by Webb, Peggy
“Come with me.”
Knowing no good would come of it, Jo Lisa followed her sister to their table where the good doctor pulled out their chairs. The introductions wouldn’t have been so painful if Susan had beamed through the entire process.
“I’ve heard so much about you.” Paul Tyler's handshake was firm, his smile warm.
I’ve heard about you, too, buster, and I don’t like a damned bit of it. Jo Lisa didn’t say that, of course. She sat perfectly erect, acting the part of the good sister, hating every minute of it, hating herself for being a hypocrite.
As soon as she could, she excused herself. She needed a few minutes alone in her dressing room to collect herself. She smoked two cigarettes, lighting one off the other. Then she smoothed her dress over her hips and walked back onstage. Picking up the microphone, she closed her eyes and began the first song in her second set—Someone to Watch Over Me.
o0o
Flat on his back with Susan curled against his side, Paul lay staring into the darkness. Jo Lisa's dislike had been thinly veiled.
How could he blame her? Any older sister with protective instincts would feel the same way.
He kicked the sheet aside and got out of bed.
"Paul?" Susan squinted at him in the darkness. "Is anything wrong?"
"It's nothing, sweetness." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Go back to sleep."
He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Everything was wrong. His nerve was gone, his career was on hold, and he was still legally tied to a woman who blamed him for the death of his son. He felt as if giant tethers bound him to the past, so that no matter which way he turned he was still pulled relentlessly backward.
He walked to the window and looked out. Traffic plied the streets outside his apartment. Didn't anybody sleep anymore?
The high-pitched wailing of a siren cut through the silence. In the distance red lights from an ambulance shot urgent beams into the darkness. Death would be riding shotgun, waiting its turn to match wits with the doctors.
Paul looked down at his hands gripping the windowsill. He held them up and studied them for even the slightest hint of a tremble. Could he trust them again? Was the healing power back?
He clenched his fists. So many lives were in his hands —his patients', Jean's, Jeffy's, Susan's, his own. Closing his eyes for a moment, he shut out the sight of his own hands.
The wail of the siren faded in the distance. He couldn't go on keeping himself and the people he cared about in limbo. He'd talk to Jean again. Soon.
Resolutely, Paul headed back to the bedroom. Susan felt his presence, and sighing, snuggled close. He wrapped his arms around her and held on, held on as if he might never let go.
Chapter Twenty-four
Susan always found solace in the church—in the quiet beauty of the stained glass windows, in the subtle power of the great hymns, and in the glory of a kind and loving Father who bent His ear toward His brokenhearted children.
She closed her hymnal, selected sheet music to carry home for further study, then snapped her briefcase shut and left her office.
"Susan?" Reverend Silas Cartwright called as she walked past his office. "You still here?"
"Yes. I'm leaving in a little while."
"We don't pay you enough to be working so late."
"I thought I'd go into the sanctuary and ask the Big Boss for a raise."
"Put in a good word for me too."
As she knelt on the burgundy cushion beside the polished altar rail, a vision of Jeffy came to her. He'd looked so frail last night, sleeping with his eyelashes curved onto pale cheeks and his chest barely moving.
"Oh, God." It wasn’t much of a prayer, a dozen hopes wrapped up in two words, but she believed He understood.
How much longer could Jeffy endure? How much longer could she be strong?
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against her joined hands. At least she had Paul. Was she selfish to pray that she could keep him?
"Susan?"
Paul's voice. At first she thought she'd prayed so hard, she'd conjured him up. But when she turned, he was there, coming toward her with that stride she knew so well, smiling at her in the special way she cherished.
“Paul.” She hurried toward him. “What brings you here?”
She was hoping for good news, hoping he’d come to say Jean had changed her mind, she’d signed the papers and everybody could move forward.
“I just came by to see your sweet smile.”
It wasn’t everything Susan wanted to hear, but for now, it was enough. She moved into his arms and held on.
o0o
Paul was at the fourth-floor nursing station when the alarm sounded.
"Code Blue. Code Blue. SICU."
Panic clutched his gut. Death was stalking the hospital. With the distress signal still ringing in his ears, Paul rushed down the hall toward the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Nurses hovered over a small form in the front cubical, working frantically.
"Cardiac standstill," Cindy O'Connell said as they made way for him. "Blood pressure zero."
"Epinephrine IV," he said automatically, reaching toward the tiny chest to begin external heart massage. Time spiraled backward, and he was in the emergency room, looking down into the face of his own son. Sweat poured off his face.
He'd let Sonny die.
"Doctor . . ."
He willed his hands to move.
"Patient is Mark Baxter, aortic stenosis due to rheumatic heart disease." Another nurse, Glenda Bland, filled him in as they worked, intubating and connecting to a ventilator. "Aortic valve replacement surgery twenty-four hours ago. Attending surgeon, Dr. Curtis Blake."
They were losing him. The monitor still showed an agonal rhythm. Nausea threatened Paul, and memories so vivid, they might have been made yesterday. He shook his head to clear it. The child was not Sonny, and he was a doctor, by God, and a damned good one.
"Defibrillate," he said.
The tiny body jerked every time the powerful shocks coursed through him.
"Come on, dammit. Come on." Paul put the paddles on the small chest once more. Not only was the child's life at stake, but everything he'd fought for. "I won't let you die."
Glenda swabbed the sweat off Paul's face.
Suddenly the monitor took up a slow, irregular rhythm.
"Got em," Glenda said.
Paul wanted to throw his head back and howl his triumph, but it was too soon to celebrate. He put his stethoscope on the little chest. The murmur was suspicious. He listened again, needing to be sure. The child's life was in his hands. He could afford no mistakes.
Nor could he risk delays.
"Internal bleeding," he said. "Prepare him for emergency surgery."
As he left to scrub he thought of Susan, kneeling at the altar.
Within minutes he was masked and gowned and holding his gloved hand out for the scalpel. The nurse slapped it into his palm. His fingers closed around the cold surgical steel.
It had been months since he'd held the knife, months since he'd used his skills. Had he lost them? Could he make that first cut?
The steel glinted in the bright lights that illuminated the operating room. His tiny patient waited underneath the sheets, his pale chest exposed.
If you can spare any mercy, God, spare it now. Not for me, but for the child.
Paul put the scalpel to the sutures on the tender skin. After the first cut, he was lost to everything except the task at hand, the task of saving a life.
The tension in the room was almost palpable. But his hands held steady.
If the huge clock on the wall hadn't been ticking, he'd have thought time was standing still.
After he closed, he stepped back from the operating table feeling as if all the life had been drained out of him.
"Beautiful job, Doc," the head surgical nurse said.
"Thanks."
He needed Susan. Hurrying, he changed and drove to her house.
She was waiting for him in her darkened den, naked except for a pair of red high-heeled shoes, her body garlanded with roses.
"Can I interest you in a flower garden, Doctor?"
"Do you know how good you are for me?"
He put his arms around her, and she felt exactly right.
Chapter Twenty-five
Fury contorted Blake's face as he burst through the door of the doctor's lounge.
Alarmed, Paul set his coffee cup aside. "Curt? What’s wrong?”"
"You had to play God, didn't you? You couldn't wait to get back in that operating room and show off your Tyler technique on your own patients. You had to use mine."
"I assume you're talking about Mark Baxter."
"Damn right, I'm talking about Mark Baxter."
"He was Code Blue. The aortic valve you put in had become unseated. I saved his life."
"What you did was ruin his life. Mark Baxter had a stroke this morning."
Paul felt all the blood drain from his face.
"He's not dead, no thanks to you, but he's for damned sure not all right. If you touch one of my patients again, I'll see you in hell."
The door slammed behind him.
There was no need for Blake to consign him to hell: he was already there.
The fragile connections he'd made to life began to unravel, one by one. He felt like a damaged and un-seaworthy boat that had suddenly been set adrift in the middle of a storm.
Blindly he reached for his cup. The caffeine shocked his system enough to get him moving. He would make his hospital rounds; then he would have a long talk with Luther.
This time he would leave no loose ends.
o0o
Paul and his partner faced off in Luther's office. Luther pulled off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. He was not a violent man, but he was ready to go out and punch faces over the Mark Baxter case, starting with Curtis Blake's. Paul had told him the entire story, starting with the Code Blue and ending with the devastating news that he was leaving.
"If you leave now, you're as good as finished."
"After what happened to Mark Baxter, I'm already finished."
"For God's sake, Paul. You saved that child's life."
"That seems to be debatable."
"Blake's an asshole."
"True. But he's a competent surgeon."
"Now that's debatable. Listen, Paul, it's a shame this had to happen your first time back in surgery, but I don't want to see you make a mistake that might very well ruin the rest of your life. You're upset right now. Take a few days off to think things through. I'll cover for you."
"You've done too much covering for me already."
"Dammit, Paul, if you let this drive you out of Biloxi, I'm going to drag you back by your ears."
He was relieved when Paul smiled. It was a good sign.
"You've made me an offer I can't refuse." Paul clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks, Luther."
"That's what partners are for."
After Paul left, Luther went to the window to watch. He was worried. In spite of Paul's laughter, he hadn't looked good. His face was pinched with tension, and his eyes were haunted.
Paul was still seeing ghosts. Luther hoped that this time his partner would be able to defeat them.
o0o
"Susan?"
She hadn't expected him to call. She clutched the receiver with both hands.
"Is anything wrong, Paul?"
"Just tired. That's all."
He didn't sound like himself.
"Are you coming over?"
"Not tonight."
"If I can get Jo Lisa to stay with Jeffy, I'll come to your apartment."
"Susan . . ." Something was wrong. The hairs on her arm stood on end. "I need to be alone for a while."
"You're sure you're all right?"
He hesitated a moment too long. "I'll call you, Susan. Soon."
He hung up before she could say good-bye.
Susan replaced the receiver, then stood at the window looking out into the dark.
"Mommy?"
She was startled when Jeffy pulled on her skirt. She'd been so absorbed in her view of the darkness, she hadn't even heard the scrape of his tiny walker across the floor. Quickly, she knelt beside her son.
"What is it, darling?"
"Tell me about the dolphins."
"Again?" She didn't want to talk about dolphins. She wanted to get in her car and go over to Paul's apartment and find out that she was imagining things. She wanted him to laugh at her fears and hold her close and tell her everything was going to be all right.
"Please, Mommy. Please."
Forcing a patience she didn't feel, she began to tell the dolphin story for what seemed like the hundredth time. Jeffy filled in the parts she missed.
"You forgot about the sea gate, Mommy. Paul said they swim through the sea gate."
"That's right. The dolphins at Oceanfront Research Center are free. At night they swim through the sea gate."
"And we'll go too."
"Not through the sea gate. In a boat."
"Paul said a big boat."
Oh, Paul, where are you?
"He said me and him would go in a big boat. And you can go too. Will you go, too, Mommy?"
"Yes, darling. Mommy will go too."
Were they both making promises they couldn't keep?
o0o
Paul drove hard. He had no destination in mind: he merely drove for the sake of movement. It gave him the sense of having somewhere to go, of having someplace to be.
He turned onto Beach Boulevard and made his way along the night-dark gulf. Far out on the inky waters the tugs sounded their mournful whistles. Up ahead the lights of Sam's Place came into view.
Paul gripped the wheel. Sweat beaded his upper lip and inched down the side of his cheek. He felt a familiar aching need in his gut.
"Drive on by, fool," he said.
The dashboard lights illuminated his clenched jaw and his compressed lips. He drove by. Twice. Then he gunned the engine, accelerating through the darkness until the lights were only a distant flicker.
Unaware of time he took the back roads and byways, driving with his windows down and listening to the shell gravel crunch under his tires. He drove north into the Southern longleaf pines. Deep in the woods a screech owl screamed, and night birds lifted on broad wings to soar into the darkened heavens.
If he could drive far enough and long enough, he might outrun his demons.
Soon the gas gauge began to creep toward empty, and Paul knew he couldn't drive forever.
Emotionally and physically exhausted, he arrived at his apartment sometime after midnight.
Somewhere in his cabinets stood a bottle, waiting for him. He rammed his hands in his pockets. The bottle loomed large in his mind.
Slowly he walked to the cabinet and took it down. Amber liquor sloshed as he carried the bottle to his bedroom. In another house, another bed, Susan would be sleeping with her hand upon his empty pillow.
Swearing, Paul grabbed a blanket off the bed; then with pallet and bottle in hand, he left his apartment and walked down to the beach. The water sounded wild and mysterious as it beat against the shore.
Paul spread his blanket on the sand, then stretched on top of it facing the sea. The bottle fit snugly in his hand.
o0o
Morning moved into the seacoast with slow splendor. The windows of heaven opened and the Universe flung pastel-colored ribbons across the water. Tides spent their restless fury on the barrier islands, then flowed into the mainland to leave gifts along the shore—fan-shaped shells with iridescent hearts, pieces of wood bleached by time, bits of a blue glass bottle from some long-forgotten picnic. Sea gulls soared toward the sun, their white wings tipped with gold. Sand crabs burrowed into the wet sand, and a lone brown pelican standing in the shallows sifted through the seaweed looking for fish.
In the distance chimes rang out, calling early morning worshipers to mass.
Kevin and Chris Clancy always walked their dog along the beach at sunrise. Run would be a better description of what they did. With their fair hair lifting in the ocean breeze and their long, tanned legs stretched out, the twins raced along behind their black Lab, Rufus.
Kevin and Chris kept abreast, sturdy young men fit from years of playing ball and competing in the high school track tournaments.
"I'll race you to that log," Chris yelled.
"What log?"
"That log." Chris pointed. "Up ahead on the beach. It must have washed up with the tide."
Kevin shaded his eyes against the sun. "Hey, that's no log. That's a man."
The man was well over six feet long, and he was stretched out on a gray blanket sprinkled with sand. An empty bottle lay beside him, glinting in the sun.
"Do you think he's dead?" Chris asked.
"Probably just a drunk sleeping it off."
"Maybe we ought to turn around and go back the other way."
"What if it's somebody who needs help?"
"What if it's not? I say we go back."
"It's too late now. Look at Rufus."
The dog had bounded ahead and was sniffing around the blanket.
Kevin and Chris moderated their pace and approached the man with caution, primed to flee at a moment's notice. Rufus caught the edge of the blanket between his teeth and began to tug.
The man sat up slowly, holding his head between his hands.
"Drunk as Cooter Brown," Chris whispered.
"You don't know that." Kevin approached the man with Chris following close behind. "Hey, mister. Need some help?"
o0o
Paul squinted at the two young men, then at the black Labrador retriever. His situation suddenly struck him as funny. He'd pictured waking up alone and walking the beach with nothing but self-pity for company. Instead he was about to be dragged into the gulf by a very determined dog.
He rubbed the beard stubble on his chin. He figured he looked like something that ought to be hauled off for deep sea burial.
"I'm fine, boys, but I guess there are a few sand crabs on the beach who are either very drunk or very happy." Picking up the empty bottle, he regarded it solemnly.
The taller of the two boys whistled. "You dumped a whole bottle of good liquor on the beach?"