Kate gazed at her big brother as he wiped his eyes. One of Ty’s best friends, maybe his only friend, a pediatric heart transplant surgeon, had killed himself on Christmas Eve, a few years ago. He had left a note:
I can’t bear the thought of not being able to save another child.
Despite the thousands of kids who were alive because of him, the surgeon was incapable of remembering anything other than the children who hadn’t made it. Kate remembered this story warily.
“Women always say they want a man who cries. That’s until they actually see him crying,” Ty said. Kate gave him a sympathetic smile. He shook his head and wiped his eyes again. “I’m in a terrible place, and I can’t figure out how to fix it.”
“Now you’re just being silly.” Kate stood up and walked toward the kitchen. “You want a cup of green tea?”
Ty joined Kate in the small kitchen. She put water in the kettle and turned on the gas burner.
“You don’t think we’d lose two siblings and emerge without any scars, do you?” she said. She spoke quietly. “I think that’s partly why I got into the insurance business. I wanted to know risks, and to better understand them.”
“I guess,” Ty said. He was still spent from his crying jag.
“I can tell you, professionally speaking, we as a society do a crappy job weighing risks.”
“Yeah?”
“We feel safer at the wheel of the car than we do flying in a plane. We’re at much greater risk. We’re more afraid of risks produced by people, like radiation from cell phones, than natural radiation from the sun, but the sun is much more dangerous. We’re more afraid when the uncertainty is high. More afraid of risks we’re aware of. More afraid of new risks.”
“I know you’re going somewhere with this, but I’m not following.”
“We’re hardwired to weigh risks a certain way. We can’t help it.”
Steam whistled through the spout of the kettle, and Kate poured them both tea. She returned to the table with the steaming mugs.
“Drink some of this. You always loved green tea, even when everyone else thought it was earthy, crunchy, New Agey.” Kate smiled.
“Thanks, sis, lots of antioxidants. And I am kind of earthy crunchy…I even meditate nowadays.” Ty sipped his tea. “Now, weren’t you telling me something about risk?”
“Yes. What happened with that boy.”
“Quinn McDaniel.”
“Yes, Quinn McDaniel. Well, he threw your own actuarial tables out the window. All of a sudden, a seemingly healthy boy can have a much higher risk for dying—even with one of the best surgeons in the world operating on him. You’re driving the car but you’re not in total control, even if you think you are.”
“Not sure I’m tracking.”
Kate took a sip. Ty watched his sister. He could practically see the gears turning in her head.
“Bad things happen to good people. With your training and your skill, you’ve done everything you could to tip the odds against that. But
bad
things still happen to
good
people. Even with the wonderful Ty Wilson performing their surgery. Look, big brother, it’s not about finding redemption, or somehow tipping the scales of bad toward the good side of things. That will never work.”
“So what
am
I supposed to do?”
“Ty.” She sat next to him on the ottoman. “Learn from your mistakes and then move on. It’s the most important thing you can do.”
T
y rode with Kate to the preschool to pick up her two young daughters, Lydia and Liza. Together they gave their uncle Ty an enthusiastic embrace. Kate peeled an orange and gave the girls slices.
“Do you need to spend the night?”
“No.” Ty hadn’t given much thought to his plans. He felt much lighter than he had when he’d arrived.
“It wouldn’t be a problem. The girls would love to have a sleepover with Uncle Ty. And you can see Henry. His flight gets in later.”
“No. I should—” Ty paused. Should what? He assumed he’d head back to Michigan and Chelsea General after this stop in Phoenix, but should he?
“So what are you going to do now?” Kate asked as though she were reading his thoughts. “Are you going home? Are you going to go back to the hospital?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
Ty hugged his sister and nieces good-bye and went back to his car.
“Tell Henry I am sorry I missed him, and I will see him soon.”
“No you won’t.” Kate smiled. “But he loves you anyway.”
He drove out of the subdivision and turned toward Phoenix and the airport. He saw a gas station ahead and pulled into it. He just needed time to think.
W
hen his son coughed, breathed his last breath, and rolled over, dead, everyone around gasped. Villanueva, though, was thrilled. Nick was on stage. Performing. This was the same catatonic couch potato whose vocabulary consisted of a succession of barely audible grunts. Here he was, in makeup. Acting. Villanueva couldn’t have been more proud if Nick had just caught the winning touchdown in the final minutes of the championship game. He knew firsthand the thrill of a crowd, and he was ecstatic he and his son now shared this experience.
The big man was not worried a whit that Nick’s stage debut consisted of a very small part in a student-written and -directed high school production. He was seeing a new side to the scrawny, almost mute boy who’d seemed incapable of much of anything but watching television and playing video games for a couple of years now. Until an hour or so earlier, he had worried that his son was an ineffable loser, a nice boy lost in his cocooned PlayStation world, his hand permanently attached to a video game controller. Could this be the same boy who had spent most of his adolescence staring at his feet and mumbling when George spoke to him?
Seeing his son on stage, El Gato was busting at his very large seams. He had to resist the very strong urge to clap the shoulder of the stooped parent next to him and proclaim on the spot:
That’s my boy that just died up there!
More than pride, Villanueva experienced a surge of parental relief. It dawned on him how worried he’d been about his son making his way in the world. Seeing the boy in public like this allayed those fears. Most of them, anyway. Maybe things wouldn’t turn out so badly for the kid. Maybe he’d graduate from college. Maybe he’d hold down a job somewhere. Maybe—and George had to take this one on faith—just maybe his son might find some companion to date, a love to marry. Nick acting was like a thread, the first one Villanueva had seen with any hope of becoming the fabric of a happy and—George hated to think this way—normal life.
So what if he was becoming one of those theater kids and not a jock. Villanueva didn’t care. Every kid needed a place. Maybe Nick wouldn’t be one of those kids living in the basement into their twenties and beyond, looking for handouts and home-cooked meals.
Villanueva’s expectations for Nick had lowered considerably since his days coaching the boy in youth football. At this point, George didn’t care if the boy had no interest in sports or looked like a strong breeze could uproot him. If he could take part in a play, perhaps there were other talents that lay beneath the boy’s taciturn adolescent surface.
H
alf an hour after Nick’s dying scene, even before the velvet curtain hit the stage at North High auditorium, Villanueva was on his feet, clapping. Other parents joined him in the standing ovation.
They’re cheering my son
, Villanueva thought, only conceding to himself a moment later they might also be cheering their own sons and daughters. Villanueva didn’t care. He put two sausage-size index fingers in his mouth and whistled.
The cast took turns taking bows, in ascending order of their roles. Nick was in one of the first small groups to move to the front of the raised stage, hold hands, and bow. Villanueva yelled “Bravo” and whistled again, this time catching Nick’s eye. The boy looked away, but he was smiling.
Villanueva vaguely remembered Nick asking if he should try out for the part. He had encouraged his son, assuming he wouldn’t get a part but thinking he should get his ass off the couch, at least for however long it took to audition. Villanueva had no idea what that entailed but it couldn’t be worse than his default, which was doing nothing—or at least nothing that required human interaction.
Nick had never told him that he’d tried out, nor that he’d made it. His ex had called and clued him in only because she couldn’t make the performance. She didn’t say why, and Villanueva didn’t ask. Even though the thought of spending an evening with the ex was akin to a day of periodontal surgery, the thought of her with another man was still one he tried to avoid.
Nick met his father in the auditorium lobby. They stood amid the eddies and swirls of other actors, parents, friends. Nick was doing his best to hold back a smile, to be cool.
Who knows?
Villanueva thought,
maybe the boy will get his ass laid
. Nick had wiped most of the makeup off his face, but missed the spots around his ears and temples. Villanueva wrapped his son in a bear hug.
“Dad!” Nick said. On one level, he sounded alarmed. On another, pleased.
“Strong work, Nick. You and me. We gotta celebrate.”
“Okay.” Nick sounded guarded.
“You were great!”
“Thanks, Dad.”
They navigated their way through the clots of parents and children and pushed through the double doors leading outside. As they walked down the steps from the auditorium to the high school’s massive parking lot, Villanueva stopped.
“Nick, I gotta ask, could you feel the audience? Could you feel the energy?”
Nick looked surprised, as though his father was in on a secret. “Yeah, Dad, I could.”
“Pretty cool, isn’t it.”
“Yeah.”
They started walking again, and Nick glanced sidelong at his father. He wore a smirk that he could not suppress. When Villanueva put his arm around his son’s shoulder, the teenager didn’t even shrug it off as a public embarrassment. They made their way down the long row of SUVs and minivans until they reached Villanueva’s convertible roadster. Villanueva sensed his son was not telling him something.
“What is it, Nick? You got something else going on?”
“There’s sort of a cast party. Do you think you could take me there?”
Squint.
“We’ll celebrate another time.”
“Sure, Dad.”
“That a promise?”
“Sure.” Nick sounded enthusiastic.
“You were great.”
“It was a pretty small part.”
“You were great,” George said again, squeezing his son on the shoulder.
“Thanks.”
Villanueva folded his enormous bulk into the coupe, looking more than a little like Fred Flintstone. His son got in next to him.
“Where to, son?”
T
y undid the buttons of her silk blouse, one by one, taking his time, savoring the moment, his excitement growing. He was not entirely sure how he had arrived at this place, by the picture window in his darkened penthouse apartment. She had suggested the rendezvous when she called Ty as he sat at the gas station in Phoenix. When he saw the call was from Tina, he knew he’d go back to Michigan. Whatever amorphous thoughts he’d had about doing anything else vanished.
When he’d opened the door, she had leaned over without a word and kissed him on the mouth, a hand on his hip. There was a hunger in her kiss that surprised Ty and threw him off guard, at least for a moment. He hadn’t expected this. Not from her. But when he recovered from his surprise, he had pulled her against him. Now she was pulling the T-shirt over his head, and no thought of right or wrong entered Ty’s mind.
Ty removed her bra, and pulled her on top of him on the long couch in his living room. After the anguish of the previous weeks, he allowed himself to be swallowed in the moment, the sum total of his universe consisting of the face in front of his, the body pressing against him.
As they kissed, Ty had one thought: Tina Ridgeway’s beauty took his breath away. He knew this was a cliché but it was true. He was dazzled by her beauty, blinded by it. That she was married, that she was a co-worker and a friend, those thoughts would come later, he knew. For now, he ran his hand along the small of her back and allowed himself to become lost in the moment.
T
ina left Ty’s apartment before dawn. Ty was still sleeping, and she managed to dress and walk out the door without waking him. As she drove home, the passion of the night faded and was replaced by not only fatigue but also a sinking feeling of regret.
Tina had always prided herself on doing the right thing, even when it was unpopular. She had argued in favor of the resident Michelle Robidaux, not so much because she thought the young woman would turn out to be an outstanding surgeon as because teaching hospitals were supposed to teach, not castigate struggling young doctors.
As a resident herself, she had run afoul of one of her attendings, the imperious Gerald Esposito, who had written her up for telling a patient about an alternative treatment to the one he was recommending. Tina received word to be in the office of the chief of the residency program the next day at one o’clock. Literally quivering with fear, sure that her medical career was over, Tina had arrived at Dr. Daniel Barrow’s office at the appointed hour. When she sat down, Barrow had held up the report detailing her transgressions.
“You know what I think of this?” Barrow leaned over and ripped the report in two, dropping it in the trash can next to his desk.
Tina looked from the ripped report back to Barrow. He raised his eyebrows at her, as she absorbed the institutional insolence she had just witnessed.
“I’m not worried in the least about you. You’re going to be a fine doctor. Now get back to work.”
Tina didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. Walking down the narrow paths between old brick buildings that led back to the hospital, Tina had first laughed and then cried at her good fortune.
What would Dr. Barrow think of her now? She had let Michelle Robidaux down. She had allowed Chelsea General to toss out Michelle Robidaux when the young doctor had become legally inconvenient. And she had let herself down, selfishly betraying her marriage vows, her sense of self, and her friendship with Ty.