The M.D.'s Surprise Family (8 page)

Pacing from one end of the hall to the other, her feet gained momentum as her concern mounted. It escalated until she was almost a swirl of color. And each time she passed the double doors through which her brother had been taken, she stared, willing them to open. Willing the surgeon she'd placed her faith in to come out and tell her that everything was all right. That there was no need to worry like this.

The doors remained closed.

Her agitation increased.

As she turned away for the umpteenth time from
the doors, she walked directly into George Grissom, hitting her face against his massive chest.

The big man took a step back, as if alarmed that he had hurt her. “Are you all right?”

Numb not from the encounter, but from worry, Raven was aware of nodding. “As well as can be expected. He's still in there.” The words came out in a whisper.

The hospital administrator eyed her nervously. It was obvious that he'd been looking for her. “Ms. Songbird, what are you doing here?”

She blew out a long, ragged breath, looking at the closed doors accusingly. “Waiting.”

“Yes, I understand.” He began to take her arm to direct her toward the elevator. “But wouldn't you be more comfortable downstairs in the visitors' lounge?”

Comfortable was not a word that meant anything to her anymore. “I was there for four hours, Mr. Grissom. I couldn't stay there any longer. And right now, I don't think I could be comfortable anywhere.”

His expression was understanding as he nodded. “He's one of the best neurosurgeons in the country.”

“I know.” That was the only reason she wasn't crawling out of her skin by now. But she was getting close.

“Perhaps you'd like to have something to eat?” George suggested hopefully. “We could—”

Shaking her head, she pulled back. “No, thank you. Really.” The smile she offered was grateful but firm. “I understand that you're trying to get my mind off what's happening in there, but you can't.” And then she paused, thinking. “But there is maybe something that you can do for me.”

“Name it.”

“Is there any way to call in there to find out if everything—” Her voice hitched. She tried again. “If everything's all right?”

“There is a phone in the operating room,” he acknowledged, although his expression told her that he doubted the wisdom of calling right now. She knew she was being impatient, but after nearly six hours, she felt as if she was coming perilously close to falling apart.

Sympathy entered George's deep gray eyes. He looked around for the nearest phone. “Why don't we go to the nurse's station and…”

Whatever he was about to suggest faded away unsaid. The outer doors to the operating salon opened before he could finish. A tall man dressed completely in green livery walked out, his face still covered with a surgical mask.

She would have recognized his eyes anywhere.

Raven was at Peter's side in less than a heartbeat,
firing questions at him before he could even strip away his mask.

“Is he all right? Is Blue going to make it? Will he be able to walk?”

 

Peter felt drained. He'd performed longer surgeries, but none that had ever mattered as much to him as this one had. The sensation still mystified him. He didn't like feeling as if he had everything riding on the outcome of a surgery. In his opinion, that only impeded his skills and could wind up jeopardizing the whole outcome.

But he hadn't been able to bank the feeling. In the end, he'd been forced to work around it.

“He's going to make it,” he assured her. “We got them all.” He heard George sigh with relief.

“I'll leave you two alone,” George said as he began to withdraw.

“What about his legs?” She wanted to know. “Are they affected?”

“We'll have to wait and see what happens once the swelling on his spinal cord goes down, but there's every indication that he'll be able to walk.”

Thank you, God. Every deal I made, I'm good for it.
“And the tumors?”

“There were five, not four,” he told her. One had hidden behind another, giving the false reading. “Initial pathology says they're benign. But we have to do further testing.”

 

Raven heard what she wanted to.

Benign.

And Blue would walk. He wouldn't spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Blue was going to be fine.

Relief shot through every part of her, drenching her, weakening her so that she thought her legs would cave under her.

With something that sounded very much like a whoop of joy, she threw her arms around Peter and kissed him. Kissed him long and hard with feeling that came from within the depths of her very soul. The anxiety that had been building within her these past six hours leeched out, leaving in its place an overwhelming energy that had absolutely no place to go.

Except to her lips.

 

To his surprise, Peter laced his arms around her and didn't just allow Raven to kiss him, but kissed her back. The surgery had taken a great deal out of him, as well, and now that it was over, now that he'd successfully removed the five tumors that had attached themselves to the boy's spinal column, he felt nothing but a breath-stealing relief.

Kissing her did nothing to restore his breath or his brain function. But it certainly made the rest of his body feel good.

P
eter could feel things waking up within him, things that had been declared legally dead two years ago. Things he was stone-cold certain he would never feel again. But then Raven had kissed him the other night.

And here he was now, experiencing the sensation of capturing lightning in a bottle. He was the bottle, she was the lightning.

And there was even more feeling this time than the last. When she'd kissed him before, he'd felt a warmth, a compassion radiating from her. This time, he felt passion vibrating between them. Passion and a surge of something that hadn't been there before. It very nearly swept him off his feet.

He had no idea that he was capable of reacting at all, much less like this. The realization that he wanted her, really wanted her, burst upon his consciousness. Scaring the hell out of him.

Pulling back, he looked down at Raven, more shaken than he wanted to admit to. “You've got to stop doing that.”

“Okay.” The answer was issued on a breathless wave. He didn't believe her for a second.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Peter didn't have to turn around to know who the deep, gravelly voice belonged to. He'd heard it often enough in the last ten years. Fighting hard to reorient himself to his surroundings and to pick his brain up out of the pile of mush it had fallen into, he was surprised to find his one-time teacher and mentor standing behind them in the corridor.

Dr. Harry Welles was now the chief of surgery at Blair Memorial. Originally, the man had offered him a position once he'd finished with his residency at Aurora General upstate. He could think of nothing better than to work for and with a man he respected more than anyone else in the field of medicine. After Lisa and Becky's deaths, he had come completely unglued. Withdrawing into himself, he didn't leave his house, didn't go out at all. It was Welles who had dug him out of that all-consuming rubble of despair.

Two weeks after his self-imposed exile from life,
Welles had come to his house. He'd all but broken the door down. The man had arrived bringing not kind words but a kick in the rear to make him come around. As he'd stared at the surgeon blankly, Welles had informed him heatedly that he had a gift and that to waste it, to cheat others of it, would be not only a crime, but a sin. He had an obligation to the rest of humanity to make use of that gift. Pouring hot coffee and hotter words into him, Welles had made him come around.

Peter looked at the man now. Prematurely gray, Welles lived and breathed Blair Memorial. Not a surgery was scheduled or performed without his knowledge and his inherent interest.

“No,” Peter muttered, stepping back from Raven. “You're not interrupting anything.”

Welles's brown eyes took in Raven before fixing themselves back on his protégé. It was obvious that he thought otherwise, but would refrain from saying so. “How did it go?”

Peter blinked. Was Welles asking him about kissing Raven? “Excuse me?”

Welles's small mouth curved just a hint as amusement glinted in his eyes. “The surgery. On the Songbird boy,” he qualified, enunciating each word slowly, like someone talking to a person who had just woken up from a long sleep. “How did it go?”

“We got the tumors,” Peter informed him, strug
gling to regain his matter-of-fact manner. Kissing Raven and then being caught by the chief of surgery had addled his brain just a little. It took him a moment to recover.

Nodding, Welles looked genuinely pleased as he glanced toward Raven. “All four?”

Raven listened to the interest in man's voice. She was right, she thought, in coming here.

“Five,” Peter corrected. “One tumor was hiding behind the others. We missed it in the CAT scan.”

“Happens. Not that often, but it happens. Glad you're on your toes,” Welles commended. He raised one somewhat shaggy eyebrow. “Benign?”

Peter stole a glance toward Raven. She was holding her breath. Did she expect him to say something different to his superior than he had to her? “First reading says they are.”

“Excellent,” Welles said with feeling. “Keep me posted.” He clasped his hands behind his back like a fabled professor from another century rather than a man whose fingers were still known to perform magic in the operating room. “Carry on,” he instructed as he began to walk away. This time the smile on his lips was even broader.

Raven moved a little closer to Peter so her voice wouldn't need to carry. “Who was that?”

He was acutely aware of her proximity. “Dr. Harry Welles. He's the chief of surgery here, has been for almost ten years.” He watched the man
round a corner and then disappear. “Brilliant surgeon.”

There was almost awe in his voice, Raven thought. “So are you.” She said so without fanfare, as if the fact was one of life's givens. She pressed her lips together and looked up at him. The tears had returned, more urgent this time. She didn't bother trying to hold them back. “I can't tell you how grateful I am to you.”

Peter's shrug was dismissive. “I was just doing my job.”

“Not a job, a miracle.” He heard the hitch in her voice and glanced at her. She covered her mouth with her hands, trying to compose herself at least a little. “When you didn't come out…when the surgery just kept going on and on…I thought…I thought…” She couldn't finish.

Oh, God, she was crying, he thought helplessly. He didn't know what to do with tears. He never had. A strong inclination to just walk away came over him, but he knew he couldn't do that. Somehow, he had to make her stop. “Don't cry,” he told her, his voice harsh with his own frustration and ineptitude. “The surgery's over. He's still alive.”

“I know, that's why I'm crying.” She saw the confusion come over his face. “Because it is over. Because he's all right.” Peter still didn't look as if he understood. “These are tears of joy.”

“Oh. Maybe they should come labeled,” he mut
tered. “In my line of work, I usually see the other kind.”

A tear trickled down her cheek and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. Opening the small purse she kept with her, she began to rummage around for a handkerchief. “Doesn't anyone ever cry when they thank you?”

“No one's ever thanked me.”

Unable to find a handkerchief, Raven used the heel of her hand to wipe away the tear stains on her cheeks. “I can't believe that. What kind of people have you been dealing with?”

He made it a point to interact with patients and their families as little as humanly possible. Which was what made this whole scenario so unusual for him. Ordinarily, he would have allowed the doctor assisting him to give Raven the prognosis. For reasons he didn't quite understand, he'd left the operating room in search of her before he had even shed his surgical scrubs. He hadn't wanted her to suffer a single extra moment of crippling doubt.

But he wasn't about to explain himself or to let her know that this was an aberration. “Because I usually let the assistant surgeon talk to the family.”

“If the surgery goes badly, you tell the patient's family. But if it goes well, you have someone else tell them?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” She wanted to understand his reasons.
She wanted to understand him. “Don't you want to know how happy you made someone?”

She kept insisting on making it personal. He'd always been determined to keep it just the opposite. Breaking his rule this time had been a mistake. “It's not my job to make people happy. It's my job to use the latest technology and whatever skills I might possess to do what I said I would do.”

Raven shook her head. The man put new meaning to the term self-efface.

“You make it sound as if you're some kind of mechanic doing a tune-up.” He didn't try to negate the impression.

“Don't you realize how gifted you are? How special you are? How—”

Peter held his hand up. “Enough—”

To his surprise, she didn't back away, didn't just shoot a smile in his direction and pick another topic. She continued doggedly on. “No, I don't think it is. Peter, you've just done something wonderful. You've given my brother his childhood back. Why can't you congratulate yourself for that?”

He'd given Blue his childhood back, but he hadn't been able to give his wife and daughter their lives back. By the time he'd realized that it was
his
car that he'd seen all mangled up and had doubled back to the scene of the accident, Lisa and Becky were both gone. And all his skills couldn't bring them back.

He didn't answer her. Instead, he nodded toward the operating room. “Your brother's going to be in the recovery room for a couple of hours before they take him to the ICU—”

“ICU?” The initials sent a cold chill down her spine. Didn't people with intense problems stay there? Was there something he wasn't telling her, something that
was
wrong with Blue?

He saw the fear scurrying into her eyes. “Don't look so alarmed,” he told her. “It's standard procedure for this kind of surgery. ICU is where all the latest equipment is kept. We need to monitor him—”

She was three thoughts ahead of him. “So something can still go wrong?”

She looked as if she was about to gather another one of her full heads of steam and go charging off. Peter placed his hands on her arms, as if that could somehow calm her down enough to listen.

“Blue's young, he's strong, but the hospital doesn't want to take any chances. There's someone at the nurses' station watching the monitors at all times. There's even one that goes off if your brother tries to turn over onto his back.”

Blue was going to hate that, she thought. She flashed Peter an apologetic smile as she nodded. “Okay. I guess I am pretty frazzled.”

“That's one word for it.” Overwrought might have been another, he added silently. The last thing
he needed was an overwrought guardian getting in the way. “Look, why don't you go home?” But even as he said it, he knew she wouldn't. She was one of those noble people who stood vigil. It made no matter if the object of their concern knew it or not, they stayed. “They're not going to let you stay in ICU,” he told her crisply. “Visitors are only allowed in the area for five minutes every hour. Otherwise,” he felt bound to add, “you can get in the nurses's way.”

She had no intentions of getting in anyone's way. She also had no intention of leaving Blue. What if he woke up and she wasn't there? She didn't want him being scared. “I'm small. I can stay off to the side.”

Yes, she was small, he thought. Small enough to fit neatly against him without leaving a ripple—except in his gut.

“Size doesn't matter. They have their rules,” he informed her. Looking down, he realized that except for the surgical apron he'd shed, he was still wearing the clothes he'd operated in. “If you'll excuse me, I have to go change.”

Raven pressed her lips together, stepping out of his way.

“I didn't mean to keep you,” she told him, then added, “Thank you,” with such heartfelt emotion that he thought she was going to cry again.

He hurried away before she did.

 

When he came down to the Intensive Care Unit later that evening to see how Blue was doing, the first person he saw was Raven. She sat on a chair beside her brother's bed, her feet tucked up beneath her, the ends of her colorful blouse hanging down halfway to the floor. One hand was lost to his view, the other was firmly holding Blue's, despite the fact that the boy was asleep. His small body was suspended a couple of inches above the mattress, lying in what looked like an oversize sling. It amazed him that the unnatural position didn't have the boy fully awake and complaining.

As if pretending that he hadn't seen her sitting there, Peter checked the chart at the foot of Blue's bed. Flipping the metal cover open, he saw that the boy had woken up from the anesthetic but, still very groggy, had fallen asleep again almost immediately.

Good, he thought, best thing in the world for him is sleep.

Glancing farther down the page, Peter saw that nothing eventful was happening—unless he counted the way seeing Raven affected him.

But that belonged on a different chart altogether.

Flipping the lid closed, he placed the chart back on the hook. Only then did he look at Raven. “What are you doing here?”

“Holding Blue's hand so he doesn't get fright
ened when he wakes up.” To prove her point, she held up their interlocking fingers.

He moved closer to the chair. And to her. “I thought I told you to go home.”

“You did.” Her eyes bright, she made no apologies this time. “I didn't.”

“I noticed.”

He looked disapprovingly at the chair. Her shoes were tucked in beneath it. One bare toe peeked out from beneath the yards of fabric. It raised thoughts about bare legs and bare bodies that he felt unequal to at the moment.

“How did you get them to let you drag a chair in here?” And then he fed himself his own answer. There could be only one explanation. George. The man was shameless in his pandering, he thought. “Did George—”

Raven shook her head. “Last time I saw Mr. Grissom was outside the operating room. Sonia felt sorry for me.”

The name didn't mean anything to him right off the bat. “Sonia?”

“Sonia Jakov. The head nurse at the desk,” she added when there was no sign of recognition on his part.

As soon as she mentioned the woman's title, he knew who she was talking about. It also made her victory that much more incredible.

Peter glanced over to where the woman, known
as the Dragon Lady to the nurses who worked under her command, was sitting. And then a bit of color around her throat caught his eye. The last time he'd checked, multicolored scarves were not part of the required uniform. Sonia was wearing one of Raven's scarves.