Andy was already in bed when she got home and appeared to be asleep. She had the feeling he wasn’t, but he didn’t say anything, and she didn’t turn on the lights or speak to him. A few minutes after she got home, she slipped into bed beside him, thinking about the afternoon and evening she had spent with Gabriel. It was real, she was sure of that now. They were madly in love. But Andy lying next to her was real too.
* * *
—
Andy was already up when Stephanie awoke in the morning. He and the boys were downstairs, dressed and having breakfast. She went to sit with them, before they left for Orinda. She was leaving for brunch shortly after. Andy said very little. He didn’t ask about the French team or their brunch meeting or their plans for the week. The only thing he knew about was the mayor’s reception, which he was planning to attend and she wished that he wasn’t. That was going to be dicey with Gabriel there too.
They were like a group of old friends when they met at noon at the Zuni Café. The food was European and American, with some California dishes, pasta, and fabulous oysters, which the French contingent were eager to try. They hugged and kissed when they met. Tom and Valérie looked peaceful and happy and exuded the aura of a couple as they joined the others, and Gabriel sat next to Stephanie and devoured her with his eyes. Bill was happy to see Wendy, she asked about Pip and Alex. Paul reported that he’d had a great night on the town. Marie-Laure had gone shopping in Union Square before having dinner with Wendy. They were all excited to be there, and would be touring SF General with Bill leading the way the next day, after the morning at the DEM, the Department of Emergency Management, and then they would be visiting the Emergency Operations Center the day after that. They had a busy week ahead. And Bill was eager to show them where he worked.
They were a boisterous group, talking and laughing in English and French, and Valérie asked Stephanie quietly how things were going with her unraveling marriage.
“Tense,” Stephanie said, as she sat holding Gabriel’s hand.
“Have you told him anything since you got back?”
“We agree that it’s not working. I’ll talk to him about it after you all leave. I didn’t want to rock the boat too much while you’re here. I’m sticking to that plan.”
Someone mentioned the mayor’s reception then, and they were excited about it. Stephanie used the opportunity to warn Gabriel that Andy was coming, and he was instantly upset.
“How did that happen? Did you invite him?” He was shocked.
“Of course not. He saw the invitation and grabbed it before I could stop him, and he insisted he wants to come. I don’t know why this time, he never does. We’ll just have to get through it and be discreet.” Gabriel looked ruffled for a few minutes and then got drawn into conversation with the others and forgot about it. Tom told them about the trick Valérie had played on him, pretending she’d found a thong under the bed, when it was her own. “I nearly had a heart attack,” he said, and she laughed. She was playful and naughty and sexy and he loved that about her too, as well as her serious, sensitive, loving, and smart side. She had all the qualities he’d ever dreamed of and never found in one woman.
“How are things working out with your situation?” Bill asked Wendy discreetly and she smiled.
“Done. I ended it when I got back.” He looked surprised.
“I didn’t think you’d do that, or not for a while. Married men are hard to get away from.”
“It was time. It was long overdue, in fact, and I finally realized it. I’d been making a fool of myself for the last two or three years,” she admitted.
“Welcome to the human race. I made an ass of myself for five, hating my ex-wife when we never should have been together in the first place. Some things take longer than others to get over. I’m proud of you,” he said and they high-fived.
Valérie told the group then that Marie-Laure had had dinner with Captain Bruno Perliot twice in the last two weeks since they left. She looked embarrassed and shy, but pleased.
“He’s very nice” was all she would say about him, but the American team were happy to hear it. He had seemed like a good man.
“Hopefully, we won’t provide as much excitement as you gave us,” Bill said solemnly, thinking of the school attack. “Just a lot of information, paperwork, and tours. The most dangerous location is at the hospital where I work tomorrow. Our patients shoot each other regularly if they haven’t finished the job on the street.” He insisted it was true. “The most challenging part of our job is dodging stray bullets while they kill each other and we try to save their lives. It’s an interesting segment of society.” He was joking but not entirely, and handguns were more common in the States than in France. “Very Wild West,” Marie-Laure commented and they laughed.
They walked down Market Street to the Ferry Building afterward, through the food markets there, and then they walked along the Embarcadero by the bay. There were a lot of tourists. They walked far enough so they could see Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Then they took cabs back to the hotel, and Tom and Valérie went to get his car. They left each other at five o’clock. Tom and Valérie went home to Oakland, and Stephanie went to the hotel with Gabriel, and they went up to his room. Marie-Laure, Wendy, and Bill had a drink at the bar, and Paul went back to the Clift, where he had liked the look of the girls the night before. He was doing fine without Tom as his guide, and just needed occasional advice about where to go.
Stephanie left Gabriel at eight o’clock, since she’d been gone all day, although he asked her again to stay at the hotel with him. He was persistent, but she said she had to see her boys. She wanted him to meet them, but not when Andy was around. She was going to try and arrange it sometime during his stay.
Andy had just put the boys to bed when she got home and she kissed them goodnight. They were already half asleep and had had a good day at their grandmother’s.
“You got some sun today,” Andy commented.
“We walked along the Embarcadero for miles. They want to see all the sights,” she said blandly.
“Did you have fun?”
“They’re a good group. You’ll meet them on Wednesday.” He nodded and didn’t comment. She read the papers they’d been sent by the DEM, and she was looking forward to seeing SF General with Bill. She hadn’t been there in quite a while and heard wonderful things about their new facility. She was happy to be doing all of it with Gabriel. He texted her four times that night, and she had to tell him to stop, and then turned off her phone.
On Tuesday, they were going to be touring UCSF, with Stephanie as their guide. And suddenly, thinking about it made her sad. If she moved to France with Gabriel, she would be leaving UCSF soon. It was going to be like leaving home. The thought of giving up her job frightened her. Who would she be without her role at UCSF? It would be like losing a limb. And what if she didn’t find a good job as a foreigner in France? There was so much to think about. She had nightmares about it that night.
Chapter Sixteen
The administrative setup of San Francisco’s emergency services was complicated but no more so than the elaborate system in France. Each country had their own way of dividing up vital services and deciding who should run them. In San Francisco, the Department of Emergency Management, the DEM, was responsible for planning, preparedness, communication, response, and recovery for daily emergencies and major disasters like the “multiple casualty incident” at the lycée in Paris. The DEM was the bridge between the public and first responders, and provided all the key coordination with city departments. It was originally known as the Office of Emergency Services, and other branches of emergency communications had merged with it, all under the umbrella of the DEM, which was run by an executive director and three deputy directors. When necessary, the DEM brought the Emergency Operations Center into action to support field operations and provide public information, among other functio
ns. They had their own deputy director.
The DEM building was on Turk Street in the Tenderloin among the derelicts and drug addicts, not far from where the French team was staying in Union Square.
Marie-Laure, Paul, and Gabriel arrived together by cab at the DEM. Valérie came with Tom, and the American team met them there. Two out of three of the deputy directors had come. The executive director welcomed the French representatives and congratulated them on their handling of the lycée shooting, which had been a tragedy but could have been even worse, as the professionals knew, despite the rabble-rousing of the press and Jacqueline Moutier.
They discussed it for a few minutes, and each of the deputy directors spoke, explaining how the system of first responders worked, and what systems were in place for a major natural disaster like an earthquake, or a terrorist attack. Everything had been thought through with great care, equipment was state of the art, their approach was constantly updated, and manpower was strong. It was an efficient department and the French were impressed. It was a remarkably smooth operation that had been impeccably implemented. They also explained how the various hospitals in the Bay Area were used, and how triage was determined and by whom. They were scheduled to see the four most important hospitals in the next few weeks, as well as the Saint Francis Burn Center, which was a very important facility and had been crucial in the recent hotel fire in January.
The informational session continued until lunchtime, when the directors left them, and they were driven to a very good new restaurant South of Market, before moving on to SF General after lunch.
They were all fascinated by how different it was from France. It was more mechanized and systematized in the United States, in contrast to the many official protocols in France and the more traditional system there, run with less manpower, since they had less. The French system was very closely linked with the police and riot squads, since terrorism was unfortunately more common in France, although that could change, as one of the deputy directors pointed out. In the case of terrorism in the United States, the FBI and Homeland Security became involved. They had more departments to draw on and more staff.
“Everything is bigger in the United States,” Gabriel commented, very impressed by what they’d seen so far. He conferred about it at length with Marie-Laure over lunch. Both cities and countries had much to learn from each other, which was the whole point of the exchange. They all felt enriched by what they’d heard.
After a delicious lunch, they headed for SF General, and Bill began the tour with one of the hospital’s directors who joined them to add additional information.
The older part of the hospital was huge and rambling, and gloomy. It was in the area of Potrero Hill. They went in through the ambulance entrance, and took a lengthy tour through the bowels of the hospital, winding up in surgery and the various trauma units, which were of greatest interest to them. It was Bill’s second home and he looked totally at ease. It was similar to the older hospitals in Paris, as the French members of the team commented. Their hospitals weren’t light and airy either, but they were efficient, as was General. It was the best hospital in the city for acute trauma. They walked through the wards together and the French team was impressed at the broad range of severe cases they handled. They already respected Bill from their time with him in Paris, but even more so after the tour. His American colleagues were impressed too. Wendy had never been there, and Stephanie not for some time, and they were impressed by how severe the cases were. They all noticed that there were access codes on every door and armed security guards patrolled the halls. Their client base was potentially dangerous in the extreme. It reminded them of a prison hospital, and some of their patients belonged there or wound up there, which didn’t seem to faze Bill. He was used to it, and moved through the halls and locked doors without feeling threatened. There were signs telling patients to remove their weapons, and metal detectors throughout.
“It really is like a war zone,” Paul said to Bill respectfully.
They toured parts of the new facility of the hospital as well, which was in sharp contrast, with extraordinary new equipment. The French team were stunned to learn that the addition to the hospital had cost over nine hundred million to build, eight hundred million provided by the city, and another hundred in private donations. Bill gave them a brief tour of their elder care unit, which was beautiful. The tour ended at six, and had been very instructive.
Marie-Laure and Wendy admitted that they were exhausted, and Valérie wanted to go back with Bill another day to visit the extensive psych ward the hospital was very proud of. She was fascinated by everything they’d seen, and she and Tom were talking about it animatedly as they left. In a whisper, Gabriel asked Stephanie to come back to his hotel.
“I can’t, I have to see my kids,” she said softly. She knew that Andy would be upset if she didn’t, even though he knew that she had busy days ahead for the next four weeks, and this was just the beginning.
“Can you meet me later?” Gabriel persisted, he was very determined and wanted to make love to her again.
“Not tonight. I need to spend one night at home or Andy will get suspicious, and he’ll make a scene. When I’m not home, he takes care of the kids.”
“Don’t you have a nanny?” Gabriel was surprised as she shook her head.
“A housekeeper a few hours a day. The rest of the time, Andy does it. He works from home. On the weekend, we do it together or take turns if I have to work. Andy doesn’t believe in childcare whenever we can do it ourselves. His mother was a full-time hands-on mom, and he thinks I should be too. And since I’m not around most of the time, he does the rest.” Gabriel looked shocked.
“Men in France don’t do that.” But he understood better now why she had to go home, although he didn’t like it. “Can’t you hire a babysitter while I’m here?”
“Andy would wonder why. He likes taking care of our boys. But he expects me to show up when I can. It’s hard when I’m on duty at the hospital. And then he expects me to come home and take care of the kids.”
“You won’t have to do that anymore, we can hire a nanny if you want,” he said glibly. It was generous of him, but she felt uncomfortable when he said it.
In the end, Gabriel went back to the hotel with Paul and Marie-Laure and wasn’t pleased about it. They were going to have dinner together, and Bill and Wendy were joining them. Tom and Valérie were going home to Oakland, to his new cozy, much cleaner apartment.
It was seven when Stephanie walked into the house. Andy was giving the boys their bath and she joined them, and sat down on the toilet to chat with them for a few minutes.
“Long day,” Andy commented.
“We had orientation at the Department of Emergency Management this morning, and a tour of SF General this afternoon. They’re keeping us busy. I’m doing the tour at UCSF tomorrow. It’s interesting because each of our hospitals is so different.” She tried to explain it while the boys splashed each other, and she helped Andy wash their hair.
She put them to bed while he cooked dinner. He had already fed the boys before their bath. Gabriel texted her three times while she was reading the boys a story. She texted him back when she finished, and then kissed the boys good night and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Andy told her he had eaten with Ryan and Aden, but he had made her an omelet and said there were leftovers for her. He didn’t know if she’d be home for dinner so they hadn’t waited for her. And he left her alone to eat in the kitchen. He hadn’t sat down with her, and as soon as he left the room while she ate, Gabriel texted her again.
He wanted to know if she had changed her mind about spending the night. “I wish I could,” she texted back. “I need to be here.” He was silent after that for a while, pouting perhaps, and then texted her again.
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll try,” she responded, feeling pressured by her responsibilities at hom
e, Andy looming like a jailer, and the man who wanted to make love to her every minute of the day. She went to bed early that night, and Andy stayed downstairs to watch TV. He was keeping away from her, and she was grateful not to have to talk to him. She didn’t know what to say. It was harder participating in the emergency services program here at home than it had been in Paris, where she had no responsibilities, and no husband and children to go home to at night. The juggling act she had to do in San Francisco was much more difficult, and the lies she had to tell made her feel guilty all the time.
* * *
—
The whole group met outside UCSF’s new Mission Bay facility the next morning. It was state of the art in every aspect, and everyone who worked there was proud of it, and so was Stephanie. The new facility was a masterpiece of sorts. It had taken 1.52 billion dollars to build, ten years of construction, and another ten years of planning before that. It opened on schedule. A hospital administrator had joined them to complement what Stephanie had to say. The administrator filled in numbers and statistics, and Stephanie showed the team where she worked every day. She explained that they had started at the old facility on Parnassus, above the Haight, which was why she and Andy had bought their house there. In recent years, the hospital had moved several of their departments south and east, to Mission Bay, near the baseball stadium. The buildings were vast and robots traveled the halls delivering meals and equipment.
It had been an adjustment for the staff at first, because it was so much bigger, but Stephanie said she loved working there now, and didn’t mind the drive down from her house. The working conditions were excellent. There were research facilities, a cancer hospital, a women’s specialty hospital, and a 183-bed children’s hospital. Every inch of the hospital was the most up-to-date possible, including a 207,000-square-foot outpatient building and a helipad. In Paris there was no hospital to compare to it, nor any that cost anything comparable to build. Stephanie said she felt lucky to work there. She was obviously proud as she showed them around, and Valérie watched her face carefully. She glowed when she talked about her work, and everyone in trauma and the ER knew her. It didn’t go unnoticed, and Valérie and Marie-Laure exchanged a look. She would be giving up a lot for Gabriel, her whole familiar world and status, as well as her marriage.
Turning Point Page 20