by Amy Ruttan
Only you’re not a mother and you probably never will be.
Kiri stared down at the liver and decided where to start the resection. The other part of the liver would go to the next doctor waiting in the wings. A resident stood across from her, while a scrub nurse waited for instructions.
“Scalpel.” Kiri held out her hand and the nurse set the number ten blade into her palm, handle first. She was the more experienced surgeon, so she removed the liver from the donor patient and placed it in the ice-cold preservation liquid where the Parish Hospital surgeon waited to split it.
José was a child and only needed half of the liver. The left lateral segment was destined for him.
Thankfully, the liver was healthy. There was no damage, no bleeding, spots or cysts and no signs that the liver was deteriorating, things they looked for during a transplant surgery. They would go over it once again before they placed it in José.
Kiri placed it into a stainless-steel bowl of preservation solution. Another resident whisked it to the general surgeon who would divide it. Kiri removed her gloves and got the cooler that would transport the liver part back to Miami.
Once the splitting was complete and she was in the ambulance she would call Alejandro and let him know they were on their way, which would give him time to get José anesthetized and into the operating room, so it would just be a matter of transplanting the organ into José.
It was a delicate dance and Kiri was impressed that a man like Alejandro would take up such a specialized and difficult field, especially given his background. Wasn’t he worried about people finding out?
And she could only imagine the public relations nightmare that it would cause if the general public did find out what the respected surgeon had done in his past.
As she mulled over trying to explain that to the board of directors if they ever found out, a memory of Alejandro crept into her mind.
The tattoo of the large eagle covering his chest.
She remembered running her fingers over the tattoo, tracing the delicate pattern and swirls of ink.
“It’s an interesting choice for a tattoo,” she whispered as he ran his hands down her back and she tracked the gentle ink designs with her fingertip.
“It covers a scar,” he said as he kissed her neck.
“A scar? It must be a large scar.”
He nodded. “Yeah, ever since I was a kid. When I became an adult I covered it with something meaningful to me.”
“An eagle?”
“Sí.”
“Why?”
“No more questions.”
He grinned and kissed her, causing her to forget all the questions she still had about him and just feel the way his kisses fired her blood.
“Dr. Bhardwaj?”
Kiri shook thoughts about Alejandro out of her head and stepped forward, opening the cooler filled with preservation solution. The surgeon from Parish Hospital gently placed the liver segment inside.
Once they were sure the liver was safe and that the left branches of the artery and bile duct hadn’t been damaged, Kiri closed the lid and moved out of the operating room. Once she had got out of her gown and scrub cap she followed a nurse out to the ambulance bay, where an ambulance was waiting to rush her back to the airport.
She pulled out her cell phone and hit the number she’d programmed in to direct her straight to Alejandro.
“Dr. Valentino,” he said quickly.
“It’s Kiri. The liver is viable and I’m on my way. Should be there in a couple of hours.”
“I’ll prep him.” Alejandro hung up on her and she slipped the phone back into her pocket as she climbed into the back of the ambulance with her precious cargo.
The paramedic who rode in the back with her secured her in her seat. She wasn’t going to take her eyes off the liver and it was protocol at Buena Vista. She was responsible for the organ. With her nod, the siren started up and the ambulance raced out of the bay at Parish Hospital.
Even though the sirens were blaring, they were trying to make their way through the crowded French Quarter at dusk. Already there were partygoers out, horse-drawn carriages and tourists everywhere.
The paramedic driving was cursing under his breath.
Come on.
She glanced out the back window and behind her the crowd of people filled in any space that they had just cleared. Finally the ambulance got a break in the crowds and headed out on Canal Street and onto the expressway that would whisk them on an elevated highway west to Louis Armstrong Airport.
She closed her eyes as the ambulance rocked slightly, whipping down the highway to the private charter plane that was waiting to take her back to Miami.
“Parish Hospital isn’t placed in the best location in New Orleans,” the paramedic across from her said. “The French Quarter this time of night is bad.”
“I can only imagine, but it’s not as bad as rush hour in New York,” Kiri said, sharing a smile with the paramedic. They didn’t say anything else. Kiri didn’t have much to say because, like the paramedics, they all knew that a life had ended.
Even though the donor had been an adult they had still been someone’s child. Someone who had been loved. Lives would be saved tonight because of the generous donation, but also tonight there would be people mourning.
Loved ones grieving.
Once she was on the plane she’d feel better, but she wouldn’t be at ease until the liver was in José and the boy was pulling through.
Only then would she relax.
* * *
Alejandro stared down at José lying on the table, intubated and waiting for the liver. The boy was on veno-venous bypass and Alejandro had almost finished removing José’s damaged liver from his body. He wanted to make sure that he left good lengths of vessel so that when he reanastomosed the donor liver it would take.
This was José’s one shot.
Just like it had been yours.
Any transplant surgery was hard for him, even after all this time, because at one time he’d been on the table, hooked up to bypass as a young boy, his father being taken off life support in the operating room next to him so that Alejandro could be given a fighting chance at life.
His brothers having to make the monumental decision to end their father’s life and become orphans themselves so that Alejandro could go on living. Every surgery stirred those memories in him, but he still wouldn’t change it for the world. When he’d visited his father’s grave months later, because he’d been in the ICU when his parents had been buried, he’d promised his father he would save others.
He’d dedicate his second chance at life to transplant surgery.
He would help other children. Other families.
The operating-room door opened and Kiri entered, masked, carrying the cooler.
“It’s about time,” he said under his breath, barely glancing up as he worked over José.
“Like I can control the speed of a plane,” Kiri said. She handed the cooler off to Alejandro’s resident, Dr. Page, who had fresh preservation solution ready and waiting.
“Are you going to scrub in and assist?” Alejandro asked. He wasn’t sure why he asked, but he figured he might as well make the offer, because she was probably going to stay anyway.
“You read my mind.”
He grinned to himself and watched her as she headed back into the scrub room to get properly attired.
Once she was scrubbed and gowned she joined him on the opposite side of the table, and the nurse handed her the retractor.
“You’ve done a nice job of dividing the bile duct,” she said. “Have you removed his gallbladder too?”
“Yes, to avoid future complications, and thank you for the compliment, Dr. Bhardwaj.”
“My pleasure,” she said.
&nb
sp; “And I didn’t thank you properly for flying to New Orleans and back to retrieve the liver. It was a lot easier on my patient and his family for me to be here.”
She nodded. “I thought as much. I’m sure they were thrilled.”
“Yes, and scared beyond belief.”
“I don’t blame them. If it were my child...” She trailed off and cleared her throat. “It’s good you were there and I’d never been to New Orleans before. Not that I saw much of the city.”
“That’s too bad. It’s a great city,” Alejandro remarked. “The Café du Monde is one of my favorite places for café au lait and beignets.”
“Beignets?”
“Fried pastries covered in icing sugar. Beautiful, but evil.” And he winked at her.
She shook her head. “I’m not much into baked goods.”
“Oh?”
“I’m more of a savory person. French fries.”
“I don’t think that’s a specific New Orleans food.”
“I didn’t say it was,” Kiri said. “Before my parents moved to New York they lived with relatives in London, England. So when we visited my family there before visiting the rest of the family in Mumbai, we had traditional fish and chips on the banks of the Thames. It was the best.”
“Were you born in Mumbai?” he asked.
“Nope, New York City. Manhattan, to be precise. Where were you born? You speak fluent Spanish.”
“How is the liver looking, Dr. Page?” Alejandro asked, ignoring her question. He had been born in Miami, but he didn’t feel like talking about Heliconia at the moment, the country his parents had come from, because it would remind him of that day he’d lost his parents. It was bad enough the ghosts of that memory haunted him every time he went into the operating room, but he wouldn’t talk about that day.
The day he’d been shot.
And if on cue his scar twinged in memory of it, his heart skipping a beat to remind him.
“It’s looking great, Dr. Valentino. Ready when you are,” Dr. Page said.
“I’m ready.”
“Walking with the liver,” Dr. Page announced, and she stopped beside him. Alejandro set down his instruments and gently reached into the stainless-steel bowl to lift out the liver. The sounds of the operating room were drowned out. All he could hear was his own pulse thundering in his ears as he steadied himself and focused on gently placing the liver where he needed it to be in order to transplant it into José’s body.
Giving José that second chance at life, like he’d been granted.
A life of antirejection drugs and taking care of yourself, but for the price of life it was something that Alejandro was willing to pay, just like José and his family were.
“You’re awake!”
Alejandro’s eyes focused and he saw Dante and Rafe hovering over him. Santi was slumping in the corner, sulking. His eyes were red.
He tried to talk, but couldn’t. His throat hurt and it wasn’t the only thing.
“Don’t try to talk,” Dante said. “You’ve just had surgery to replace your heart and they just removed the tube from your throat.”
He glanced over at Rafe, who nodded. His eyes were red too, bloodshot.
“Do you remember what happened?” Dante asked.
Alejandro nodded and winced as tears stung his eyes. The sound of shots still seemed to be ringing in his ears.
“The police are going to come and they want you to look at pictures. Do you remember the men who came in?”
Alejandro nodded, because he would never forget those scary men with the guns. Then he grimaced, his chest hurting.
“You were shot. Remember?” Dante said again. “Don’t try to move. You’re still recovering. Please take it easy.”
And then he shot a look at Santi, asking silently where Mom and Dad were. Santi would know why Mami and Pappi weren’t here. He needed them. He wanted his parents.
Santi’s eyes were dark, hollow. “Mami and Pappi are dead. You have Pappi’s heart.”
He heard screaming in his head, realizing that he was crying out in his mind when he was unable to do it physically. Only the screams were the monitors and his brothers were calling for help as he had a seizure.
“It’s a nice job,” Alejandro said, shaking those memories from his head. He didn’t want to think about his parents right now. Those nightmares of the shooting, there was no place for them. He had to stop thinking about them. He needed to focus on the surgery as he began a caval replacement. Usually he would take the approach of navel preservation cavocavostomy, but in José’s case his IVC was completely fried so Alejandro used the donor IVC to replace José’s.
“I didn’t split it, just removed it,” Kiri said.
“Still, you kept all the arteries intact. It’s a beautiful liver.”
Kiri nodded. “It’ll give him the best shot.”
“It’s the best part of the job,” Alejandro said, then he grinned at her.
“What is?” she asked.
“Giving them their best shot. Every child deserves a chance at life.”
“Y-yes...of c-course.” She stammered over her words, like she was trying to swallow down sadness.
Had Kiri lost someone? A child, perhaps, who still haunted her? When she’d come into his office he’d noticed that she didn’t wear a ring on her finger, but that didn’t mean anything. Not really. She could still be involved with someone.
She could have a family. The thought of her with another man made him angry. Not that he had any claim over her other than a one-night stand five years ago when he’d still been dancing. One heated one-night stand that still stuck with him.
Since Kiri he hadn’t seriously dated anyone. He’d just thrown himself into his work, but there were times he recalled her hands on him, the scent of her, the taste of her, and the thought of her with another man was just too much for him to take at the moment.
“How did your family take to moving down here from New York City?”
She cocked an eyebrow above her surgical mask. “I’m an adult. My parents took it fine, I suppose. They really don’t have a say over where I go.”
“Not your parents. I mean your husband or significant other.”
“I’m not married and there’s no significant other, not that it’s any of your business.”
“I was just curious. You don’t have to snap at me.”
Her dark eyes narrowed. “How about we focus on the surgery?”
“I like to chat when I’m doing surgeries. Besides, you had no qualms when we were talking about café au lait and beignets.”
“I suppose I didn’t. Still, we should focus.”
“I am.”
“How so?”
“Chatting helps me focus.”
“Really?” she asked in disbelief.
“What helps you keep your focus during surgery, then?” he asked.
“Silence.” There was a twinkle in her eyes.
There were a few snickers of laughter and Alejandro couldn’t help but smile. This was why he’d been attracted to her all those years ago. She was feisty, fiery. She might act like a bit of a wallflower, but she wasn’t.
She was far from it, deep down.
They didn’t say anything further as Alejandro finished the surgery. Before he closed they took José off bypass. And he held his breath, waiting for the donor liver to pink up and let him know that it was being accepted by the body for now. There was always the chance that it could be rejected later on, but Alejandro wouldn’t close until he saw the blood flow back into the liver.
That would let him know that he’d done his job well for now.
“Take him off bypass.”
The machines whirred to a stop and Alejandro watched the liver.
Come on.<
br />
The liver pinked up and he said a silent prayer that it had taken so well. “Excellent job, everyone. Let’s get this little man closed up and into the ICU.”
“Fine work, Dr. Valentino,” Kiri said.
He nodded in acknowledgment, but didn’t look at her as he finished his job. He probably should let a resident close, but he wanted to see José’s case through. He’d brought the boy this far.
And he’d promised José’s mother that he would see it through. That he wouldn’t leave José’s side.
Once it was done and José was stabilized Alejandro finally stepped away and let residents and nurses take care of his charge. He would check on José in the ICU before he left for the night. Kiri was already in the scrub room, cleaning up, as he peeled off his mask, tossing it in the receptacle.
“There’s a lawyer pacing the halls, looking for you,” Kiri said. There was a hint of censure in her voice.
“It’s not a malpractice suit,” Alejandro snapped. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking that. I assume it’s your injunction about the baby, but it doesn’t look good for a lawyer to be pacing the halls of the hospital, waiting for a surgeon.”
“Are you afraid of the image he’ll cast?” Alejandro teased as he ran his hands under the water.
“Yes.” She toweled off her hands. “Especially as he’s looking for one of my surgeons.”
He grinned. “I am one of your surgeons?”
“Of course. I am the pediatric head. You’re a pediatric surgeon, are you not?”
“Absolutely.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her.
She rolled her eyes, but a smile played at the corner of her mouth. “You’re pathetic.”
“I thought you were just praising my prowess in there?”
“You’re very infuriating. Where did you learn to be so annoying?”
“I have three older brothers, all of them in the medical field.”
“Oh, good Lord.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t you have siblings?”
“We’re going to start with the personal interrogation again, are we?”
“Hey, I like to get to know my colleagues.”