Of Flesh and Blood (12 page)

Enjoying the day’s warmth, Tyler opted against the more direct underground tunnel route that connected the parking garage to the children’s hospital. Instead, he strolled the path between buildings beside the central courtyard garden, past the rainbow of uniforms worn by various workers lounging in the early morning sunshine. He returned the friendly wave from a small group of staffers from the SFU who were enjoying a smoke break. He bit his tongue, amazed that the same people who worked with cancer victims believed they could light up with health impunity.

He reached the children’s hospital. Energized by the gorgeous day, he bounded up the stairwell, forgetting that there was an extra maintenance level between each of the numbered floors. By the time he had climbed all twelve flights, he was panting as he strode into the nursing station. Rounding a corner he spotted Nikki Salazar before she saw him. In mauve scrubs, she leaned gracefully against the countertop, charting. She stood with one leg crossed behind the other, the toes of her back foot barely touching the ground, as if en pointe.

Nikki looked up and their eyes locked briefly. “Hi.” She nodded and then dropped her gaze back to the chart. A slim smile creased her lips. “Guess it’s true that age eventually catches up to everyone.”

“I wish I could blame my lack of fitness on my age. Be less embarrassing.” He managed to slow his breathing and thumbed toward the patient rooms. “The kids do all right overnight?”

“All stable,” Nikki said, meaning that none of them had died or developed sepsis during the night, always a small victory in and of itself. “Nate had a tough time sleeping. Jan finally had to sedate him around two
A.M
.”

He nodded. With all the poor kid must have had on his mind after the
news of his cancer’s recurrence, Tyler couldn’t imagine sleep would come easily, if at all.

“Did you have a happy birthday?” Nikki asked, without making eye contact.

“Happy enough,” he said. “Very quiet. Just a glass or two of wine at home.”

The forced words were almost as many as they had exchanged, outside of patient care–related issues, since the night they closed O’Doole’s Pub together. Three weeks had passed, but the memory was still vivid enough that it clouded their subsequent encounters with newfound awkwardness.

Nikki shut the chart. Tyler expected her to walk away, but she didn’t. She touched the scar that ran from the bridge of her nose to her cheek. That one flaw made her even more attractive in his eyes. “You ever see the movie
Logan’s Run?
” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“It’s a cheesy seventies sci-fi flick.” She shrugged. “It’s set in a futuristic society where—if I remember right—they kill anyone as soon as they hit thirty-five.”

Tyler chuckled. “And Logan doesn’t like this policy?”

“Not when he turns thirty-five, he doesn’t.”

“Then I guess my birthday went better than it could have.”

“Better than Logan’s, anyway.” With that, Nikki turned and headed out toward the patients’ rooms.

Tyler was still grinning when he plopped down in front of a keyboard at the back of the nursing station. He began to call up his patients’ latest lab reports and imaging studies online, but his thoughts kept drifting back to that night at O’Doole’s.

Three Fridays before, a group of them from the SFU had headed out to the pub. Despite their closeness at the hospital, the staff hardly ever socialized outside of work. Tyler always assumed they needed the time apart to distance themselves from the intensity and tragedies of the work they shared. But this particular Friday, they had gone out to celebrate the news that Michael Houston—an irascible two-and-a-half-year-old African-American who had won over the entire staff during his four-month stay—had finally been discharged home.

Miracle Mikey—as he had been dubbed—was originally admitted with
the most common, and treatable, type of childhood leukemia: acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). But nothing went smoothly for the boy from day one. The trouble started as soon as Mikey was given his initial, or “induction,” phase of intense chemotherapy. He developed multiple serious side effects. And once those drugs knocked out Mikey’s immune system (as they were supposed to) he was clobbered by one overwhelming infection after another. Few of the staff expected Mikey to survive even his induction phase.

But Mikey was a fighter. Each time he emerged from a coma or was weaned off the life-support system, he would do so with a smile on his face and, if he had the strength for it, mischief on his mind. After he had weathered a particularly aggressive case of sepsis, or blood poisoning, one of the nurses nicknamed him Miracle Mikey. The moniker proved prophetic. With normal blood counts and no cancer cells detectable in his bone marrow, Mikey was sent home to begin the maintenance phase of his treatment as an out-patient. His prognosis was excellent.

While the majority of the children treated by the sixth-floor team did survive their cancer, even the veteran nurses acknowledged Miracle Mikey as a special case. He represented a triumph of will and personality over disease and complication. And so, the evening after his discharge, the staff had taken the opportunity to head to one of the few bars in Oakdale and celebrate the occasion over what turned out to be several pitchers of beer.

Tyler and Nikki sat at the far end of the long table in the corner. They were close enough to have a good view of the surprisingly talented piano player—who sounded, and even looked, a lot like a younger Billy Joel—but far enough away to hold a private conversation over the music and ambient noise.

Tyler lowered his empty pint glass to the table and nodded at Nikki’s full glass. While the pitchers had been steadily draining around her, she had barely touched her beer all evening. “Can ye nae down a single glass o’ stout in honor of the wee lad’s triumphant discharge?” he said, struggling to feign a Scottish accent.

Nikki shook her head and pointed to the neon shamrock behind the bar. “You do realize O’Doole’s is an
Irish
pub?”

“I can’t do an Irish lilt.”

“You canna do a Scottish one either, laddie,” Nikki said with a much more authentic-sounding accent. She pointed to her glass. “Anyway, this stuff is liquid calories. I might as well stuff the pitchers directly down the back of my pants instead of drinking it.”

“
You?
Right. The ballerina.” Nikki had told him once of her childhood ballet studies, but even if she hadn’t, Tyler would have assumed from her gracefulness and arched posture that she had trained as a dancer.

“In a previous life. I haven’t danced seriously since I was sixteen.”

Tyler drank in her chocolate brown eyes, delicate bone structure, and smooth complexion, save for the scars under her eye and above her lip. “I am not buying your calorie-counting excuse for a second.”

She shrugged. “All right, I’m the designated driver.”

“Except no one drove here,” he said. “You planning to hijack the cab on the way home?”

Her smile faded. She glanced around to ensure that none of the others were listening. “Truth is, I’m a recovering addict.”

Tyler realized she wasn’t joking. “Oh . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . . um . . . to—”

Nikki laid a hand on his arm. The amused smile lit her eyes again. “I’m the one who ought to apologize. I had no right to lay that on you!” She laughed self-consciously. “That’s as bad as being trapped on a flight beside a stranger who’s hell-bent on saving your soul before the plane touches down.”

“Not that bad.” He returned her grin. “Well, not as bad as say . . . if my seatmate were a Scientologist, and it was a transatlantic flight.”

“I guess not.” She sipped her beer. “Besides, I’ve never had an issue with booze. I don’t really like it much. But they tell me it’s a good idea to avoid all drugs, including alcohol.”

Nikki struck Tyler as too self-possessed and devoid of nervous energy to be an addict. He wondered if cocaine or narcotics were her previous crutch, but, sensing silence was his best response, he merely nodded.

She reached for the nearest pitcher and filled his glass without asking. “Five years ago, I was involved in a bad car accident,” she said. “My fiancé was driving on a highway outside Phoenix. A van drifted over the median. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. He hit us head-on.”

“Oh, my God!”

“I got off easy. Aside from a few lacerations”—she flicked a finger near the scar under her eye—“worst injury I sustained was a couple crushed vertebrae in my lower back.” She swallowed. “Glen died.”

“Oh, Jesus, Nikki . . .”

“The back pain was so intense,” she went on. “The hydromorphone was the only thing that seemed to numb it. In retrospect, I guess I wanted to numb more than just the physical pain. Anyway, long after the bones healed, I kept popping those beautiful little pills. The problem was, my doctor recognized that I didn’t need them anymore. And he decided to wean me off my supply.”

Tyler could guess where she was heading but didn’t interrupt.

“By this point, I was back working again, in Tucson.” Nikki looked down at the table. “As you know, there’s no shortage of painkillers on an oncology ward. I didn’t think anyone would notice if I borrowed a few pills here and there.”

“But someone did.”

Nikki nodded. “Suffice it to say I lost my nursing license in Arizona, followed by doing a stint in rehab. I was lucky to get my papers in Washington.”

“Does anyone else here know?”

“Janice Halverson did. Right from our first interview,” she said, referring to the headstrong SFU nurse manager who fluctuated in her staff’s eyes between hero and slave driver, depending on the person and time of day. “She has been unbelievable. She took a chance on me when she absolutely didn’t have to.”

“Janice is no fool,” Tyler said. “She recognizes a superstar when she sees one.”

“Thanks,” Nikki mumbled, as she began to redden. “God, you’d probably trade me for that Scientologist on the transatlantic flight about now.”

He leaned closer and gently elbowed her in the ribs. “Are we talking New York–London or L.A.–Moscow? Because that could make it a much different choice.”

She looked up at him affectionately. “Dr. McGrath, you’re a pretty good listener for an MD.” She bit her lip. “And you? You have any dirty laundry that I could wash for you?”

“Don’t think your machine would have room for it all.”

“Try me.”

“Well, for starters, the Alfredson was the last place I wanted to come to work.”

She frowned. “But your family’s name is synonymous with the hospital. Like the royal family, or something.”

“Except we’re not exactly the Romanovs or Windsors.” He shook his head. “It’s only a hospital.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel, then why do you care one way or the other? It’s still a very good place to practice.”

“True, but this job is hard enough to get right
without
feeling like you have history watching over your shoulder.”

“I guess so.”

“Besides, moving back here has not been good for the home front, you know?”

She said nothing. He doubted he was letting her in on much of a secret—the hospital gossip mill being legendarily efficient—but something in her placid expression invited more. Finishing a third pint of beer, Tyler explained how much Jill and he had drifted apart since they arrived in Oak-dale. He never mentioned their infertility issues, but he sensed that Nikki appreciated something other than their respective hectic careers had strained their marriage.

The alcohol combined with the opportunity to open up—in a way that Jill and he had not done in ages—heightened the sense of closeness. Then the Billy Joel impersonator at the piano launched into a series of sing-along standards, from “Sweet Caroline” to “American Pie.” Soon, Tyler and Nikki found themselves linked arm in arm with each other and the two people on either side, as they belted out the tunes and swayed to and fro.

By midnight, the crowd from the hospital had thinned, and canned music replaced the pianist. The remaining staff all gathered on the makeshift dance floor. Though Tyler had danced with several of the other women from the SFU, by the time the last song—Elton John’s “Your Song”—played, Nikki was in his arms. Even drunk, he was acutely aware of the pitfalls of holding her warm supple body against his, but her gentle curves, fluid dancing, and vanilla fragrance were irresistible. The sexuality of the contact was less mesmerizing than its intimacy. He couldn’t remember the last time Jill and he had held each other the same way.

Tyler lowered his head and spoke into her ear. “You working tomorrow?”

“Day off.”

“Me too. Maybe we could grab a coffee somewhere?” Drunk as he was, he recognized the inappropriateness of the offer but was too caught up in the moment to stop himself.

“Oakdale is no Seattle, Tyler. Unless you like gas station coffee, we don’t stand a chance of finding a cup at this time of night.”

“Yeah, I suppose—”

She pulled back and studied him, eyes aglow. “My place is less than a mile away. Even my sponsor tells me I’m still allowed to drink coffee . . . provided it’s decaf.”

“Yours as good as the gas station?”

Nikki leaned forward and stood on her toes to whisper in his ear. “Don’t pressure me, Dr. McGrath.” She giggled.

He pressed his cheek against hers while Elton John sang, “How wonderful life is now you’re in the world.”

The lights came up. Tyler and Nikki lagged behind the rest of the group filing for the door. Near the doorway, he stopped her by the arm. “Let’s grab a cab of our own.”

She viewed him with an unusually indecisive expression before slowly nodding. “We could walk. It’s not that far.”

He leaned nearer and snuck in a kiss on her cheek. “Don’t feel like walking,” he whispered in her ear.

They stepped outside. Despite the suburbia enveloping them, the unusually warm breeze reminded Tyler of the tropics. He spotted a waiting cab. They hurried over and climbed in the back. Nikki gave the driver her address. As soon as the car pulled away from the bar, Tyler reached out and cupped Nikki’s chin in his fingers and turned her face toward him. She nuzzled her face against his hand. In the car’s dim interior he could not see the scar under her eye, but he leaned forward and kissed her on the same cheek.