The M.D.'s Surprise Family

by Marie Ferrarella

  Calling the Imaging department as soon as the boy’s sister had left his office yesterday, he’d told the woman on the other end of the line to put a rush on the procedure. Because of his standing in the medical community, not to mention Blair Memorial itself, the receptionist knew better than to offer even a single word of protest or to point to the fact that they were already overbooked, overworked and understaffed for the amount of scans and films they had to take and review.

  Instead she’d offered a pleasant, “Yes, Doctor,” and promised to do her best. He’d ended the conversation by telling her he certainly hoped so.

  As he’d hung up, he could almost hear the woman cowering. A tinge of guilt pricked him before he’d blocked it. He was not in the business of making friends, he was in the business of extending lives, of making them more tolerable for people who, through no fault of their own, were faced with intolerable alternatives. Everyone had a purpose in life, and healing was his.

  As he looked over his shoulder at the backlit display on the wall and the CAT scan held in place with metal clips, he remembered why he didn’t, as a general rule, operate on children. Because as impervious as he tried to make his heart to the life-and-death situations he dealt with, the plight of someone so young faced with something so devastating got to him.

  As if reading his mind, the small boy in the large chair smiled brightly at him. It seemed as if he was somehow trying to convey the thought that the situation was not as dire as it appeared. That everything would be all right if he just had a little faith.

  It was entirely unfounded optimism. Peter knew that he lived in a world where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And, more likely than not, with heavy consequences.

  Peter suppressed a sigh he felt to the very bottom of the soles of his feet. A kid of seven wasn’t supposed to be faced with things like this. He was supposed to be able to run, to laugh and to feel immortal.

  Like Becky.

  Peter banked down the thought before it could go any further. He shifted his eyes toward Raven. She was unusually quiet for a woman who had verbally accosted him not once but twice. What they had to talk about was not meant for a child’s ears. “Are you sure you want him here?”

  Blue answered before his sister had a chance to. He answered with the voice and attitude of a young adult who had always been allowed to think freely, who felt that his thoughts mattered as much, not more, not less, than the next person’s. That person usually being Raven. “It’s my body.”

  Strange, strange family, Peter thought with a resigned shrug. He looked at Raven again.

  “As we’ve already determined, Dr. DuCane was right. There are tumors on your brother’s spinal column. Initially it looked like a cluster, but in actually there seem to be four. Four small tumors.”

  “That doesn’t sound like so many,” Blue offered.

  One was too many if it was the wrong kind or in the wrong place. And, in this case, it might be both. Tests would have to be done on the actual tissues before they could discover if the tumors were malignant or not. In his experience, Peter thought grimly, given their location, they usually turned out to be the former. If nothing was done and the tumors were left where they were, it was only a matter of time before they would grow larger and eventually paralyze this boy who had life pulsing from every pore.

  Well, there you had it. He did have tumors, Raven thought. Her fingers and toes felt numb. All this time, she’d been secretly holding her breath, praying that there’d been some mistake, that the initial X ray that Dr. DuCane had authorized was erroneous, that the pains in his back were nothing more than just good, old-fashioned growing pains.

  But deep down she’d known it wasn’t a mistake. That there was something very, very wrong with this perfect little boy.

  Raven felt the sting of tears and instantly forced them away. She wasn’t about to cry in front of Blue. If she was anything other than upbeat, he would sense it and it would make him worry. Worse, it would make him afraid. There was no way she was going to allow that to happen. He had to feel that this was just something he had to go through and that, at the end, he would be perfect again.

  Just as he’d always been.

  Peter glanced toward the boy’s sister. For a second he thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes. But in the next moment that smile of hers was fixed in place and she was nothing short of confidence personified.

  He only wished he felt half that confident.

  Raven took a deep breath. “So, Dr. Sullivan, when can you operate?”

  “You understand that the operation is extremely delicate?” he said.

  If successful, the boy would heal faster than an adult, but there would still probably be therapy, still a painful recovery period to face. And that was if everything went right. There were no guarantees. A great deal could go wrong that was beyond anyone’s control. He knew that better than anyone.

  Raven nodded. She placed her hand over Blue’s and gave it a squeeze along with an encouraging smile. She kept her voice cheerful. “That’s why we came to you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Peter turned his chair around, looking at the CAT scan. Thinking. As with a great many neurological problems, time was of the essence, but they did have a little leeway. He wanted Raven to use that leeway to carefully think things over before she gave him the okay to go ahead.

  This wasn’t the kind of dilemma a boy of seven should be privy to, even if it was his body. Turning his chair back around, he looked at Blue. “I’d like to talk to your sister alone.”

  Rather than being upset, Blue looked resigned. “Whatever you tell Raven, she’s only going to tell me later.”

  “That’s up to her.” And undoubtedly, the woman could couch this a great deal better than anything he could say to the boy. He’d lost the knack of talking to children, not that he’d really ever had it. It was just that Becky had talked to his heart and that was how he communicated with her.

  “Okay.” Blue rose and crossed to the doorway.

  “Wait for me in the hall,” Raven told him. After Blue let himself out and closed the door behind him, she looked at the surgeon expectantly. She supposed it was better this way, after all. Dr. Sullivan might say something to make Blue feel that the surgery wouldn’t go well. “All right, we’re alone. What is it you want to tell me?”

  Without the boy to listen, Peter felt less restrained. “Are you aware of the risks involved?”

  “I think I am. I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on ever since Dr. DuCane told me what she suspected.”

  He didn’t bother mincing words. “If I operate, he might still become paralyzed.”

  “If you don’t, he definitely will.”

  Like the rest of his body structure, the boy’s spinal cord would be small, delicate. Peter had the hands of a skilled surgeon, but he didn’t like taking chances if he could help it. “There’s a small chance—”

  She knew what he was about to say. Raven shook her head. “Too small to take. I believe in meeting problems head-on instead of hiding from them.”

  “There’s also the fact that the tumors might be malignant—”

  Her eyes met his. She could feel the air backing up in her lungs again. “Yes?”

  “If that’s the case, the operation might cause the malignancy to spread—”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie, is that it?” She smiled, shaking her head. She wasn’t about to place her head in the sand and hope for the best. She had to tackle this and then hope for the best. “It might spread anyway—if it’s malignant and there’s no proof that it is,” she informed him with feeling.

  He’d found that when emotions were involved, the right decision was not always made. It was best to make decisions after the heat had left and things had cooled off. “Ms. Songbird, I want you to think about this—”

  “My name is Raven,” she told him, “And I have thought about it.”

  He sincerely doubted it. He heard the passion in her voice, the
urgency. He didn’t want her making a final decision like that. “Think about it some more,” he countered. “We have a small window of time. Use it.”

  She blew out a breath, trying not to sound as impatient as she felt. God, why weren’t her parents here? She needed someone to lean on. “How long am I supposed to look through this window?”

  Now she was being rational. “At least twelve hours, twenty-four would be better.”

  Raven nodded her head. “All right,” she told him even though she already knew what the decision was going to be.

  Chapter Four

  “What did I ever do to deserve you?” Renee smiled warmly at her son-in-law. Then, grasping the wheels of the wheelchair she’d been forced to use today, Renee scooted herself back from the front door.

  “You had Lisa.”

  Peter entered, his arms full of the groceries he’d stopped to pick up. He’d called her earlier to see if he’d left his jacket at her house the other night. It had been an excuse to talk to the one person who made him feel comfortable, the one person he didn’t feel he had to keep his guard up around. The tired note in Renee’s voice had alerted him. He knew that this was one of her bad days.

  Being Peter, he’d asked about it. She’d been slow to confirm his suspicions. Further pushing on his part had informed him that she hadn’t been able to get out of the house to go to the store. He’d volunteered to go for her, picking up the few things she’d admitted that she needed.

  Peter made his way to the kitchen and placed the three grocery bags on the counter. Without waiting for Renee to say anything, he began to unpack them. He knew his way around her kitchen as well as she did.

  “Have you taken the anti-inflammatory medication I prescribed for you?” he asked casually.

  Renee came to a stop directly behind him. She’d gotten far better at managing her wheelchair around corners than she was happy about. But she’d resigned herself to the necessary evil.

  “No.”

  He looked at his mother-in-law over his shoulder, noting that she avoided eye contact. “Have you even bothered to have it filled?”

  “I will, I will,” Renee assured him, and then she sighed. “It’s just that I don’t like being foggy.”

  He gave her a look. They both knew she was just being stubborn. “It won’t make you foggy.”

  Renee waved her hand dismissively. “They all make me foggy, or nauseous or something.” With another resigned sigh, she said to him what she always said at times like this. “It’ll pass, it always does.” And then she smiled. “But thanks for worrying.”

  He mumbled something unintelligible as he got back to unpacking and storing. “You know that patient I told you I lost?”

  Immediate interest entered her eyes. He knew she liked something to chew on. “The one who walked out with her brother because of your less than warm-and-toasty bedside manner?” He nodded in response. “Did she have a change of heart?”

  Heart, that was the word that best suited Raven Songbird, he thought. She displayed a great deal of it in every word she uttered. “She showed up at the hospital yesterday, said she’d changed her mind.”

  Placing the carton of milk on her lap, Renee propelled herself to the refrigerator to put the item away. “Guess she knows quality when she sees it, even if you have to make a cactus seem warm and cuddly sometimes.”

  It felt as if he fought a two-front war. “It’s not my job to coddle them,” he reminded her.

  The look Renee gave him showed she was completely unconvinced. “Well, there we disagree. Sometimes that is part of the job.”

  Peter paused, shaking his head. “That’s what she said.”

  Approval shone in her hazel eyes. “Smart cookie. What’s her name?”

  Peter had to think for a second. He’d never been very good with names. “Raven,” he finally said. “Raven Songbird.”

  The second half gallon of milk on her lap, Renee paused in midroll to look at him with something akin to surprise and awe. “Like the clothes?”

  He nodded. “Exactly like the clothes.” He figured Renee might get a kick out of it. After all, the woman could have been a contemporary of hers. “Her mother started the company.”

  Slipping the milk onto the shelf, Renee closed the refrigerator door again. “Well, I guess she can afford the best—and you are.”

  It was no secret that he didn’t come cheap. His fee was right at the top of his field, but then, the amounts that he charged enabled him to do his volunteer work for Doctors Without Borders. The fees he collected from his wealthier clients help to fund the operations that he performed on the devastated citizens of Third World countries. In so doing, he wound up bringing hope to the hopeless. Given that he felt no hope himself, he was struck by the irony of the situation.

  Peter paused to kiss the top of his mother-in-law’s silver head. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” he told her with a smile.

  “Oh, good.” She said the words with such feeling, he stopped folding the paper bags and looked at her. “Because I have something to tell you.”

  Putting the empty bags on the side of the table, he pulled a chair to him, straddled it and looked at her across the table. “Okay, what?”

  Renee took a deep breath. It wasn’t a subject she was looking forward to, only one that she knew needed broaching. Until now, she’d allowed him to have his bleeding heart. But she knew her daughter wouldn’t have wanted him to continue grieving this way, not for this long. There was no easy way to begin. “It’s been more than two years since Lisa and Becky were taken.”

  Peter could feel himself tensing as he looked at her warily. “Yes?”

  Renee reached across the table and touched his hand. “And I think it’s time you moved on.”

  “Moved on? Moved on how?” He knew exactly how she meant, but he wasn’t about to give in to that. “I’m working.”

  Renee left her hand where it was, feeling that her son-in-law needed the human contact. “Yes, I know, but I think that you should do more than work.”

  Peter shrugged as he glanced away. “There’s not enough time—”

  She watched him pointedly, remembering another Peter. A happier Peter. She missed him. And she had a feeling that Peter missed him, as well. “There was when you were married.”

  “There was a reason to have time when I was married,” he informed her flatly.

  Because he understood what Renee was attempting to do, he forced a smile to his lips. The woman’s heart was in the right place, if a little off kilter. “I have my work and I have you, Renee.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it in the courtly fashion he knew she loved. “That’s enough for me.”

  Renee was not about to be dissuaded. “It shouldn’t be. Not that I’m undermining what you do,” she was quick to explain. “Your work is very, very important. You perform miracles. But I am a poor substitute for what you really need.” And she knew that he couldn’t fight her on that score.

  He truly loved Lisa’s mother. She was the mother he had never known as a boy, so he humored her where he wouldn’t anyone else. “And what is it that I need?”

  Renee set her mouth firmly. “Female companionship.”

  He gestured toward her. “In case you missed it, you’re a female, Renee.”

  She snorted at the weak attempt to deflect her focus. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  His smile was broad as he took her hand in his. “I like older women.”

  Renee pulled her hand away, giving him a stern, motherly look. “Peter—”

  “Don’t,” he warned her quietly. He saw compassion enter her eyes. “Maybe someday I’ll be ready.” Although he sincerely doubted it. “But right now, this is all I can manage.” In a rare, unguarded moment of honesty, he admitted to her what he barely admitted to himself. “I’m lucky to be sane.” And then he shrugged off the moment. “I didn’t exactly have a thriving social life before Lisa, so this is business as usual for me.” Peter took his mother-in-law’s hand
in his. “I know you mean well, Renee, but this is something that’ll work itself out.”

  Renee closed her hand over both of his. “Don’t hide from life, Pete,” she told him. “You have far too much to offer—and so does life,” she added pointedly. Then, she withdrew her hands and looked at him through the eyes of a mother. “Now then, have you eaten?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I didn’t come here for you to feed me, Renee.”

  “Well, you’re not leaving until I see you have something.” She pulled away from the table, pivoting the wheelchair so that she could access the refrigerator. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Peter rose to his feet. He hated seeing her relegated to that chair. “No,” he contradicted, “the least you can do is let me get that prescription filled for you.”

  She turned from the refrigerator and sighed, surrendering. “I guess one of us has to stop being stubborn first.”

  He grinned back. “Guess so.”

  With a resigned nod of her head, Renee propelled herself over to the drawer beside the sink where she kept all the miscellaneous things that she had no given place for. Opening it, she riffled through myriad papers and odds and ends until she found the prescription he had written for her. It was dated several weeks ago and was for a brand-new anti-inflammatory drug that had hit the market.

  She held the paper out to him. He knew which pharmacy she frequented. “Go—” she waved Peter on his way “—fill it.”

  Triumphant, he gave her a knowing smile. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  “By the way,” she called after him. On his way to the front door, he turned to look at her. “Before I forget, next time you see the Songbird girl, see if you can get a scarf for me.” Her face softened and she looked like a young girl, he thought, not an older woman imprisoned in a wheelchair. “I always loved their colors.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised before heading out.

  The phone was ringing by the time he walked into his apartment later that evening. An emergency? he wondered. Undoubtedly it was his answering service. He’d just left the only person who would have called him privately. After Lisa and Becky had died, people didn’t know what to say to him and he had no idea how to field their pity. Eventually, all the friends he and Lisa had had together drifted out of his life.