“He can’t fit in your wagon, stupid,” Gary told his brother haughtily. Even so, there was real fear in the older boy’s eyes as he watched his father. He was just as worried as Greg, but trying very hard not to show it. “You’re not gonna die, right, Daddy?” His lower lip trembled slightly as he added in a hoarse whisper, “Not like Mommy, right?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Tracy said firmly. The fact that she was able to assert herself this way without a hearty protest from Micah indicated how sick he really was. It was time to stop talking and start driving. “I need Sheila’s phone number.” This time it was an order, not a request.
“I know it!” Gary piped up, excited that he could help.
Tracy gave him a wide smile. “Good man.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Tell me her number and I’ll call her. The sooner I can get her here, the sooner I can take your dad to the emergency room.”
The familiar term struck a responsive chord for Greg. He patted his father’s arm, as if to set him at ease. “Just like you do with me, Daddy. Don’t worry, they’re real nice.”
Meanwhile, Gary was reciting the numbers in his great-aunt’s phone number very carefully. Tracy hit each on the keypad.
Less than five minutes later, it was all arranged. Sheila was coming right over. Fifteen minutes later, the woman was using the key Micah had given her and came in. One look at her face told Tracy that Micah’s aunt was trying not to appear as concerned as she felt.
But her eyes gave her away.
The moment she was inside, the boys came running up to her, throwing their arms around her waist and seeking the warmth, comfort and reassurance that she had come to represent in their lives.
“Daddy’s sick,” Gary told her, wanting to be the first with the news.
“I know, honey,” Sheila replied. “Tracy told me when she called.”
Greg turned to her for the reassurance he still so desperately needed. He asked her the same question he’d asked his father. “He’s not gonna die, is he?”
Sheila hugged both boys to her, then, bending, she kissed the top of each blond head. “He’s going to be just fine. This is your dad we’re talking about. He’s always fine.” But even as she said it, Sheila’s eyes met Tracy’s, silently seeking the reassurance from her that she was giving the boys.
The moment Sheila had arrived, Tracy immediately began to draw Micah up to his feet. She wedged her slim shoulder beneath his armpit in order to give him the support he needed. Her one goal was to get him to her car, parked at the curb.
“Yes, he is,” Tracy answered in an almost alien, no-nonsense voice no one in the room had ever heard her use before.
It occurred to her at that moment that somehow, through some wild twist of fate, she had been designated to be the “strong one” and while she didn’t much care for the role—she would have liked to have had someone to emotionally lean on herself—she accepted it without complaint. All that mattered was getting Micah to the hospital before he got any worse.
“Let’s go, Mr. Invincible,” she coaxed, taking small, measured steps so as not to throw him off. Passing Sheila, she promised, “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
For the sake of her nephew’s sons, the older woman forced a smile to her lips.
“I’d appreciate that,” she told Tracy. She didn’t need to add that she’d be waiting by the phone for her call. That went without saying.
Gary broke away from Sheila and hurried over to the front door. Yanking on it as hard as he could, he managed to open it for Tracy and his father.
“Thank you,” she told the boy. It struck her that the little boy was acting more like a young man than a child his age. The maturity level of both boys astounded her at times. “I’ll take good care of him,” she told the little boy as she walked slowly past him, keeping Micah’s arm draped across the back of her shoulders.
“Okay,” he replied. She saw Greg’s lower lip quiver a little. He was old enough to sense that there were some things that promises couldn’t cover, no matter how well intentioned.
It felt like an eternity had gone by before she finally got Micah to the car and into the front passenger seat. The second he was in the car, she switched into high gear and quickly rounded the trunk, all but throwing herself into the driver’s seat. Glancing to make sure he was buckled up, she gunned the engine.
Less than thirty seconds later, they were pealing away from the curb, and then out of the development.
He was too quiet, she thought, weaving her way onto the main drag that ultimately led to the freeway. That worried her a great deal.
And then he spoke and she found herself missing the silence. She really didn’t want to have to argue with Micah.
“You scared the boys,” he told her, each word measured and struggling to emerge. His breathing was labored.
“No,” she contradicted calmly, silently congratulating herself on her performance, “you did. With your sweaty body and your pale face.”
Micah had his seat belt on, but he was sitting slightly hunched over rather than ramrod straight the way he usually did. Added to that, his right hand was pressed hard against the source of the radiating pain. Even so, he made a concentrated effort to lighten the mood.
“I didn’t hear you complaining the other night,” he told her.
She slanted a quick look at him. So, he wasn’t pretending that it never happened. She took a grain of comfort from that. “Well, at least you still have your sense of humor. That’s hopeful.”
He glanced down at the speedometer. “You’re going too fast.”
She’d all but flown onto the freeway, tenser than she could ever remember being. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t have much time to get him to the hospital. “No, I’m not.”
“Okay,” he relented. “For an airplane, you’re not, but for a car, you are.” He sucked in air as a sharp pain sliced through him. Eyes closed, Micah struggled past it and did his best to go on talking as if nothing was wrong. “I thought the object was to get me there in one piece.”
“It is. And the sooner the better.”
Though she had no intentions of telling him, Tracy somehow attempted to outrace time. If she didn’t get to the hospital as quickly as humanly possible, she would live to regret it.
And Micah wouldn’t live at all.
He’d undoubtedly laugh at her “intuition,” but that didn’t change the fact that it was there and it felt extremely real to her. She couldn’t ignore that.
In less than twenty minutes, feeling as if she’d run all the way instead of driven, Tracy was pulling up to the left side of the hospital and the E.R. entrance. Stopping at the valet station, Tracy turned off the ignition.
That was when Micah began to rouse himself. He’d dozed off to escape the pain. Awake, he was having an extremely difficult time focusing.
Turning toward Tracy, Micah asked, “Have we landed yet?”
Rather than take exception to his choice of words, she merely said yes as she jumped out of the car and once again rounded the vehicle to get to his side. By the time she’d started to help him to his feet, a hospital attendant was bringing over one of the hospital’s wheelchairs from the E.R.
With Tracy on one side of him and the attendant on the other, they started to slowly lower Micah into the seat. He felt unmanned by the help. Grasping the armrests, he announced curtly, “I can do this on my own.”
“By all means, go ahead,” Tracy told him.
Hands raised as if to surrender all contact, she stepped back. But she watched Micah like a hawk. He was growing progressively weaker, but she also knew that his pride was at stake and since she’d gotten him here where he could be taken care of, she could cut Micah a little slack when it came to the self-esteem department.
However, the moment he was seated, Tracy immediately took possession of the wheelchair and all but propelled him through the electronic doors that sprang open to admit them.
The instant she was inside, a nurse and an orderly approached them. And for the first time since she’d stood on Micah’s doorstep earlier today, Tracy felt that everything
was
going to be all right.
“Hi,” she greeted the duo. “He has appendicitis.”
They took it from there.
* * *
Fidgeting, Tracy looked at her watch.
It was three minutes later than the last time she’d looked at it. Impatience and worry rifled through her, alternating in strength.
Micah had been in the operating room for one hour and twenty minutes.
The queasy feeling in her stomach threatened to devour her from the inside out. Why the hell was it taking so long?
The first hour she’d been fine. She was aware that appendectomies took approximately an hour to perform, so she felt that everything was going well and there was no need for concern. She’d already called Sheila and the boys with an update, telling them that she’d diagnosed Micah correctly and he’d been taken off to surgery in very short order. There was every reason to believe that this man with an excellent constitution would be fine and good as new in a short amount of time.
But her self-assurance had begun waning as the minutes ticked away in slow motion, feeding into each other and eroding her confidence with every passing moment.
What if she’d brought him here too late?
If she’d stopped by last night instead of tonight, she could have brought him to the hospital a lot sooner and that might have made all the difference in the world. She sincerely doubted that he’d gotten this bad just overnight. She was willing to bet that this appendicitis had been days in the making.
Why had she played those games with herself? Why had she pretended to distance herself from him and what had happened between them? She knew it had, just as she knew that she was reacting to what had happened in a very real, very dangerous way.
She was falling in love with him.
What if she’d brought him here too late? her mind taunted.
Tracy stopped pacing for a moment and stared accusingly at the operating room’s double doors across the way. She’d watched Micah being rolled into the room on a gurney, pumped full of morphine and feeling absolutely no pain.
She
had been the one with the pain as she watched him disappear behind those doors almost two hours ago.
Why wasn’t anyone coming out to apprise her of what was going on?
Dear God, what would she tell his sons if the unthinkable happened?
If…?
“Ms. Ryan?”
Startled, Tracy swung around to see a tall, gaunt man dressed in blue hospital livery—operating room livery—slipping off his surgical mask. A second later, it hung about his neck, looking as worn out as he did.
Fearful, praying she was just being paranoid, she hurried over to the man.
“Yes, I’m Tracy Ryan.” It took everything she had not to grab his arm and grill him. She did her best to sound calm—or at least sane—as she asked, “How is he?”
The surgeon paused. Was he tired or trying for dramatic effect? She did her best to look patient.
Finally, he said, “You got him here just in time. Half an hour longer and we might be having an entirely different conversation,” he told her honestly. “In a different part of the hospital.”
The morgue was located in the basement. She didn’t want to even go there. Instead, she tried to get the surgeon to give her some reassuring words. So she spoon-fed them to him.
“So he’s going to be all right?” She searched his face.
The surgeon, Dr. Firestone, nodded. “He’s going to be fine. We got it all.”
She wasn’t sure she was following him. “All?”
The surgeon rotated his shoulders for a moment before answering. “His appendix burst just as we were making the first incision. It took a long time to mop up everything from the cavity, so to speak. We had to be sure he wasn’t going to come down with peritonitis,” he explained. “That was why the operation took twice as long as it normally does. This is ordinarily a very simple surgery,” he assured her.
She’d heard all she needed to. Micah would be all right. Life could go back to being on track. “When can I see him?” she asked.
Firestone glanced at the overhead clock on the opposite wall out of habit rather than need. “He’ll be in recovery for about an hour, then they’ll take him up to his room. You can see him then.”
Overcome for a moment, she pressed her lips together, suddenly struggling to get herself under control. When she did—and could finally speak—her voice was almost inaudible.
“Thank you, Doctor.” She put out her hand to him.
His hands were large and hamlike. It was hard to envision them as the hands of a gifted surgeon, yet they were and he was. He enveloped her hand in his own.
“No, thank
you
for getting him here just in time. That man owes his life to you.” Firestone smiled at her. “I wouldn’t let him forget that too soon.” Patting her hand, the surgeon rose again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been dying for a roast beef sandwich for the last hour. It’s time to reward myself,” he added with a wink.
Tracy marveled that the man could actually eat after having his hands inside a man’s abdomen. But that was why he was a doctor and she wasn’t. Her mind jumped from one topic to another as huge waves of relief washed over her.
He would be all right. Micah was going to live. She felt like cheering.
Instead, taking in a long, shaky breath, she waited a couple of minutes before she called Sheila again. There was no reason to alarm the woman by sounding as if she’d just run all the way to the hospital, dragging Micah’s body behind her. If she sounded breathless, Sheila would undoubtedly think the worst.
And there was no longer any reason to think that way.
Smiling to herself, Tracy began to dial.
* * *
His eyelids felt as if they were made of lead and each weighed a ton. It took him several attempts before he finally opened his eyes and
kept
them open.
Focusing them was another story. That was tricky.
Eventually, in what seemed like hours but in reality was no more than several minutes, Micah managed to see.
It still took a second before he realized he was looking at Tracy.