it.” Charlie slapped the table and jostled the glass of milk, causing it to spill. Swiping at the mess with a napkin, he smiled.
“Every day, Trey. Every day. But then that’s grace, man. Undeserved but freely given.”
“Yeah, but I feel like I should be doing something to make up for all I’ve done wrong.” He paused to watch a trio of nurses look his way then quickly avert their gazes. “It just seems too easy.”
“Easy and hard all at the same time, I’d say.” He tossed the soggy napkin toward the center of the table and gave Trey a direct look, his smile gone. “This is personal isn’t it? It’s about your acquittal.”
Trey sipped at his coffee without actually tasting it. “I still don’t feel like a free man.”
“Give it some time. The ink’s barely dry on the paperwork that says you didn’t do it.”
“But I did do it. I killed that man.” A couple turned to stare, and he lowered his voice a notch. “A twenty-year-old kid is dead. By the hands that are supposed to heal, not kill. No amount of time is going to change that.”
“No, it won’t.”
“That’s it? It won’t?”
Charlie shrugged. “Sorry, pal. That kid would have killed you if you hadn’t defended yourself. You know that.”
Sometimes he thought he did. Other times, he wasn’t so sure. He’d known that boy. Mentored him. Taught him how to stay on the back of a bucking horse. He’d had high hopes he’d do well in rodeo and in school.
Was even willing to put money behind his hopes.
Trey inhaled deeply, then let the breath out slowly as he nodded to a pair of orderlies vacating a nearby table. “I don’t fit in this life anymore. In medicine, I mean.”
Speaking the words aloud crystallized all of it—the swirling emotions that had suffocated him since his release, the feeling that it was wrong to come back.
“Sure you do,” Charlie said.
His cell phone rang again, but Trey ignored it to lean toward Charlie. “I can’t even hold a knife yet, Charlie. I threw up on my kitchen floor just trying to cut a bagel.” The phone rang again. He was beginning to think he shouldn’t have gotten out of bed at all. With no family to speak of, no one to call him for an emergency, it could only be the chief.
And his expectations.
Charlie seemed to consider the statement a moment. “Why do you think that is?”
Trey ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “That’s the million dollar question.”
His friend didn’t waste a minute. “I know a guy who might be able to help. He’s a specialist at this sort of thing. While I look for his number, you answer the call.”
Numb, Trey pressed the button and held the phone to his ear. “Brown here.”
The chief of staff’s rant began with a question and ended with a statement. In as few words as possible, Trey promised to appear within ten minutes under penalty of continued loss of his license and possible banishment from Turner Memorial altogether. Trey placated the chief with the appropriate apology and promised to be in his office right away.
Doubt slammed him hard as he hung up the phone, making him wonder whether he would ever operate again. Skepticism hit him harder when Charlie reached for the notepad in his coat pocket, wrote down a number, and then pushed the slip of white paper toward him.
“He helped me, and I know he’ll help you.”
“You mean you …” The words died as he tried to enunciate his shock at the idea of such a level-headed guy as Charlie Dorne having need of a counselor’s help.
Nonplussed, Charlie nodded. “Yeah, me.” His gaze, while direct, seemed to indicate his thoughts were elsewhere. “When Dee died, I had a real bad time of it.” He pointed to the paper. “I’m still here because of this man.”
Faint remembrances of signing a sympathy card for Charlie upon the demise of his wife teased at his mind. Back then it had been just one more document to sign between surgical orders and medicine changes. Fresh shame gnawed at him. Before he could comment further, Charlie stood and grabbed his tray.
“Better get yourself up to the chief’s office stat,” he said. “You’ve got less than half of that ten minutes left.”
Trey stood and tucked the card into his shirt pocket. “How’d you know?”
Charlie pointed to the phone clipped to Trey’s belt. “I’ve got ears.”
He lifted his backpack to his shoulder and joined his friend in a chuckle as they walked toward the elevators. “I guess I’ve tried his patience enough for one day.”
The surgeon pressed the up button. “Make that call.” He paused as they stepped into the elevator and then he slid Trey a sideways look. “Or I can call him for you.”
“Yeah, sure,” Trey said. “If you think of it, that’d be fine.”
They shook hands and parted ways when Charlie left the elevator on the fifth floor. All the way to the top, Trey rode alone and tried to pray. Somehow, his elusive needs didn’t quite collect into any coherent thoughts.
An hour later, after all the papers were signed and the lawyers had departed, the moment was properly celebrated among the staff. Trey left the chief of staff’s office a full-fledged doctor with a brand new license to practice medicine in the state of Texas and a place on the staff of Turner Memorial Hospital. While there was no direct mention of him being placed on the fast track, the chief’s toast over champagne left little doubt that was at least an option.
Unfortunately, that license would do him no good if he couldn’t hold a knife, and the fast track would be a slippery slope unless he decided that’s what he really wanted. Then there was the issue of Vikki. He certainly wouldn’t be meeting her at the Lancaster for dinner, but he would have to speak to her about any continued involvement in his life. Those days were over.
He balled his hands into fists. Somewhere behind him a door opened.
“Dr. Brown,” the chief’s secretary called, “you’d best get down to OR seven. Dr. Santini’s looking for you.”
Santini.
He’d promised to scrub in with his former friend at ten, and his watch read five minutes past. Once more he was late. Another bad impression made on his first day back at work.
Work.
What was his work anymore? Cutting people and sewing them back up? How could he still hold a scalpel after he’d used one to …?
Trey pushed the bloody image away with a roll of his shoulders and slammed his fist against the wall with a satisfying thud. “Tell him I’m on my way, Peg.” He stalked down the hall toward the stairs.
Twenty minutes later, shame chased him back to the parking garage, the contents of his stomach left on the floor of OR 7. There was a virus going around, or at least that’s what he overheard one of the nurses saying as he made his exit. He should take a day or two to feel better. This from Santini as he diplomatically stepped over the mess and sent an intern out to arrange for another operating room.
With the car door closed, Trey turned over the ignition and positioned the air conditioner vents so they were blowing directly on him. Closing his eyes, Trey leaned back against the headrest and once again tried to pray. This time all he could manage was a roughly mumbled, “Help me.”
The buzzing of his phone jarred Trey. He reached into his pocket and saw that the name on the caller ID matched the one on the card Charlie Dorne had given him.
“Dr. Brown, this is Tom Glenn. Charlie told me you’d be expecting a call,” the counselor said. “Am I interrupting?”
“Your timing is fine, Mr. Glenn.”
“Call me Tom. I’m calling because I have an unexpected cancellation for this morning at eleven, and I wondered if perhaps you’d like to take that slot.”
Trey arrived with a few minutes to spare.
He found the chair nearest the door and waited long enough to get nervous. Just as he was about to bolt, the door opened, and a guy who looked as if he’d just stepped out of the Houston Texans locker room called him by name.
“Come on back,” Tom said as he led Trey down a hallway decorated with Louisiana State University memorabilia. “Charlie tells me you played for the Aggies.”
&n
bsp; “Running back,” he said. “I mostly warmed the bench but I made a couple of touchdowns senior year.”
“Middle linebacker,” Tom said. “I stopped a few touchdowns in my brief college career. And a few running backs.”
Tom glanced back in time for Trey to see him smile. Trey joined the counselor in laughter, and the ice was broken.
“Come on in and make yourself comfortable.”
Unlike the nondescript reception area, Tom’s office was decorated in that slick modern style many of Trey’s colleagues favored. The furniture was all chrome and black leather, and the modern art was good. Very good, judging by the Kandinsky painting by the door and the Picasso lithograph holding a place of honor between the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a view of Memorial Park and the polo grounds.
He took a seat across from Tom’s vintage Karl Springer desk, ironically an almost exact copy of the one Vikki had in her office. “Thank you for fitting me in. Where should I begin?”
“I find the beginning’s the best place, although I’m always curious as to whether my clients can sum up their issues in a sentence. Can you do that?”
Could he? Trey thought a minute. “I killed a kid I’d been mentoring. Now I can’t hold a scalpel without losing my lunch.” He let out a long breath. “Sorry, that was two sentences, wasn’t it?”
Tom appraised him, chin propped on steepled fingers. “You murdered a kid?”
The question—the same one he’d asked himself often during his incarceration—knocked the breath from his lungs.
“You didn’t follow the case?” he grated.
“I’d like to hear it from you.”
Was that a yes or a no? Trey didn’t want to tell the story again. Didn’t know if he could.
Eyes on the floor, he focused on regulating his breathing. When he felt like he could speak without vomiting, he recited, “I was coming home after an evening out. Came through the garage. I walked in on him. He was trying to open the safe in my home office.”
He blinked against the memories. He could see it. The hall light shining behind him. The dark office. The adrenaline surge when he noticed movement behind the desk. A head turning toward him, light slanting across a face.
Firefly Summer Page 4
