Mending the Doctor's Heart

by Sophia Sasson

  “Wow! There are clinics Stateside that still don’t have electronic health records. How did you manage that?”

  Smiling, he pointed to the computer and logged in. “The people in Washington, DC, have no idea how efficient we can be with money when we want to. The grant they gave us covered the EHRs, too. Instead of buying one of those expensive ones the companies sell, my friend George designed this database. The man went to MIT. He’s settled in Boston now, but when I called him up to do us a favor, he flew over for two weeks, figured out the specs and then did his computer magic. We had the servers and computers shipped from Japan.”

  She nodded. “I always knew you could do anything you wanted. You’ve accomplished more here in a few years than people do in generations.”

  “It wasn’t all just me. I hired Maria two years ago and she’s been here right alongside me. She helped write the grant that let us build the hospital.”

  Anna turned toward the computer and tapped some keys, but not before he caught the pain in her eyes. Taking credit for everything was easy, but not truthful. He knew how to construct a building but he knew nothing about what it took to run a hospital—Maria had done all that. She had been his partner in every way; his dreams had become her goals. Being with Anna made him forget that, and he wanted to make sure he reminded himself. He owed Maria.

  He pointed to various features of the EHR as Anna navigated his mother’s chart.

  “Looks like she has stage 3 breast cancer. That’s serious, but not fatal. She hasn’t seen a breast surgeon, which is what I’d recommend. They may suggest surgery or send her to a radiation oncologist. I know some good people in California if you fly her over.”

  Nico shook his head. “She doesn’t want to leave the island.”

  Anna gaped at him. “Are you crazy? This is her life we’re talking about. She doesn’t have to move there forever, just for treatment. There are even some medical assistance programs if you can’t afford the treatment.”

  He bristled. “It’s not the money. This island has been her whole life—she wants to die here surrounded by family, in her home. She doesn’t want to live out her last days thousands of miles away in a sterile hospital.”

  “But she doesn’t have to die! The five-year survival rates are pretty good. Treatment means more years of life for her...”

  “Yes, but at what cost? Being sick all the time, lying in a bed? She wants to enjoy her last days and go out as the vibrant woman she is. That’s how she wants to be remembered, not as a sick old lady.”

  Her wide eyes and slight pout told him that she not only disagreed, but wanted to dig her heels in and make him see things her way. And he wanted nothing more than to pick her up and kiss the pout right off her face.

  “It’s okay, Anna, I appreciate what you’re saying, but you know it’s not the way we do things here. My mother wants to die with dignity. She doesn’t want to linger on and be a burden to her family.”

  “As a doctor, it’s my job to save people, and your mother is by no means terminal. If you want to be obstinate, fine. There’s only so much I can do.”

  “It’s not your place to say how I should or should not live my life.”

  Nico turned to see his mother standing there and groaned. Why couldn’t he catch a break? First Uncle Bruno and now his mother. The look in her eyes told him he was in for a long lecture. Approaching her, he spoke softly in Chamorro. “Nana, Anna is trying to help. Please don’t start something. We don’t have to listen to her.”

  “You do know I speak Chamorro, and my hearing is perfect.” Anna’s tone reminded him of the time he’d taken her to see the Fish Eye Marine Park and she’d been asked to pay the tourist fee, which was twice as much as the residents’ ticket price. She had planted her feet and given the baby-faced teenager working the counter an earful about how she was just as much a resident as Nico. The poor kid probably hadn’t received that kind of scolding since he was a toddler.

  He gave her an exasperated look, remembering why they’d had to buy the house in Tumon Bay to begin with. For some reason, Anna and his mother just rubbed each other the wrong way and he always had the misfortune of being caught in the middle.

  Anna stepped up to his mother, and short of physically separating them, Nico realized he wasn’t going to avoid an argument today.

  “Nana, I understand that you want to die at home, I respect that. But you don’t have to die at all. Women survive breast cancer and go on to have happy, healthy, productive lives. You can see your grandchildren grow up. Surely that’s worth the sacrifice of getting treatment.”

  She’d called his mother Nana. That’s what Anna had always called her. When he’d first introduced the two women, Anna had insisted on calling her Mrs. Atao. That had changed when they got engaged, but it warmed his soul to know she still thought of his mother as Nana.

  “Child, when you’re my age, you’ll see that life is about quality rather than quantity. It’s time for me to go. You mainland people fight to the end, painfully eking out every breath. That’s not how we do it here.”

  He watched Anna blow out a frustrated breath. She didn’t understand; never had.

  “Thank you for looking at her chart,” Nico said. “Let me drive you back.”

  She blinked up at him, then shuffled her feet. “Is there someone else who can give me a ride?”

  It was just as well. They’d just fight all the way back, and it wasn’t worth it anymore. “I’ll arrange it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “IS SHE GONE?”

  Nico didn’t have to ask Maria who she meant. Even in a disaster with the phone lines and internet down, Nana had managed to inform the entire island that Anna was back. Everyone who had ever known or met Anna had stopped by or told a friend to go talk to Maria to rehash what they’d heard and to give her unsolicited advice. So, his normally levelheaded Maria had become a little paranoid about what Anna’s arrival meant.

  “Yes, neni, I asked Lenny to drive her back to the field hospital.”

  He was sitting in the office he and Maria shared. Eventually it would be her office as the hospital administrator and he would only come to the hospital as needed. He didn’t know anything about running a hospital, but he knew how to get a building built, how to get supplies on and off the island. When he met Anna, he’d been working for a retailer who was putting up new shopping centers to cater to the hordes of Japanese and Korean tourists who flocked to Guam on holiday. Putting up the hospital had taken every ounce of his focus and effort for the past four years; he hadn’t thoroughly considered what he would do once it was fully operational in three months. As majority shareholder, he would be running the hospital’s board of directors, but was that enough for the rest of his life? He’d been so focused on getting the hospital built that he hadn’t contemplated long-term plans. The hospital was his way of getting closure for Lucas’s death. A few months ago, when the building had passed inspection, he’d known that he’d finally paid the penance for letting down his family.

  “She’s not what I expected.” Maria had set up this office so their desks were back to back; she wanted them to face each other while they worked. She continued to tap away on her keyboard.

  “Out with it, Maria, whatever it is.”

  She looked up at him through hooded lashes, her dark eyes thoughtful. “First of all, you said she was beautiful.” This was what he loved about her. There were no games, no innuendoes or interpretation required. She didn’t hide her feelings. If she didn’t like something, she let him know in fierce terms, if she was upset with him, he knew exactly why. An open book.

  “I was honest with you.”

  “Beautiful is what I am. Easy on the eyes, considered desirable by most men. Anna? Anna is gorgeous. She’s the kind of woman men fantasize about, pin up on locker walls. You could’ve warned me—I would have put on so
me makeup, maybe gone to Gina’s salon for the tsunami special highlights.”

  “Maria!”

  “I’m not fishing for a compliment. I just don’t want you to embarrass yourself in front of her. There were all these drool stains all over your mouth.” She made a big show of wiping her own chin.

  He rolled his eyes and stood. Maria didn’t want a compliment, but she was getting ready to drop something heavy on him. It was her style, to make him smile or slap his forehead before she got to the heart of the matter. He went to her side and she turned her face so he could drop a kiss on her cheek. “So you gonna tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  “She’s still in love with you.”

  “Maria.”

  “Trust me, a woman can tell these things. She might be angry, and still hurting, and maybe she doesn’t know it, but the look on her face when she saw me...” Maria twisted her own face “...and when she saw you come and put your arm around me. It was as if she was a drowning woman and I had just taken away her life vest. I can’t explain it, just a feeling—” she tapped her chest “—I got in here. The look in her eyes was so... I can’t even describe it.”

  Maria didn’t need to say more. Nico knew exactly what she meant. It was the bitter sadness in Anna’s eyes. It had wrenched his soul when he’d seen it in the field hospital. It was what had made him work all night with the tractor to clear the road so he had an excuse to bring her to the hospital, hoping she’d find some comfort in it like he had.

  “She’s still not over Lucas’s death. Anna’s a stubborn woman and she won’t stop blaming herself. Until she does, she can’t grieve for him.”

  Maria shook her head. “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “You know this how?”

  “She regrets leaving you, Nico. I know it, I could see it in her eyes when she looked at you.”

  “You’re reading too much into things. She’s already agreed to sign the divorce papers.”

  “And have you given them to her?”

  He stepped away. “How? The only printout I had is under a foot of water. And unless you’ve been hiding an internet connection somewhere, I can’t pull it from my backup files.”

  Maria sighed in frustration. “There has to be someone on this island who has managed to get a satellite connection working.”

  There was. But he wasn’t going to mention it to her.

  “I’ll get hold of my cousin Bitsy at the Maestro Hotel—I bet they have internet.” Internet connectivity was an ongoing problem on Guam. The hotels seemed to have better luck using satellite services, so that’s what Nico had installed in the hospital. But the dish had been damaged in the disaster.

  “Don’t worry—she’s here for a few more days. I’ll get the papers signed.”

  Maria raised one brow. “You sure you haven’t changed your mind after seeing her? My booty’s never going to be as skinny as hers.”

  He laughed and gave her another kiss. “I like you just the way you are, Maria. You’re nothing like Anna, and I don’t want you to be.” And that was the truth. Nobody could replace Anna, and he didn’t want Maria to be a stand-in. He planned to love Maria the way she deserved to be loved; for the wonderful woman that she was.

  “Okay, then, I have some good news.”

  He went back to his desk and started his computer. Though the internet wasn’t working, he needed to work on his spreadsheets to record and calculate the damages he’d need to submit to the insurance company. He also needed to figure out how long their opening would be delayed.

  “The governor stopped by while you were out getting Anna. That’s what I came to the burn unit to tell you, but then I thought I’d wait until you could focus.”

  He sat up. The governor was newly elected and was not well-known to the Atao family. They had gotten lucky with the previous governor because he happened to be a good friend of Uncle Bruno’s and had helped them get the necessary permits and permissions for the hospital. Having the permit in place was what had clinched the grant money. Nico had been meaning to make friends with the new maga’låhi and get into his good graces. So much on Guam happened because of who you knew and hadn’t angered.

  “Apparently Guam Hospital is beyond repair. The building will have to be torn down. There’s an uproar in the community because a lot of their patients died when part of the building collapsed, not because of the actual tsunami.”

  “You call this good news?” Nico had been so focused on helping people near his home base of Talofofo that he hadn’t really kept up with what was happening on the other side of the island. He knew Guam hospital wasn’t operational; that was why he had opened up his building and hurriedly set up whatever equipment was still functioning with Dr. Balachandra’s help.

  “We need a hospital on the island, especially now, and the governor wants it to be this hospital. He wants to cut a deal with us—funding, staff and any equipment that can be salvaged from the other hospital.”

  Maria’s eyes were alight with excitement but Nico’s head was starting to throb. “Let me guess, he needs us to go operational now.”

  She nodded. “That’s the downside. But we’re so close. Hiring staff was the major problem, so if we get all of the old hospital staff, things can happen quickly.”

  “Maria, we don’t have a chief medical officer. I don’t want to put Dr. Gejan in charge here.” Dr. Gejan had been the CMO at Guam Hospital for almost two decades. He had done nothing to progress medical care in Guam. Nico’s vision was to bring in someone who would make sure the hospital could provide care that was equivalent to, or better than, what folks received on the mainland. Maria had put an advertisement in the major medical journals and they had two candidates they were interviewing in the next month. The CMO was the linchpin who would attract other medical specialists to rotate through the hospital. He didn’t want the same old staff and the same old substandard hospital.

  She bit her lip. “Could we use one of the other doctors on a temporary basis?” Nico couldn’t think of anyone who was qualified. “Let me talk to Domingo and see if he thinks there’s anyone good enough over there.” Domingo was Nico’s neighbor and had worked as a billing clerk at the hospital for nearly twenty years. Not only did he know everyone there, he had a beat on every nurse and doctor in the hospital. When they came to settle their bills, patients talked to him about the quality of the care they’d received.

  “I told the governor we’ll come see him tomorrow morning.”

  “Maria, that’s not enough time.” He tamped down his irritation. Maria was good at what she did, but she should have consulted him before agreeing to a meet. She still operated like a stateside girl sometimes, assuming that everything worked according to rules. That wasn’t how Guam operated.

  “It’s just to talk generally about how this would work. How much funding he can give us, what we need—that kind of thing.” She gave an exasperated sigh. “Look around, Nico. We’re already functioning as a hospital. I don’t even want to think about what will happen if someone sues us—we don’t have our malpractice insurance squared away. Being officially designated by the government will give us some protection.”

  He wasn’t worried about those things. People wouldn’t sue him. Not for taking care of them when there was no other option on the island. “I don’t want to go into that kind of meeting with back-of-the-envelope calculations. He’ll ask us how much we want and hold us to the numbers we quote him. We need time to put together cost projections, timelines—”

  “Nico! Come on! We’re the only hospital around. People need a place to go. We get this done, one way or another. That’s why you built this place.”

  He took a deep breath. She was right, that was exactly why he’d built the hospital, and even if the governor offered them nothing, Nico would still open the door—not that there was one right now—and make sure people g
ot care. This was why Maria was good for him. She reminded him of his mission, kept him on track so he didn’t let the details take away from the big picture.

  “I don’t want to take the staff wholesale from the other hospital. I want good people. See if you can get hold of those candidates we want to interview for the CMO position. Maybe we can move up the interviews, bring them in to run the hospital for a week and see how they do.”

  She slapped a hand on the desk. “Now, that’s the spirit. If they can run this place in the middle of this chaos, they can do the job. But, my darling, where am I going to find a working phone?”

  He grinned. “Do I have to solve all your problems? Talk to Bruno. He knows someone who works at the utilities—they’ll know who has a working phone.”

  As he went back to his spreadsheets, a fleeting thought took hold in his mind. There was one person who would make the perfect CMO for the hospital. He shook his head. It would be playing with fire.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NICO HADN’T SHOWN up for three days. She should be relieved. Apparently, local nurses and doctors from Guam Hospital had taken over the care of patients at Nico’s Talofofo facility since the regular hospital had collapsed. The airport had been cleared and more help was arriving daily, so Anna had the opportunity to get a rare eight hours of rest. Given the grueling hours of the past several days, she should be exhausted and ready to drop, but she couldn’t even bring herself to lie down. Two hundred and ninety-seven hours before her deployment ended. She was buzzing with energy, and she knew why. She had to get closure. There was no other way.