First Sight

by Danielle Steel

  She thought about Zack, as she lay in the bath. She hadn’t called him since the morning they arrived. There didn’t seem to be much point, and he knew where she was. He could have called her and hadn’t. But he was on her mind, so she sent him a brief e-mail when she got out of the bath, just to keep communication open between them. She didn’t want to close any doors before she got back. She called room service after that, ordered chicken soup, read a chapter in the book she’d brought with her and hadn’t had time to read so far, and fell asleep by ten o’clock.

  She woke up at two in the morning, feeling violently ill, and spent the rest of the night throwing up. She felt absolutely awful, and finally fell asleep again at six in the morning, as the sky over Paris was beginning to lighten. The last thing she wanted was to be sick in Paris, and miss the opportunity to enjoy the city she loved so much. It was really miserable luck, and she obviously had picked up a flu on her travels. It was noon when she next woke up, and finally felt better, although her stomach muscles ached from retching all night. But at least when she got out of bed, she no longer felt nauseous. It had been a rough night, but the worst seemed to be over.

  She called Gilles and asked him to meet her outside at one. She ordered tea and toast from room service, thought about calling Zack again, but by then it was three in the morning for him. It was odd how the familiarity of him called to her at times. Good or bad, he was after all the current man in her life, even if part-time. By sheer reflex, she had almost called him the night before, when she was sick. But theirs was not the kind of relationship in which she would have felt comfortable whining to him. She had a strong suspicion he would have laughed at her, or made light of it. Sympathy hadn’t appeared to be his strong suit so far, in the four months they’d been together. Whenever she said that she was exhausted from a hard week, he had ignored the comment and suggested they go out, and several times she had, to indulge him, oblivious to her own needs, meeting only his. She took a shower, dressed in a sweater and jeans, comfortable shoes, and left the hotel. As promised, her driver Gilles was waiting outside, and smiled the minute he saw her.

  He took her to all the places she loved to go to, but by four o’clock she was feeling sick again. She hated to waste a minute in Paris, and had wanted to go to Didier Ludot at the Palais Royal, to dig through their vintage couture, but in the end, she decided to skip it and go back to the hotel. She didn’t feel up to shopping anymore. And as soon as she got to the Plaza Athénée, she went straight back to bed. By seven o’clock that night, she was throwing up again, even more violently than she had the previous night. Whatever bug she had picked up, it was a nasty one, and by nine o’clock she felt like she was going to die. She made one last trip to the bathroom, and this time nearly fainted on her way back to bed. She hated to admit it, but she was starting to panic. And after lying in bed crying for another half-hour, she began to think about finding a doctor. She was sure that all she had was stomach flu, but she was feeling extremely ill. And then she remembered the name of a doctor a friend in New York had given her, in case she ever needed a physician in Paris. She had saved his office and cell phone numbers on a piece of paper in her address book. Feeling slightly embarrassed, she called and left a message on his cell phone, and lay on her bed afterward with her eyes closed, feeling frightened to be so ill. She hated getting sick when she was on trips and far from home. She thought about calling Zack again, and felt stupid even thinking about it. What was there to say, except that she was feeling awful and had the flu? She didn’t want to call Jade and David and upset them, either, so she lay on her bed, waiting for the doctor to call her back, which he did promptly. She was impressed when he returned her call within minutes and promised to come to the hotel at eleven.

  The concierge called as soon as he entered the hotel, and told her that the doctor was on his way upstairs. At least by then she hadn’t thrown up in nearly two hours, and she hoped it meant she was on the mend. She felt silly to have bothered a doctor for something that was surely minor, even if disagreeable, and he probably couldn’t do anything about it anyway. She was feeling sheepish as she opened the door to him when he knocked, and even more so when she saw a tall, good-looking man with sandy blond hair in his mid-fifties standing there in an impeccably elegant dark blue suit and white shirt. He looked more like a businessman than a doctor, as he introduced himself as Docteur Jean-Charles Vernier. And when she apologized for disturbing him on a Saturday night, he insisted that he had been at a dinner party nearby anyway and didn’t mind at all. He said he was delighted to help her, although visiting patients in hotels was not usual for him. Timmie knew he was an internist and a reputed professsor at the Faculté de Médicine. He had left the dinner party promptly after Timmie’s call on his cell phone, although he was somewhat overqualified for what he was doing as a favor for her friend in New York. Timmie was grateful that she had made note of his name and number and had a doctor to call, other than a total stranger referred by the hotel. He was a well-known and highly respected doctor in Paris.

  He followed her into the room, and could see that she was moving slowly, and seemed somewhat unsteady, and even considering her fair redhead’s skin, she seemed unusually pale to him. He saw her wince when she sat down as though her whole body ached, which it did. Every muscle in her body felt as though it were shrieking. She’d been vomiting for two days.

  Without saying a great deal about it, he took her temperature and listened to her chest. She had no fever, and he assured her that her lungs were clear, and then he asked her to lie down. As he put his stethoscope away, she noticed that he wore a wedding band on his left hand, and she couldn’t help observing that he was a very good-looking man, with deep blue eyes and still-blond hair, in spite of a little distinguished gray at the temples. She couldn’t help thinking too that she looked a total mess, not that she cared. She felt too sick to worry about how she looked. He smiled at her pleasantly as she lay down, and he gently moved his hands around her abdomen, and then frowned. He asked her then to describe what had happened, touched several places on her stomach again, and asked her if it hurt. She seemed to be most sensitive around the area of her belly button, and once when he touched her she gave a sharp gasp of pain.

  “I think it’s just the flu,” she reassured him, looking worried, and he smiled. He spoke excellent English, but his accent was decidedly French, and so were his looks, although he was taller than most French men.

  “You are also a doctor?” he asked with a somewhat mischievous look. “As well as a famous designer? I should be very angry at you, you have cost me a great deal of money. My wife and both my daughters have bought many of your clothes.” She smiled at his comment, and he pulled a side chair up to the bed, and sat down to talk to her. He could see that she was afraid.

  “Is it something awful?” She had decided sometime that night that it was probably cancer, or at the very least a perforated ulcer, but there had been no sign of blood in anything she threw up. She hoped that was a good sign, but she didn’t like the look in his eyes. Something told her she wasn’t going to like what he had to say, and as it turned out, she was right.

  “I don’t think it’s awful,” he said carefully, as she nervously twisted a lock of her long red hair. She looked like a little girl suddenly, tucked into the big bed. “But I am a little bit concerned. I would like to take you to the hospital tonight, and do some tests.”

  “Why?” Her eyes opened wide, and he saw fear turn to panic. “What do you think it is?” She was sure again that it was cancer after all.

  “I cannot be certain without some scans, but I think it is possibly an attack of appendicitis.” He was almost sure it was, but didn’t want to make an official diagnosis without a sonogram. “I would like to take you to the American Hospital in Neuilly. It is a very pleasant place,” he said reassuringly as tears filled her eyes. He knew the American Hospital would be less frightening for her than the Pitié Salpetrière where he often worked. He had privileges to see patient
s at the American Hospital too, although he seldom used them.

  “I can’t. I have a show on Tuesday, and rehearsals on Monday. I’ve got to be there,” she said, looking nearly frantic, as he frowned.

  “I can assure you that if your appendix explodes, Madame O’Neill, you will not be at your show. I know your show is important, but it would be irresponsible not to do some tests now.” It was easy to see that she was feeling very ill.

  “Would I have to be operated on if it is my appendix?” she asked in a choked voice, and he hesitated before he answered. He looked like a very elegant dinner guest who had wandered into her room from a party somewhere downstairs. But however worldly he looked, he sounded very much like a doctor, and she didn’t like what he’d just said.

  “Possibly,” he said in answer to her question. “We will know better after the scans. Have you ever had this before? Or even something similar in the past few days or weeks?” She shook her head. She had felt a little queasy one night in Milan, but she thought it was something she ate. She’d had white truffles on pasta for dinner, and it had been extremely rich. Jade and David hadn’t felt well afterward, either, and they had all decided it was the heavy white truffle dinner. In Milan, she hadn’t thrown up, as she had for the past two nights. In the morning, after the white truffle pasta, she’d been fine. She didn’t mention the truffle episode to him, for fear it would make him even more determined to do the scans on her now, if he thought she’d had the problem for a while.

  “I think I’m feeling better. I haven’t thrown up in several hours.” She looked as stubborn as a child, which he didn’t seem to find particularly charming. He didn’t like difficult patients in the middle of the night, and he wasn’t accustomed to dealing with foreign VIPs and headstrong Americans. Jean-Charles Vernier was used to his patients and students doing what he said. As an illustrious professor, his authority was usually unquestioned. He assessed somewhat correctly that she was obsessed with her work. “What if I just rest, and we see how I feel tomorrow?” She was bargaining with him, and he didn’t like it. He looked at her with considerable annoyance. He could see that she had no intention of going to the hospital if she could help it. She knew that if she did, and they operated on her, the show on Tuesday would be a mess. She had no confidence that anyone would pull it off as competently as she would herself, even David and Jade. She had never missed a ready to wear show in her entire career. And in addition to that, if at all possible, she had no intention of having surgery in France. She would take care of it when she got back to the States, hopefully, once she got home, or even in New York. “Why don’t we give it another day?” she suggested. Her eyes were wide and very green in the startlingly pale face.

  “Because it could get rapidly worse. If it is indeed appendicitis, you don’t want it to explode.” The very word nearly made her shake. The prospect of an explosion of any kind anywhere in her body did not have a lot of appeal.

  “No, I don’t, but maybe it won’t. Maybe it’s something else, some minor thing, like the flu. I’ve been traveling a lot for the past three weeks.”

  “I see that you are a very stubborn woman,” he said, looking at her sternly from his considerable height. “Everything in life is not about work. You must also take care of your health. Are you traveling with anyone?” he inquired discreetly, but it was obvious that there was no one sharing the room with her. The other half of her bed was untouched.

  “My two assistants, but they’re in London for the weekend. I could stay in bed until Monday, and even if it’s appendicitis, maybe it will calm down.”

  “That’s possible, but it sounds as though it has been acute now for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. That is not a good sign. Madame O’Neill, I must advise you that I think you should go to the hospital.” His voice was firm, and he looked as though he was about to get seriously annoyed with her if she didn’t do what he said. She didn’t like his attitude, and he liked hers even less. He thought she was foolish, stubborn, and spoiled, and used to doing whatever she wanted. Another American obsessed with money and work. He had dealt with a few patients like her before, though generally the workaholics he saw were men. He wasn’t enjoying this at all. He was a respected internist with a busy practice. He didn’t have the time or disposition to argue with a patient who didn’t want his help, no matter how well known she was. In his own field and realm, he was nearly as important as she was.

  “I want to wait,” she said stubbornly. He could see that nothing was going to move her. She seemed totally inflexible to him, foolishly so.

  “I understand that, but I do not agree with you.” He took a pen out of his inside jacket pocket then, and a prescription pad from his doctor’s bag. He scribbled something on a sheet from the pad, handed it to her, and she looked at it, hoping it would be a prescription for some magical medication that would fix everything. Instead, all she saw was his phone number on the paper he handed her. It was the same number she had called and not a prescription at all. “You have my phone number. I have advised you of what I think you should do. If you don’t wish to follow my advice, and if you feel worse, please call me at any hour. But then, I will insist that you go to the hospital. Will you agree that if you do not feel better, or feel worse, you will do as I ask in that case?” His tone was chilly and very firm.

  “All right. Then I will,” she agreed. Anything to buy time. She couldn’t allow herself to get sicker until Tuesday night. And hopefully, whatever it was would have disappeared by then. Maybe it really was only the flu, and he was wrong. She hoped he was.

  “We have an agreement, then,” he said formally, as he stood up and replaced the chair he’d sat on to its original place. “I will hold you to it, for your sake. Don’t be afraid to call me. I take calls at any hour.” Although he wanted to impress her with the seriousnesss of the situation, he didn’t want to appear too intimidating or frighten her unduly. He didn’t want her to be afraid to call him if she got worse.

  “Can’t you give me something in case I get sick again? Something to stop the vomiting?” She was still feeling nauseous as she lay in bed and talked to him, but she didn’t want to admit it to him. She had no intention of going to the hospital that night. He was probably just an alarmist, or maybe he was covering himself, she told herself. Maybe he was afraid of a malpractice suit if he didn’t at least suggest the hospital to her. Her thinking was very American, and she didn’t share any of it with him.

  “That would not be wise,” he said stiffly, in response to her request. “I don’t want to mask whatever you have. That could be dangerous for you.”

  “I had an ulcer several years ago, maybe it came back again.”

  “That is all the more reason for you to have a scan. In fact, I’d like to insist on that before you travel again. When are you leaving Paris?”

  “Not until Friday. I could come in on Wednesday, after the show on Tuesday afternoon.” She was hoping to be fine by then.

  “I hope you will. Call me on Wednesday morning, and I’ll make an appointment for the scan for you.” He sounded businesslike and cool as Timmie decided his ego was bruised because she wouldn’t do what he said.

  “Thank you, doctor,” she said softly. “I’m sorry to have brought you here for nothing.” She looked genuinely apologetic, and for an instant he wondered if she was actually a nice woman. He couldn’t tell, all he had been able to see so far was how headstrong she was, and accustomed to getting her own way. It didn’t surprise him, given who she was. His assessment of her was that she was probably used to having control of everyone and everything in her world. The one thing she couldn’t control was her health.

  “It was not for nothing,” he reassured her politely. “You must have been feeling very ill.” He correctly guessed that she was not the kind of person to call a doctor unless she thought she was dying, or very near. Jean-Charles had agreed to see her, as a favor to his patient from New York who had referred her. And there had been a tone of desperation in Timmie’s voice
that struck him, even before he recognized her name.

  “I was, but I’m feeling better now. I think you scared me,” she admitted, and he smiled.

  “I wish I were able to ‘scare’ you into getting a scan tonight. I truly think you should. Don’t wait until you feel very ill again to call. It might be too late then, and if it is your appendix, as I suspect, it could explode.”

  “I’ll try not to have any explosions between now and Wednesday morning,” she said with a grin, and he laughed as he picked up his bag. He liked her, despite the fact that he thought she was stubborn, and tough to deal with, as a doctor.

  “I hope your show goes well,” he said formally, told her not to get out of bed until then, and to rest as much as possible over the weekend, and a moment later, he let himself out.

  After he did, Timmie lay in bed, feeling terrified, but also as though she had escaped a dire fate. She had adamantly not wanted to go to the hospital that night. It all sounded much too scary to her. She hated hospitals, and even doctors sometimes. She rarely went, unless she felt deathly ill, and admittedly she had. She lay quietly after his visit, and a few minutes later, she called Zack. She was feeling lonely and scared and reached out to him. She didn’t want to worry David and Jade by calling them in London. By then it was three in the afternoon for him, and she assumed he’d be at home. He often was at that hour, particularly on a Saturday afternoon. He would be home from the gym, and it was too early to go out for whatever evening plans he had. But when she called, both at home and on his cell phone, it went to voice mail, and all she could do was leave him a message, tell him she was sick, and hope he’d call her back. She needed to talk to someone, and since he was the man she was sleeping with, however temporary their relationship, he seemed like a viable option. She just wanted to hear a familiar voice that would comfort her for a minute, a hand to hold on to in the dark.