The melody in our hearts (22 page)

He kissed her hair and kept brushing her shoulder, then rested his chin on her head.

“You’ll find your Prince Charming one day, Valerie. I know there is a man out there who’s looking for a wonderful woman like you, and one day the two of you will meet and you’ll be happy for the rest of your lives.”

She chuckled, although her tone was sad and ironic.

“Yeah, right. You’ve watched too many movies, my friend.”

He pushed her away and looked her in the eye, causing something inside her to stir.

“You are a wonderful person, Val, and if he was too blind or too stupid to see it, he should only blame himself. But don’t underestimate yourself because you deserve only the best.”

She was so deeply touched by his words and by the way he had said them that she didn’t find the heart to contradict him or to even say a word, for that matter.

She felt her eyes welling with tears, and all she could do was to simply hold him tight and listen to his heartbeat telling her that everything was going to be okay, as long as they had each other.

It was right then, while she was sitting on his couch, his arms around her stroking her back, his breath comfortingly deep and even, that she promised herself she wouldn’t waste any more time on guys until she was a well-known doctor who had saved thousands of lives.

The only man she would ever let close to her would be Ryan, the one man she knew would never hurt her.

Part Three - Love takes over

~
Thirty-seven
~

*** April 14, 2010 ***

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Valerie yelled, as soon as the machine alarm went off. “You’re not dying on my table, Ryan. There’s no way you’re gonna die on my table. I won’t let you!”

Doctor Fox, who was on the night shift in intensive care, had been called straight away to help Valerie, and she was glad for his presence: She knew she wouldn’t be able to be detached, she was too involved, and she needed someone who’d be able to see things from the outside and make the right decision if something went wrong. But she wasn’t ready to accept that something could actually go wrong, so when the alarm went off, she panicked and flinched. Doctor Fox saw her hesitation, and he immediately grabbed the internal paddles, which he expertly placed inside Ryan’s chest.

“Charge to twenty,” he ordered, and they gave the first shock, but it didn’t seem to work.

She knew she couldn’t waste any time; every second would take Ryan further away from her and, although she knew what she intended to do was dangerous, she also knew she couldn’t lose Ryan, she couldn’t lose her best friend, not without fighting.

She quickly put her hands inside his chest and felt for his heart, while the assistant cleaned the blood that was gushing all around the incision. Doctor Fox didn’t have time to stop her, but he knew that it wouldn’t work anyway, so he let her do it, hoping this would help her feel less guilty afterwards, when they would declare the time of death, and she would have to accept the loss.

She started pressing slightly, the way she had been taught at university, but she had never done it before so, while counting rhythmically, she started to silently pray in her head, asking God to help her save Ryan, her best friend whose heart she was holding in her hands now.

I promise I’ll get over my fears
, she pleaded.
Please let me save him, and I swear on my life I’ll go back to surgery. I’ll save people’s lives, just like you wanted me to when you made me choose this path. I won’t disappoint you, please God, please don’t take him away from me.

“Doctor Fogarty,” Delia, the nurse, called gently. “You can stop now.”

She put a hand on her arm and Valerie looked up. No, this couldn’t be the end, he couldn’t die like that – there was no way she was giving up.

She shook her head, continuing to press his heart.

“I can do this. I can do this,” she said, more to herself than to the other people around her.

“Valerie, we’ve lost him.”

Doctor Fox bowed his head, knowing how hard this would be on her, but also knowing there was nothing else they could do; the guy had been injured pretty badly in that accident, and there wasn’t much left to do other than accept the reality.

“No, no, I won’t let you kill him. I can do this. I can bring him back!” she said, shaking her head in desperation, her brow beaded with sweat.

Just then, only a second later, she felt his heart start beating in her hand and she flinched, looking at the screen beside her as the machine went back to the normal, steady, rhythmical beep, which meant he was safe.

A tear rolled down her cheek and Doctor Fox sighed and then patted her hand.

“Wow. Great job, Valerie!” he said, looking at her in surprise. “If I weren’t a scientist, I’d say this looks like a miracle to me.” She looked up and he noticed she looked exhausted. He knew it had been too much for her: She needed to get out and breathe some fresh air before she collapsed. “I can finish here, if you need a break.”

She nodded, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. Much as she wanted to do it, she knew she didn’t have the strength and most of all the concentration to go on and sew up the incision. She had saved him, that was all that mattered to her right now, and she did need a break. She desperately needed to get out of that operating room, to start breathing normally again, to pray and thank God, to fall down on her knees and cry until she had no more tears left to cry.

“Thanks, Jason,” she said, then she got closer to Ryan’s ear and whispered. “You’re okay now, Ryan. Doctor Fox is gonna take care of you. Be right back.”

She walked out, quickly removed the surgical gloves and coat, and almost ran out of the room, down the corridor and through the emergency exit to the flight of stairs.

Only then, after the door had closed behind her, did she allow herself to let it all out. Her knees buckled, and she slumped down on the steps, her head between her knees, her hands on the back of her head.

She sobbed like a child for a long time; mostly it felt like relief: Relief for saving Ryan, relief for feeling his heart beating again, relief for knowing she’d probably be able to walk into an operating room again.

“Thank you, God.” she whispered keeping her head hidden between her knees, and feeling as if all of her strength had suddenly left her body.

She totally lost track of time, but when the emergency door opened and Doctor Fox peeped in, she was feeling a little less tense now that weariness had started to take over.

“I thought you’d be here,” he said, smiling at her. “We’re taking him into recovery now if you want to see him before we move him to the intensive care unit.”

She wiped away the last tears on her cheeks, then she nodded and he held out a hand, which she took without hesitating, too worn out to play the part of the strong woman.

“Thanks, Jason,” she said.

“No problem. You okay?” he asked, opening the door for her and scrutinizing her face. “You know, having to operate again and his being your best friend – I mean, it must’ve been pretty tough.”

She shrugged and tried to put on a real smile.

“I’d be lying if I said it was easy. But the thought of losing him scared me much more than walking into that room. It didn’t take long to decide.”

He nodded and patted her arm approvingly.

“Good choice indeed,” he smiled. “I’d better go back to my patients now. But call me if you need anything, okay? I’ll be here ‘til eight a.m.”

She nodded and smiled back at him, then quickened her pace: She wanted to see Ryan as soon as possible; she wanted to be by his side and make sure he’d be okay.

~
Thirty-eight
~

Sitting on a chair by his bed in the recovery room, Valerie stared as the sheet covering Ryan’s body lifted rhythmically, synchronized with his heartbeat, echoing in the room through the machine monitoring his vitals.

Doctor Walker was checking the results of Ryan’s brain scan, on the table at the far end of the room.

“Everything seems okay. You acted quickly enough, so the brain didn’t suffer any damages,” he said after a while, and she turned back to look at him.

“Are you sure?” she asked, even though she knew Steven was the best neurosurgeon in Boston, if not in the whole country.

He nodded and got closer to her.

“You did a great job, Valerie,” he said, patting her shoulder. “Jason told me the way you acted. I think another young surgeon wouldn’t have tried that; you were very brave. Now we only have to wait for him to wake up.”

She looked away and he walked out of the room, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She thought back to when they had called her, a few hours earlier, to replace Doctor Moore, who was supposed to be on the night shift. She thought that maybe it had been destiny that had made the pipes in his house burst just a minute before he was leaving to go to work.

When they had called her to replace him, she had hung up and gotten dressed unwillingly, hoping that nothing bad would happen, nothing that would cause her to make decisions she didn’t feel ready to make yet.

Now, looking at her best friend’s pale face regaining a bit of color under all those scratches and cuts, she thanked Heaven that she was at the hospital and that she had been able to save his life. If Doctor Moore had been there, he probably wouldn’t have done his utmost to resuscitate him, like she had done, even when the nurses had told her that there was nothing left to do. Even when Jason, who was a more experienced surgeon, had told her that Ryan was gone. She hadn’t given up, not this time. She had lost only one patient, and she knew that Ryan wouldn’t be the next one.

Now all they could do was wait and see. Like Steven had said, there probably wouldn’t be any brain damage because Ryan had been out of oxygen only a few seconds in there, although they had seemed like hours to her. She trusted Steven, and she was sure that Ryan would make it and would be back to normal once he woke up.

If he ever woke up
, a voice inside her head told her.

They would be keeping him in an induced coma for a few more hours to help his body recover sooner from the accident and the operation. As hours and days went by, as soon as his vitals improved, they would reduce the sedatives and then wait for him to wake up.

She stared at him and ran her fingers through his hair, thinking back nostalgically to that funny forelock half-covering his eye that he used to have when they were teenagers, and that he had cut off months after moving to Boston. She smiled and took his hand.

“I’m here, Ryan,” she whispered. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

For a second it seemed that his fingers had twitched, as if to squeeze hers, but she soon convinced herself that it was only a reflex and that he couldn’t hear her with all the sedatives they had given him.

Around eight Delia walked into the room and saw Valerie was asleep, her hand supporting her head and her elbow resting on the armrest of the armchair she was sitting on.

She thought Valerie must be wrecked after all the events from the previous night: Going back to the operating room hadn’t been easy, and she had had to fight to save her best friend’s life. They still weren’t sure whether he would eventually wake up once they reduced the sedatives, and this was surely another reason to feel awful.

Delia didn’t want to wake her, but Valerie’s shift was over, and she could go home and rest now before coming back for the afternoon shift. She touched Valerie’s arm lightly and she gave a start, giving Delia further proof of how tense she still was.

“What’s wrong? Is he okay?” she asked, looking instinctively at the screen and then at Ryan.

“Everything’s fine, Doctor,” Delia reassured her. “I only wanted to inform you that your shift’s over. You can go home and rest.”

Rest – as if it would be easy to do it, knowing that Ryan was fighting for his life in a hospital bed.

“I’m fine. I can stay,” she said, rubbing her eyes and standing up from the armchair where she’d been sleeping.

“But, Doctor Fogarty, you’re on the afternoon shift today. It would be better if you went home and got some rest.” The nurse tried to object. “It’s been a long night,” she added, almost whispering.

“I can sleep a couple of hours in the staff room, so if anything happens, I’ll be here.”

Valerie stretched and turned to face the nurse for the first time since she had come in, and Delia saw big dark rings under Valerie’s eyes, showing how much she needed to rest.

Valerie saw the expression on the nurse’s face and understood that she probably looked awful. Maybe Delia was right: She needed to rest. It had been a very long night, but she just couldn’t go home and leave Ryan alone. She had to be with him.

“Delia, this is
my
patient. Any decisions, therapies, or medications should be discussed with me first, even if I’m not on shift, okay?”