by Amy Ruttan
“It’s an awesome offer, can I think about it?”
Dianne nodded. “Of course. I know I’m springing it on you, but when I texted Jerome that you were here and I had seen you...he got so excited. The four of us used to be inseparable.”
A lump formed in her throat. “I know. I’ll think about it.”
Dianne smiled. “Good. I’ll see you down there.”
Dianne left and Pearl leaned against the open door of her locker. She would love to go and spend time with Dianne and Jerome, but it was Dianne’s comment about how the four of them had been inseparable.
It was true.
They’d spent a lot of time together as two couples when she and Dianne had been pregnant together.
It was sort of like a dream. That moment in her life when she was happy and she almost had it all.
One that she had never expected and one that she still mourned the loss of.
She couldn’t go to Dianne and Jerome’s ranch.
Why not?
The other alternative was to spend her weekend off alone. She had no desire to visit her parents. Her mother was in Los Angeles and her father was in Seattle. She could fly to one of their places. Each of them had begged her to come and see them more often, but Pearl had a hard time facing them and the toxicity both of them spewed.
Their relationship was the reason why Pearl really didn’t believe in happily-ever-afters. She tried to believe in forever and happiness, but that had turned out so painful.
Of course, there were exceptions, like Dianne and Jerome, who honestly seemed to be happy and had been together for a long time. Now they were living out the dream they always talked about.
It hit her hard that she really didn’t have any dreams.
She didn’t know what she wanted out of life, other than being a surgeon, which she had become.
She sighed and shook her head, trying to dispel her disappointment, her grief. There was no place for those thoughts here today. Today she had to be that surgeon that she had become. That was the only good thing in her life.
She was a surgeon and she knew how to save a life.
Just not her own, apparently.
* * *
Pearl glanced up a couple of times to see Calum standing on the opposite side of the operating table. Their patient was in the prone position to access the spine.
It was always tricky with a patient who had skeletal dysplasia because it was difficult to get a proper airway, but Dianne was good at her job.
It was good to be in the operating room again and working on something that was not a sports injury.
Well, not technically a sports injury. The patient was an actor and had insisted on doing his own stunts, which was why they were trying to decompress the spine. She assisted Calum in the delicate surgery, but he was the lead surgeon.
And it had been far too long since she’d worked with him on a surgery. She had forgotten what a talented surgeon he was and it just reinforced her decision to have him work with George.
Calum was George’s best chance.
As if sensing she was watching him, he briefly glanced up. His eyes crinkled at the corners and she knew he was smiling behind the mask.
“How does it feel to be doing a decompression again, Dr. Henderson?” he asked from behind his mask.
“It’s great to be back.” And it was, she just forgot herself there for a moment. “It’s a pleasure to be working with you again, Dr. Munro. I had forgotten what a talented surgeon you were.”
And it was the truth. Coming back here and working with Calum was like coming home.
His blue eyes crinkled again and she hoped that was a smile and not a grimace behind his surgical mask.
“Ditto,” he responded.
“Ditto?” she teased.
He chuckled as he continued to work. “Yes. Ditto.”
Pearl smiled to herself. “Your compliments embarrass me, Dr. Munro.” She did enjoy his compliments, but she also forgot how fun it was to banter with him back and forth across the table.
He cocked an eyebrow. “You haven’t changed a bit. Can we focus?”
“I am focusing,” she responded. “Or have you forgotten that I do idle chitchat during surgery. Especially when I think that surgery is going smoothly.”
“I did forget,” he responded dryly.
There were a few small laughs from the nurses and interns who were observing the surgery. Even Dianne was laughing a bit.
“I take it then you haven’t changed and you still want almost absolute silence while you’re working.”
“I prefer that. Yes,” Calum said. “Of course, being taught by Dr. Chin, I learned to work in noise.”
Pearl smiled again. Dr. Chin had the propensity to blast music—in particular, Queen—especially when he was doing delicate procedures. It was when the patient wasn’t doing well that the operating room fell silent, so the silence in Calum’s room was making her a bit uncomfortable.
“So why don’t we put some music on in here? The patient is responding well,” she said.
“Do you blast music?” Calum asked.
“In fact, I do. I guess I adopted Dr. Chin’s style.”
Calum chuckled again. “I never really thought of a surgical playlist before.”
“I’ve read studies that if music is playing it actually can help with blood pressure.”
Calum cocked an eyebrow and looked at her in disbelief. “What?”
“I’ll forward you that report.” Pearl suctioned where some blood was pooling and it was then she saw that this was no longer a simple spinal decompression.
“Dammit,” Calum muttered. “Do you see that?”
“Yes, it’s wearing away at the spinal cord. There’s no room for the decompression to go.”
“I’m going to have to fuse him.” Calum began to pull out the instruments and moved quickly to change his plan. “The patient didn’t want a fusion, because a spinal fusion is going to take more time to heal and there will be more physiotherapy for him. He was pretty specific about not wanting a fusion because of his work.”
“There’s no choice in this case. Unless he wants to be a paralyzed.”
Calum nodded. “Yep. No choice.”
They both worked quickly, turning the spinal decompression surgery. And Pearl was glad to work with Calum. They had been trained by the same brilliant surgeon and even though they hadn’t done a surgery together in five years, it was like they’d never been apart. There were no questions, there was no confusion. They worked together seamlessly.
It was like they were one.
And it felt right.
* * *
The surgery took longer than Calum planned. He knew that Pearl wanted to be there for George when he had his scan. In fact, there was a call into the operating room as they were working on the fusion. Pearl had been pulled away and he thought that she was going to walk away from their surgery for her high-paying VIP patient.
Really, she had no investment in staying and he could handle a spinal fusion on his own, but Pearl returned.
She told him that she’d explained to George’s coach why she couldn’t be there and George had no problem with her not accompanying him to the MRI. He’d had MRIs before. So when the surgery was finished, Pearl left before they closed up his patient, so that she could check the scans and Calum had no problem with that.
He was impressed and glad that her priorities still seemed to be the same. Saving lives.
He thought when she left for that job out east with that first sports team, that he’d been wrong about her from the beginning. He’d thought the most important thing to was her job. Pearl had always talked about her parents putting career and the almighty dollar before family. Just like his father.
He was hurt and disappointed that she ran off and did that, but perhaps he
’d been wrong about. She didn’t go running off to babysit George. She’d stayed and done the surgery with him and she’d been a tremendous help to him. Maybe he was wrong about her and that thought upset him, because then he was the fool for letting her go.
Calum had forgotten what it was like to work with her.
It was like coming home.
Don’t think like that.
He shook away that thought.
He couldn’t let himself associate Pearl with home. Not that he really knew what home was. He’d thought he’d found that once, and when she left he hadn’t really associated anything with home since. Other than his dog, Max.
After the patient was taken to the intensive-care unit and he updated the family, Calum made his way down to radiology to see if Pearl was still there and he saw that she was.
She was sitting in a darkened room, in front of a computer, hunched over, and she appeared stressed. She was frowning and worrying her bottom lip and he knew that expression well. It was the same expression when she broke the news that she was pregnant to him, but it wasn’t the same expression when she told him she’d lost the baby.
That expression had been without emotion. It was flat, cold and detached. Like she was lost. Only he’d been lost, too, in that moment, but he felt like he didn’t have the right to feel so lost. He hadn’t been the one carrying the baby, but he still grieved their loss just the same. Even when he thought about her like that, he wanted to hold her in his arms and comfort her, but he was sure that she would push him away just like she’d done all those years ago.
“Thanks for your help,” he said gently from the doorway.
She tore her eyes from the computer screen and seemed momentarily surprised to see him standing there.
“What?”
“Your help with the patient and the spinal fusion.”
She relaxed. “Right. No problem. It was good working with you again.”
“Why are you still here? You should go home and rest.”
“Can’t. Stuff came up,” she said, not looking at him.
“You seemed entranced by the computer. Is it George’s scans?” he asked.
She nodded and he pulled up a chair beside her so that he could see the scans. The moment he saw them, a coil of dread unfurled in his belly.
It was the most extensive osteosarcoma he’d seen. And compared to the last scans done, not that long ago, it had grown. And now he was having a bad feeling that he might not be able to save the leg.
That he might fail at this and let down Pearl and George. His father had let down his mother and Calum didn’t want to let down Pearl.
He didn’t want to be like his father.
Aren’t you? You’re so focused on work.
He shook away that thought and studied the images.
“It’s extensive,” he said quietly.
“It’s bad. I’ve never seen one grow this fast,” Pearl whispered. “It’s...awful.”
“And what would you tell him?” Calum asked seriously.
“What do you mean what would I tell him?”
“If you were the surgeon?”
Pearl sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face. “I would say that amputation is the only course of treatment. If it were me, but I haven’t worked on enough osteosarcomas. I haven’t developed a plan, an award winning aggressive treatment of osteosarcoma like you have.”
“Pearl, don’t pin all your hopes on me.” And he was serious. This cancer was dangerous, it was the most aggressive he’d seen in a long time.
The last time he had seen something like this was just after Pearl left, when he worked as much as he could with Dr. Chin. Work kept him busy and kept his mind off the loss of both Pearl and the baby.
It was on a teenage boy.
The osteosarcoma had been just like this. Calum had been full of hope that they could save the leg, but by the end there was no way he could. After multiple surgeries and lots of pain for the young man, they still had had to amputate.
It was then that Dr. Chin told him that sometimes the best help they could give someone, especially with a terminal diagnosis, was to do no harm.
Calum didn’t want to accept that, but over the years, he has learned that Dr. Chin was right and sometimes there was nothing to be done.
Only, it was that sense of helplessness that drove him to work on his treatment plan for situations like this. And that boy might have lost his limb, but he was still alive and cancer-free.
Pearl then reached out and took his hand. It surprised him and he couldn’t push away her hand, because he liked the reassurance she was giving him.
It felt good.
It felt so right.
“I have faith in you, Calum. I think you can do this.”
“You’re wrong.” Her eyes widened and he squeezed her hand. “We can do this together.”
And he couldn’t believe that he was saying that.
Pearl nodded. “Okay. We’ll tackle this together. I’m eager to learn from you.”
She took back her hand and there was a pink blush in her cheeks, and it took every ounce of his strength not to take her in his arms and reassure her that everything was going to be okay. That they could do this together, even though he wasn’t sure of that.
Working with her in the operating room had given him a false sense of hope and he thought perhaps that nothing had changed between the two of them, but he was wrong. Everything had changed between them and he had to keep reminding himself of that fact.
Maybe they could start again? That thought scared him. He wasn’t sure he could take that chance.
Calum cleared his throat and stood. He wanted to put some distance between them.
“Is George still here?” he asked.
“No. He went back to his place with his mom. I figured we needed to come up with a plan and we could present it to him. I mean, we tried to strategize at The Angry Octopus, but that really didn’t work out too well.”
“No. It didn’t. And there’s lots I have to catch you up on. We can try dinner again, but somewhere that’s new. Somewhere we don’t have any ties to. Somewhere colleagues go all the time and we can work out a plan. Unless you’re too tired after that spinal fusion.”
He was feeling a bit tired from that surgery, which at six hours had taken longer than he had thought.
“That sounds good. I just want to go home and change.”
“I can pick you up.”
What’re you doing?
Only he knew that she didn’t have a vehicle and it was the gentlemanly thing to do.
“Sure.” Only her tone didn’t sound so sure. “I’ll text you my address.”
Calum nodded. “About eight? I’m sure I can find a place we can have a late dinner and I’ll send you some information about the procedure, and we can go from there.”
Pearl nodded. “That sounds good. I’ll see you at eight.”
Calum nodded and quickly left. He had gone to find Pearl, determined to keep his distance from her, but somehow had made dinner plans with her. What was wrong with him? Why was it when he was around her he forgot all sense?
She got under his skin.
Maybe that’s where she’d always been.
CHAPTER FIVE
PEARL WAS STILL in shock that Calum had suggested dinner. She was nervous, but almost secretly pleased.
She didn’t care what restaurant. She was just hoping to have a nice meal with a friend.
Is he just a friend?
There was a part of her that didn’t think so. She still cared for Calum, but she had ended things between them, and he had made it clear they were just colleagues.
You should have said no.
Only, she had found herself agreeing. She genuinely wanted to learn from Calum and discover his procedures. He had such a high success rate
and she had been feeling positive about the whole situation with George after his previous scan, but now she wasn’t feeling so sure.
The new scan had terrified her to the very core.
She’d seen osteosarcomas like that and Dr. Chin always amputated, but medicine had come a long way and Calum had had so many successes.
She admired him for that.
She was envious that he was able to forge a new path. What had she done?
You ran away from your feelings, remember?
That’s what she did. She’d taken the job offer her father had pressured her to take numerous times and if she was going to waste her surgical career on becoming an orthopedic surgeon over a neurosurgeon or a cardiothoracic surgeon, then she might as well become a private surgeon to a big-league team.
And that’s what she’d done.
There was part of her that wanted to leave the job, even though it had been her goal when she became a doctor because she loved the sport, but she couldn’t leave. She loved working with the players. They made her feel like part of the team. Their triumphs felt like hers.
When a player returned to the game after she helped them through an injury, it was so satisfying.
She clung to that because the memory of leaving Calum and losing the baby was too much.
The idea of facing Calum was too much. She’d let him down. And that was a punch to the gut. Every instinct of her was telling her to run.
She was terrified for George. What if this didn’t work? What would happen?
You are pessimistic.
And she sighed. Calum was right. She was far too negative.
She had to think positively for George’s sake. There was no running from this.
She didn’t want to let down George. The team was relying on her. George was relying on her and so was Calum.
Pearl was going to learn from Calum.
She was going to show Calum that she was a damn fine surgeon, too, even if he thought she took the easy way out and left for the lucrative position.
Pearl took a deep calming breath and opened her email to read through the information that Calum had sent her. Tonight at dinner she didn’t want to talk about the good old days, she didn’t want to reminisce. He had promised her this dinner would be between two colleagues and they would be discussing George and George’s care only.