by Nicola Marsh
“Yeah, I guess . . .” Though that hadn’t been all, and Harper knew it. Seeing him so focused after that call last night, watching him dash off, clarified that to someone like him, his job would always come first.
Not that he’d ever make her feel second-best; he wasn’t that kind of guy. And she’d never put him in the position of having to choose between her and his job, but being head of an ER in a major hospital came with responsibilities, and she had a feeling last night would be the first of many times Manny would be called away from her.
Crazy, to be having these thoughts after they’d only been officially dating a few days, but Colin had often made her feel second-best and she knew some of her residual angst stemmed from that.
“For what it’s worth, by what we saw last night, if Manny had a choice between going into work and spending time with you, there’s no contest; he’d choose you every time,” Samira said.
“He only has eyes for you, that’s for sure,” Pia added. “After you left, Sam and I chastised Rory and Dev for not looking at us the way Manny looks at you.”
Harper chuckled. “Girls, we haven’t been dating long. They don’t call it the honeymoon period for nothing.”
Besides, she’d give anything to have what Samira and Pia had: keepers. A guy around for the long haul. A guy to accept her, every flawed inch. A guy who would always choose her.
“It was nice hanging out last night. When Nishi gets back, we should get her and Arun into our cozy clique too,” Samira said. “It’s great to have a group where everyone gets along, the guys and the girls.”
“Sounds good,” Pia said, “but don’t expect to see us every week. Dev and I are technically back in that honeymoon period.”
Samira made a gagging sound. “Okay, all you loved-up couples can stick to your honeymoons while I wrangle a baby and a husband who’s auditioning for another role that will take him away from home for a few months.”
“Auntie Pia is always available for babysitting . . . after the honeymoon,” Pia said, and they laughed.
An e-mail popped up on the laptop screen in front of Harper, with job offer in the subject line.
“Thanks for the call, girls, but I have to go. Work beckons.”
“Bye,” Samira and Pia said in unison, before hanging up, leaving Harper to check her e-mail.
She’d been asked to style a hospital fundraiser, a silent auction charity night at a swanky Docklands venue. Full buffet of fancy finger food. The kind of job she didn’t like because it was finicky and all it took was one canapé to look off center and the whole platter suffered. But she couldn’t afford to turn her back on any jobs at this stage, and she fired off an acceptance with her fee. Confirmation arrived surprisingly quickly, and after making note of the date in her diary, she pondered the booking.
She’d never done any work for hospitals before, and while the hosting hospital wasn’t Manny’s, what were the odds of landing a job like this after she’d started dating a doctor? Had he put in a good word for her?
She didn’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed. He’d already helped her out enough with the New Zealand jobs. She wasn’t some charity case. But she immediately felt bad for being prickly. Who cared how the referral came her way? She needed the work, she needed the money; she should be thankful rather than self-sabotaging.
Was she trying to find faults with Manny because he was too perfect?
And did his perfection accentuate her imperfections, playing into every one of her insecurities?
She had to be careful, because if she got too caught up in analyzing their differences, she could ruin the best thing to happen to her. She wanted to believe in him, to be grateful for this new, sparkly relationship.
But could they ever have a real relationship if she withheld the truth?
It was too early to reveal her true self to him, but there’d come a time soon when she would have to, and that day terrified her.
48
Manny had worked twelve hours straight and wanted to head home, have a shower, and fall into bed. But the moment he glimpsed Izzy’s text message on his cell, “please come see me,” he shelved his fatigue and hightailed it to her place.
She must have her test results.
She wanted to deliver them in person.
Which could only mean one thing.
Bad news.
How many times had he been on the opposite side of this scenario, the one imparting the bad news? Too many to count, and it never got easier. No matter how calm his voice, how stoic his expression, how much he steeled his nerve, watching the faces of patients’ loved ones crumple when he imparted a serious diagnosis never failed to gut him.
Now he could be on the receiving end, and he couldn’t contemplate a world without Izzy in it. She’d been his rock, his everything, for so long. She’d got him through the dark time after his mom’s death, when the guilt threatened to overwhelm him. She badgered him and nagged him but she loved him irrevocably, and the thought of her having a terminal illness made him want to retch.
Considering the badly injured, mutilated patients from the car pileup he’d attended to for the last twelve hours, he shouldn’t speed, but he made it to Izzy’s in record time. He parked out the front and turned off the engine, then sat in the car for a full minute, gripping the steering wheel and resting his forehead against it. Exhaustion made his head spin, but it was more than that. Being light-headed stemmed from what he’d face when he walked inside his grandmother’s house.
After dragging in several calming breaths, he straightened, shook out his arms, and got out of the car. Mustering every ounce of calm, he strode to the front door and let himself in. He couldn’t avoid this any longer. He needed to know what they were dealing with. Now.
The aroma of beef masala chops emanated from the kitchen, and he followed the tantalizing smell. They’d been his favorite from childhood and reserved for special occasions. He hated that he’d forever associate something he loved with the news he knew wouldn’t be good.
“I made your favorite,” Izzy said, tapping a wooden spoon against the edge of the pot before re-covering it. “Thought you might be hungry after a long shift.”
He crossed the kitchen to drop a kiss on her cheek. “How did you know I was on a long shift?”
“Because you would’ve been here thirty minutes after my text otherwise.”
“True,” he said, glad she’d brought it up rather than hedging around the news she had to impart. “You got your results?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Sit. Have some masala chai.”
Manny didn’t want tea. He didn’t want anything other than good news, but he’d given up wishing for things that could never happen around the time he’d pushed his mom to exercise and she’d dropped dead of a heart attack.
“Okay,” he said, knowing this was part of a ritual, a long-established way of Izzy getting her nerves under control. He’d seen it countless times before. The day he’d got a scholarship to attend a lauded private school. The day his final high school grades came out. The day he was offered a place at college to study medicine.
He’d drunk a lot of cups of masala chai with his gran over the years so he waited, clamping down his impatience as she went through the ritual of boiling tea leaves with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, a pinch of pepper, and ginger, adding milk and way too much sugar before pouring the steaming concoction into chipped glasses.
When she placed the glass in front of him and pulled up a seat, the scent of the spices made his throat clog with emotion. The smell of comfort. Of home.
He reached for the tea and took a sip to ease the tightness in his throat, the milky sweetness evoking so many treasured memories.
Izzy waited until he’d drunk half his tea before speaking.
“The doctor suspected endocarditis when I first saw him,
and the blood tests and the transthoracic echocardiogram I had yesterday confirmed it.”
Manny returned his glass to the table, his hand trembling, as every snippet of information about inflammation of the heart’s inner lining flooded his brain.
Usually caused by bacteria. Uncommon in people with healthy hearts, which meant Izzy’s wasn’t. Symptoms could develop slowly over time, so could go undiagnosed too long.
“Stop imagining the worst,” Izzy said, poking him in the chest. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“Endocarditis can be fatal,” he blurted, immediately ashamed those were the first words he uttered after his gran revealed her diagnosis.
He should be comforting her, offering her pragmatic advice, not scaring her. Then again, Izzy was too stoic for her own good, and he needed to ensure she knew how serious her condition was.
“I’m well aware of that,” she said. “I may call my doctor a quack, but he’s far from it.”
“What symptoms have you had?”
Her gaze slid away, furtive, guilty. “You were right: I have lost weight. And I’ve had night sweats, joint pain, with occasional nausea. I thought I’d lost weight because I haven’t felt like eating much the last few weeks.” She shrugged, fatalistic. “Then my heart started doing some weird jumpy thing, so I thought I better get it checked out.”
“It’s bacterial, so it will be treated with antibiotics for a start—”
“The echocardiogram showed I have heart valve damage and a lot of scarring around it, which allowed a buildup of bacteria.”
Manny was pretty sure his heart skipped a beat. Valve damage in itself could be fatal too.
“How bad are the valves?”
Izzy’s nose wrinkled. “Bad. Apparently, I have prolonged infective endocarditis, so there’s a lot of damage. Dead tissue around the valves, fluid buildup, debris from the infected tissue. I need the valves replaced.”
Manny felt the blood drain from his face. “All of them?”
“They’ve booked me in for surgery in two days.”
Fuck. This was serious, and he knew enough that if Izzy had a case of prolonged infective endocarditis, replacing the heart valves wouldn’t mean she’d be fine.
Complications from sustained damage were common: blood clots, atrial fibrillation, kidney inflammation, and the more severe stroke and heart failure.
“Please get that look off your face.” Izzy sighed and reached out to clasp his hand between hers. “I’m old. I’ve lived a good life. What will be will be.”
Tears burned the back of his eyes as he searched for something to say other than curse the injustice of this. He had nobody, apart from Izzy.
Though that wasn’t entirely true. He had Harper now. And the thought of having someone to confide in, to vent to, went some way to alleviating the pressure in his chest.
“But you know what this means, don’t you?” Izzy squeezed his hand before releasing it, the old twinkle in her eyes.
“What?”
“You’ll have to get married before I die. It will be my deathbed wish, and I’ll haunt you forever if you don’t.”
“Stop this talk about dying,” he muttered, harsher than intended as her eyebrow rose.
“You of all people know what I’m dealing with, Manish, so please don’t patronize me or sugarcoat the truth. My doctor clearly outlined the seriousness of my condition, so I’m under no illusions.”
She clutched at her chest, and Manny could’ve sworn his heart stopped. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but seeing you married would be the best medicine.”
He managed a laugh. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Made you smile though.”
He shook his head and pulled her in for a hug. She clung to him, and as he pressed his cheek to the top of her head, he wished he could impart his strength to her.
His beloved grandmother would need it for what she had to face.
49
Harper had received a text from Manny yesterday afternoon, saying he’d worked twelve hours and had to crash for the rest of the day, and he’d call her today. She tried not to read anything into the brevity of the text. What did she expect, some overly effusive missive when the guy had spent half a day patching up people? She’d almost asked him about the hospital job that had come her way but knew the last thing he needed at the end of a long shift was to trade texts, so she’d bided her time until today.
He must be having one hell of a sleep, because he hadn’t called by midday, and she knew this would be another downside of dating a doctor besides being ditched for emergencies: not being able to call him for fear of waking him. A selfish, irrational thought, considering the work he did and how he devoted his time to her when they were together. Manny made her feel special in a way she never had, like she was the only girl in the world. She needed to remember that the next time she felt a little sulky.
Her mom had invited her over for lunch, and Harper hoped Lydia had taken her advice and sorted things with her dad. Seeing those gift baskets the other day had made Harper sad in a way she hadn’t expected. Her dad truly loved her mom, his devotion absolute. So what the hell had happened to keep them apart for so long? If there was the slightest chance they could reconcile their differences, Harper would be all for it.
The first thing she noticed when she parked in front of her childhood home was a new car in the driveway. A black compact hybrid. Her mom’s small SUV was parked in front of it, so it wasn’t an impulsive buy by Lydia, and she hoped her dad hadn’t gone overboard and upped the ante from his gift baskets. Or worse, it signaled her mom was about to introduce her to a new man.
The door opened as she reached the porch, and Harper struggled not to gape. Her immaculately presented mother who never had a hair out of place, always wore makeup, and wouldn’t be seen dead in a leisure suit, wore her hair loose and tousled around her shoulders, not a bit of makeup on her face, and black yoga pants topped with a gray hoodie.
But Lydia’s eyes sparkled in a way Harper hadn’t seen in a long time, and her smile . . . she’d never seen her mother this happy.
“Who are you and what have you done with my mom?”
“Come in,” Lydia said, waiting until Harper had stepped inside and closed the door before flinging her arms around her.
“Mom, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
The moment she asked the question, she knew.
The strange car in the driveway.
Her mom’s disheveled appearance.
Lydia definitely had a new man, and they’d barely made it out of the bedroom.
Harper shuddered and Lydia released her.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” her mom said, leading her by the hand toward the kitchen.
The first thing Harper glimpsed as they passed the dining room was no gift baskets. Yep, it was looking more likely by the minute that her mom had a new man.
The second thing she saw as she entered the kitchen was her dad, wearing a tailored suit of all things, with a tie and expensive Italian loafers.
When her father smiled, his proud gaze swinging between her and Lydia, Harper knew what the surprise was, and she let out a whoop. Her feet flew across the kitchen, and she flung herself into her dad’s open arms, bursting into tears as he hugged her tight.
“I guess this means she’s happy about our decision,” Lydia said, completing their family hug by pressing against Harper’s back like she used to when Harper was little and it was the three of them against the world.
There were sniffles all round before they disengaged and Harper stood between her parents, her head swiveling.
“You two owe me an explanation.”
“We love you, darling, but we don’t owe you anything,” Lydia said, standing beside Alec, her hand in his. “But we want to tell you what’s happened, because we
know you’ve been worried about us.”
“That’s an understatement,” Harper said, pulling up a chair at the table.
She couldn’t be happier that her parents had reunited, but a small part of her wished she could reboot her vitiligo as easily. They could return to normal, but she never could.
“You’re looking awfully slick, Dad.”
Alec shrugged, bashful. “I was trying to impress your mother, be the man I thought she wanted me to be, but it turns out my clothes had nothing to do with it.”
“Let’s have a drink.” Her mom sloshed bourbon into three glasses and added ice before joining them at the table.
Another anomaly in a day tipped topsy-turvy. She’d never, ever seen Lydia touch a spirit; her mom was a chardonnay drinker any day of the week.
When they all had a drink, Lydia raised her glass. “To the Rylands.”
“To you and dad,” Harper said, clinking her glass against her parents’. “Now, would someone like to give me the lowdown?”
Her dad couldn’t take his eyes off her mom, so Harper knew Lydia would be the one to talk.
“Your father and I had a good marriage for the most part, but when you live with someone long enough, resentment can set in. While I gave up my career by choice to save your father’s business, I envisaged going back to it one day. But your father got used to having me around as an adjunct to his business, entertaining his cronies, throwing parties, and I knew having a salon again would never happen.”
“But I thought you loved entertaining,” Harper said. “Some of my fondest childhood memories are the big parties you guys hosted here. We were always having people around. The food, the music, the laughter, I cherished all that.”
“What I didn’t realize was your mother had to do all the work to make those parties a success,” her dad said, suitably shamefaced. “I was the life of the party, but your mother did it all. The preparation, the food, the cleaning up.” He shook his head. “I was hopeless.”
“I gave up asking him to help after a while but that wasn’t good, because as my resentment built I seriously started to dislike your father.”
