Leave a Mark (3 page)

The girl’s eyes peeked open, and Lee made out green irises, but before she could answer, Christiana Leger broke in.

“Wren Blanchard. Twenty-five. Non-smoker. No prescriptions. No history of kidney stones. Her boss said she was fine one minute and on the floor the next.”

Lee kept the girl’s hand in his as he glanced back at Dr. Leger. He tried to swallow the irritation his colleague inspired. Most of his colleagues. The ones who had never grasped that you could learn so much just by listening to your patients.

“Fuck me, this hurts." Ms. Blanchard squeezed his hand as she hissed out the words.

One look told him he didn’t need to ask her to rate her pain. She was guarding, and her breath was labored. A nine, easy.

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?” Dr. Leger asked.

Lee had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Stupid question,” the girl muttered, her eyes still closed. Then he watched a thought ripple across her face. “Seven.”

She’s tough
.

“How long were you hurting before you fainted?” he asked, and her hesitation confirmed his guess. Lee knew before she answered that she’d likely hidden her pain as long as she could.

“About half an hour… maybe more.”

“Has this ever happened before?” he asked.

She gave a tight shake of her head. Then she opened her eyes, looked down at their joined hands, and released him. She squeezed her eyes shut again, as if that could block her pain.

“Can
you
make it stop?" Even though her voice shook with agony, she wasn’t begging.

Lee felt certain that she was vetting him, asking if he were up to the task.

And he wanted to say yes. He wanted to make the pain stop.

“Eventually. We need to find the cause first. Any chance at all that you’re pregnant?”

“Hell, no.”

Lee smiled as he plucked a pair of gloves from the supply table. “I’ll need to do a pelvic exam.”

She opened one eye.

“Morphine first.”

In spite of himself, Lee choked on a laugh. Dr. Leger folded her arms across her chest, unamused. “I’ll be fast. I promise.”

“Mmm… what a catch,” she rasped.

Lee bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing a second time. If she could crack jokes in this kind of pain, what was she like on a good day? Lee cleared his throat before speaking again.

“Ms. Blanchard, I’ll need you to roll onto your back and raise your knees. I’ll keep you covered.”

“It’s Wren. First-name basis now,” she mumbled before moaning and rolling over. But with the movement, her eyes shot open, and she began to pant. “Oh shit… oh Jesus — What the fuck…”

Lee slipped his right hand under the sheet and used his left above to palpate her abdomen. Beyond her cervix, he could feel swelling, but no adnexal mass. He pressed deeper.

“Ten… Oh God, make it stop—” she gasped, her voice hollowing out.

Lee looked up to see his patient had gone completely white.

“Her pressure’s dropping,” Dr. Leger said.

Shit.

“She needs surgery. Now.”

“Don’t fuck up my ink…” she whispered. Her eyes rolled back, and she was out.

AS LEE SCRUBBED
his fingers and hands — counting each stroke — he gave thanks that Dr. Jem Yeng, Chief of Obstetrics, was the attending on call and not Dr. Barrow. Lee had only scrubbed in on a few cystectomies, but he’d watched Barrow do dozens of hysterectomies, making calls about women’s organs he never would have made.

With his hands in front of him, Lee backed into the operating theater behind Dr. Yeng and waited for the scrub tech to fit him out with gown and gloves. He saw Mercer standing at the head of the surgical table where his patient was already intubated, giving him another measure of relief. Mercer was a friend, but he was also a careful and skilled anesthesiologist. Wren Blanchard’s emergency had come on a good day at UMC.

“Dr. Hawthorne, she’s your patient. Why don’t you take the lead?” Dr. Yeng offered.

Adrenaline surged in his blood. Lee had assisted in scores of laparoscopic procedures, but something about this particular patient made his heart race.

“Thank you, Dr. Yeng,” he managed. But when he approached the table and saw the flesh peeking through the square of surgical drape, Lee stilled. In an operating room, it was easy to forget that the body on the table belonged to an actual person. Swathed in blue drapes, heads nearly covered with masks and hair caps, patients barely looked human. Apart from race and body type, one patient resembled every other.

Except Wren Blanchard.

The abdomen in front of him was a work of art. A cherry-blossom tree in full bloom spanned her body from pelvis to ribs. Pink petals floated away in a breeze, and a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds was just taking flight. The dark branches and roots of the tree struck a stark contrast to her fair skin, as did the blackbirds. But the pink blossoms, each one blushing in its own way, could not have looked more natural — as if such images made their debut on skin before growing up from the ground.

“Wow.”

“You should see the rest of her.” Lee looked up to see the smiling eyes of the scrub nurse. “It’s quite something.”

“She asked me not to mess up her ink,” Lee said, bringing his eyes back to the masterpiece in front of him. “I thought she was delirious. Clearly not.”

“Well, she’s bleeding, so you’d best get started, Dr. Hawthorne,” Dr. Yeng chastened gently.

“Right.” He held out his hand for the scalpel.

In the end, he made two small incisions. One in the trunk of the cherry blossom just to the right of her navel. The other, lower, just above her pudenda, he was able to hide in the beautiful root work of the tree.

After Lee had corrected the ovarian torsion and removed the hemorrhaging corpus luteum, he stitched up the incisions as carefully as he could so that Wren’s scars would be tiny. For the first time in his career, he found himself hoping that his patient would be happy with his sewing skills.

WREN WAITED IN
the carpool line. Her stomach started to hurt. Mamaw Gigi was late, and Mamaw Gigi was never late.

She looked over her shoulder back at the entrance to Myrtle Place Elementary and wondered if she should go tell her teacher, Mrs. Gibson. Would Mrs. Gibson still be in the classroom? Could she walk back there all by herself?

“Hey, sugar.”

Wren jumped, and Darryl laughed at her from the driver’s seat of Mamaw’s station wagon.

“Where’s Mamaw?” Wren asked, peering into the empty car through the open window.

Darryl winked at her. “Your mamaw took a spill and hurt her elbow.”

Wren’s heart started to thump hard against her chest. Mamaw was hurt?

“Now, don’t go all scaredy-cat on me, sugar. She and your Papaw are getting her patched up at the hospital, and I told them I could pick you up from school.”

“Mamaw’s at the hospital?” Wren’s lip began to tremble, and Darryl pushed open the passenger door.

“She’ll be fine, sugar. Elbows are easy to fix. Climb on up here, and we’ll go get some ice cream.”

Wren eyed the front seat. “Mamaw doesn’t let me sit in the front. She says the back is safer for little girls.”

Darryl nodded. “Well, she’s right about that, but I thought you were a big girl. Hop up here. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”

Wren didn’t move. “Where’s Laurie?”

A frown started to fold onto his forehead, but he shook it off with a smile. “Your mama is sleeping off some medicine she took. Now, you need to get in this car if you want some ice cream… unless you’re planning to walk home tonight.”

Wren’s eyes got big. Walk home? She’d get lost or kidnapped. She scrambled into the front seat and put on her seatbelt.

“Now, that’s a good girl. A big girl… What did you say your favorite flavor was?”

Ten minutes later, Wren sat in the front seat with rocky road in a sugar cone. Mamaw usually made her get it in a cup because cones dripped, but Darryl had said it was a good thing Mamaw wasn’t around today.

Wren licked the side of her cone and thought that she’d always want Mamaw around, but she was happy to get a cone.

Darryl sat next to her, sipping a milkshake.

“Mmm-mmm,” he said, drinking his shake and tilting his seat back. “This sure is good. It relaxes me.”

Wren nodded and slurped a marshmallow out of her ice cream. “Marshmallows relax me,” she said. She leaned back against her seat and sighed.

Darryl held his milkshake with one hand and put the other in his lap. A minute later, he began rubbing his fingers up and down the zipper of his jeans. Wren stopped licking her ice cream.

“Yep, this sure is relaxing,” he said, moving his hand back and forth. “You ever try this?”

Wren shook her head, her face getting hot. “I’m ready to go home now.”

“We’re in no rush, sugar. Uh-oh. Look at that,” Darryl said, pointing to her lap. Ice cream had dripped down her cone and dotted her school pants. “Let me wipe that up for you.”

WREN WOKE UP
in a semi-private hospital room next to a snoring woman. Her throat burned, and her eyes felt greasy, but she was alive.

She raised her right hand to her face to wipe her eyes, and the sight of an IV lock taped to her wrist surprised her.

“Good thing needles don’t freak me out.” Her voice came out scratchy and raw, and she cleared her throat, wishing for some water.

She knew better than to try to sit up on her own. Although her limbs felt heavy and drugged, she was still aware of pain in her middle. Wren glanced around and found the controls along the railing, and she inclined the head of the bed until her chest was just higher than her belly.

Even under blankets and a hospital gown, her stomach looked…
puffy.

She lifted the neck of the gown and took a tentative peek. The Lady Gouldian Finch that soared across her chest made her smile. Even if things lower down were a mess, he was still beautiful with his sharp red face and his proud purple chest and gold belly. He aimed for a bougainvillea perch and gazed sagely past her right arm. Across from him, over her heart, her timid wren hid in his nest as though the events of the night had spooked him.

He wasn’t alone. Wren lifted the gown a little higher.

The top of her cherry blossom tree was still visible, but the rest of it disappeared under bandages. She’d have to wait to assess the damage.

Wren glanced at her snoring neighbor. The woman was about Mamaw Gigi’s age, seventy, or so. She slept on her back with her mouth open. A tube that looked disturbingly thick snaked down from the side of her bed and ended in a pouch half-full of rust-colored fluid.

Wren made a face and looked toward the door, not wanting to think of the tube or its unfortunate owner. She was aware that she was both half-starved and nauseated, but the thought of eating anything in the dingy hospital room nearly made her gag.

I need to get out of here… What the hell time is it, anyway?

There were no windows in the room, but she felt sure that only a few hours had passed. She looked around in search of her purse and clothes. They were nowhere to be found. Did Rocky have them? Wren remembered her boss hovering over her when they strapped her to a gurney in the hospital’s drive. Rocky must have brought her in his car.

The ride she didn’t remember, but she did recall a nurse helping her out of her clothes and into a mint-green gown in the ER. Wren looked down. The one she wore now was blue. Any number of things could have happened to her between the time the doctor with the blue eyes nearly killed her and the moment she’d awoken here.

The thought sent an unpleasant shiver up her spine. There was no telling how many people had seen her naked since she’d arrived. What made it worse was that in the moments before she’d passed out the second time, she hadn’t even cared about that. The pain in her middle had been so bad, she’d been ready just to die and be done with it.