I gave him a gentle kiss. “She used to tell me all about what you were up to … and with whom.” It was so strange how accepting my parents had been of my relationship with Nick when Eli had told them about it. Not that they’d have been as angry as Eli was, but they really seemed to like the idea of me and Nick together.
His cheeks reddened. “Small town gossip. I think she hoped I’d be able to convince you to move back home. I tried to tell her that you were living your dream life and that came first over me or anyone.”
A pang of guilt followed by annoyance hit me in the gut. Yes, I’d chosen my career over him, but so had he. Oh, he’d once mentioned maybe moving to southern California, but I needed a clean start.
“You talked about all this while she was in the hospital?”
“She’d brought it up a few times before, so on that day … it was truncated. She said, ‘Get Mia. Bring her home. Make her happy.’”
“But you didn’t.”
He shook his head. “I was going to talk to you at the funeral about maybe moving home so I could at least feel like I honored her request by saying something, but … well, we never spoke when you were here.”
I closed my eyes as more guilt filled me as I abided by Eli’s wishes to avoid Nick. “I’m sorry, Nick.”
“I get it. It was a hard situation that would have been made worse if Eli got pissed.”
“I hate how we all act in ways to avoid pissing him off. It’s not right.”
“It was right for that time. And now she has what she wants. You’re home with your dad and Eli.”
“What about you?”
Nick shrugged. “She just saw me as the person who could get you here. As long as you’re with your family, she’s happy.”
“I didn’t realize how much I owed you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Mia. I care about your family. They’re like family to me, especially after my folks moved away. I just wish I’d been able to order up that miracle.”
“Me too,” I said, all of a sudden feeling tired. I lay my head back down on his chest and was out within minutes.
23
Nick
I didn’t know how to describe Mia’s and my relationship. I felt closer to her the night she’d called me to help her father and we’d ended up spending the night together. The sex was cathartic, but even more so was the talk we’d had.
But that didn’t change the fact that we couldn’t be together because it was against hospital policy. Even if it weren’t, I wasn’t sure we’d be an item. Did I want that? I think I did, but that scared the shit out of me. Four years ago, I hadn’t considered the ramifications of loving her. I’d been so sure that her family and even Eli would want us to be happy. Like a silly teenage girl, I’d thought true love would make everything rosy.
Now, four years later, I was more cynical about most things in life. Whether you loved someone or not, they could leave you, either by choosing something else or through death. No matter how hard you tried to do your best, you could fail, which in my case meant, someone could die. So, while I always made the most of the time I could spend with Mia, I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of believing in a fairy tale.
With that said, I was glad for the fleeting moments with her because everything else in my life had gone to shit. The lawsuit was big news in town. The hospital administration had little to say to the public about it. While they didn’t want to say anything that could hurt the case, their vague statements and tepid defense of me only served to make the people in town think the hospital was trying to cover up an error.
I continued to receive unhappy messages. Not all were threatening. Some simply expressed their displeasure and told me to quit. Those people were happy to tell me who they were, and since they weren’t threatening, I couldn’t do much about it. Changing my number wasn’t an option because I was a doctor that people needed to be able to reach.
The number of threatening voicemails I received grew. I finally called the sheriff even though I worried if the hospital found out they’d put me on leave. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much the sheriff could do.
“They’re ominous to be sure,” the deputy said after listening to a few. “But they fall short of a real threat.”
“Can you trace it?” I asked, not liking how a message that suggested I might lose my hands so I couldn’t kill people didn’t measure up to a threat.
“Yes, but it’ll be one of those toss away phones. People are smarter now about these things.”
“Can you at least try?”
He agreed, and as he guessed, none of the calls could be traced to a person. I wondered if it was one person, or some sort of conspiracy with a group of people in town wanting to harass me. What was his or hers or their end goal? Did they want to hurt me or just run me out of town?
One day I came out of my home to find my windshield bashed in. I was happy Mia hadn’t been at my place, not just because she might have been outed, but because clearly someone was upping the ante. I was able to have a glass replacement guy come and fix it that morning, but I wondered how long before it happened again.
The resulting paranoia was taking its toll on me. The dreams came nightly now. They’d morphed from my past patients blaming me for their deaths, to more vivid images of how they died, and what they wanted to do to me. Jane Parker, Mia’s mother chopped my hands off. Ms. Mason came at my eyes with a hot poker. A shrink would probably say that the dream about Jane represented my feeling like I hadn’t done enough to help her and the one about Ms. Mason was that I hadn’t seen what was wrong. See, that’s why I didn’t need therapy as Mia suggested more frequently now. I knew what it all meant. Talking about this shit wasn’t going to make it stop. I was already jumping at the wind rustling the trees outside my home or a warning buzzer ringing in the hospital. I was in a constant state of hyper-awareness that I couldn’t seem to shake. One night when Mia turned over in bed, I woke in a panic, worried someone had broken in. Not that I told her that.
Was I having problems? Yes. But telling a therapist wasn’t going to help. And if it got out that I was seeing someone, I’d look guilty. Like I was in therapy because I couldn’t handle that I’d killed Ms. Mason.
“Can you believe those people?” Peggy said as she came into the lounge where I was trying to regroup after shocking a patient back to life when his heart stopped. “Did you see them out front? Picketing us. What happens if one of them has a heart attack? Where are they going to go if not here? Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
“The hospital needs a better PR strategy,” I said.
“It does feel like they’re hiding something.” She sat with me at the table. “I’ve been over it a million times, Nick. We didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t miss anything.”
I nodded, mostly to reassure her because I wasn’t sure.
“They’re getting obnoxious. I heard about your car.” She shook her head. “I wonder if we need more security.”
My heart rate ticked up again and I swore inwardly.
“Hey, Nick. Maybe you should take some time off?”
I glared at her. “Why?”
She shrugged and looked away. “You’ve had to deal with a lot.”
“So have you.”
She shook her head. “No. Not like you.”
“Do you think I can’t do the job?” I knew I sounded angry, but I was. Why was she questioning my ability? Of all the people that should be on my side, it was Peggy.
“You’re a great doctor, but you’re under a lot of stress. We can all see it.”
My eyes narrowed. “But can I do the job?”
She huffed out a breath. “Yes, but—”
“Either I can or I can’t, Peggy.”
“You’re not as on your game as usual. And no one blames you.”
“The whole fucking town blames me,” I snapped. “They’re picketing.” I closed my eyes as I tried to rein in my anger and frustration. Maybe Peggy was right. Maybe I should take some time off.
“They’re wrong, Nick. And I don’t question your commitment or skill.”
“So, what are you questioning?”
“Whether you’re mentally focused.”
“You think I need counseling too?”
“Too?” She cocked her head to the side and I cursed for giving away too much.
I stood. “I’m not going to let them keep me from doing my job.”
She nodded. “Okay then.” But she said it in a way that suggested she thought I was a ticking time bomb.
“I’m going back to work.” I stalked out of the staff lounge. As I made my way up the hall to the ER, there was a loud crash. My heart shot to my throat, and I jumped back, pressing myself into the wall like a scared baby. Had one of the picketers come in to find me? A second later, I recognized that thought was ridiculous. Or was it? Someone had already broken my windshield. I was getting disturbing messages on my voicemail. I knew from my residency, that violence could happen in an ER.
I looked around, and thankfully, no one was in the hall to notice me. Taking a breath, I continued up the hall. Coming around the corner, a CNA was crouched on the ground picking up a tray of food that had been dropped. Now I felt like an idiot for thinking I was in danger over a dropped tray of food. Maybe I was losing it.
I was able to get through the day, and once home, I was having my now usual vodka straight up. I wondered how long before this habit veered into a drinking problem. But fuck, after a day of being on alert from emergencies to imagined danger, I needed something to sooth the raw edges.
What I couldn’t decide was if I was just paranoid or did I really need to worry about someone making good on their threat? Because I didn’t know, I stayed away from Jim and Mia in my off-hours. I didn’t want to put a target on their backs.
Mia didn’t balk, which I suspected was because she didn’t want to risk her job. Instead of seeing each other, we texted and one night had phone sex, a first for both of us.
Jim and I talked on the phone too. I didn’t tell him the truth about why I wasn’t coming over. I simply told him work was busy and I needed to rest. He said he understood, but I think I heard the disappointment in his voice. I had to hope he didn’t think I was losing interest, or that Eli had something to do with it.
And so, I went my life. During my waking hours, I constantly tried to have one eye looking behind me for some nut case wanting to get at me for Ms. Mason’s death, and at night, haunted by the dead. It was a fucked-up way to live, but what choice did I have? My only saving grace was the hope that when the lawsuit was over, I’d be vindicated and life would go back as usual. How long would that take? A year? Two? I could do that. If I didn’t go fucking crazy before then.
24
Mia
The growing tension in the community began to concern me even before someone broke the window of Nick’s car. In talking with the staff that answered the phones, I discovered that the hospital was getting threatening phone calls. Most were targeting Nick as the physician in charge of her care, but a few were generic complaints about the hospital not being forthcoming in what had happened to Ms. Mason.
“We need to make a statement to calm them down,” I told Dick one morning when I showed up to a slightly larger group of people outside the hospital demanding answers to Ms. Mason’s death. It was still only a handful, but if it continued to grow, it would be difficult for people to feel comfortable about getting treatment.
“They’re just looking for someone to blame,” he said, looking at reports instead of me as I sat in front of his desk.
“You’re making it easy for them by acting like the hospital doesn’t care.”
He finally looked up. “What would you have me do?”
“Make an official statement.”
“Saying what? We’re in the middle of a lawsuit. You know I can’t say anything that could hurt our case.”
“You could say that, and assure them that an internal review showed everything was done properly.”
“Do we know that?”
My eyes narrowed as I studied him. “Yes. The only thing that seems to have failed was receiving the order of the chest x-ray.”
His jaw tightened. “Which I told you was likely human error. Do you want to put a bigger target on Dr. Foster’s back?”
My heart clenched in my chest. “There’s no indication that he did anything wrong.”
“But they won’t see it like that, will they? He was in charge of her care and left her to treat another patient.” He shook his head. “I wonder if I should put him on leave. Perhaps that would calm them down.”
Inside my head, I was screaming at him to stop blaming Nick.
“The only problem with that is we’re a small hospital. Without Nick, we’re understaffed.”
“Why do you want to blame him?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded indifferent to the answer.
“I don’t want to blame him. The town blames him. He was her physician, and if anything went wrong, it’s on him, is it not?”
“Not necessarily.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the EMR system. When you have the tech person come in, I’m sure they’ll show that.”
None of what he said was wrong, and yet I couldn’t help but wonder if he was purposefully setting Nick up as the scapegoat. The hospital would have some liability for him, but it would be shared. If it was the EMR, the hospital was solely responsible and it could perhaps lead to investigations of other times the system might have failed.
“We should arrange more security in the ER and around the hospital,” I said.
“These people are our neighbors, Ms. Parker. They’re angry and confused, but they don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Trust me. It will die down soon.”
“I still think the hospital needs to release a statement instead of ignoring them. It makes the hospital look insensitive by not saying anything and ignoring that people are wanting answers.” I tried again to make him see his inaction was hurting the hospital’s reputation.
He sighed. “Fine. Draft something up and I’ll take a look.” Then he cocked his head to the side. “What is the relationship with you and Dr. Foster, anyway? You seem overly concerned about him.”
“You know my relationship with him,” I said hoping I sounded annoyed and not worried. “I grew up with him. Years ago, we dated. Now we’re colleagues.”
“Those old feelings have popped up. We can’t have that—”
I interrupted him. “He works for the hospital which is my client. I’m looking out for him as I am for the rest of the staff.”
“He has his own attorney.”
“Frankly, I’m glad. His employer isn’t doing all it can to protect him. Of course, that could lead to problems if she discovers something.”
He frowned. “Like what?”
“Like maybe the EMR was to blame. I understand that the hospital wants to avoid any liability, but by setting up Dr. Foster—”
“You act like this is a conspiracy. We’re not setting him up. As far as we can tell, he did everything correctly. You can put that in your statement. But if something did go wrong, it's more likely his fault, not a computer glitch.”
I could only stare at him.
“You know your brother thinks this hospital failed your mother. People like to blame their doctors or the hospital when they’re loved ones die. It’s the nature of the beast. This will all die down and we’ll be back to normal.”
“What about the additional security in the ER? The group could end up blocking ambulances or harass the staff when they’re coming and going.”
“I can authorize one extra person.” He turned his attention back to his work, which I took as my cue to leave.
What a mess, I thought I as I headed back to my office. Not just the hospital situation, but my personal life as well. Once again, I’d allowed myself to be with Nick. No, I thought. This time I actively sought to be with him. Whe
n I remembered how he was with my father, my heart got so full in my chest.
But I was taking a big gamble that I really couldn’t afford. Just like all the times before, when I left his place, we’d agreed that we couldn’t continue. I thought I saw the disappointment in his eyes over that, but maybe I was projecting my own feelings onto him because I was disappointed.
I stopped at the break room on my floor to grab a coffee before heading back to my office to work on a statement.
“Mia,” Peggy said as she entered. “I was hoping to find you.”
“Is something wrong?” I asked as I put a little creamer in my coffee.
“I wanted to talk to you about Nick.”
I studied her, wondering if she knew about us. “Sure. Come to my office.”
Once behind my desk, I asked. “What’s up with Nick?”
She sat in the chair in front of my desk. “He’d never admit it and he’d hate that I was here, but I think this thing with Ms. Mason is taking a toll on him.”
I nodded. “I’d be worried if it didn’t.”
“Yes, but I’m concerned it’s more than just regular guilt weighing on him. With the mob outside, he seems even jumpier than he had been.”
“Mob? Is it growing?”
She shrugged. “You know what I mean. I think all of it … the people outside blaming him—”
“Are they blaming him specifically or the hospital?”
“More him.”
“What about you? Are they harassing you?” I sipped my coffee, wanting to be professional despite the worry that was growing for Nick.
“No. Well, they have things to say to all of us when we come in, but they know he was her doctor.”
I nodded. “I’m going to craft a statement.”
“That’s all well and good, but a statement isn’t going to help Nick.”
“What are you saying, Peggy? Do you think he can’t work?”
She blew out a breath. “I think he’s an amazing doctor. I think the world of him. He’s getting the job done, but he’s struggling. You can see it in his eyes. In the tension in his body. Today I walked into the break room, and he jumped like startled cat. He seems on edge and that can’t be good for him.”
Heart of Hope: Books 1-4 Page 15