by Jill Barnett
“I asked Cale for a second opinion after your last appointment.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“You have an arrhythmia.”
“An irregular heartbeat? Is there something wrong with the valve?”
“We’re not certain.” Cale put his hand on her shoulder. “We want you to get a TEE. A transthoracic echocardiogram. The images of your heart and blood vessels will give us a clearer view.”
“We want to know exactly what’s going on, Laurel,” Karl added.
“What do you think it is?” She could see neither of them wanted to speculate. “Oh, for crissakes, you two. Stop being doctors and tell me what’s going on here.”
Cale spoke first. “It could be a problem with the valve. It could be an infection.”
“We don’t know because of your past surgery. It could be any number of things, Laurel.” Karl paused, then asked, “Have you been to the dentist lately?”
“Yes, for a cleaning and chipped filling, but I took my antibiotics. I know better than to miss those. What if the valve is bad? It’s only been seven years.” The words came out rushed and panicked.
“Don’t do that to yourself.” Cale said sternly. “We don’t know what’s wrong. But we’ll find out and fix it.”
She thought she might cry and felt overcome with the swelling feelings of weakness and loss and sudden fragility. She just wanted it to be yesterday, forever, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
“I want to do a quick exam, Laurel.” Karl came around his desk.
She stood mechanically and followed his nurse to an exam room, where she stuck a thermometer in Laurel’s mouth and took her blood pressure, then marked the charts and handed her a paper gown. “Strip to the waist. You know the routine.”
Laurel set her purse down on a chair, put on the gown, and sat stiffly on the edge of the exam table, feeling every single heartbeat in her chest. After a sharp knock on the door, both Karl and Cale came in, stethoscopes hanging from their necks and with those doctors’ smiles meant to put you at ease, which usually did just the opposite.
Karl read the chart. “You do have a slight fever.” He handed the chart to Cale. “Ninety-nine. How have you been feeling?”
“A little tired, I guess, but I wasn’t sleeping well last week.”
Karl listened to her chest, pushed back the paper gown, and moved the steth around her back, then stepped aside and Cale did the same exam. She looked up at him as he listened to her heart. His expression was taut and serious and gave nothing away.
“I’m scared,” she whispered and felt as if she might cry.
He dropped the steth and took her hand. “It’s going to be okay, Laurel.”
“I didn’t know what to expect the first time around. I do now. I know too much. I know second surgeries carry a high risk.”
“Your friend here is the best.” Karl looked as if he sincerely believed that and stepped out to check with his nurse about the test schedule.
“Can we do this?” she asked Cale.
“What do you mean?”
“Should we do this? We had a past.”
“It might not seem like a perfect situation to you. Look, you need me and I want to do it.” He paused. “But it’s your choice.”
“I’ve always felt very badly about what I did to you.”
“Laurel.” He laughed and shook his head. “Afraid I’m going to get even on the operating table?”
It was so stupid she laughed, too. “No.”
“We were a long time ago. I was young and in love. You hurt me. Jud crushed me. I felt deeply betrayed, so I stopped caring about anything and focused only on medicine. But if it hadn’t been you it would have been someone else. I came out the winner here. I found exactly what I wanted to be and do, and after that, I found a woman I could love in the same way I loved medicine, and I did love her for almost thirty years.” He tried to cover his pain with a professional smile, but Laurel recognized the emotion that crossed his expression.
“I’m sorry you lost her.”
“They were good years that I wouldn’t change for anything. So in a way, I need to do this, Laurel. You had valve surgery and now you might need something more. And here I am a cardiothoracic surgeon. It seems to me as if this is the way things were supposed to turn out.”
Karl came back in. “The test is scheduled at UCI Med Center for tomorrow at eleven.”
“Tomorrow?” Laurel didn’t think it would be so soon. “So fast?”
“My office was supposed to get you in here ten days ago.” Karl made it clear he wasn’t happy with his staff.
“We need to see what’s wrong.” Cale’s voice was gentle. “And as soon as possible.”
“I’m supposed to leave for a trade show in Chicago today.”
“Not now you aren’t,” Karl said.
So she dressed and took the appointment information and left, numb. She was almost to the front door of the medical building when Cale called her name and came running up to her.
“You okay?”
She nodded first, then shook her head, afraid if she spoke her voice would crack. He put his arms around her. “It’s going to be fine.”
She was crying by the time they sat down on a bench near an atrium water feature, surrounded by lush plants and spilling into a granite-edged pond with spotted fish and butterfly koi the colors of a sunset.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“For years I never worried much. I had a murmur. I’d heard about it since childhood. Then when Annalisa was maybe thirteen, I started getting so tired and run down. Going up stairs was a problem. I went to the doctor, he sent me to a specialist, who said I needed surgery, so I just did what they advised. They were so matter-of-fact. I don’t know if I was just naïve, or unwilling to really accept what was happening. Only afterward did I understand what I had gone through. I didn’t face my mortality until I was in recovery. It was much tougher than I’d thought.” She stared at her hands. “Now I know what to expect. I’m scared. It’s risky, if it’s a second heart surgery. The fact that you are here tells me I should be worried.”
“Don’t jump the gun, Laurel. I can’t tell you it’ll be a breeze. But I can promise I will do everything I can to make this as easy as I can. Even stepping aside if you want another surgeon.”
“I don’t want anyone else.”
“Just have the tests and we’ll take this one day at a time.” He stood. “Come on. I’ll walk you out. I’m heading for the hospital.”
At her car, she paused. “Thanks, Cale.”
He reached up and brushed her hair from her face; it had stuck to her tears. “I’ll be there tomorrow and we’ll see what’s going on.”
“Here you are, back in my life when I need you.”
“Maybe we both need each other.”
She laughed then. “Oh, right. I’m sure you have no other patients.”
He didn’t laugh, but just said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Laurel-Like-the-Tree.”
Laurel made a vague excuse to Annalisa about a forgotten appointment she couldn’t change and promised she would fly to Chicago the next day. Tuesday night, she let the machine pick up Jud’s two calls from Denver. The only person who knew what was happening was her uberdiscreet assistant, Pat, who picked her up Wednesday morning and drove her to the outpatient wing of the hospital. Pat would then wait and drive her back home.
Both Cale and Karl were there for the test—two men she trusted—yet she lay on the table feeling shaky at best. Getting a tube stuck down your throat and having to swallow it didn’t sound easy. But the sedative helped and the nurse numbed her throat. As with most medical tests, the idea of the procedure was worse than the actual test. She lay there with the tube in, trying to breathe calmly. A nurse leaned over and wiped the saliva from her mouth, and the tech talked to her in an even, easy tone, which made her breathe a little easier. But she watched their faces, searching for meaning in every expression. Cale stepped closer at one point in the tes
t and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Close your eyes and relax. It won’t be much longer.”
A medical minute always felt like an eternity, and the prep and test had taken the better part of an hour before they moved her into a bed in the recovery area. When she looked at the wall clock, she saw she’d been there for almost two hours. They gave her juice with a straw and a cup of hospital pudding, but she wanted answers, not cafeteria food, so when Cale and Karl both walked in together, she searched their expressions for an early answer, but found none. “Well,” she said brightly, “if it isn’t the Blues Brothers. The least you could do is smile and lull me into a sense of security before you give me the bad news.”
Cale gave her a small smile then.
“Too late. I can see something is wrong.” She stared at her hands folded and white knuckled.
“How are you feeling?” He sat down on a stool and rolled over to the end of the bed.
“Okay.”
“We have the test here.” Karl held up a video, then slipped it into a machine. “I’m going to play it so you can see what we found.”
Cale used a pen to point at the back-and-white sonic images of her beating heart. “You have a tear right here, in the graft valve. It’s leaking.”
“So what does that mean? Another valve? More surgery?”
“The valve looks to be strong. It’s working well, but we’ll know more when we go in. The best-case scenario means we might only have to repair the tear.”
“How complicated is that?”
“Any heart surgery has its complications.”
“Don’t do that. Please. I want to know exactly what I’m looking at.”
“There’s another complication we have to address first. You have endocarditis.”
“An infection?” She knew that was not good. They’d given her the lectures after her first surgery and at almost every yearly checkup. Like Pavlov’s dog, she heard the word “infection” and reacted with panic. “How does that affect the surgery?”
“We have to clear it up before we can operate, which means you’ll need antibiotic treatment.”
“So you give me a prescription and schedule the surgery?”
“No. You’ll need intravenous antibiotics,” Karl told her. “I’m admitting you to the hospital now.”
“Oh God—for how long?” Chicago. The show. Annalisa. Jud.
“A few days.” Karl scribbled on her chart and didn’t look up. “Then you can administer the antibiotic yourself at home.”
“Once the infection is cleared up,” Cale added, “I can go in and see what we’re looking at.”
“What’s the risk factor?” she asked.
“Less with your old friend here.” Karl opened the door and called for a nurse. His beeper buzzed. He checked it impatiently. Laurel took that instant to watch Cale. He was so serious. That alone scared her more. Karl handed the nurse her chart. “Let’s get Mrs. King into a room.”
“Wait,” Laurel called out to her. “My assistant, Pat, is waiting for me. She was going to drive me home. Can you send her in here?”
“I’ll send someone to find her.” Karl left with the nurse.
“Still scared?” Cale rolled the stool over and took her hand in both of his.
“Of course.” She smiled too brightly. “So these are a surgeon’s hands.”
He laughed. “Good thing they aren’t shaking or you’d be out of here all too fast.”
“I trust you.” It was strange, the expression he gave her, and something passed between them that was from long ago. His manner softened and he was the old Cale, looking at her as if she were something special. At that moment, she might have done anything he asked. “I do have a problem. I didn’t tell Annalisa what was going on. I didn’t want to worry her. She was pretty shaken through the last surgery. I’d been home for about a week when I woke up one night and she was standing over me, watching me breathe.” Laurel could still remember the sheer terror on her daughter’s face, even in the shadows of darkness. “I’m supposed to fly to Chicago to meet her.”
“Do you want me to call and talk to her?”
“God, no. I’ll make some excuse. I want to tell her at the right time. Not when she’s out of town. Not over the phone. Not when she has so much on her plate.” She paused, then added pointedly, “I just don’t want you to tell anyone.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Your medical condition is private.”
“Not even to your brother?”
“Especially not to my brother.”
She laughed. “Okay.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but Pat came in then, her face creased with worry. “They wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.”
“Don’t start crying. I have an infection and they’re going to give me some antibiotics.”
Pat looked at Cale.
Laurel introduced them, then Cale left, saying he would check on her later.
“Banning? Another one?”
“Yes. Another one. Jud Banning’s brother. Matthew Banning’s father.”
“It’s raining Bannings.”
Laurel laughed. “Yes, disco mama, I guess it is. There’s also another son and a grandfather.”
“My doctors never look like that.” Pat sat on the edge of the bed. “Now what’s really wrong?”
“I told you I have an infection.”
Pat merely looked at her.
“It’s in my heart, so they are making me stay a few days on antibiotic IV.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I know. Me too. I’m not going to tell Annalisa yet. I’ll tell her there’s a problem on the job and I have to stay to solve it, that we need her to handle the equipment decisions and to make the orders. I know she can handle it on her own, and she should, but I’m afraid she’ll fly home if she knows what’s happening with me. I need you to back me up on this.”
“Okay.”
“And if Jud Banning calls—”
“If? He’s called twice today.”
“Okay, okay. He’s out of town until Thursday, I think. I want you to tell him I’m in Chicago and I’ll call him when I get back. Same with my mother.”
“Besides lying to everyone, is there anything else you want?”
“I just need you to protect me for a little longer. I don’t want everyone hovering around me, and that’s what will happen if they find out. This came on so suddenly and right now I’m just not that strong.”
“You rest. Lying is part of my job description. ‘Ms. King is out to lunch, Ms. King is away from her desk, Ms. King is in a meeting.’ Now, tell me what you need from home.” Pat made a list, then said, “I’ll take care of Henry. If you think of anything else you need, call my cell.”
Laurel sagged back against the pillow. She could feel her frustration and emotion all swelling up inside her. Her throat was tight. Her eyes burned. She was going to cry and she was afraid if she started she wouldn’t be able to stop.
A cell call wouldn’t help her. She needed a miracle. And she hoped to God her miracle was Cale Banning.
31
Even in slacks, Victor felt overdressed walking down the streets of Avalon, where bikini tourism was now the island’s gold standard. But this piece of paradise was a place of contradictions, where someone once built a casino that was never used for gambling. The island was just a distant suburb of Southern California, yet a place you couldn’t walk or drive to. Once Spanish land, which lost its piousness when it first became a smugglers’ haven, it then became a romantic idyll tempting sport-fishing movie stars and chewing-gum magnates.
A purple haze hid the shadowed profile of the mainland toward the east, while the late island morning was warm and sullen, heavy with the promise of a flawless afternoon, the kind that made people leave their cold, gray lives behind for the chance to sink shallow roots in balmy Southern California.
Yet for all the promise of the sun, there was no promise left in Victor’s days. He didn’t live his life in sunshine se
asons or pacific years, but in weeks and hours. Time mattered only when he realized it had passed. Should he chance a glance into any of the store-front windows along the walkways of this tourist town, a stranger slouching with age and walking with a limp would have stared back at him. Who was that old man?
Now his birthday celebrations marked his life passing and everyone acted as if the fact he was still alive needed to be ritualized. The funny thing about aging was you could never go back. Your choices were done and made, the roads chosen, rocky or not.
It was early when he entered Kathryn Peyton’s shop. The dark corners of the room still carried the chill of night. Art pieces more commercial than at her shows lined shelves of random size and placement, each painted in complementary colors to best display the piece—a blue flutelike vase, a green shallow bowl, or an elongated red pitcher, Modiglianiesque in design.
“Can I help you?”
There was some irony in the fact that the young woman behind the counter had hair the same ebony as the woman whose painting he sought. “I want to see Kathryn. Tell her it’s Victor Banning.” He leaned against the counter, cane hooked on his forearm, his feet aching the way so much of him ached nowadays, and watched the motion of the second hand on the wall clock. Time was fickle; it could rocket by and suddenly one day you were old, or in moments of tension, time moved like a glacier.
The Kathryn Peyton who emerged from the back room carried herself with the singular quality of a woman who had lived too many years alone—that osteal sense of sheer determination that guarded the broken spine of only the loneliest of souls. Funny how you could see in others your own weaknesses.
“Victor.” She approached him alone, a whitewash of dried clay on her arms and hands, her smock spotted with chalk and color. The young woman with Rachel’s hair had completely disappeared. “Why are you here?”
“We’ve spoken at every one of your shows and you never asked me that question. Why is that, Kathryn?”
“I doubt you’re here to rehash the past. I care about here and now.”