Nightwatch

by Jo Leigh

  “It was my pleasure.” He put the beef in the microwave, hit defrost, then excused himself with a reassuring smile to get ready for work.

  His shower, although too brief, revived him somewhat, and the three aspirin would help even more. By the time he’d dressed and returned to the kitchen, the dogs were gobbling up their breakfast, eating out of his cereal bowls. Mrs. Allen stood watching them, and he was glad that she had them. Everyone needed someone to care for.

  She looked up at him with a coy grin. “Have I told you about my great-niece, Lilly?”

  He nodded. “You have.”

  “She’s a very beautiful girl, Doctor. And she can cook like a dream.”

  He grabbed his coat from the back of his dining-room chair and slipped it on. “I’m sure she can, but I’m already married—to my work.”

  “Oh, I’m sure—”

  “If you don’t believe me,” he said, “you can ask my ex-wife. Turns out I don’t share well with others. So save your niece the grief.”

  Mrs. Allen sighed. “It’s such a shame. You’re so very handsome, and especially nice.”

  He touched the older woman on the shoulder. “Thank you. You have my phone number if you need anything, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Please let me know when you reach your sister. If I’m not available, you can tell my secretary, Connie.”

  Mrs. Allen went back to the pleasure of watching her “babies” as Guy headed toward the garage. He pressed the door opener as he stepped inside. The garage was neat as an operating room, which was the only way he’d have it. Inside, his baby, a 1958 Corvette, sat shiny and polished as the day she was born. But he wouldn’t take her out today. Not with the roads so torn up. Instead he climbed into his Range Rover and prepared for a slow twenty miles to the Courage Bay E.R.

  When he arrived at the hospital, his headache returned full force. He went to his office first, but the usual piles of reports were missing. As was Connie. He played back the messages on his private line, and after two calls from a pharmaceutical house in Boston asking him to speak at a symposium next spring, Connie’s voice came on, letting him know that she’d been stranded and would get in as soon as the streets were cleared.

  Guy sighed as he went to make coffee. His office wasn’t large but it had its pluses, the main one being the private call room. He busied himself with coffee grounds while he thought about the missing reports.

  He’d have to give the staff the benefit of the doubt. Considering the conditions last night, reports weren’t the top priority. Saving lives was.

  Which meant that he would take his coffee to go. He’d do rounds, assess the situation in the E.R. But first, more aspirin.

  The scent of his Kona coffee made him feel better as he went back to his desk. He kept meaning to replace the old thing, with its battered sides and stiff top drawer, but whenever he had any time off, he made his way to the boat.

  Just thinking of the Caduceus relaxed him more than anything else in the world. His ’44 sloop was everything a man could want in a boat, and his only regret was that he had so little time to sail her.

  Thank God she’d been in dry dock during the storm. She was getting a new mast, aluminum. He was to have taken her out next week, but with this damn storm…

  He’d call. After rounds.

  Coffee cup in hand, Guy walked toward the admitting desk, all thoughts of sailing firmly stowed away. Before he reached his destination he was stopped twice, once by Karen, the admitting nurse, then by Mike Trailer, the head of maintenance, both of whom had tales of woe. Karen was concerned that the computers had been down for two hours during the night, and Mike told him about some window blowouts on the third floor. He listened patiently, although he was sure the information had already been given to Callie Baker, the chief of staff. He was more concerned with what was happening now in his domain.

  Surprisingly, there were only four people in the admitting area, none of whom presented serious problems. Two of the E.R. bays were occupied, one with a woman who had broken her left hip when she fell on a toppled tree, and the other with a heart-attack victim, who was now stabilized.

  He went back to admitting, and when Karen gave him the charts, he flipped quickly through the various cuts, bruises and breaks. He stopped when he got to Bruce Nepom. After reading the chart, Guy put the stack back and headed for the ICU.

  He found the man in room C. There wasn’t much to see. Nepom was hooked up to a heart monitor, IV, respirator. Bandages covered his face and head, and his ribs had been taped.

  There wasn’t much hope, but he was glad to see Rachel had been so thorough. Everything that could have been done had been done. What he didn’t see on the chart was that Nepom’s family had been contacted.

  After putting the chart back, Guy returned to admitting one more.

  Karen gave him the rest of the night’s paperwork, and he headed for his office and another cup of coffee.

  He flipped through more notes. Damn. Rachel and Amy must have stitched, sewn, patched, splinted and put casts on nearly a hundred people since the storm started.

  The name on the next report stopped him cold. Heather Corrigan. He did a quick check on her vital statistics: age eighteen, blond hair, no wedding ring. It was the Heather he knew. His stepdaughter. And she was dead.

  Guy put the papers down on his desk and closed his eyes. Heather was supposed to be in Europe with his ex-wife. What was she doing here? Pregnant?

  He focused his gaze with some difficulty, but as he read, the words became horrifyingly clear. Preeclampsia. Heather was healthy, strong. For God’s sake, she was only eighteen. And she’d died in his E.R. What the hell had Rachel done?

  He picked up the phone with shaking fingers and dialed.

  “Hi. You’ve reached Dr. Rachel Browne. Leave your number at the beep.”

  “Dr. Browne, this is Guy Giroux. Pick up the phone. Right now.” He sat stiffly, a well of anger making it difficult to breathe, then slammed the receiver down when she didn’t answer. He stared blankly at his desk for a moment, then pounded his fist on it so hard his pen holder fell over.

  Rising slowly, Guy put on his coat, retrieved Heather’s chart and headed for his car. He needed to talk to Dr. Browne—now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DRIVE TO RACHEL’S did nothing to calm Guy’s mind. He wavered between the respect he had for her as a doctor and the pain and rage he felt as a parent. He simply didn’t understand how she could have been so incompetent.

  His tires squealed as he came to a stop in her driveway, and once the keys were out of the ignition he was heading for her front door.

  He rang the bell several times, then beat on the wood with his fists, almost hitting Rachel as the door suddenly flew open.

  “What is it?”

  Guy’s tirade stopped before he was even able to start it. Dr. Rachel Browne, aka the Iron Lady, well known for her strict code of ethics and her somewhat aloof manner at the hospital, stood before him in a loose robe and tiny, see-through red nightie.

  “Put your eyes back in their sockets, Guy, and tell me why you’re waking me up two hours after I got off the seventeen-hour shift from hell?”

  He tore his eyes away from the vision she presented and looked straight into her eyes. “What the hell happened in there last night?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Heather Corrigan. Healthy eighteen-year-old. And she’s dead, Rachel.”

  Rachel blinked at him as if his words weren’t English, as if she didn’t know she’d killed a girl in his E.R. Killed—

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get the full report to you, Guy, but the girl had severe preeclampsia. I did everything possible to save her.”

  “Everything possible,” he said, not believing that for a minute. “Where the hell was Williams?”

  Rachel folded her robe tightly around her and slowly tied the knot in front. “There was only one OB on last night, and she was in the middle of a C-section with com
plications.”

  He knew he was scaring her, that her step backward was a precursor to slamming the door in his face, but there had to be something she’d missed. Something she could have done.

  “Guy? What’s going on?”

  He focused on her face, realized his vision was blurry with tears. “She’s…she was my stepdaughter.”

  Rachel’s eyes closed for a long moment, and when she opened them she touched his arm. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

  “Damn it, Rachel, she was always perfectly healthy. There’s no reason this should have happened.”

  “She hadn’t seen a doctor in a long time. No prenatal care at all. By the time she came in, her blood pressure was through the roof, the baby was almost dead. Guy, it was too late.”

  He swallowed, leaned against the doorframe. Blinked his eyes clear. “I don’t understand any of this. She was supposed to be in Europe with her mother.”

  “Why don’t you come in. Sit down.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you did everything. I just—”

  “Of course.”

  “Go back to sleep. You must be tired.”

  “Are you sure you ought to be driving? With all the storm damage—”

  “I’m fine. Sorry to have bothered you.” He turned and walked to his car, wishing like hell he could blame her. Blame anyone except himself.

  RACHEL WATCHED as Guy got into his Range Rover, worried that he’d do something crazy, get distracted. Just plain run off the road.

  Heather Corrigan had been his stepdaughter. She could hardly believe it even now, but why would he lie about something so awful?

  Guy pulled out of her driveway too quickly. When he jerked to a stop, she saw him wipe his face with his hand, and when he started up again, he was moving at a much saner pace. Only when he turned the corner, out of her view, did her focus shift to her street. Tousled and windblown for sure, it still had the peaceful mien that had drawn her here in the first place.

  There were mostly two-story houses with manicured lawns. Bikes, ten-speed and trainers, leaned against garage doors or lay on the sidewalk, making it difficult for the mailman.

  She’d been so drawn here, and yet she’d never felt truly at home. Her night shifts, her single status. She was the odd duck, the silent stranger her neighbors nodded to when they couldn’t avoid her gaze.

  Exhaustion washed over her, and she wasn’t quite sure whether it was the night before or the thought of the night ahead that made her so weary. Poor Guy. She’d had no idea. Yeah, she’d heard he’d been married before, but that was about the extent of her knowledge of his personal life.

  The man was a hell of an administrator and an even better trauma surgeon. She was lucky to work with him.

  But he was also terribly attractive, and not just because of his good looks. He pulled at her in a way that was too scary to examine closely. So she didn’t. She avoided him by working nights most of the time. By never letting down her guard. By being a doctor first, and a woman a distant second.

  She closed her door, debating whether to get a glass of orange juice, but her body led her to the bedroom and her Egyptian-cotton sheets. To sleep.

  GUY DIDN’T GET BACK to his office and privacy for two hours. The longest two hours he’d ever spent.

  It was just that he had to know. For certain. So he’d gone to the morgue. In that cold room, with the sterile sinks and the gleaming drawers, he’d found her. Death had changed her, stiffened her soft features, made her face a mask. But it was Heather. God, what had she done to her hair? It was short, uneven, as if cut by ragged scissors without a mirror.

  He stood there for a long time, wishing he could remember some prayers. Finally he spoke, quietly, hoping someone, something, listened.

  It was over now, and he knew for sure. After he put all the paperwork on Heather in front of him, he sat down behind his desk, sinking into the fine leather, and closed his eyes. Memories of Heather laughing, braiding her hair, begging him for a Madonna album despite the adult lyrics. He’d only had her for four years. Four years of emergency calls, late-night surgeries, missed school plays, forgotten birthdays. He’d been as lousy a stepparent as he’d been a husband. But he’d loved Heather. More than her mother, at the end, although that was no one’s fault but his own.

  He’d never blamed Tammy for leaving him. She had every right, and in fact, she’d probably stayed too long. His damn job. That was what she’d always called it. His damn job. And it had given him the only real satisfaction in his life.

  He wasn’t meant to be married, but the lesson had been learned the hard way. With other people’s pain. And now, Heather was gone.

  Guy hadn’t known she was pregnant, or even that she’d had a boyfriend, a lover. He’d lost touch, and whose fault was that?

  It took him a moment to locate Tammy’s number in his Rolodex. She was living in Bordeaux, France, away with husband number three, studying art and learning to cook. Last time they’d talked, she’d sounded happy.

  He got through after dialing all those numbers, and Tammy’s voice sounded as if she were in the next room, not overseas.

  “Bonjour.”

  “Tammy.”

  There was a pause, long and static-free. “Guy.” She always used the French pronunciation. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  He swallowed, picked up his pen and squeezed it. “I don’t know how to…Oh hell, Tammy…Heather.”

  “What about Heather?”

  He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tammy. She’s dead.”

  Nothing. No sound. No sharp cry, no keening wail. Just perfect silence.

  “If this is a joke—”

  “It’s not. I wish it were.”

  Then came the sound of pain, and it was as terrible as anything he’d heard in all the years he’d been telling parents about their children, husbands about their wives…This was his grief, and her grief, and it was too real. It hurt like hot metal in his gut, like a gunshot wound.

  “How?” Tammy said, her voice slurred.

  “I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

  “What? What are you talking about? Heather’s not pregnant. She’s with her father. With Walter. In Los Angeles.”

  “No, she’s not. She’s here, in Courage Bay. I think—” He stopped. Swallowed. “I think she was trying to find me.”

  “Wait a minute. This makes no sense. I spoke to her two weeks ago, and she said everything was fine. That she was in L.A., that Walter was at the office, but that she would tell him hello.”

  Guy ran a hand over his face. “So you had no idea where she was? Who she was with?”

  “No.”

  “Tammy—”

  “Wait, stop right there. Don’t you dare use that tone with me, not now. Not when…”

  He listened to her weep and cursed himself for being an insensitive fool. “We should call Walter. Find out what he knows.”

  She sniffed. “Yes, right. But she was really pregnant?”

  “She had a baby boy.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “And, I’m sorry, Tammy, but he’s not doing all that well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure, except that he has jaundice and his blood pressure isn’t stable.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure? You’re a doctor, for God’s sake—that’s all you’ve ever cared about. And now your grandchild is ill and you don’t know why?”

  Guy’s first thought was that the boy wasn’t his grandchild, but he said nothing. His second thought was that he was a complete ass. “I’m sorry. I’ve been having a tough time with this, too. I’m going from here to the NICU.”

  “I’m going to call Walter. And then I’ll get on a plane. Please, Guy. You have to take care of the baby. Please.”

  “Of course.”

  She wept quietly for another moment. “I have to clear things with Ted. He’s got this…It doesn’t matter. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

&nbs
p; “You have my cell. Call me if you need me.”

  “Thank you.”

  He heard her hang up, and he listened to the dial tone for a second, then put his phone in the cradle. He had to go see the baby, make sure everything was being done to save him. A baby boy that Heather would never know. Who the hell was the father, and where had he been last night? Where had he been during the whole pregnancy?

  A knock jerked him out of his thoughts and his sister, Natalie, poked her head in. “Can I come in?”

  He nodded.

  She stepped into his office, closing the door behind her. Six years his junior, she bore the distinctive Giroux high cheekbones and dark eyes. Natalie was a burn specialist, and their brother, Alec, worked in the E.R. with Guy. “I heard about Heather, Guy. I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “Does everybody know?”

  She smiled the way she did with her patients. Kind, concerned, ready to listen. “This isn’t L.A. County General, Guy. These things get around pretty fast.”

  His head dropped into his hands. “She deserved better, Nat. I don’t know how it happened.”

  She walked behind him and massaged his tense shoulder muscles. “Things happen, Guy. Mom—Dad. You have to believe there’s a reason.”

  “Don’t get all metaphysical on me. Does Alec know yet?”

  “He’s already left for Cabo with Janice and the kids. But I’ll call him. Let him know what’s going on. I know he liked Heather a great deal. We both did. She was a sweet girl.”

  Guy’s throat tightened, and he had to change the subject before he made a fool of himself. His sister had recently married the city’s fire chief, Dan Egan. “How are things with you and Dan?”

  Natalie walked to his side and smiled. “Really good. Thanks. In fact, why don’t you come for dinner tomorrow night?”

  Guy appreciated the invitation. He liked Dan, and was happy that Nat had found herself a good man. Both his siblings had been through so much in the last year, and yet they’d come out stronger, better. In love. And he’d never felt so distant from them. “Thanks, Nat, but I’m going to stick close to the hospital. I’ll take a rain check.”