First Time in Forever

by Sarah Morgan

  How had he got himself in this situation?

  For the first time in years he’d made a misjudgment. He’d thought Veronica was the sort of woman who was happy to live in the moment. Turned out he was wrong about that.

  “I have to go, Veronica.”

  “All right, I’ll flex. I’m sorry, I’m being a shrew. Let me cook you dinner tonight, I promise I won’t complain if you’re late. You can show up whenever. I’ll—”

  “Veronica—” he cut across her “—do not apologize to me when I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. You need to find a guy who will give you the attention you deserve.”

  There was a tense silence. “Are you saying it’s over?”

  As far as Sean was concerned it had never started. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. There are hundreds of guys out there only too willing to flex. Go and find one of them.” He hung up, aware that the nurse was still watching him.

  He was so tired he couldn’t even remember her name.

  Ann? No, that wasn’t right.

  Angela. Yes, it was Angela.

  Fatigue descended like a gray fog, slowing his thinking. He needed sleep.

  He’d been called to an emergency in the night and had been on his feet operating since dawn. Soon the adrenaline would fade and when it did he knew he was going to crash big-time. Sean wanted to be somewhere near his bed when that happened. He had the use of a room at the hospital but he preferred to make it back to his waterside apartment where he could nurse a beer and watch life on the water.

  “Dr. O’Neil? Sean? I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have put the call through if I’d known it was personal. She said she was a doctor.” The look in her eyes told him she’d have no objection to being Veronica’s replacement. Sean didn’t think she’d be flattered to know he’d temporarily forgotten her existence.

  “Not your fault. I’ll talk to the relatives—” He was tempted to take a shower first, but then he remembered the white face of the boy’s mother when she’d arrived at the hospital and decided the shower could wait. “I’ll go and see them now.”

  “You’ve had a really long day. If you want to come by my place after work, I make a mac and cheese that is wicked good.”

  She was sweet, caring and pretty. Angela would come close to most men’s idea of a perfect woman.

  Not his.

  His idea of a perfect woman was one who didn’t want anything from him.

  Relationships meant sacrifice and compromise. He wasn’t prepared to do either of those things, which was why he had remained resolutely single.

  “As you just witnessed, I am an appalling date.” He managed what he hoped was a disarming smile. “I’d either be working and not show up at all, or so tired I’d fall asleep on your sofa. You can definitely do better.”

  “I think you’re amazing, Dr. O’Neil. I work with loads of doctors, and you’re easily the best. If I ever needed a surgeon, I’d want you to look after me. And I wouldn’t care if you fell asleep on my sofa.”

  “Yes, you would.” Eventually they always did. “I’ll go and talk to the family now.”

  “That’s kind of you. His mother is worried.”

  *

  HE SAW THE worry the moment he laid eyes on the woman.

  She sat without moving, her hands gripping her skirt as she tried to contain anxiety made worse by waiting. Her husband was on his feet, hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders hunched as he talked to the coach. Sean knew the coach vaguely. He’d found him to be ruthless and relentlessly pushy and it seemed that surgery on his star player hadn’t softened his approach.

  The guy wanted miracles and he wanted them yesterday. Sean knew this particular coach’s priority wasn’t the long-term welfare of the kid lying in the OR, but the future of his team. As a sports injury specialist he dealt with players and coaches all the time. Some were great. Others made him wish he’d chosen law instead of medicine.

  The moment the boy’s father saw Sean he sprang forward like a Rottweiler pouncing on an intruder.

  “Well?”

  The coach was drinking water from a plastic cup. “You fixed it?”

  He made it sound like a hole in a roof, Sean thought. Slap a new shingle on and it will be as good as new. Change the tire and get the car back on the road.

  “Surgery is only the beginning. It’s going to be a long process.”

  “Maybe you should have got him into surgery sooner instead of waiting.”

  Maybe you should stop practicing armchair medicine.

  Noticing the boy’s mother digging her nails into her legs, Sean decided not to lock horns. “All the research shows that the outcome is better when surgery is carried out on a pain-free mobile joint.” He’d told them the same thing a week before but neither the coach nor the father had wanted to listen then and they didn’t want to listen now.

  “How soon can he play again?”

  Sean wondered what it must be like for the boy, growing up with these two on his back.

  “It’s too early to set a timetable for return. If you push too hard, he won’t be playing at all. The focus now is on rehab. He has to take that seriously. So do you.” This time his tone was as blunt as his words. He’d seen promising careers ruined by coaches who pushed too hard too soon, and by players without the patience to understand that the body didn’t heal according to a sporting schedule.

  “It’s a competitive world, Dr. O’Neil. Staying at the top takes determination.”

  Sean wondered if the coach was talking about his player or himself. “It also takes a healthy body.”

  The boy’s mother, silent until now, stood up. “Is he all right?” The question earned her a scowl from her husband.

  “Hell, woman, I just asked him that! Try listening.”

  “You didn’t ask.” Her voice shook. “You asked if he’d play again. That’s all you care about. He’s a person, Jim, not a machine. He’s our son.”

  “At his age I was—”

  “I know what you were doing at his age and I tell you if you carry on like this you will destroy your relationship with him. He will hate you forever.”

  “He should be thanking me for pushing him. He has talent. Ambition. It needs to be nurtured.”

  “It’s your ambition, Jim. This was your ambition and now you’re trying to live all your dreams through your son. And what you’re doing isn’t nurturing. You put pressure on him and then layer more and more on until the boy is crushed under the weight of it.” The words burst out of her and she paused for a moment as if she’d shocked herself. “I apologize, Dr. O’Neil.”

  “No need to apologize. I understand your concern.”

  Tension snapped his muscles tight. No one understood the pressures of family expectation better than he did. He’d been raised with it.

  Do you know how it feels to be crushed by the weight of someone else’s dreams? Do you know how that feels, Sean?

  The voice in his head was so real he rocked on his feet and had to stop himself glancing over his shoulder to check his father wasn’t standing there. He’d been dead two years, but sometimes it felt like yesterday.

  He thrust the sudden wash of grief aside, uncomfortable with the sudden intrusion of the personal into his professional life.

  He was more in need of sleep than he’d thought.

  “Scott’s doing fine, Mrs. Turner. Everything went smoothly. You’ll be able to see him soon.”

  The tension left the woman’s body. “Thank you, Doctor. I— You’ve been so good to him right from the start. And to me. When he starts playing—” she shot her husband a look “—how do we know the same thing won’t happen again? He wasn’t even near another player. He just crumpled.”

  “Eighty percent of ACL tears are non-contact.” Sean ignored both the woman’s husband and the coach and focused on her. He felt sorry for her, the referee in a game of ambition. “The anterior cruciate ligament connects your thigh to your shin. It doesn’t do a whole lot if you’re just going about yo
ur normal day, but it’s an essential part of controlling the rotation forces developed during twisting actions.”

  She gave him a blank look. “Twisting actions?”

  “Jumping, pivoting and abrupt changes of direction. It’s an injury common among soccer players, basketball players and skiers.”

  “Your brother Tyler had the same, didn’t he?” The coach butted in. “And it was all over for him. It killed his career as a ski racer. Hell of a blow for such a gifted athlete.”

  His brother’s injury had been far more complicated than that, but Sean never talked about his famous brother. “Our aim with surgery is to return the knee joint to near-normal stability and function but it’s a team effort and rehabilitation is a big part of that effort. Scott is young, fit and motivated. I’m confident he’ll make a full recovery and be as strong as he was before the injury, providing you encourage him to attack rehab with the same degree of dedication he shows to the game.” He hardened his tone because he needed them to pay attention. “Push too hard or too soon and that won’t be the case.”

  The coach nodded. “So can we start rehabilitation right away?”

  Sure, just throw him a ball while he’s still unconscious.

  “We generally find it helps for a patient to have come around from the anesthetic.”

  The man’s cheeks turned dusky-red. “You think I’m pushy, but this kid just wants to play and it’s my job to make sure he gets whatever he needs. Which is why we’re here,” he said gruffly. “People say you’re the best. Everyone I talked to gave me the same response. If it’s a knee injury, you want Sean O’Neil. ACL reconstruction and sports injuries are your specialty. Didn’t realize you were Tyler O’Neil’s brother until a few weeks ago. How’s he coping now he can’t compete? That must be hard.”

  “He’s doing just fine.” The response was automatic. At the height of Tyler’s skiing success the whole family had been bombarded by the media and they’d learned to deflect the intrusive questions, some about Tyler’s breathtaking talent, others about his colorful personal life.

  “I read somewhere he can only ski for recreation now.” The coach pulled a face. “Must be hard for a guy like Tyler. I met him once.”

  Making a note to commiserate with his brother, Sean steered the conversation back on topic. “Let’s focus on Scott.” He went through it again, repeating words he’d already spoken.

  Drumming the message home took another twenty minutes. By the time he’d showered, checked on a few of his patients and climbed into his car, two hours had passed.

  Sean sat for a moment, summoning the energy to drive the distance to his waterfront home.

  The weekend lay ahead, a stretch of time filled with infinite possibilities.

  For the next forty-eight hours his time was his own and he was ready to savor every moment. But first he was going to sleep.

  The phone he kept for his personal use rang and he cursed for a moment, assuming it was Veronica, and then frowned when the screen told him it was his twin brother, Jackson. Along with the name came the guilt. It festered inside him, buried deep but always there.

  He wondered why his brother would be calling him late on a Friday.

  A crisis at home?

  Snow Crystal Resort had been in their family for four generations. It hadn’t occurred to any of them that it might not be in the family for another four. The sudden death of his father had revealed the truth. The business had been in trouble for years. The discovery that their home was under threat had sent a ripple of shock through the whole family.

  It was Jackson who had left a thriving business in Europe to return home to Vermont and save Snow Crystal from a disaster none of the three brothers had even known existed.

  Sean stared at the phone in his hand.

  Guilt crawled over his skin because he knew it wasn’t the pressures of his job that kept him away.

  Breathing deeply, he settled back in his seat, ready to catch up on news from home and promising himself that next time he was going to be the one who made the call. He was going to do better at staying in touch.

  “Hey—” he answered the call with a smile “—you fell over, smashed your knee and now you need a decent surgeon?”

  There was no answering banter and no small talk. “You need to get yourself back here. It’s Gramps.”

  Running Snow Crystal Resort was a never-ending tug of war between Jackson and their grandfather. “What’s he done this time? He wants you to knock down the lodges? Close the spa?”

  “He collapsed. He’s in the hospital and you need to come.”

  It took a moment for the words to sink in and when they did it was as if someone had sucked all the oxygen from the air.

  Like all of them, he considered Walter O’Neil invincible. He was as strong as the mountains that had been home for all his life.

  And he was eighty years of age.

  “Collapsed?” Sean tightened his grip on the phone, remembering the number of times he’d said that the only way his grandfather would leave his beloved Snow Crystal would be if he was carried out in an ambulance. “What does that mean? Cardiac or neurological? Stroke or heart attack? Tell me in medical terms.”

  “I don’t know the medical terms! It’s his heart, they think. He had that pain last winter, remember? They’re doing tests. He’s alive, that’s what counts. They didn’t say much and I was focusing on Mom and Grams. You’re the doctor, which is why I’m telling you to get your butt back here now so you can translate doctor-speak. I can handle the business but this is your domain. You need to come home, Sean.”

  Home?

  Home was his apartment in Boston with his state-of-the-art sound system, not a lake set against a backdrop of mountains and surrounded by a forest that had their family history carved into the trees.

  Sean leaned his head back and stared up at the perfect blue sky that formed a contrast to the dark emotions swirling inside him.

  He imagined his grandfather, pale and helpless, trapped in the sterile environment of a hospital, away from his precious Snow Crystal.

  “Sean?” Jackson’s voice came through the speaker. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” His other hand gripped the wheel of his car, knuckles white because there were things his brother didn’t know. Things they hadn’t talked about.

  “Mom and Grams need you. You’re the doctor in the family. I can handle the business but I can’t handle this.”

  “Was someone with him when it happened? Grams?”

  “Not Grams. He was with Élise. She acted very quickly. If she hadn’t, we’d be having a different conversation.”

  Élise, the head chef at Snow Crystal.

  Sean stared straight ahead, thinking about that single night the summer before. For a brief moment he was back there, breathing in her scent, remembering the wildness of it.

  That was something else his brother knew nothing about.

  He swore under his breath and then realized Jackson was still talking.

  “How soon can you get here?”

  Sean thought about his grandfather, lying pale and still in a hospital bed while their mother, the family glue, struggled to hold everything together and Jackson did more than could be expected of one man.

  He was sure his grandfather wouldn’t want him there, but the rest of his family needed him.

  And as for Élise—it had been a single night, that was all. They weren’t in a relationship and never would be so there was no reason to mention it to his brother.

  He made some rapid mental calculations.

  The journey would take him three and a half hours, and that was without counting the time it would take to drive home and pack a bag.

  “I’ll be with you as soon as I can. I’ll call his doctors now and find out what’s going on.”

  “Come straight to the hospital. And drive carefully. One member of the family in the hospital is enough.” There was a brief pause. “It will be good to have you back at Snow Crys
tal, Sean.”

  The reply wedged itself in his throat.

  He’d grown up by the lake, surrounded by lush forests and mountains. He couldn’t identify the exact time he’d known it wasn’t where he wanted to be. When the place had started to irritate and chafe everything from his skin to his ambitions. It wasn’t something he’d been able to voice because to admit that there might be a place more perfect than Snow Crystal would have been heresy in the O’Neil family. Except to his father. Michael O’Neil had shared his conflicted emotions about the place. His father was the one person who would have understood.

  Guilt dug deep, twisting in his ribs like a knife, because apart from the row with his grandfather and his wild fling with Élise, there was something else he’d never told his brother.

  He’d never told him how much he hated coming home.

  *

  “I ’AVE KILLED WALTER! This is all my fault! I was so desperate to have the old boathouse finished in time for the party, I let an eighty-year-old man work on the deck.” Élise paced across the deck of her pretty lakeside lodge, out of her mind with worry. “Merde, I am a bad person. Jackson should fire me.”

  “Snow Crystal is in enough trouble without Jackson firing his head chef. The restaurant is the one part of this business that is profitable. Oh, good news—” Kayla leaned on the railing next to the water, scanning a text “—according to the doctors, Walter is stable.”

  “Comment? What does this mean, ‘stable’? You put a horse in a stable.”

  “It means you haven’t killed him,” Kayla said as she texted back swiftly. “You need to calm down or we’ll be calling an ambulance for you next. Are all French people as dramatic as you?”

  “I don’t know. I cannot help it.” Élise dragged her hand through her hair. “I am not good at ’iding my feelings. For a while I manage it, but then everything bursts out and I explode.”

  “I know. I’ve cleared up the mess after a few of your explosions. Fortunately your staff adore you. Go and make pizza dough or whatever it is you do when you want to reduce your stress levels. You’re dropping your h’s and that is never a good sign.” Kayla sent the text and read another one. “Jackson wants me to drive over to the hospital.”