“Avery’s not even one year old. There can’t be much that she’s attached to at her age,” he quipped softly. Sentimental? A pre-toddler?
“And what about photos? Someday she’ll want to see pictures of herself as a baby. She also needs pictures of her parents. Those are things she’ll cherish when she gets older. Things that can’t be replaced. Things she’ll guard for the rest of her life.”
He thought of the small box he’d hidden in the attic all those years ago. Was it still there? It had held nothing of any real value, only memories of the childhood he had lost. Memories of a mother who had been taken away from him. Like Avery’s mother had been taken away from her. He and his baby sister had too much in common.
“I don’t know what the plans are for your father’s house, but this is too important to leave up to the staff that might not know what to keep for Avery,” Hannah said, her chin rising as if readying for a fight. Did she think he wouldn’t take her concerns serious?
William trusted that Hannah knew more about what his sister needed than he did. “Okay, I’ll make arrangements and see if Avery’s nanny can meet us there this weekend. I don’t know if she’s taken another job, but I’m sure she’ll want to help if she’s able to. Will that work for you?” he asked, glancing once more at the lake whose calm waves had always given him the peace he needed in his life.
Just the thought of returning to his childhood home caused his stomach to churn. With the way his life was changing, he had a feeling it would be many years until his life was peaceful again.
The fact that that thought didn’t bother him as much as it had before Avery, Hannah and Lindsey had moved in with him scared him most of all.
* * *
Accompanying William on his rounds through the neurosurgery intensive care unit was one of Hannah’s favorite things to do. Not only did she get to see all her friends and coworkers, she got to see the patients from a different perspective.
“Can you dictate the consult note?” William asked as they exited an elderly patient’s room. The man had suffered a subdural hematoma after a fall and was being closely observed because of the anticoagulants he had been taking.
“Sure,” she said as William approached the ICU doctor on staff for the day. The fact that he trusted her skills enough to take on the task made her smile as she took a seat at the nurses’ station to type up her notes.
“So, what’s it like to work with Dr. Frosty?” one of her coworkers said as she slid her chair over till it bumped Hannah’s.
Kitty had a bit of a mouth on her, but Hannah knew she was meticulous in the care of her patients. She was also a friend who could always be counted on in a pinch. Should Hannah mention her current arrangement with William? It wasn’t like they were keeping it a secret.
“Hush. He’ll hear you,” Hannah said, looking over to where William stood with the other doctor. “And it’s great.”
“You two certainly looked close,” one of the respiratory techs said as she joined them.
“He’s as great at teaching as he is at surgery. I couldn’t have asked for a better preceptor.” Hannah really wasn’t sure what to tell them about William. He was a man who valued his privacy and she respected that.
Making a point to appear caught up in studying the patient’s chart, she was glad when there were no more awkward questions. Eventually someone would see them together outside of work and the rumors would start. When that happened, she’d deal with it, but talking about William behind his back was not something she was going to do.
* * *
After completing their morning rounds, Hannah and William took the elevator to the parking garage. As the doors shut, she relaxed for a second. From patient rounds to surgery and then follow-up appointments, there just didn’t seem enough hours in the day.
“Dr. Frosty, huh?” he asked as he leaned against the side of the elevator.
Hannah wished she could go through the elevator floor. Her face burned with embarrassment. Had Kitty’s words hurt him?
“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Hannah said. What would he say if she told him she thought of him more as Dr. Hottie than Dr. Frosty after that night in the gym? They’d both chosen to pretend that nothing had happened that night, but she knew neither of them had forgotten it.
His lips quirked into a half smile. “I guess it’s better than Bill.”
“Or Billy? I just can’t see you as a Billy. Though, like Lindsey says, Billy the Brain Surgeon has a good ring to it.” Hannah laughed at his look of horror. She was finding out that teasing the always-so-serious doctor was a lot of fun. He was always so good-natured when Lindsey gibed him. It made him seem so much more human.
Her thoughts suddenly took an unprofessional turn as she took in the way he looked right then, his body relaxed, his whole attention on her, which always sent shivers running along her spine. But he had no way of knowing that.
“Did you manage to get in touch with Jeannine?” he asked as he looked away. She’d caught that look of frustration before he’d turned his head and had no problem understanding it. Finding out the abused woman had left with her husband before they’d made rounds, her self-discharged had been upsetting for both of them.
“I’ve tried to call, but I just keep getting sent to her voice mail,” Hannah said, taking out her phone and checking once again.
William’s phone dinged. The ringtone was one she had come to know meant an emergency. He checked it before moving to the elevator buttons and punching in the ground floor.
“‘Motor vehicle accident victim with head injury,’” he read aloud. “‘Positive for loss of consciousness. Twenty-nine-year-old male. No seat belt. In CT now.’”
The doors opened and they both headed for Radiology, only to learn the patient had been sent back to the emergency ward.
“I want to go talk to the radiologist. I’ll meet you in the trauma room,” William said to Hannah.
“Okay.” Hannah reversed her course. She’d never worked in the ER, but she’d made many trips to the pediatric side of the unit in the past. She had a lot of respect for the staff who worked there. It took a special person to deal with everything that walked through the doors.
The trauma room was crowded with medical staffers. The first thing she noticed was a nurse starting the rapid transfusion pump. That was a bad sign. The young man was bleeding from somewhere, which would make an emergent surgery even more complicated if he also had a head injury.
As someone from the lab exited the room, she entered. Standing at the head of the bed, she saw the man yank his arm away as one of the nurses tried to insert a large bore IV catheter into his arm. Taking out her pen light, Hannah checked his eyes. While a bit sluggish, they did react to the light. Noting the oval shape of one of his pupils, however, Hannah anticipated a major problem. The intracranial pressure in his head was building.
“What was his GCS?” she asked the nurse who was busy recording the patient’s vitals. The Glasgow Coma Scale would give them a clearer understanding of the man’s consciousness level. Anything within the range of three to eight, Hannah knew, meant the patient was comatose.
“It was a twelve on scene but just dropped to eight,” he said, never taking his eyes off the monitors that displayed the patient’s vital signs. “He needs to go to surgery now. It’s up to those two as to who gets to take him first.”
Hannah looked over to see that William had entered the room along with the trauma surgeon, Dr. Weeks.
“What did the CT show?” she asked as William joined her at the patient’s bedside.
“He has a large subdural hematoma. The OR team is on its way now to take him for an exploratory. If Dr. Weeks can get the internal bleeding stopped and the patient makes it through the surgery, we’ll go in and evacuate it,” William said as he conducted his own assessment of the patient, checking his pupil response and then examining the head
laceration.
“Is he stable enough for two surgeries?” Hannah asked, feeling helpless as she watched the patient deteriorate before her eyes. More than once as a nurse, she had wished for the surgical skills that would allow her to take a patient to the operating room herself instead of having to wait for the surgeon on call to show up.
“We don’t have a choice. He needs a crani to decrease his intracranial pressure or he won’t have a chance. We’ll just have to hope that Dr. Weeks finds the bleeding and fixes it fast.” William stepped away from the young man’s bedside. “I’m going to go talk to his family.”
Hannah looked up as one of the monitors beeped an alarm.
“What’s the holdup? This guy needs surgery now,” Dr. Weeks said as the OR team charged into the room. “Let’s go before he codes.”
Hannah followed the team out of the room and joined William in the hallway to accompany him to meet with the family. Having never been in a critical care waiting room before, she knew it usually meant a patient was near death.
The room was full of people, all in some form of grief. Everyone stopped when she and William entered, and Hannah could feel the weight of their stares. Their eyes said they were expecting the worse, their expressions revealed they were all full of hope. How did William handle this kind of responsibility?
“I’m Dr. Cooper,” William announced. “I’m the neurosurgeon called in to see Kyle. I was told his wife was here.”
The group seemed to part as a woman not quite Hannah’s age stepped forward. “I’m his wife and this is Kyle’s mother and father.” The young woman indicated the older couple beside her. “Is he...?” Her voice broke on the words.
“He’s headed to the OR right now. As I’m sure Dr. Weeks told you, Kyle’s condition is critical.”
Hannah listened as William clarified some of the details of Kyle’s surgery to decrease the cranial pressure. He used words the family would understand, explaining that the accumulation of blood was pushing on Kyle’s brain and could cause permanent damage. She felt she had learned as much by listening to him than she had ever learned in one of those dry nursing school lectures halls. By the time he had received their consent to proceed with the neurosurgery, his phone was alerting him to a message.
“Dr. Weeks has located the source of the bleed,” he told Kyle’s family after reading the message. “As he suspected, it was the spleen. He’s removing it now... I’m going to get ready. I’ll have an OR nurse keep you up to date on our progress. I don’t expect to be in surgery for very long,” William added before he and Hannah headed out the door.
“Let me know when you finish. I’m going to hang out in the employee lounge,” she told him once they arrived at the door that led to the OR.
“I thought you’d want to come in with me,” he said, swiping his ID badge to pass through the door.
“Really? You’ll let me in the operating room with you?” she said. There had been a holdup with her paperwork from school and she hadn’t yet been given hospital clearance to attend his surgeries.
“I got special permission from the medical chief for you to observe only. Come on, I’ll show you where to change.”
By the time Hannah was directed to an area off to William’s side, where she wouldn’t be in the surgical field but would still have a good view, she was starting experiencing some serious jitters. The smell of Betadine and blood mingled in the air as the surgical team prepared. She made herself concentrate on the way the technician draped Kyle’s head for the procedure, her stomach continually rolling in protest. What if she couldn’t take watching? Performing brain surgery had been her dream for years but she’d never actually been present for one.
Then William’s soothing voice enveloped her as he explained each confident incision, the sound of soft classical music filling the room. Some surgeons liked hard rock in their ORs, others liked soft jazz. Hannah should have known he would go for Tchaikovsky.
Soon she had forgotten her fears and was totally caught up in the procedure as the blood that had accumulated underneath the skull was evacuated.
The anesthesiologist called out that the patient’s blood pressure was dropping, but William’s hands never faltered. His voice was always calm and steady, and it was easy to see why they called him the Ice Prince of the OR. He was able to separate himself from every emotion while he had a scalpel in his hand.
Hannah remembered wondering which of William’s personas was the real one. She hadn’t understood the nickname then. She’d needed to see him here, now, to fully appreciate where the ability to withdraw from everything happening around him gave him the power to save lives. Only, the real world wasn’t like this sterile room. To really live, he had to open himself up to others instead of shutting them out.
And who was she to say anything about someone shutting others out? After everything she had been through with Lindsey’s dad, and then her parents turning their backs on her, she’d shut herself in as much the same way as William had. Her fear of losing her daughter had taken control of every aspect of her life. She’d devoted herself to taking the best care of Lindsey. Yes, she’d made friends with other mothers and coworkers, but she hadn’t let anyone inside her and Lindsey’s world. Just as William hadn’t let anyone inside his world until now.
Maybe it’s time for me to make some changes in my life, too.
Hannah eyed the monitors and was relieved to see that the patient’s blood pressure was starting to rise. The anesthesiologist called out the new reading.
As William prepared to close the incision, he explained that they would store the section of skull that had been removed until he could confidently replace it once Kyle’s vitals and crania had time to restore themselves. Most assuredly, before the patient was sent to a rehab facility.
“Thank you,” William said to the operating staff as he stepped back from the table. He then turned to Hannah. “Well, what do you think? Do you still want to specialize in neurosurgery?”
“Yes,” she said as she replayed the operation over in her on head. She had no doubts now. She was meant to be in a neurosurgeon’s practice. “This is definitely what I want to do.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WILLIAM STOPPED AT the bottom step of the house that had haunted his childhood. While his classmates had moaned about being sent off to boarding school, he had gladly left this place. Would things have been different if his father had sold the house after the accident? Would he have been different without the reminder every day of his mother’s accident?
“This is where you grew up?” Lindsey asked from beside him.
“Yes,” he answered without explaining that he had spent as much time away from the place as possible. Hannah’s daughter had been raised in a home filled with love. He couldn’t expect her to understand that his upbringing had been very different than hers.
“It would have been a cool place to play hide-and-seek when you were little. I bet you could hide for hours here,” Lindsey said as she continued up the steps.
He’d spent most of his time hiding in his room or in the attic, but he didn’t have many memories of anyone actually seeking him. As far as his stepmothers had been concerned, if he was out of sight, everything was fine. It was only when he’d showed up during one of their social functions that he’d become a problem. No one had been interested in the awkward child happier to be reading a book than talking with strangers.
The trip to Dallas had not been without challenges. While Lindsey had done her best to entertain Avery, the little girl had refused to be satisfied. She’d finally fussed herself to sleep. And that was why Hannah had insisted that they pack a bag to spend the night. She had known the trip there and back in one day would be more than any of them could handle.
He’d wanted to drive back to Houston that night, but he could now see that Hannah had known what she was talking about. A night trip would have been miserable for e
veryone. It was another lesson learned.
Lindsey had told him he should get a minivan with a DVD setup, but he drew the line at driving a “mommy van.” That was not happening.
“It’s a monstrosity that my father built to declare himself the king of Dallas real estate,” he said as they climbed the steps to the front door. “‘Real estate is all about perception,’ he would say. ‘No one wants to hire an unsuccessful agent.’”
“Are you okay?” Hannah asked, as she shifted Avery in her arms and reached for his hand.
Her touch was warm and comforting. Surprising himself, he closed his hand over hers. A strange calm came over him. Not like the calm that he demanded of himself in the OR, but a peaceful feeling that he wasn’t alone. That there was someone to care enough to go through this with him. Was this friendship? Or was this something more? He should release Hannah’s hand and step away, but at that moment he didn’t know if he had the strength to go through the doors without her.
For the first time it really sank in that his father was gone. That he would never be there to greet William again. The weight of that knowledge slammed into him unexpectedly as he walked, hand in hand with Hannah, into the foyer where he had last seen the man.
He remembered taking a real good look at his father then—had acknowledged their similarities in height and coloring, and noted that his father’s age had begun to show despite his fight to hold on to his youth.
His father had insisted that William come to meet his new wife. She’d turned out to be only a younger version of wife number three, whom he’d divorced a few years prior. William had made the effort; as always, hoping that he’d see some sign that his father had changed. There’d been no change. His newest stepmother had been surprisingly pleasant, though. An interior decorator before their marriage, she’d shared with him some of the changes she had planned for the house. But her time had run out too soon.
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