The Rebel Doc Who Stole Her Heart

by Susan Carlisle

  Ty followed Michelle’s gaze as she glanced at the older couple walking in their direction on the sidewalk in front of her condo. Their faces showed interest in what was happening between him and Michelle.

  She turned back to him and hissed, “Come in. I don’t want to have this conversation in front of my neighbors.”

  Stepping back, she allowed him to enter, followed and then closed the door behind her. Ty continued on into the kitchen, setting the boxes down on the closest counter. He turned to find Michelle standing behind him in what could only be described as a warrior’s stance.

  “When were you going to tell me?” she demanded, her look boring into his.

  “Tell you what?”

  “That you were offered a job at the hospital,” she all but shouted at him.

  “I didn’t think it mattered. You knew I planned to leave. I’ve tried a number of times to discuss it with you but you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  She had the good grace to look away. “So when do you plan to call ahead for a coffee-maker, pack up your boxes and get on your bike?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  She gasped, her face going pale. Her next words came out in a strangled voice. “That soon.”

  “Yeah.” The word drifted off as if he hated to say it. His heart constricted in agony. He was hurting her. Just as he’d hoped he wouldn’t do. He hadn’t expected the depth of pain he’d feel knowing he had to leave her. That she wouldn’t be a part of his life but he couldn’t stay. That was for her sake. He was no good for anyone.

  She stood back and studied him. “You are more like your parents than you think.” There was a note of censure in her voice.

  “I’m nothing like them,” he said sharply.

  “Think about it, Ty. You don’t stay in one place. You’re always running. You don’t even really own anything.”

  “Don’t you get it? If I stayed I’d end up failing you. I found that out a long time ago. I’d let you down. I did that once and I refuse to let it happen again.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never stayed in one place long enough to see what you’re capable of. You won’t know until you try.”

  “I know,” he said, with a surety as immovable as the Appalachian Mountains as he backed away from her.

  She shook her head sadly. “You carry so much guilt over Joey. You were a kid. You couldn’t have done more for him.”

  He made an aggressive step in Michelle’s direction and bared his teeth as he spat the words. “I could have made my parents take him to a doctor. The hospital. I could have taken him myself. I could have asked someone for help.” He bit the ugly words out. “You don’t know anything about me. What makes you think I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to you?” He pointed his finger at her. “I’m not good enough for you.”

  Michelle stood her ground proudly through his tirade. For that he had to admire her. A lesser person would have been frightened.

  “I would never have taken you for a coward,” she said with a tone of regret. As if she’d had a revelation, she continued in an even voice, “You’re afraid to commit. You’re making excuses not to. You’re not afraid you’ll not be here if I need you. You’re afraid that you might get hurt if you are. You’re running because you do care.” She narrowed her eyes and gave him an earnest look. “Don’t you ever get tired of running from the past?” She waved a hand around. “It’ll never stop following you.”

  What did she want him to admit? That, yes, it followed him everywhere, never left him? He looked at her for a long moment. “You talk about me being a coward. Have you told your team how sick your mother has been? Have you confided to anyone outside of me in years? Hey, maybe that’s the way you want it. You knew I’d be leaving so it would be easy to tell me. You wouldn’t have to invest yourself in anyone. You are still mourning your father. Still trying to be the perfect little girl. Where has that got you? No friends, no life. No happiness.”

  She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You have some nerve…”

  “Hey, you believe you have all the answers? I’m thinking that maybe you need to realize a few things also. Realize that you can’t control everything. Your mother’s cancer. Whether I leave or not. All you can control is you and your life. And you decided to close off people years ago.”

  Michelle’s mouth drew into a thin line and her eyes widened as a stricken look covered her face. She blinked and cleared her throat before she said in a subdued voice, “That all may be true but that still doesn’t change the fact that you are still trying to deal with not standing up to your parents. Not insisting they take Joey to a doctor. You went into medicine to help and that’s all well and good.

  “But you run around from one place to another like the masked hero doctor. Spreading your brand of medicine and happiness as a shield against dealing with your past. You didn’t leave your parents’ lifestyle behind, you just ran away from them. And the pain. No matter how great a doctor you have become, it can’t bring Joey back. All you can do is live well and honor him. That much I have learned in the last few weeks.”

  Her words hurt. Cut to the quick. The strong, clear-minded and confident Michelle had returned with a vengeance and pinned him to the wall. “I care about you, Michelle, I do. That’s why I have to go. I don’t want to watch as disappointment fills your eyes.”

  “That’s the biggest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard. You don’t know what it’s really like to care about someone. Not since you were sixteen have you stuck around long enough to find out. You’re not fooling anyone but yourself. And I’m not sure that you’re doing a good job of that either. You don’t care enough about me to stay and try to build a real relationship. You’re taking the easy way out. Never getting emotionally involved.”

  He glared at her but she didn’t slow down. “Maybe we’re not that different after all. But I do know one thing, I want a man who will be beside me through thick and thin. You’re right, you probably aren’t that person.”

  A stabbing pain tore through Ty’s gut with those words. Michelle had given up on him, had decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “Well, I guess everything that needs to be said has been. Goodbye, Michelle.” He headed for the front door, the takeout boxes forgotten, the food gone cold just like his heart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TY PULLED THE motorcycle to a stop near the campsite. He’d been on the road for weeks and had covered five states in search of his parents. Traveling from one to another, he checked locations they’d frequented as a family years earlier. Each spot he visited held good and bad memories.

  When he’d left Raleigh and Michelle, he gone to his next assignment, which lasted only two weeks, sure that he would move on as if nothing had happened. Michelle would forget him in time and he would remember her as a pleasant interlude during a work assignment. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He missed Michelle with a pain so consuming that it was almost tangible. At work, he remembered the intensity of her eyes snapping at him over her mask. On his motorcycle it was her thighs pressed tightly to his as he turned a curve. The worst was when he played his guitar. She’d ruined the joy for him. Michelle was in his blood.

  Trying to outdistance the growing grief that roiled in him, he’d not accepted the next anesthesiologist position offered. Instead, he’d decided to take some time off and travel. He’d ridden his bike far and fast, trying to clear his head and hopefully his heart of Michelle. That hadn’t happened. If anything, he’d become more miserable. He was constantly fighting thoughts of what Michelle would think about the places he was seeing, wishing she was there to share them. The worst was that he worried she might move on and no longer give him any thought.

  After another aimless day he had fallen into bed. Sleep had eluded him. In the early hours of the morning he’d given up and seen the situation for what it was. He was hopelessly in love. It was time to face the truth and do something about it. But he had to face the past before he cou
ld ask Michelle to share his future. If he was going to do that, he had to find his parents. The thought of doing so made his stomach contract but it still had to be done. Now he was parked at a camp in central Florida. He’d been told his parents were there.

  Placing his helmet on the seat of his bike, Ty walked across a grassy area towards the mobile campers parked under the trees. As he approached, a man in ill-fitting clothes came out to meet him.

  “Can I help you?” the man said in a gruff voice that held a note of suspicion.

  It was part of the lifestyle to be distrustful of any outsiders. Ty found it ironic that for years he’d been an outsider. The one new to the hospital, the staff, the OR team. In those places more times than not he’d been welcomed.

  “I’m looking for George and Miranda Lifeisgood. I was told they might be here.” His parents had changed their last names long ago. They’d said they’d had left their old life behind and their last names as well. To his knowledge they had never legally married. Smith was his mother’s parents’ surname and Ty had taken it when he’d move in with them.

  “Who’s looking for them?” the man asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  Had he been signaling to someone? “I’m their son.”

  “Son?” he asked, as if he didn’t believe Ty. “Didn’t know they had one.”

  “Are they here?” Ty asked with a note of frustration. The woman in the last camp he’d visited had been sure his parents were traveling with this group. Ty started to step around the man when another one came out from among the campers and headed in his direction.

  There was something familiar about the man’s walk. He wore clothes similar to those of the first man but this one had the bearing of a leader as he stalked across the ground. His curly dark hair was streaked with gray and hung freely around his shoulders. As he came closer Ty knew without a doubt that it was his father. He was an older version of what Ty saw when he looked in the mirror.

  Ty’s heart beat faster. All of a sudden he had the urge to turn and leave but he had to face his demons and that meant talking to his parents.

  “George,” Ty said. He had never been allowed to call his parents by anything other than their first names.

  “Ty? Is that you?” his father asked, coming to a halt just out of touching distance.

  Ty nodded. “Yes.”

  “What brought you here?”

  So much for the warm family welcome. He hadn’t expected more but it would have been nice. In reality he’d not treated them much better at his grandfather’s funeral. “I wanted to see how you and Miranda are.”

  His father looked at him so long without saying anything that Ty feared he would reject him.

  “Come, your mother will be glad to see you.” His father turned and walked off, not waiting to see if Ty followed.

  Ty stayed a few steps behind his father as they weaved in and out between campers that had seen better days. Children ran around barefoot and elderly women sat huddled together, speaking softly, as they passed. Where Ty had once been an insider he was now very much the outsider. They finally reached a camper that was set a little off from the camp.

  His father’s deep voice called, “Miranda, come out here.”

  Ty’s heart thumped harder against his ribs. He would’ve known his mother instantly. She had aged but done so gently. Her long wavy hair reached the middle of her back and was controlled by a red bandana. Dressed in a flowing multicolored shirt that reminded Ty of Michelle’s bright home, shorts and wearing rope thongs on her feet, his mother looked like the quintessential beachcomber.

  “What’s going on?” she called, stepping out of the camper door and coming down the steps. She looked in his direction and said in a breathy voice of pleasure, “Ty.”

  “Hello, Miranda.” Ty held his breath. Would she turn him away? His mother stared at him for a moment as if she couldn’t believe that he was truly there. She wasn’t the only one. Finally, she opened her arms and Ty walked into them.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  She pushed him back to arm’s length and studied him as if she were a fortune teller getting a reading. “You’re well, I see, and here for answers.”

  Ty nodded. He and his mother had always been in tune with each other.

  “Then come, sit and let us hear your problem.”

  His mother welcomed him as if nothing had happened. Was it that easy? Ty glanced at his father. He was moving folding chairs around so that they faced each other. His father hadn’t been as friendly as his mother but he hadn’t turned Ty away either. Obviously it had been he who had held the grudge, not his parents.

  They all took seats.

  “First tell us how you have been,” his mother said.

  Ty gave them the short version of his life but didn’t mention Michelle. He felt that if he put his plans into words it might jinx them. They were too important to take that chance.

  “How have you both been?” Ty looked from his mother to his father.

  “We are well,” George said.

  His father had always been one for few words and apparently that hadn’t changed.

  His father’s face turned serious. “So, Tyrone, tell us why you are here.”

  Ty didn’t miss the implication that he wouldn’t have come unless he wanted something. Did they really have no idea what burden he carried?

  “I want to talk about Joey.”

  His mother flinched. His father reached over and took her hand.

  Ty forged ahead. “I want to know why you wouldn’t take him to a doctor.”

  “Because it is not our way,” his father stated firmly.

  So the answer hadn’t changed.

  “Joey could have lived if he’d only had medicine.” Ty worked to keep his voice even.

  “We had no money for doctors or medicine,” his mother said in a wistful voice. Had she begged his father to help Joey?

  “There are programs. We could have gotten him care. I should have gone for help.”

  His father let go of his mother’s hand and sat straighter. He looked directly at Ty. “We did what we could for Joey. It was meant to be.”

  “Did you know that I feel responsible for Joey’s death?”

  “Why would you feel that way, Ty?” His mother sounded truly mystified.

  “Because I should have made you do something to help him.”

  “We did all we could,” his mother said.

  Ty let out a sound of desperation. Nothing was different. Except that his parents had moved on. He was the one who was stuck in the past. “Would you have let me take him to the hospital?”

  “No,” both his parents said at the same time.

  The mountain-sized guilt that he had been carrying around slipped slowly off him. They wouldn’t have listened to him even if he’d insisted that Joey see a doctor. They were so set in their beliefs that they wouldn’t have allowed him to take Joey.

  “We take care of ourselves. We’ll not let others tell us what we need to do,” his father stated.

  His father referred to the government. His parents didn’t vote, didn’t pay taxes so they didn’t exist. They wanted to keep it that way. No matter the cost.

  Ty stayed a while longer and they talked about the past. Before Ty left he had his parents agree to keep in touch. They would at least drop a postcard in the mail to let him know where they were from time to time. As they got older he could check on them, use his skills as a doctor to help them when they wouldn’t seek it elsewhere.

  No matter what Michelle thought, his life was very different from that of his parents. He shared some traits but in other ways he was thousands of miles away from them. Sadly, he and his parents would never be close but they were still his parents. He’d try to leave his guilt behind and build a future free of blame.

  * * *

  Michelle knocked on the door of her most recent patient’s room. Mr. Jordon was a seventy-year-old man who wo
uld be in her OR for triple by-pass surgery first thing the next morning. She gently pushed the door open. Her patient lay propped up in his bed and appeared to be asleep. A white-headed woman about the same age as the man sat beside him, holding his hand.

  Michelle rounded the bed to stand beside the woman. “I’m Dr. Ross.”

  “I’m Martha Jordon. Richard’s wife.”

  “I won’t wake Mr. Jordon. He needs to rest. I was just checking to see if he or you have any questions about the surgery.”

  “What’re his chances?” Mrs. Jordon seemed to be forcing the question out.

  “I won’t lie. The surgery is an intensive one but we do them here all the time.”

  Mrs. Jordon glanced at her husband and when she looked back her eyes were glassy with moisture. “Richard is all I have.” She sniffled. “We couldn’t have children. So he’s everything to me.” A tear dropped to her milk-white cheek. “I had cancer three years ago and he nursed me through the horrible chemo. I can’t lose him now.”

  Michelle’s heart broke for the woman. She knew what it meant to be alone. That deep endless void that nothing or anyone else could fill except for the person missing. Glancing around, she found a spare chair and brought it alongside Mrs. Jordan’s. Sinking down on it, Michelle took the older woman’s hand and held it. For a long moment they sat, saying nothing. Human touch was enough.

  Finally Michelle said, “Mr. Jordon is strong. He should be fine. You need to take care of yourself. He’ll need you when he gets out of here.”

  Mrs. Jordon gave her a weak smile. “I’ll be there for him.”

  Michelle gave the fragile hand in hers a gentle squeeze. “I know you will.” She stood. “Now, I want you to go home soon and get some rest. The nurses will take excellent care of Mr. Jordon overnight and I’ll be in to see you both in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Ross. You’ve been very sweet.”