Perfecting For Love - A Standalone Novel (A Doctors Romance Love Story) (Burbank Brothers, Book #3)

by Naomi Niles

  She nodded and motioned again for me to sit down. I sat gingerly on the end of the cushion, not wanting to give her the impression that I was staying.

  “Carla, they found Dad on the floor of his office early this morning. He is in St. Mary’s Hospital in intensive care, or at least I hope they’ve gotten him into a room by now. He’s been in the ER all day long waiting for room.”

  Carla’s hands flew up to cover her mouth; her eyebrows rose and there was a look of alarm on her face. “Is he okay?”

  “I really don’t have any information other than that. The hospital is not very good about giving me info. I’m on my way there from here. Dad told me about having a lady in his life just a day ago. I knew if you didn’t hear from him that you would worry. I’ve been in those shoes and they are no fun. I went to Dad’s house and went through his papers until I found his phone bill and that’s how I got your name. I don’t mean to imply anything that may not be between Dad and yourself, but at least I wanted you to have the benefit of knowing how ill he is.”

  “Have they said anything at all to give you an idea of whether he will be all right?” Her voice broke and I could see tears forming in her eyes. She was pretty lady with a sweet face and her demeanor was gentle and sincere.

  “No,” I shook my head. “All they will tell me is that he has had a cardiac event. I’m going down there now and hopefully they’ve gotten their test results back and have begun some sort of treatment. When I left him, they had him intubated and sedated so he wouldn’t fight the tube. My dad is a strong man, Carla. If anyone can get through this, it’s him. He’s in excellent condition and has never had any heart issues before this.”

  Carla nodded, reaching into her pocket for a tissue and dabbing her eyes. “Gwyne, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve come by. I’m not really sure whether I have the right to ask this, but I’d like to see him as well. Would you like company on your visit to him?”

  I thought about this a few moments. “Carla, you appear to be a very nice lady and I know that Dad cares about you. That said, I’m not sure they’re allowing visitors who aren’t immediate family. Also, if Dad should come conscious and see you and I both standing together, it may give him a bit of a start and that’s probably not a good idea for a cardiac patient.”

  “You’re right, of course. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that first.” She stood and held out her hand to me. “You are every bit as beautiful as your pictures, my dear. Your father is very proud of you. Make him proud now by being the strong daughter he knows you are. You have my number; please, please keep me informed, day or night.”

  I nodded and smiled, squeezing her hand. I made way my way to the front door and turned before I opened it, saying, “If you pray, Carla, this would be a good time to get started.” I went out her door and hurried toward the cab were Sean was waiting.

  A few minutes later, we were pulling into the parking garage of St. Mary’s hospital. I checked with the receptionist and learned that Dad had finally been transferred to an ICU bed on the sixth floor. Sean took a seat in the lobby on the main floor while I rode the elevator up to the sixth. I went directly to the nurses’ station and they pointed to a room just across the hall from where I stood. “You may only stay a few minutes,” they told me.

  I crept with a timid fear into Dad’s room. I wasn’t sure what to be prepared for. Essentially, it looked identical to what I had seen in the emergency room. His eyes were closed and the tube was still in his mouth. He was unmoving and for powerful man like my father, that was really hard to take.

  “Dad, it’s me, Gwyne. I’m here again. They won’t let me stay long, so if you can hear me underneath all that medicine, understand that I love you very much.”

  A male nurse walked in to Dad’s room and checked his equipment. He was being fully monitored on a continual basis from the nurses’ station, but evidently a hands on examination was conducted regularly. “Can you tell me anything more?”

  “Why don’t you have a seat in the family waiting room and I’ll ask the doctor to come and talk to you?” The nurse was far more polite than those in the ER. Perhaps it was because they were better trained here; perhaps it was simply because there were fewer patients to monitor. I nodded and did as he asked.

  The doctor was not long. He introduced himself as Dr. Brewster and took a seat opposite me in the small waiting room. It was otherwise empty.

  “Ms. O’Reilly, I’m Dr. Brewster, your father’s cardiologist. It appears that your father has suffered a cardiac event and our scans revealed the need to go in with an IV of contrast, looking for blockages. Sure enough, your father will require a quintuple bypass.”

  I drew in my breath at the severity of the pronouncement. “Will he make it?” I was blunt in my questioning.

  “There are no guarantees, of course. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I would be lying. I can tell you that we have a very fine surgical department here at St. Mary’s and he couldn’t be in better hands. I want to give him another eight hours of rest and monitoring and then we plan for surgery at 7 AM. You will want to stop by the pre-surgical department downstairs and complete some paperwork. Did you have any questions?”

  “Questions? Only a million of them. But, I’m fairly sure that you would’ve answered them by now, if you were able to. I will be here when he undergoes surgery in the morning. Will he be returned to the ICU?”

  “When he leaves surgery, he will go to postop first and then be brought back here to the ICU most likely. They have the monitoring equipment needed to keep an eye on his progress. Hopefully, if all goes well, he will be in a private room within two to three days, and after that, we’ll have to talk about physical therapy and home care. Ms. O’Reilly, do you have any other family members who could help you care for your father?”

  I shook my head. “No, there’s only me.”

  “In that case, I may recommend that he go to a physical therapy unit that is attached to the hospital. They will be able to provide around the clock care, and will assist him when it comes time to get out of the bed and to begin walking. He will need to go through extensive physical therapy; just because we unblock the arteries doesn’t mean that they won’t plug up again. He will need to be gradually escalated in terms of the duration and challenge of the therapy. I predict, if all goes well with the surgery in the morning, that in six month’s time, he will be feeling pretty much himself again. Remember, Ms. O’Reilly, there are no guarantees. Sometimes God has a different plan than we do.”

  “Can you bring him out of the sedation so that I can talk to him before surgery?”

  Dr. Brewster shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be a good idea. He’s been through a great deal of stress so far and it’s better that we leave him in a resting state. I would say he has a better than 75% chance and you should soon be able to talk to him after the surgery.”

  I nodded. Dr. Brewster stood up and left the room. As the door clicked shut behind him, I felt my strength beginning to wane a bit and wanted Sean’s arms around me. I followed the doctor out and took one last look at dad in his bed. I recognized that it might be the last time I ever saw him alive. It was more than I could stand to think of. I went over and kissed him on the cheek and then quickly left before I began to cry. O’Reillys were not permitted to cry, especially in front of my dad.

  Sean was waiting for me, as expected, downstairs in the waiting area. “Would you like to stop in the hospital café and have a cup of coffee?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “No, this is not the sort of place I want to hang out. Please, can we go somewhere else and get a bite to eat? I’m starving.”

  “Of course.”

  We called the cab and headed to a small diner that wasn’t far from my firehouse. Sean ordered us a cup of coffee and cheeseburgers with fries. My eyebrows went up at the unhealthiness of his order, but I said nothing. It sounded awfully good. Pulling my phone from my purse, I called Carla and she answered on the first ring.

/>   “Carla, it’s Gwyne. He’s okay for the time being. They’re going to do surgery at 7 AM. He needs a quintuple bypass.”

  “I’d like to be there with you, even if only in the waiting room, Gwyne.”

  “I think I would like that, too,” I told her and briefly gave her instructions for where to find me.

  Sean, overhearing my conversation, took a bite of his burger and said, “It sounds as though the two of you have become friends.”

  “I don’t know about friends,” I said. “She seems to be a really nice lady and I’d like to get to know her better. I know how helpless she would feel being left out of this tomorrow morning. The least I can do is let her sit with me. I don’t want dad to know that we’ve met quite yet. That might give him a bit of a shock.”

  “Good thinking, Gwyne. I knew you had a good head on your shoulders. Sometimes, I think you forget about that.”

  “What about you? Do you want to be there?” I asked him, referring to the surgery.

  “It’s your call, sweetheart. I can ride down there with you and wait in the waiting room downstairs if you like. I know you don’t want Carla to know about me quite yet.”

  “No, why don’t you stay home in the morning and get some rest? You are still recuperating yourself and you’ve been running all over town taking care of me. Carla will be there with me, and if anything bad happens, I will text you. Just pray to God that doesn’t happen.”

  Sean nodded and we finished our dinner and went home. He held me tightly that night, whispering positive thoughts softly into my ear. I slept better than I had the night before, spooned against him. I didn’t want to imagine what it would’ve been like to sleep alone. I didn’t ever want to imagine what it would be like to sleep without Sean.

  Chapter 22

  I arrived at the hospital thirty minutes before the surgery was to begin. I checked in with the desk in the surgical unit and they gave me a small device that looked like a child’s game. It had several lights on it, the most prevalent of which was green and it blinked softly. The woman at the desk told me, “If it vibrates and the red light begins blinking, please report here to the desk. This will allow you to move around the hospital at will. Why don’t you get yourself some breakfast downstairs? Just keep this with you; will be in touch,” she said kindly. I had begun to grasp that as a severity of treatment increased, the personnel seemed to be more sensitive. I wasn’t sure what that indicated, but I knew that my nerves were frazzled by this point and I couldn’t have taken another rude attendant from the ER department.

  I took a seat and waited for Carla to arrive, which was only a few minutes later. We went together downstairs to the cafeteria and settled at a table with plates of scrambled eggs and toast. I had a tall glass of orange juice and she was drinking coffee. The orange juice seemed to have more sustenance and I wanted the tart flavor to coat my tongue. I had always loved oranges.

  “How long have you and my dad been seen one another, Carla?” I asked her. “I hope I’m not prying.”

  “No, not at all. You are his only family and you certainly have a right to know. I met your dad about a year ago. That was before I retired as a schoolteacher. He came to our school and gave a brief presentation on fire safety to the elementary students. He and I had the opportunity to chat a bit before the presentation started, and when he was done, he stopped by my room to say goodbye. He slipped me his business card and on the back, he had written his home phone number and the words single quote call me.’ I was very flattered. Your father is a handsome man. I’ve been widowed for eight years and I have no children. I thought I would retire alone and perhaps travel a bit of the world, but other than that, I was looking forward to a fairly lonely life. Your father changed all that.”

  “He talked only briefly about you, but I could tell he was very fond of you.” I wanted to make her feel better; one of us needed to feel better.

  “Thank you for saying that. I did call him after about a week’s time and we talked for two hours on the telephone. He asked me to dinner and I agreed. And I agreed the next week, and the following weekend as well. We’ve seen one another at least once a week ever since. If you’re wondering, Gwyne, he has stayed at my house overnight, but we’ve never stayed at his.”

  I didn’t know why, but this made me blush. I had to be pleased that she respected me as an adult enough to divulge this personal information. I think what she wanted to do was to assure me that she had not lain in my mother’s place in their bed. She did it in a very graceful, thoughtful way, and I appreciated that. I nodded and smiled, patting the back of her hand.

  We finished our breakfast and put our trays on the stand as was indicated. Taking the elevator upstairs, we sat down in a pair of chairs in the corner, picking up magazines and rifling casually through the pages. Each of us kept watching the clock, and we made small talk to make the time pass more quickly. Suddenly, the gadget in my lap came to life, the red light flashing and the device buzzing. We both leapt up from the chairs at the same time and quickly walked to the nurses’ desk.

  “Ms. O’Reilly, the doctor will see you in meeting room 11. I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s only immediate family allowed.”

  “Please,” I said. “She is his fiancée,” I stretched the truth a bit and tapped the back of her hand with my own as an indication to go along with it.

  “Very well, room 11.”

  We had just been seated in room 11 when the doctor walked in with good news. “He came through surgery fine. We opened five blockages, as expected, and so far everything looks normal. He will be returned to the ICU as soon as he comes out of recovery. We will continue to keep him sedated until we feel comfortable that he can breathe on his own. Until then, the ICU rules still apply. Only one visitor at a time, and only a few moments.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Do you have any idea regarding how long he will be in the ICU?”

  “There are no certainties with this, Ms. O’Reilly. Don’t let me mislead you; he is not entirely out of the woods yet. Things can happen post-surgery. It’s not the norm, but it can happen. There’s really no point in your sticking around. You won’t be able to see him. I suggest that you go home and get some rest and check back with us during evening visiting hours. If anything happens in the interim, we will call you.”

  The doctor wasted no further time, leaving the tiny consultation room as he headed back to what I imagined was his next surgery for the day. Carla and I hugged one another and she said she would ride in the elevator down with me. I didn’t want her to do this; I will was afraid that she would run into Sean. I hugged her once more and told her, “No, why don’t you go on home? I’m going to hang around a little longer just for my own nerves. I’ll be in touch when I hear something.”

  She didn’t blink at my words, but nodded and smiled. “You know where I am.” She gave a little wave and I watched as she disappeared into the elevator.

  I forced myself to sit and page through yet another magazine for five minutes or so before taking an elevator downstairs myself. Sean was watching for me and immediately stood and headed in my direction. I nodded and held two thumbs up and a smile appeared across his face. He waited for me by the exit doors and kept his arm around me as we waited for a cab to take us home.

  I was exhausted by the time we reached home. The strain had taken its toll. Sean and I removed our clothing and crawled beneath the blankets together, clinging to each other for warmth and emotional reassurance. We fell asleep and when I awakened, Sean was holding out a bowl of soup.

  “It’s not homemade,” he said. “Don’t get the idea that I know how to cook, or something. I do know how to warm up soup from a can, though, so you’re in luck. I even washed out the pan when I was done.”

  I laughed and gratefully took the bowl of soup from him, setting it aside briefly when I called the hospital. Just as I had hoped, Dad was back in his ICU room and his nurse told me he was doing very well. “There’s no reason for you to come in this evening unless you reall
y want to,” she told me. “He’ll be sedated until at least tomorrow morning.”

  I appreciated that their staff recognized the amount of strain the family members were under. As much as I wanted to see Dad, I knew it would be better if I stayed home and rested. I briefly called Carla and gave her the good news. I could hear the relief in her voice. Sean and I settled in to an evening of television from bed. Just before we went to sleep, he made slow, gentle love to me. It was not sex. It was a loving, comforting togetherness; it was the act of two people who were deeply and committedly in love with one another.

  Chapter 23

  I was at the hospital early the next morning. Dad was still intubated and sedated. I met with the doctors briefly and they were going to attempt to slowly bring him out at about ten in the morning. They suggested that I go down and have some breakfast and come back up, which I did. This time, when I entered his room I was delighted to see his eyes were open and the tube was gone. He still wore a cannula beneath his nose and there were IVs and equipment plugged in everywhere. He looked awful, but I suppose anyone who had had open-heart surgery after a heart attack would look less than their normal, spry self. I cautiously hugged him careful not to put any pressure on his wounds. I contented myself to kiss his cheek and the back of his hand. I lay my head on the mattress next to him and he weakly lifted that hand and petted my hair.

  “Dad, you had me so scared. I know how weak you are and that your throat must feel just awful. You don’t have to talk.”

  Dad nodded. He opened his mouth as if to say something but then close his eyes and drifted back to sleep; he was extremely weak. I left the ICU room and went down to the family waiting room. I quickly called Carla and updated her on his progress and then called Sean with the same information. Sean urged me to stay long enough for one more visit and then to come home and he would bring me back that evening.