Revealing the Real Dr. Robinson (9 page)

“They know all that, but they believe that as long as they bring her here she’ll be fine.”

“And pretty sick now, with a heart infection.” Because bacteria had entered her system through a dental procedure. Common and frustrating. “So, can we send her someplace else now? Because this is going to get tricky.”

Ben stopped, leaned against the wall, shut his eyes, trying to mentally will away his headache. “I’ll talk to them again, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope. Amanda and I have tried everything we can think of and so far it’s falling on deaf ears.”

“Or frightened ears,” Shanna said sympathetically, immediately connecting to the pain and fear of Maritza’s parents. “It’s hard to move in a different direction when it scares you to death.”

“But they know they can go to the hospital with her if we transfer her.” He opened his eyes, straightened up. “You’re right, though. I’m sure they’re scared to death. But so am I, because we could lose her.”

“Look, how about you go and talk to her parents since you know them, and I’ll get an IV started in Maritza. Then I’ll get some blood cultures going so we’ll know what we’re dealing with. And, Ben, relax. You’re looking as stressed as Maritza looks sick.”

“Easier said than done,” he said as she walked away. Especially when his stress was about Shanna.

* * *

“Another case of yellow fever admitted.” Shanna caught up with Ben in the corridor between their rooms. “And Maritza’s stable.” It had been a long day and she was ready to be off her feet for a while. “Her fever was elevated this evening, but the antibiotics should kick that pretty quickly.”

“And her parents are still refusing to let me send her somewhere else, so nothing’s changed with that.”

His emotional level over this was much the way hers usually was, and it was interesting to watch because in Ben it didn’t look like a weakness, which was the way she characterized it in herself. “Did they ever tell you why they allowed the dental procedure?”

He leaned back against the wall, folded his arms over his chest. Sighed heavily. “It was a free exam. They were trying to be good parents, and they didn’t think an exam qualified as a procedure.”

Shanna winced. “Scraping one of those dental scalers over my teeth is more than a procedure. It’s torture.”

“Well, procedure or torture, either way that’s what happened. Look, would you like to come in for a drink? Not yerba maté, as I know you don’t like that. But I’ve got some killer fruit juice. Unless you’ve got something else to do.”

“I’d love some killer fruit juice. Can you give me a minute to go...” She had been going to say “slip into something more comfortable,” but that certainly had a sexual connotation, which had no application here whatsoever. “Go change my shoes.”

“I’ll leave my door open. And I promise not to overreact this time.”

In the span of a minute Shanna slipped out of her long cargo pants and oversized camp shirt and into a clean pair of shorts, a fresh T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Now she wouldn’t look so much like Ben, who also wore long cargo pants and a below-the-elbow camp shirt. Sexy look on him. Dreary on her. On her way across the hall she wondered if he might have slipped into something more comfortable, too, but as she pushed through his door she saw the same old Ben in the same old clothes. Oh, well. So much for wishful thinking. “I see you cleaned up my mess from this afternoon.”

“Shall I grovel to you now, tell you how embarrassed I am?”

Laughing, Shanna waved him off as she crossed the room and sat down at his tiny kitchen table for two. “For what it’s worth, I thought you looked...good. Every now and then I enjoy a good look at a guy in his boxers.”

“I take it that’s not on your off-limit topics.”

She shook her head. “A girl appreciates what she appreciates. No reason denying it.”

“And your ex?”

“Definitely didn’t appreciate him in any capacity. On our wedding night I caught him doodling his new last name on a pad of paper. And that was the high point of our marriage.”

“Ouch,” Ben said. “All the hopes and dreams of a new bride dashed to pieces in a doodle.”

“No hopes, no dreams and definitely no dashing. But that’s when I started formulating my divorce plans. It had been a huge mistake, but I didn’t realize it until I said ‘I do,’ and knew I should have said ‘I don’t.’”

“And you got out fast.”

“No, he delayed it. Was afraid he’d have to let go of my family. So it took a while, but in my mind the marriage lasted three months, even though the paperwork said two years.”

“Why did you do it in the first place? Were you really that desperate to get your family’s attention?”

“We all have our flaws. Mine just happens to be trying to please a family who won’t be pleased by me. They’re...hard to deal with sometimes. They thought I should be married, so that’s what I did.”

“That’s rough,” he said. “My father was a very demanding man, kept lots of secrets, told lots of lies, but I don’t think there was a day of my life that I ever had to fight for his attention. I’m sorry you’ve had to do that.”

“You know what they say about how something that doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” She took a sip of the juice. It was pulpy, thick and cool, sliding down her throat. And it took long enough to slide that she hoped in the span of those few seconds their topic of conversation would switch. Talking about her failure to please her family made her seem weak, and she didn’t want Ben to see her that way.

“So, do we talk about the elephant in the room? I know it’s one of your off-limit topics but, Ben...I think we should just get it out of the way. You know, over and done with then move on to the next subject.”

He looked across the table at her, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. Didn’t do anything until he picked up his glass of juice and took a sip. “I was burned,” he said, setting the glass back down. “I was fifteen, got a little sloppy in some car repairs I was doing with my dad, and the result is what you see. Some scars.”

Said much too casually. “How extensive?” she asked.

“Neck, shoulder...” He shrugged, shook his head. “Not worth talking about.”

Because he’d never talked about it? She’d seen him run when caught exposed, she saw the kinds of clothes he wore to cover up. Something told Shanna the real scars weren’t what you could see on the surface. “Maybe not, but I’m sticking to my guns.”

“About what?” he asked, clearly relieved she wasn’t pursuing the matter.

“Men in boxer shorts. I do enjoy a good look every now and then, and you were a good look, scars included. So, on that note...” she scooted the chair back and stood “...thank you for the juice and the company. But now I’m going to grab a couple of hours’ sleep then go back over and sit with Maritza for a while.” Handing the glass to Ben as she passed him, she swept by then paused halfway between him and the door and turned to face him.

“My family is all about exclusion, Ben. That’s what I grew up with, what I got used to. It’s not a good way to have your life develop around you and it’s not a good way to choose your life. Whatever you’ve gone through, whatever else you’ve done, you don’t have to be excluded, and you don’t have to exclude yourself. You’ve proved your place in the world and that accounts for a lot more than...scars.”

He didn’t respond but, then, she hadn’t expected him to. No good-night or parting words of support. He was Ben after all. And the more she knew him, the more she cared. Because with Ben there were no perceptions. He was who he was.

* * *

“How long?” Shanna yelled down the hall, already assessing her options.

“Less than five minutes,” the nurse yelled back. “Her fever spiked, we tried to cool her down with a sponge bath, but when that didn’t work, we called you, and in those few minutes she...”

She’d had a febrile seizure. Then her heart had stopped. “And what was her temperature last time you took it?” Resuscitation

“One hundred-five.”

“I need epinephrine,” she said, sprinting by the nurse who detoured to the medicine room while Shanna shoved though the pediatric ward doors just as Ben came charging in from the opposite direction. At Maritza’s bedside one nurse and a volunteer from the village were already fully engaged in resuscitation efforts when Ben grabbed the laryngoscope and an endotracheal tube off the emergency cart and in two blinks had the breathing tube in place.

“I’ll bag,” the nurse volunteered as Shanna moved in to start chest compressions while Ben readied the defibrillator in the event Maritza’s heart didn’t resume its rhythm on its own. “I called for epi,” she said as he stepped back to ready the defibrillator. “But I’d rather not interrupt the resuscitation to use it if we don’t have to.”

“Because?” Ben asked.

“Side-effects. At Brooks, we instituted what’s being recommended internationally, which is high-quality, rapid CPR with minimal interruptions, including not interrupting to administer medication. I went to a conference in Oslo and researchers there...” She stopped. “Bottom line, keep the CPR going, do the drugs afterward. But you know that, Ben. Didn’t you write a response to one of the journal articles on it?”

“You read my response?”

“I read several of your responses,” she said, getting ready to step back so Ben could attempt a cardioversion—shock Maritza’s heart back into a normal rhythm. Once she saw he was ready, she stopped chest compression for a split second, looked at the heart monitor, saw nothing but the tell-tale squiggly tracing of ventricular fibrillation, where the heart was jiggling but not beating, then moved into place with the paddles. “Back,” she cautioned the nurse as she herself stepped away and allowed Ben to come forward and administer the first shock to Maritza’s chest.

Everybody in the room held their collective breaths for a fraction of a second, watching the heart tracing on the portable EKG machine continue to waver across the screen. Then, just as Shanna positioned herself to start compressions again, the first blip appeared. Then the second, the third...

“Hold off bagging her,” Shanna instructed the nurse as she put a stethoscope to the girl’s chest to see what was going on in there. A breath sound, a heartbeat... It was amazing how, after a sputter, Maritza was breathing again, fighting against the breathing tube. Not awake yet but returning to life.

“Welcome back,” Ben said to the child. Then he turned to Shanna. “Now we get her transferred. Her parents are going to listen to me or I’ll be taking her to
El hospital para la Cirugía Cardiovascular
in Buenos Aires myself.”

“We didn’t call them,” one of the nurses said. “Didn’t have time.”

Ben looked out the window at Maritza’s view of the village, all of it lit up now, casting a yellow glow against the black of the night. “That’s fine. I’d rather talk to them at home anyway. Care to take a walk with me?” he asked Shanna, then signaled for Dr. Francis to stay with the girl while they went to make the notification.

“It’s easy for you, isn’t it?” Shanna asked Ben a little while later as they approached the Costa home. “Taking charge the way you do.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as a take-charge kind of person.”

“But you step up when it’s necessary and...lead. Make people want to follow. My father and my grandfather, too, actually, are great leaders, but they do it by force. They demand that people follow them, whereas you simply walk quietly and people want to follow.”

She twined her arm through his, fully expecting him to shake her off, but he didn’t. And for a few moments someone might have mistaken them for lovers out for an evening stroll, they looked so cozy and perfect together. Well suited, Shanna thought, even though she knew better. Her head was in a fantasy world. Ben was being polite, not shaking her off. That was all. For a little while, though, it was nice. And such a simple thing. She liked simple things. Too bad she hadn’t known that years ago.

Of course, if she had, she wouldn’t have met Ben. And the more she knew about him, and the closer they became, the more she was beginning to see how truly passionate he was. Of course, if she totally convinced herself she’d made a mistake then there was no reason to be here. She’d come to study the way he distanced himself from his patients when, in truth, he didn’t. It was himself he distanced himself from. But she wasn’t ready to make the full admission because she wasn’t ready to leave. So for now she shoved it out of her head.

“Shanna,” he said, before he knocked on the door, “it’s been a crazy day from the beginning to the end and—”

“And we survived to face another crazy day tomorrow,” she said, letting go of his arm. What was the point of holding on to someone who didn’t want to be held?

“Yes, another day. Look, I’m glad you’re here. Whatever brought you here, whatever’s keeping you here, I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad I’m here, too. None of this is what I’d expected but, it’s good.”

“What did you expect?”

She laughed. “In my isolated world I expected Brooks in a miniature version. Maybe with a few jungle creatures thrown in for good measure.”

“Well, the jungle creatures I can do, but this isn’t Brooks by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Caridad is the anti-Brooks.”

“You can say that again.”

He landed his first knocks on the door. Then stepped back, shoulder to shoulder with Shanna. “Like I said, it’s nice having you here, Shanna. You make Caridad better, and I hope that in spite of my ups and downs, you’ll consider staying for a while because...” He turned to face Shanna, who was already facing him. “Because we’re good together, as doctor and doctor.”

“Doctor and doctor,” she murmured, stepping up to him.

“Nice medical relationship,” he murmured.

“Very nice,” she practically purred as she looked into his eyes. “Very, very nice.”

By the time Maritza’s father opened the door to them, they were locked in an embrace, exploring the depths of their very first kiss. A nice kiss, Shanna thought as the yellow porch light flipped on. Nicer than any kiss she’d ever had. But from a man who would regret it the instant it was over.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HE
kiss had been yesterday, today was life as normal. But nerve-racking, considering the dozen or so times she’d walked by Ben already, only to be greeted by the most clinical of nods, with nothing else. She had been right. He regretted the kiss. So now what? How did they get back to the place they needed to be in order to keep working together? Or was Ben actually able to turn it off that easily?

So much for a spontaneous moment gone bad. Although she’d enjoyed it. But that was as much time as she had to devote to thinking about it because her day was full. Her yellow-fever patients were all recovering nicely, Maritza was finally where she needed to be and her doctors there were cautiously optimistic about her recovery. Now Shanna had a dozen patients waiting for her in clinic and if she didn’t grab a cup of tea for herself now—
not
yerba maté—it might be hours before she got the chance again. So, on her way to clinic, she ducked into the lounge, put a kettle of water on the free-standing electric burner and was starting to look through Caridad’s stash of various teas when she heard familiar footsteps behind her. Immediately, she tensed up. But didn’t turn around to face him.

“That kiss probably wasn’t the most appropriate thing I’ve ever done, but I’m not going to apologize for it,” Ben said, standing in the doorway, keeping his distance.

He was scowling, she imagined. “Do you want me to apologize? Because from the way you’ve been avoiding me...”

“Not avoiding you. Just trying to figure out how to handle it.”

“It was just a kiss, Ben.” Simple admission, complicated reaction. That kiss had shaken her to the soul. “People do it all the time.”

“I don’t.”

Of course he didn’t. Ben preferred sitting with his face to the wall. Except it hadn’t been a wall he’d been facing when he’d initiated the kiss. And make no mistake, he’d been the one to pull her into him. And not so gently. Not roughly, either. More like possessively. Being possessed by Ben...she’d liked it.

She turned to face him. “It reminded me of the night Jimmy Barstow brought me home from a date. He escorted me to the front porch and we had that typically awkward moment most teenagers do, where you’re not sure about the kiss. You know, will he, won’t he? Should I, shouldn’t I? Should I tilt my head? Open my mouth?”

“Did you?” he asked.

“Tilt, yes. Mouth, no. It was my first kiss, by the way.” She wrinkled her nose at the memory. “Not good by any stretch of the imagination. But, still, my first. And in a fifteen-year-old’s mind, so romantic.”

“Let me guess. Until the front porch light came on.”

“Not just a light, Ben. It was a floodlight. Lit up the whole front yard and halfway across the street, blinded me and my date. Then there was my father, who’d grown to about ten times his normal size, as I seem to recall. He was standing in the front door, arms folded across his chest, mean frown on his face.

“In one version of the story he’s holding a shotgun and in another he’s got two growling Rottweilers on leashes, ready to rip through the screen door. Either way, my father posed this huge threat and that’s the part of this story that’s never changed.”

“So, what did he do?” Finally, Ben’s scowl melted down to pleasant interest. No smile there but nothing negative, either.

Shanna shook her head. “Nothing. I expected an earthquake, and got...nothing. He opened the door for me, thanked Jimmy for seeing me home safely, and that was that.”

“Were you disappointed?”

“Maybe a little. Normally, the people in my life fight against me. I think just that once I wanted someone to fight for me. Anyway...” she turned back round to find her tea “...last night, it was nice. Don’t know what it was about, but I hope it doesn’t come between us because I enjoy being here, Ben. Like the work, like you...”

“You had your tongue down my throat,” he said, in his typical businesslike voice.

Smiling, Shanna grabbed a bag of oolong then turned back to face Ben just as the tea kettle began its spindly pre-whistle. “Consider yourself lucky. I never got that far with Jimmy. And Jimmy never got that far with me, the way
you
did.” Just then the kettle erupted into a full whistle, and Shanna was grateful for the distraction because, yes, she’d had her tongue down his throat and, yes, she’d enjoyed it. And, yes, she’d do it again. That was the troubling part. Knowing what she knew about Ben, she’d do it again.

“I don’t do this, Shanna.”

He entered the room, stepped up behind her, so close behind her she could feel his breath tickle her neck. Then it happened again, tingles and goose bumps. Only this time she shivered. And she couldn’t hide it. He was too close, and she could feel him staring hard at her. Turning around now would mean risking another kiss. But today she wasn’t into risks because one more risk and things might change drastically. She didn’t want them to so she kept her back to him. “But you did,” she said, trying not to sound as unsteady as she felt.

“We let it get out of hand once, but it’s not going to happen again because I don’t get involved in relationships.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because yesterday you seemed like a man on the verge.”

“I’m always a man on the verge, but I’m also a man who knows when he has to pull back.”

“Then you’re missing out, Ben.” She sidestepped him to prepare her tea. “Because getting involved on some level is what life’s supposed to be about. I’d be lost without my involvements. They’ve made me who I am. Even my bad marriage played a part in shaping me. Every person I’ve ever met, every patient I’ve ever known... It’s not good, excluding everything you’re afraid will get close enough to touch you.”

She turned around. “And that’s not just about relationships, Ben. It’s everything. It’s...life.”

“Sounds good when you say it, and for you it probably works. Hell, it probably works like that for just about everybody. But I don’t have enough in me to be
more
than what this hospital needs. It’s my life, Shanna. Everything I am, and there’s nothing left over.”

“Then that’s what you’ll be contented with for the rest of your life?”

“That’s what I’ve reconciled myself to for the rest of my life. My choice.”

“Too bad, because everybody loses. The people who surround you. You...me. We all lose.”

Ben didn’t say a word when she picked up her mug of tea and walked away from him. Even, steady footsteps on the corridor floor. Jerky, unsteady heartbeats inside her chest. Because he was watching her. She could feel it. One kiss. One impulsive little kiss with such an enormous ripple effect. Nobody, not even Jimmy Barstow, had ever evoked the uncertainty and excitement in her in a simple kiss the way Ben had. So now what was she going to do about it?

Nothing. He’d made himself perfectly clear. He was married to his work. And as for her, she hadn’t thought straight about anything for months. So who was to say she was thinking straight about her feelings for Ben? She liked him. Liked him enough to kiss him, actually. Liked him enough that she hadn’t stopped thinking about that kiss.

But was there really something more than that? Or had that kiss merely been a refuge on a very tumultuous journey? Take one step beyond that kiss and that was when the confusion took over.

So, she had to keep reminding herself that Ben was her refuge for a little while, and only a little while, and that was where she needed to keep him. Shove him back to the edges and she’d be fine. Of course, the way
he
wanted to be kept on the edges was going to make that pretty easy.

* * *

“No, I’m fine.” Talking to her grandfather was like talking to a wall. Nothing got through to the man except what he wanted to hear, which, in this case, wasn’t what she was saying. In his defense, he was a great healer, had the best medical instinct she’d ever seen. But the downside to that came with the little girl who had just wanted to crawl up on her grandfather’s lap and have him tell her a story.

In her life there had been no laps, no stories. Only a grandfather who would spend an occasional evening explaining a coronary stent or an implantable cardiac defibrillator to a six-year-old little girl who was clutching a plastic model of a human heart rather than a cuddly teddy bear. “I’m in Argentina right now.”

She waved to Ben, who was poking his head into his office to see who was tying up his landline. She grinned sheepishly as she held the phone receiver away from her ear, not really keen on listening to the same loud voice booming the same things he’d told her when she’d left home. “Just seeing the sights for now, Grandfather. It’s a beautiful country. Great food. Nice people.” Like he would be interested in anything outside his world. “Good health care, too.”

Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have tossed that last bit into the conversation, but giving good health care was what this sojourn was about. Why she’d left medicine, why she hoped to find her way back. Why she was so confused about how to do that.

“It’s nonsense, Shanna.” Miles Brooks spoke so loudly Ben grimaced from the doorway on the other side of the room. “A waste of time, and I’m not a patient man. We have a medical center to run here, and we can’t keep your position open forever while you’re off trying to discover yourself, or whatever it is you’re off doing.”

She regretted Ben had to hear this, but it was his office, and it had the only private landline in the hospital. Since her cell wasn’t getting a signal, she didn’t have a choice. Though she hadn’t expected Ben to fold his arms across his chest, lean against the door frame and simply listen. Which was exactly what he was doing.

“I’m not trying to discover myself, Grandfather,” she said, knowing that wasn’t entirely true. There was some self-discovery mixed in there. For the most part, though, she knew who she was, so this journey of hers was more about reconciliation. That was the part that got confusing. She still didn’t know what she was trying to reconcile herself to—who she was or to who she had to become. “I’m just taking time to see things I’ve never had time to see before.”

“While we continue working to support your whim. It’s irresponsible, Shanna. And it’s not fair to your family. You have your obligations to this family and to the medical center, and you’re beginning to run out of goodwill, as far as most of us are concerned. We gave you your time, didn’t have a choice. But your time’s running out.”

She shut her eyes and tried blanking out the next two minutes because she knew her grandfather’s lecture by heart, knew every word of it, knew every inflection in his voice as he reeled out each and every point in detail, all of them telling her why she was such a letdown to her family, why she was such a screw-up in her duties.

It was easy to shut out, though, and it wasn’t like this was the first time she’d shut it out. But what wasn’t easy to shut out was Ben hearing it. Two uninterrupted minutes of standing and listening to all the things that made her a colossal Brooks failure, and by the time she’d hung up the phone she felt like she’d been put through the wringer, not because of what her grandfather had said but because of what Ben had overheard. And might believe.

“So there you have it,” she said, standing up. “My dirty laundry. Every last speck of it.”

“He’s not a friendly man,” Ben commented, still not budging from the doorway. “The day I sat across the desk from him and he pummeled me with questions, I think I would have rather taken a physical beating. So, how are you doing?”

“Pretty much beat up. Used to it, though. My grandfather means well...”

“For the medical center? Or for you?”

“It’s all interchangeable. In my family, by the time we’re able to walk, we’re already beginning to assimilate. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, Ben. I’m not complaining. Wasn’t even unhappy. But...we’re just not typical, and sometimes I think that typical might be nice.”

“You’re a good doctor, Shanna. He’s anxious to get you back. I can understand that.”

“See, that’s the thing. He’s anxious to get me back because he wants to win. Wants to get his way.”

“Or get his granddaughter back.”

She thought about that for a moment. It would have been nice to believe there was some sentiment attached to him wanting her to return, but there wasn’t. She was, pure and simple, a practical matter. Her grandfather wanted her back on his terms and anything else disrupted his plans.

“What he doesn’t like to lose is control. The thing is, Ben, I don’t hate him. Don’t even dislike him. My grandfather’s a great man, he’s been responsible for many advances in cardiac medicine. And look at the hospitals and clinics he’s built. I’m in awe of him. And proud of him. But...” She shrugged.

“It’s tough being the granddaughter of a medical legacy?”

“Something like that.” Especially if you were in search of your own medical legacy and beginning to have grave doubts that it’s out there. “My entire family is so driven by what they do there’s no room for anything else. Fun for my father is lecturing at a medical conference. For my mother it’s publishing another article on the latest discovery in cancer treatment...she’s an oncologist.

“You know my grandfather, and my grandmother is dean of a nursing school. My great-grandparents are the same. Great-Grandfather founded the Brooks Medical Center, Great-Grandmother started one of the first schools of nursing in that part of the country. That’s who the Brooks family is, and they’ve cloistered me, but not with bad intentions. They kept my brothers and me separated from all the things other kids our ages were doing because the world we live in is a perfect world...for the Brooks family purpose.”

“But not for Shanna?”

She shrugged. “It’s a safe world. A whole lot safer than anything outside it. And the people in it are happy, Ben. There’s never been a time when I’ve believed anyone in my family isn’t happy.”

“Which means Shanna is...”

“Trying to find out if I’m really cut from the family cloth. I’ve got to know myself better before I go back.” Not just know herself better but prove herself worthy. She had to change, or everything about her future with Brooks Medical Center would be changed for her. “And in the meantime I’m going to be checking Beatriz Rivas in a few minutes. Her baby’s breech, and as she’s getting closer to her due date, I want to see what I can do about turning it.”