“So does anyone want more ice cream?” Susan interrupted, a bright smile plastered on her face.
“Not me,” Scott said.
“Me, neither,” said Deirdre, “but I could use a lift back to Ellen’s place.”
“No sweat,” said Jack. “We’ll—”
“I’ll drive you,” Scott said. “It’s on my way.”
“No, it’s not,” Jack argued. “You live out beyond the Ridge.”
“Jack, for God’s sake, quit being a horse’s ass and shut up.” The smile was falling apart at the seams. “He wants to drive her home. Let him.”
With that the woman burst into tears.
They waited to see if Jack had anything to say about it, but he was staring down at his wife as if she was a premenopausal mermaid who had just washed up on shore with a missile launcher under her fin.
And people wondered why Deirdre had never married.
Chapter Eleven
“You know how much this baby means to us.” Patsy Wheeler reached for Ellen as they prepped her for the procedure. “I don’t care if I have to lie flat for the next five months.”
Ellen gripped the woman’s icy hand and held tight. “We’re doing everything possible to make sure you maintain this pregnancy, Patsy.” She was struck by how empty the words sounded. How many times a week did she utter the same sentence, trying hard to stand clear of the fear and worry in a woman’s eyes as she looked to Ellen for answers. Early on in her training she had been warned of the danger to be found in identifying too strongly with a patient, of allowing emotion to get in the way of clear-eyed diagnosis and treatment.
It was a difficult tightrope walk. She cared about the wellbeing of all her patients. She wished them all happy babies and loving relationships and long healthy lives. But there was always one who touched your heart in a special way, whose situation resonated more strongly than usual. Maybe she reminded you of someone you loved. Maybe you saw yourself in her eyes or heard your own life in her stories. Sometimes you didn’t understand why a particular patient touched you so deeply, and that was the way it was for Ellen with Patsy Wheeler.
She didn’t meet Hall’s eyes. She knew her own sadness would be reflected in them and that was the last thing their patient needed to see. Patsy Wheeler was forty-two years old and pregnant with her first child. After years of trying to conceive, she and her husband had finally hit the jackpot, and Ellen had celebrated right along with them.
Unfortunately it seemed their elation might be short-lived.
Patsy Wheeler’s cervix, which had been compromised by two punch biopsies over the years, was beginning to dilate months earlier than it should. Ellen would add a few stitches to strengthen the cervix and, please God, enable Patsy to carry the baby closer to term.
“Do you mind if I stick around?” Hall asked as they stepped out into the hall so Patsy and her husband Doug could be alone for a few minutes.
“I’d like that,” she said. There was nothing difficult about the procedure, she had performed over one hundred of them, but the fact that he cared enough about Patsy to stick around mattered deeply to her. They had both grown up as the child of a physician. Hall understood the ways in which that shaped a young person, the dreams it could awaken.
Her clearest memories of childhood were the sound of the phone ringing at odd hours of the night, the image of Cy, his cheek still creased from sleep, as he grabbed his bag and headed out into the dark city. He would come home hours later, rumpled and tired but exhilarated, to her mother’s punishing silence. Sharon had never asked questions about Cy’s life beyond their six-room apartment on the Upper West Side. It had taken Ellen a very long time to understand the irony involved in being the childless wife of a successful obstetrician who helped create miracles for everyone but the woman he loved.
Ellen had been hungry for information. She wanted to know about his patients, his routine, the way he felt when a tiny human being saw the world for the first time. Sometimes he came home steeped in sadness, and she would sit quietly in the living room, watching him as he looked out the window at the city traffic below. For as long as she could remember she had wanted to follow in his footsteps. She had wanted to care that deeply, work that hard, know the joy he felt when a new life entered the world even at the risk of the unbearable sadness that was also a part of the equation.
To connect with him, make him finally see her.
The words You’re just like your father had been music to her ears.
Until the day she learned he wasn’t her father at all.
* * *
“Thanks for the ride,” Deirdre said as they turned the corner onto Ellen’s block. “First my sister walks out on me and then—” She stopped mid-sentence and looked at Scott. “What on earth happened back there with your boss’s wife anyway?”
“I figured it was a woman thing.”
“Maybe if the woman is an alien,” Deirdre said. “Is Susan usually like that?”
“She’s never pitched a fit at the garage, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Is she moody? Emotional? Prone to screaming fits?”
“I never noticed.”
“Oh, come on! Even a man would notice if a woman’s head did a 360 while you were talking to her.”
He laughed out loud. “Yeah, that might grab your attention.”
“Are they happy together? Does he play around?” A thought occurred to her. “Does she play around? Maybe—” Another thought occurred to her. “Is there anything between her and Hall Talbot?”
“You have one hell of an imagination.”
“He’s very good-looking.”
“Something else I never noticed.”
“You must hear a lot of gossip working at the garage all day.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much all we do. Swill beer and shoot the breeze.”
“Don’t get defensive on me. I’m searching for information.”
They had come to a stop in front of Ellen’s house, but neither made a move to call it a night.
“Why are you searching for information?” he asked. “Because you want to know if your sister has any competition with Talbot?”
Surprise almost blew her out the passenger door and onto the driveway. “Was I the last one to find out?”
“Depends when you found out,” Scott said, leaning back in his seat. “It only happened Sunday night.”
“Garage gossip?” she asked with an edge to her voice.
“Observation,” he shot back. “Her car was parked in front of his house all night.”
“And you make a habit of driving around town checking out parking arrangements?” She regretted her words immediately. “Sorry, but that’s my sister we’re talking about.” She knew more about the secret life of the kiwi bird than she knew about Ellen. Her fling with the doctor notwithstanding.
“This isn’t Boston. When you own the only bright red Cruiser in town, people notice where it’s parked.”
“And I suppose people don’t just notice these things. They talk about them, too.”
“Other people. Not me.”
“You’re a regular Boy Scout.”
“And you’re a real bitch.”
She flinched. “I guess I deserved that.”
He didn’t answer. She felt an uncomfortable blend of regret, embarrassment, and tenderness that made her wish she had stayed home with Stanley.
Time to cut her losses.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said once more, fumbling for the door handle. “Let me know when my car’s ready and I’ll—”
“Don’t get out.”
She swung open the door. “Listen, I think we’ve said about as much as—”
He pointed toward the side garage window, illuminated by the headlights. “Somebody broke in.”
* * *
Doug Wheeler was the only person in Surgical Waiting. He jumped up the second Ellen appeared in the doorway. “Everything went as planned,” Ellen said quickly, glad to put him a
t ease. “Patsy will be back in her room in a few minutes.”
The look of relief on his face made her smile.
“The baby?” he asked.
“Fetal heartbeat is strong. The sonogram looked good. Patsy’s in excellent physical condition.” It was a question of buying as much time as possible for the baby to develop properly. She laid out a plan that included bed rest and medical supervision, but it quickly became clear that the poor man wasn’t tracking well at all. “I’ll write this all up for you, Doug. They’ll be bringing Patsy back to 3D. Go wait for her.”
“Thanks, Dr. Ellen. We—” His voice broke and she reached over and patted his arm.
“Go visit your wife,” she said. “That’s an order.”
He managed a smile, then took off down the hall at a run.
David Letterman flashed his own gap-toothed smile from the television mounted to the wall across the room as Ellen gave in to an enormous yawn. The temptation to lie down on one of the leatherette couches and drop into sleep was almost overwhelming, but she resisted. She would be back here again in less than seven hours to perform a laparoscopy on Lucy Hunt, a seventeen-year-old girl with chronic abdominal pain. Ellen suspected adhesions from a childhood appendectomy, but she wouldn’t know with certainty until she went in with the scope.
Hall had said he would wait around, but she wouldn’t blame him if he had abandoned ship and headed home. She would change, pop into the office to see if he had left a note on her desk, then drag herself home before it got any later.
“Hey, Doc.” Mary Ann Ippolito, head surgical nurse, greeted her as they approached the elevator.
“You’re here late, M.A.” This time she stifled her yawn.
“Claire started maternity leave and Ginny called in sick. Leave it to the old girls to pick up the slack.” Mary Ann had been with the hospital since the day it opened in 1965. She was as much a part of the place as the bricks and mortar. There wasn’t much that escaped her notice. “I saw Dr. Talbot a little while ago.”
Ellen nodded in what she hoped was a casual fashion. “He was consulting with me on Wheeler.”
“I hear you were both at the Butler christening this weekend.”
“Absolutely! I was delighted to play a small part in the birth of their little girls.” Try to parse that sentence for gossip, M.A., I dare you!
Mary Ann was the past master of the poker face. Whatever she knew, or thought she knew, wouldn’t reveal itself until she was good and ready. That was how she had earned the nickname the Cobra from cowed underlings. You never knew when she was going to strike until it was too late.
Jenny, a night clerk from radiology, joined them and the conversation veered toward the weather and last week’s Memorial Day Haddock Fry. Ellen silently blessed the young woman for showing up when she did. She was tired and feeling more than a little bit prickly. One raised eyebrow from Mary Ann and she just might tell the lot of them to worry about whose car was parked in their own driveways and leave her alone.
She parted company with them on her floor, then slowly walked the dimly lit hallway to the tiny office she shared with Hall. A thin pool of yellow light spilled under the door and she smiled. He had waited for her after all.
“We’re not out of the woods,” she said as she stepped inside, “but things are looking a lot better than they were a few hours ago.”
She glanced around. The light on Janna’s desk was lit, but there was no sign of him. She peeked into his tiny office. He wasn’t there, either. She pushed open the door to her office, then stopped in her tracks. His long, lean frame was draped across two hard-backed chairs. His arms were crossed over his chest. His head rested against his right shoulder. He wasn’t exactly snoring, but it was close.
A twisting sensation settled behind her breastbone, an odd blend of tenderness and raw desire. Was it possible to want to jump a man’s bones and tuck him in at the same time? She felt stripped bare, more naked than when she lay beneath him in his bed. The sensation was painful. She wanted to back away from it, push it aside. Whoever first noted that sex was the best way to ruin a friendship deserved the Nobel Prize in Romance.
They were never going to find their way back to where they had been. Even if they said to hell with the town and its opinion, Annie Butler’s shadow would always come between them. Ellen had been around long enough to know a man didn’t stop loving one woman just because he had sex with another. They weren’t hard-wired that way. Good sex and true love sometimes walked off into the sunset together, but mostly that happened in fairy tales. In the real world good sex and true love weren’t even on speaking terms, at least not most of the time. If you ever managed to get the two of them in the same man at the same time, you had better check your pulse because odds were you were dead and this was heaven.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hall, it’s late. Time to go home.”
He had the doctor’s ability to wake up instantly, clear-headed and alert. He swung his legs to the floor and stood up. “How did it go?”
“So far, so good. I’m putting her on complete bed rest.”
“Home or hospital?”
“We’ll try home first. If it proves too stressful, I think her insurance will cover in-hospital care.”
“Have Janna check into it. She has the revised plans on file.”
Somewhere down the hall a telephone rang three times, then stopped.
“Amanda and Tori were in this afternoon. Tori was afraid she was pregnant again.”
“Did you recommend the Pill?”
“I recommended abstinence, but I don’t think she was listening.”
“Once that genie’s out of the bottle...”
“I know, I know.” She dragged her fingers through the riot of curls and waves that served as a hairstyle. “I recommended the Pill and a condom.”
“The suspenders-and-belt system of birth control.”
“No,” she snapped, “the birth control and AIDS system of survival.”
He met her eyes. “What’s wrong, Elly?”
“You know what’s wrong.”
“No, I don’t think I do. Talk to me.”
She met his eye. “Did we use protection Sunday night?”
“I—” He stopped cold. “Jesus,” he said, “I don’t remember.”
“Don’t look so guilty. I was there, too, and I don’t remember, either.”
They had both been tested within the last year as part of a local drive to help erase the stigma surrounding AIDS testing, so that wasn’t an issue.
“Are you on the Pill?” he asked.
She laughed out loud. “The only reason for me to be on the Pill would be to help keep the pharmaceutical companies in business.” And there was the matter of the small blood clot in her left leg two years ago that warned her away from hormonal solutions. She looked at him. “Besides, you had a vasectomy.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Very funny. I remember exactly when you had it. I was leaving that afternoon for the seminar in Denver and you had a three o’clock with Rosenberg up in Bangor.”
“It didn’t happen.”
Your blood really could run cold. Who knew?
“What do you mean, it didn’t happen?”
“It didn’t happen. I canceled.”
“You canceled? Why did you cancel?” Why didn’t you tell me?
“Rosenberg asked a few questions about my motivation and ended up suggesting that I postpone the procedure.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“Wish I could, Elly, but that’s the truth.”
Neither one of them needed to have it spelled out for them. “I can’t believe this is happening,” Ellen said, sinking down onto one of the hard-backed chairs he had been sleeping on.
“Nothing’s happened yet,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “The odds are against it.”
Her laugh held a tinge of hysteria. “You sound like every sixteen-year-old girl who ever passed through my office. It can�
�t happen the first time.... It can’t happen if you’re standing up.... It can’t happen when you have your period or you’re nursing or a thousand other reasons, but it happens anyway. It happens all the time, every single day, to thousands of women who didn’t think it could possibly happen to them.”
He crouched down in front of her until their eyes were on a level. “I’m in this with you.”
“I know,” she said.
He hesitated for a moment. “You’re still within the seventy-two-hour window for more extreme forms of birth prevention.”
She shook her head. “I’m not a good candidate, remember?”
“Then we’ll wait and see where we stand.”
“On quicksand.”
“You haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“They say it’s the last thing to go.”
‘We’ll get through this,” he said, stroking her hair with a gentle touch she felt straight through to the soles of her feet. “I hope you’re feeling lucky enough for both of us.”
“Always,” he said. “We’re friends, remember?”
She remembered. She remembered all of it.
They left the hospital together. He waited while she started her car, then he climbed into his Rover, waiting again for her to exit the parking lot before he fell into line behind her. She made a right at the traffic sign. He made a left. She wished the whole town could have been there to see them go their separate ways, but Murphy’s Law was in full effect. Live your life like a cloistered Jewish nun, and there was nobody around to bear witness, but kick up your heels for even one second and the whole town turns out with their camcorders.
The night air was cool and scented with pine. When she first arrived in Maine, she had brought with her a boatload of preconceptions about what she would find, and in most cases she wasn’t disappointed. It was every bit as beautiful as she had imagined. The coves and harbors were picture-postcard perfect. The towering pines. The lobster shacks and the secluded islands. The odd blend of tourist excess and Down East asceticism that suited her down to the ground. Maybe the accents weren’t as over-the-top as she had hoped and the welcome was a tad reserved, but those were small things in an otherwise perfect landscape. Cy had warned her that native New Yorkers never felt truly comfortable beyond the five boroughs—with the exception of Florida, the unofficial sixth borough—and that she would find herself back home on the Upper West Side before her first year was over. He found it difficult to believe that she considered Shelter Rock Cove home now. He was probably still reeling over her decision to buy a house.
Girls of Summer (Shelter Rock Cove - Book #2) Page 14
