Once Upon a Matchmaker

by Marie Ferrarella

  She’d all but flown onto the freeway, tenser than she could ever remember being. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t have much time to get him to the hospital. “No, I’m not.”

  “Okay,” he relented. “For an airplane, you’re not, but for a car, you are.” He sucked in air as a sharp pain sliced through him. Eyes closed, Micah struggled past it and did his best to go on talking as if nothing was wrong. “I thought the object was to get me there in one piece.”

  “It is. And the sooner the better.”

  Though she had no intentions of telling him, Tracy somehow attempted to outrace time. If she didn’t get to the hospital as quickly as humanly possible, she would live to regret it.

  And Micah wouldn’t live at all.

  He’d undoubtedly laugh at her “intuition,” but that didn’t change the fact that it was there and it felt extremely real to her. She couldn’t ignore that.

  In less than twenty minutes, feeling as if she’d run all the way instead of driven, Tracy was pulling up to the left side of the hospital and the E.R. entrance. Stopping at the valet station, Tracy turned off the ignition.

  That was when Micah began to rouse himself. He’d dozed off to escape the pain. Awake, he was having an extremely difficult time focusing.

  Turning toward Tracy, Micah asked, “Have we landed yet?”

  Rather than take exception to his choice of words, she merely said yes as she jumped out of the car and once again rounded the vehicle to get to his side. By the time she’d started to help him to his feet, a hospital attendant was bringing over one of the hospital’s wheelchairs from the E.R.

  With Tracy on one side of him and the attendant on the other, they started to slowly lower Micah into the seat. He felt unmanned by the help. Grasping the armrests, he announced curtly, “I can do this on my own.”

  “By all means, go ahead,” Tracy told him.

  Hands raised as if to surrender all contact, she stepped back. But she watched Micah like a hawk. He was growing progressively weaker, but she also knew that his pride was at stake and since she’d gotten him here where he could be taken care of, she could cut Micah a little slack when it came to the self-esteem department.

  However, the moment he was seated, Tracy immediately took possession of the wheelchair and all but propelled him through the electronic doors that sprang open to admit them.

  The instant she was inside, a nurse and an orderly approached them. And for the first time since she’d stood on Micah’s doorstep earlier today, Tracy felt that everything was going to be all right.

  “Hi,” she greeted the duo. “He has appendicitis.”

  They took it from there.

  * * *

  Fidgeting, Tracy looked at her watch.

  It was three minutes later than the last time she’d looked at it. Impatience and worry rifled through her, alternating in strength.

  Micah had been in the operating room for one hour and twenty minutes.

  The queasy feeling in her stomach threatened to devour her from the inside out. Why the hell was it taking so long?

  The first hour she’d been fine. She was aware that appendectomies took approximately an hour to perform, so she felt that everything was going well and there was no need for concern. She’d already called Sheila and the boys with an update, telling them that she’d diagnosed Micah correctly and he’d been taken off to surgery in very short order. There was every reason to believe that this man with an excellent constitution would be fine and good as new in a short amount of time.

  But her self-assurance had begun waning as the minutes ticked away in slow motion, feeding into each other and eroding her confidence with every passing moment.

  What if she’d brought him here too late?

  If she’d stopped by last night instead of tonight, she could have brought him to the hospital a lot sooner and that might have made all the difference in the world. She sincerely doubted that he’d gotten this bad just overnight. She was willing to bet that this appendicitis had been days in the making.

  Why had she played those games with herself? Why had she pretended to distance herself from him and what had happened between them? She knew it had, just as she knew that she was reacting to what had happened in a very real, very dangerous way.

  She was falling in love with him.

  What if she’d brought him here too late? her mind taunted.

  Tracy stopped pacing for a moment and stared accusingly at the operating room’s double doors across the way. She’d watched Micah being rolled into the room on a gurney, pumped full of morphine and feeling absolutely no pain.

  She had been the one with the pain as she watched him disappear behind those doors almost two hours ago.

  Why wasn’t anyone coming out to apprise her of what was going on?

  Dear God, what would she tell his sons if the unthinkable happened?

  If…?

  “Ms. Ryan?”

  Startled, Tracy swung around to see a tall, gaunt man dressed in blue hospital livery—operating room livery—slipping off his surgical mask. A second later, it hung about his neck, looking as worn out as he did.

  Fearful, praying she was just being paranoid, she hurried over to the man.

  “Yes, I’m Tracy Ryan.” It took everything she had not to grab his arm and grill him. She did her best to sound calm—or at least sane—as she asked, “How is he?”

  The surgeon paused. Was he tired or trying for dramatic effect? She did her best to look patient.

  Finally, he said, “You got him here just in time. Half an hour longer and we might be having an entirely different conversation,” he told her honestly. “In a different part of the hospital.”

  The morgue was located in the basement. She didn’t want to even go there. Instead, she tried to get the surgeon to give her some reassuring words. So she spoon-fed them to him.

  “So he’s going to be all right?” She searched his face.

  The surgeon, Dr. Firestone, nodded. “He’s going to be fine. We got it all.”

  She wasn’t sure she was following him. “All?”

  The surgeon rotated his shoulders for a moment before answering. “His appendix burst just as we were making the first incision. It took a long time to mop up everything from the cavity, so to speak. We had to be sure he wasn’t going to come down with peritonitis,” he explained. “That was why the operation took twice as long as it normally does. This is ordinarily a very simple surgery,” he assured her.

  She’d heard all she needed to. Micah would be all right. Life could go back to being on track. “When can I see him?” she asked.

  Firestone glanced at the overhead clock on the opposite wall out of habit rather than need. “He’ll be in recovery for about an hour, then they’ll take him up to his room. You can see him then.”

  Overcome for a moment, she pressed her lips together, suddenly struggling to get herself under control. When she did—and could finally speak—her voice was almost inaudible.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” She put out her hand to him.

  His hands were large and hamlike. It was hard to envision them as the hands of a gifted surgeon, yet they were and he was. He enveloped her hand in his own.

  “No, thank you for getting him here just in time. That man owes his life to you.” Firestone smiled at her. “I wouldn’t let him forget that too soon.” Patting her hand, the surgeon rose again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been dying for a roast beef sandwich for the last hour. It’s time to reward myself,” he added with a wink.

  Tracy marveled that the man could actually eat after having his hands inside a man’s abdomen. But that was why he was a doctor and she wasn’t. Her mind jumped from one topic to another as huge waves of relief washed over her.

  He would be all right. Micah was going to live. She felt like cheering.

  Instead, taking in a long, shaky breath, she waited a couple of minutes before she called Sheila again. There was no reason to alarm the woman by sounding as
if she’d just run all the way to the hospital, dragging Micah’s body behind her. If she sounded breathless, Sheila would undoubtedly think the worst.

  And there was no longer any reason to think that way.

  Smiling to herself, Tracy began to dial.

  * * *

  His eyelids felt as if they were made of lead and each weighed a ton. It took him several attempts before he finally opened his eyes and kept them open.

  Focusing them was another story. That was tricky.

  Eventually, in what seemed like hours but in reality was no more than several minutes, Micah managed to see.

  It still took a second before he realized he was looking at Tracy.

  Was she real? Or was he just imagining her again?

  She’d been in his dreams more than once since they’d made love. And each time, he’d only become aware of that after the fact. After the dream was over and he woke up.

  That made it harder to hold on to.

  Each dream about her had surprised him, as if he hadn’t expected her to haunt his mind like that, not when he’d made such a conscious effort not to think about her during his waking hours.

  But he had no control over the night.

  It wasn’t that he’d felt disloyal to Ella when he’d made love with Tracy. Ella had been a selfless woman and she would have wanted him to move on, to find someone new. To find someone to care for their sons. The problem was that he didn’t want to experience ever again that gut-wrenching emptiness that had swallowed him whole when Ella had died. He was old enough to know that love seemed to go hand in hand with that awful specter, the specter of losing the one who meant the most to him.

  He’d already put himself out there because he loved his sons and, of course, Sheila. He was determined not to put himself out there because of a woman. To love only to lose. Once was enough, thank you.

  But his subconscious, which had wantonly pulled Tracy into his dreams, taunted him with the fact that he had no real control over that.

  Love was a mysterious force that had many slaves, but no master. God knew that he certainly didn’t have a say in it. He’d fallen hard for Ella and now he felt himself falling hard for Tracy, as well, God help him.

  He could, of course, go on running from striking up relationships, but something told him that he was pretty much doomed. The yearning for Tracy had all but become a fact of life for him.

  God knew, even in his weakened state, he was extremely glad she was there.

  “Are you real?” he asked her hoarsely.

  She’d been sitting here in his room for the past hour, waiting for him to open his eyes. Praying that the doctor hadn’t made a mistake and that he was going to be all right.

  Tracy rose from the vinyl chair and came over to his bed. Ever so gently, she cupped his cheek and smiled into his eyes. “Welcome back, stranger.”

  “Yeah, you’re real,” he murmured. And then, with a sigh, his eyes closed again. He was fast asleep.

  Tracy’s mouth curved as she shook her head. “Not much of a conversationalist, are you?”

  He went on sleeping.

  Tracy knew she should leave. She had a ton of case files to catch up on, not to mention that she wanted to stop by Micah’s house and reassure the boys in person that their father would be all right.

  She had some very good reasons why she should be on her way, but she was still recovering from her own ordeal. Waiting for word about his surgery while struggling not to think the worst had taken a great deal out of her. She felt too tired to drive.

  It was really no contest. She decided to stay a little longer, just to recharge.

  And to watch him sleep.

  She smiled to herself. Seeing Micah’s chest rise and fall was exceedingly comforting and reassuring. He was going to be all right. She’d gotten him to the hospital in time.

  Happy beyond words, Tracy sat down again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “See, I told you he was all right.”

  “But he’s not moving.”

  “He’s sleeping, stupid. See? His chest is going up and down. That means he’s alive.”

  Unlike the first voice, the second two voices did not blend in with his dream.

  Until this very second, as the voices filtered into his semiconsciousness, Micah hadn’t even realized that he was dreaming. He’d vaguely thought that he was just experiencing disjointed bits and pieces of something he couldn’t quite get hold of.

  Since his wife had died, if he dreamed at all, it was to relive that awful day when she’d left him standing alone by her hospital bed, feeling incredibly helpless and lost. And so angry at the world he could barely contain it.

  But just now—whatever “now” was—the woman in his dream hadn’t been Ella. There’d been a different face, a different voice echoing off stage that he’d somehow known belonged to the woman. And there had been no despair, no sense of anger, just a strange, strong sensation of…hope.

  That was it.

  Hope.

  And it was her voice he’d heard in his head, her voice he’d felt in his soul.

  Tracy’s voice.

  But at the very end, it had been joined by smaller, childlike voices. His sons’ voices. Which was when he’d opened his eyes.

  Joy as well as a sense of well-being filled him as he looked at his sons being brought in by Tracy. His aunt was right next to her. The boys had wide, relieved smiles on their faces as they came running up to him, jockeying for the same space next to him right beside his bed.

  “I want to be next to Daddy, I’m older,” Gary cried, pulling rank.

  “No, I want to be next to him,” Greg cried. Unlike his brother’s voice, which was filled with self-importance, his voice was trembling.

  “Boys, your daddy has two sides,” Tracy gently pointed out.

  Taking Gary by the hand, she circumvented the foot of the hospital bed and led the boy to the left side of the bed. The boy had to share the space with an IV drip, but he was small enough not to need much room. To give the boys their moment, she moved a couple of steps back, assuming the place of an outsider, rather than the person who had been instrumental in arranging everything for the past three days. Ever since she’d brought Micah to the emergency room.

  Each boy grabbed one of Micah’s hands, grasping it between both of theirs and hanging on as if to keep him from suddenly leaving them. It was obvious, despite Gary’s blustery bravado, that both boys had been very afraid that he’d be taken away from them just like their mother had been.

  “We missed you, Daddy,” Gary declared loudly.

  “Yeah, missed you, Daddy,” Greg echoed, not to be left out.

  “And I missed you guys,” Micah told them, squeezing each little hand that clutched at his. “All of you,” he added, looking first at his aunt, then at the woman who had ushered his sons into the room. The woman who had infiltrated his sleep.

  Much as he wanted to see the boys, Micah couldn’t help wondering if she was breaking some sort of protocol bringing them in. He’d learned that she was the kind of woman who made things happen the way she wanted them to, not necessarily the way they were supposed to.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for them to be here?” he asked Tracy.

  “Well, I had to smuggle them in inside my purse,” Tracy deadpanned, “but I’m fairly certain it’s okay.” And then, unable to maintain her serious face, she grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s safe for them to be here. Last anyone checked, appendicitis wasn’t catching.”

  He knew that, he just thought that Gary and Greg might be too young to be allowed on the floor. But, since he was in a single-care unit, there was no other patient in the room who could have been contagious.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sheila nod authoritatively, backing up Tracy’s cheerfully stated assurance.

  Belatedly, he realized that his sons were talking to him.

  “Did it hurt a lot, Daddy?” Gary asked him. “When they cut the bad thing out of you, did it hurt?”
There was concern in the young blue eyes.

  “I didn’t feel a thing,” Micah told the boy. He steered the conversation away from him and any fears they still harbored, hoping to dispel them. “So, what have you two been up to while I’ve been lying around here?” he asked.

  The boys gleefully threw themselves into answering his question. The next fifteen minutes were spent with each boy trying to talk louder than his brother, relaying their exploits. Micah had expected to hear about video games, television shows and playtime spent with a few of their friends who lived nearby in the development. What he wasn’t expecting was a report about “all the neat places Tracy took us to. She even made Aunt Sheila come with us,” Gary informed him importantly.

  He’d proceeded, with Greg’s input, to tell his father about the amusement park Tracy had taken them to in San Diego as well as the new animated movie that had opened in the local theater that weekend.

  Greg came closer to him and confided in a whisper that nonetheless carried throughout the room, “Tracy’s a lot of fun, Daddy.”

  His eyes momentarily meeting Tracy’s, the corners of Micah’s mouth curved in more of a grin than a smile as he told his younger son, “You don’t know the half of it, Greg.”

  After a few more minutes of nonstop details, Sheila stepped forward and interrupted. “Boys, your dad looks a little tired.” She looked from one boy to the other. “Why don’t we let him rest?”

  Looking disappointed, the two boys dutifully nodded. And then Greg piped up, “Can we come back and see him tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid not, boys,” Tracy told them.

  Gary’s shoulders drooped. “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because,” Tracy said, then paused for half a beat before breaking her big surprise, “your dad’s going to be coming home tomorrow.”

  The boys lit up like Christmas trees. For his part, Micah was stunned.

  “Really, Daddy?” Greg asked excitedly.

  “Tracy said so, so it’s gotta be true,” Gary maintained.

  Greg was still a little uncertain and eyed his father questioningly. Micah responded by saying, “What she said,” as he nodded at Tracy, although his uncertainty was clearly evident in his face. This was the first he’d heard about being discharged. Was she just trying to placate his sons?