Читать книгу Mending The Doctor's Heart - Sophia Sasson - Страница 13
ОглавлениеAS THEY DROVE down the littered road, Anna clung to the handhold while Nico swerved to dodge branches, pieces of furniture and random objects. At times, he had to go off-road to bypass a section.
“This is what you call passable?”
He gave her a half smile and wiggled his brows. Despite herself, she smiled back. It was Nico’s mischievous smile. Like the time he’d surprised her with their honeymoon. She’d thought they were going to Tahiti or Fiji. Instead, he’d driven her to a run-down house in Tumon Bay.
“What’s this?”
“It’s our new home.”
She stared in horror. They had talked about buying a house so they wouldn’t have to live in his family home, with his mother and the rest of his family constantly in their faces. Anna had pictured one of the cute cottages by the sea with a front porch they could sit on and enjoy breakfast as they watched the tide come in. While this house was on the sea, it looked like it would fall into it any second. The railings on the front porch were broken. A section of the roof had caved in. Trash littered the front and side yards. While she could hear the ocean, there was no sight of it. The whole thing looked like a crumbling heap that would collapse if she poked it with a finger.
“You bought this?”
He nodded and she turned to see his eyes shining, his mouth turned up in a brilliant smile.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking. This place is a dump and if we combined our salaries, we could’ve had something much better. But I wanted to buy this for you, with my own money, and fix it up the way you want it.”
Fix it up? This place needed to be bulldozed. Before she could say anything else, her feet left the ground as he lifted her. Automatically, her hands went around his neck so she could rest her face in the nook between his neck and shoulder. It was the best vantage point to breathe in the scent that was uniquely Nico. Earth, sweat and clean soap. Somehow the feel of his solid chest tempered her anger. It always did, and he knew it. He was still dressed in the cotton shirt and pants he’d worn to their wedding. She had chosen a plain white dress that fell to her ankles. Somehow a big wedding dress didn’t appeal to her. They were married in the church where Nico had been christened, then had a luncheon at the golf course. Her sister Caro had come with her two-year-old toddler and the rest of the guests included nearly every person on the island. Nico and Nana were connected to everyone somehow, either by blood or friendship.
Stepping onto the rickety porch, he kicked open the door, which nearly fell off its hinges. The inside of the house was only marginally better than the outside. They entered through a foyer with peeling paint and years of grime and dirt on the hardwood floors. Miraculously, the stairs didn’t crumble under their weight.
He toed open the door of a bedroom and set her down. Anna gasped. The room looked like it belonged to another house. There was a big wooden four-poster bed, complete with white gauzy drapes. It was covered in rose petals. A dark wood dresser held several candles, their flickering lights dancing along the mirror. The wide plank floors gleamed. Skylights let in the soft glow of the evening sun and big French doors led to a balcony.
Nico walked over and opened the doors. She followed him outside and gasped again. The balcony looked out to the calm waters of the bay and the waves of the Philippine Sea beyond.
“There is no other home on this island with this view. When we fix up the rest of this house, it’ll look like this bedroom.”
This was why she loved Nico. He dreamed of things she couldn’t even imagine and made them happen. She turned and put her arms around him. “I love you, Nico, and I can’t wait to make this our home and raise our children here.”
He gave her that half smile and wiggled his brows as he carried her to the bed.
“Did our house in Tumon survive?”
While Nico had done most of the work to restore that house, Anna had put in her fair share of sweat equity. She remembered sitting with a toothbrush cleaning the grout in the kitchen floor, hauling trash to the industrial-sized bins in the yard, spending days scraping wallpaper off the walls and hand-cleaning inches of mud off the floors. It had taken them the better part of a year to make the house livable, and more often than not, she’d spent the time yelling at Nico for the slow pace with which things got done on the island. But when it was all finished, the house was even better than what she’d ever imagined. She’d been bounced from one rental to another as a child, and this was the first place that had felt like home.
He gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”
“You weren’t home when it happened?”
“I don’t live there anymore.”
Her stomach lurched. Had he sold their house? How could he? Even as the thought flew through her mind she realized how unreasonable she was being. She had left him, and their life. Why would he stay in their home? Of course he’d sold it.
“We still own the house, I didn’t sell it, but I couldn’t live there anymore.”
His eyes were fixed on the road ahead. “I gave it to you in the divorce papers I had drawn up.”
Pain ripped through her chest. How could she have forgotten about the asset division in the divorce settlement? While she had never been divorced herself, she had seen her mother through five of them, each one impossibly more contentious than the last. In the last one her mother had fought with her ex-husband for two months over a painting they had acquired during travels overseas. The painting wasn’t worth as much as they each spent on lawyer fees.
“You bought the house, and it’s probably worth ten times what you paid for it. You should keep it.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t been there since the day you left. Tito has been going once a month to do some basic upkeep. I paid the insurance, so any damage from the tsunami should be covered.”
“What will I do with the house? I don’t even live here. You should sell it.” As she said the words, her breath stuck. The house was not a commodity; it wasn’t a car or jewelry that you sold and split the proceeds, even though she knew that’s what most divorced people did. The house had been home. Their home. One they built together.
Nico swerved hard to avoid an upturned car and Anna slammed into the side door. His jaw clenched. “The house is not for sale. If you don’t want it, we’ll figure out another solution.”
Why did she feel relief? He was being totally unreasonable. Not that she wanted any money from him, but if he wasn’t going to live there, he should sell it. The firm line of his lips told her he was done with this conversation. One of the many things about him that irritated her. It wasn’t that his mind couldn’t be changed. When they were married, a kiss in that crook between his neck and shoulder or a nip on his earlobe melted his resolve. Fights didn’t last long. Until she had Lucas.
After more than an hour of driving, he pulled up to a white building. At least three cars were on the roof and a good-sized yacht was on its side on the front lawn.
“The building was in the direct path of the tsunami. The roof will be an expensive repair.” Nico’s voice was grim, as if he was surveying the damage anew.
The windows were blown out but the building seemed intact, which was far better than what the other buildings in the area looked like. Most of them were missing walls and had roofs caved in.
“Will insurance cover it?”
He nodded. “They should, but they’ll be dragging their heels with all the claims that’ll be hitting them.”
They picked their way across the lawn. The revolving door at the hospital entrance had been blown out, so all that remained was a gaping hole. Still, Anna didn’t miss the etched brass sign next to the door.
In memory of Lucas Michael Atao. The baby who remains in our hearts.
All are welcome, all will be served.
We save lives here.
Hand on her mouth, she staggered and gasped. He was right there as her knees buckled. She waited for the panic to hit but it didn’t. All she felt was Nico’s strong chest on her back, his arms holding her upright. It had been 1,923 days since he’d died. Yet the vise that gripped her heart was as strong as it had been the day it happened.
“I’ve never forgotten him, Anna, and I never will. Your sacrifice, and his, will not go in vain. Good will come from his death.”
She couldn’t talk about this. Nothing in the world could take away the hole in her soul. Not a new hospital, and definitely not Nico. Leaving his embrace, she steadied herself for what waited inside. Silently, he walked in first and she followed. Several people were in the lobby mopping and piling litter into large garbage bags. They waved to Nico and Anna, automatically greeting them with “Hafa Adai!”
She knew a few people, but not well. Some frowned, obviously trying to place her. She walked past them before recognition dawned.
Unfortunately, that luck didn’t hold. “Anna, is that really you?” Before she could stop him, Nico’s uncle Bruno enveloped her in his arms. Never mind that he hated her and they’d never gotten along. He greeted her like she was his long-lost daughter, kissing both cheeks and wiping tears from his eyes as he gushed over how good it was to see her back on Guam.
“Uncle, enough now. Mrs. DeSouza is critical—Anna needs to attend to her.”
Bruno patted her on the shoulders. “It’s so good to see you.”
Anna shook her head as they walked away. “What’s come over him?”
“Aunt Mae died last year and he’s been going on these emotional extremes ever since.”
Anna stopped. “Aunt Mae died? How?” Anna had been quite fond of Bruno’s wife, who had taken Anna under her wing and shown her how to fit in with Nico’s family. She had taught Anna how to make Chamorro food and perform the rituals at church. Aunt Mae had even shown her what to plant in her garden to deal with the briny air. The woman was no spring chicken but she couldn’t have been more than sixty.
“She had a heart attack.” Nico’s voice was matter-of-fact but Anna knew how much he too had cared for Aunt Mae. “I wrote you an email to let you know, but you never replied.”
Anna had set her account so emails from Nico went to a special folder automatically. It was the only way to make sure she never saw his name in her in-box. After returning to California from Guam, she’d been sitting on a bus and checked her smartphone, mindlessly scrolling through emails. She’d read the email from Nico even before her brain had fully processed who the note was from. Crying uncontrollably for the rest of the bus ride, she had almost packed her bags when she got home. Luckily her brain kicked in. So she’d made sure she never accidentally read his emails again. Keeping him out of her mind was the key to her survival.
“I didn’t see the email,” she said sheepishly. “I’m sorry about Aunt Mae, she was a good woman. If we have time, I’d like to go to her grave and leave some flowers.”
“She’s buried near Lucas.”
He might as well have dropped a boulder on her. Since the day she buried him, Anna had not seen her son’s grave. On that horrid day, she’d buried a piece of her soul along with him, a part that she’d never get back. It was the same part that once loved Nico.
“What’s this about Mrs. DeSouza?”
Nico got the hint and led the way. Anna noticed that though the hospital wasn’t quite functional, the inner core was intact. It seemed the entire community was there fixing beds, rolling medical equipment, tending to sick patients. An old man bent low over a cane handed water to a young man who was sitting with a towel over his head. We take care of each other. No one comes to help us, we only rely on each other. Nico had explained this to her when they’d first met; it was what had first made her fall in love with Guam. She had traveled the world and seen a lot of close-knit communities, but never had she witnessed the kind of kinship that existed here.
Nico left her in what would eventually become the ICU. Right now, a generator was powering the few pieces of equipment that weren’t waterlogged. A gap-toothed man sat at the nurses’ station taking apart a defibrillator. Far from a sterile environment, but Anna was used to that now. In Liberia, she’d been lucky if there was a tent available to deal with a patient gushing blood. It was a minor miracle she hadn’t gotten sick.
Mrs. DeSouza had suffered a stroke. Anna vaguely remembered her from community parties. If her memory served, Mrs. DeSouza had never been married, so she fostered little children. Teen pregnancy was common on the island and young mothers often needed child care while they studied for exams or took courses at Guam University. Anna did the best she could for the sick woman.
She moved on to the next patient on a bed, thankful she’d never seen him before. He was in better shape, though he’d obviously had a heart attack. Someone had used a defibrillator but he still had an arrhythmia. She administered some medication and hung an IV bag for a continuous drip. The man would need more invasive testing but he was fine for now.
Nico returned as she finished with her fifth patient. “Mrs. DeSouza won’t make it through the night,” she said without preamble.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he nodded. “Dr. Tucker said there were surgeons on the way.”
Anna shook her head. For once it wasn’t an issue of resources. “She’s too far gone. It’s time to say goodbye.”
Nico nodded. “She has two teenagers she’s been fostering for four years now. They’re really close, I’ll ask someone to go get them.”
“The patients here are good for now. Where do you want me to go next?”
“We have some with burn injuries from fires that broke out.” He grimaced as he said it, and Anna knew why.
She nodded. “Let’s go. They are probably more critical than some of these cases.”
He took her to another unit that was set up like a general hospital ward. Several individual rooms surrounded a nurses’ station, where Nana sat. She stood and came to Anna. “I didn’t get to properly greet you yesterday.” Giving her a hug, she took Anna’s hand and patted it. “Welcome home, my child. I am happy to see you are well.”
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. She had never gotten along with Nana. While Anna understood why some of the extended family took issue with the fact that she was white and not Chamorro, she didn’t understand why Nana disliked her. Nico’s father was white. He had been a marine stationed on Guam. Sometimes Anna wondered whether Nana had been taking out her husband’s betrayal on Anna. Still, like Uncle Bruno, her smile held genuine warmth and her eyes welcomed Anna sincerely.
Nico motioned to the first door, but before he opened it, he paused. “Are you sure?”
“I’m a doctor—I’ve seen pretty horrific things.”
He opened the door to a darkened room. The figure lying on the bed looked barely human; he’d been burned from head to toe. Anna slipped on gloves and a mask. Burn patients were highly susceptible to infection and she was glad that Nico had had the foresight to put the man in a relatively clean, secluded room. The patient was unconscious but breathing on his own, with a weak but steady heartbeat.
She examined his burns and determined that most of them were first degree with some second degree. The total mass of burns was concerning, so she dressed as many as she could, started an IV and gave him medication.
Each room held its own disturbing picture. Anna dealt with it the way she’d learned: one at a time. Compartmentalized. If she allowed herself to think of all the patients at once, she wouldn’t be able to stand.
“How do you do this?” Nico was helping her with bandages. There was only one nurse at the hospital, and she was working on the less critical cases. No one else could stomach being in the rooms with the smells and sight of burnt flesh. They were on their third burn victim, who was also unconscious.
“I take it one patient at a time. I stay in the moment. My heart cried in the last room. I’m going to grieve for this one now because I don’t think she’ll make it.”
“And when you walk out of the room, will you think about this?”
She shook her head. “I expend my emotions when I’m with the patient so when I leave, I have something left to give the next patient. I have to compartmentalize.”
“How do you do that?”
“It’s a learned skill. I’ve been working one disaster after another for the past five years. In Liberia, nearly all my patients died. My mentor there taught me how to be compassionate without losing myself.”
“Is that what you did with me and Lucas? Compartmentalized us?”
Her head snapped up.
“Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of Lucas.”
“Then why haven’t you been back?”
Because being here makes me want to bury myself with my son. She wished she could have left Lucas and Nico on Guam, but she carried them with her wherever she went.
She went back to bandaging the wound.
“I blame myself too. I blame myself for letting you do the surgery. Not because it didn’t go well, but because I know you will never let go of the responsibility. I knew that when you made that first cut, that no matter what happened, you would never be the same.”
“You would’ve let him die.”
“Not because I wanted to, but because that was his fate.”
Her hands were trembling too much to continue with bandaging. “It wasn’t his fate. It was this island. If we were in California, he’d be getting ready to go to kindergarten.”
“Sometimes, Anna, you have to accept what befalls you.”
“And sometimes, Nico, you have to take control of your life and leave the man who refuses to do what’s right for his family. You are not responsible for righting every wrong your father did.”
They’d had this conversation before, said the same hurtful words to each other, and yet it seemed they couldn’t stop. She took a deep breath and looked at her watch. Three hundred and seventeen hours before she could leave.
They finished attending to the rest of the patients in silence. She asked for a chart at the nursing station so she could document what she’d done. While the normally painstaking medical notation was often forgone in disasters, Anna wanted to leave a treatment plan for whichever nurse or physician came in next. The hospital had a working helipad, which meant rescue organizations might be able to transport patients off island to the Philippines or Hawaii for further care.
When Lucas had been diagnosed, the commercial airline pilots were on strike so there had been no outbound flights. They’d waited for a month but there was no sign of the strike resolving. That’s when she’d begun researching other means of transport. With her mother’s and sister’s help, she’d cobbled together the money to hire a private helicopter. By then it had been too late. A storm system had come in, making helicopter flight impossible. Lucas had gotten worse and time ran out.
“You must be Anna.”
She looked up to see a pretty young woman with dark hair and dark, luminous eyes.
“Have we met?”
The woman shook her long, lustrous hair. “I’m Maria.”
The name was obviously supposed to mean something, but Anna couldn’t place it. Then it hit her. Nico’s new girlfriend. Her throat closed.
“You’re Nico’s...” She couldn’t choke out the words.
Maria nodded. “Fiancée.”
They’re already engaged?
“Well, almost fiancée. We haven’t made it official yet—he wanted to make sure things were squared away with the divorce.”
Maria was sucking up all the air in the room. Anna looked around to see if there was anyone who could save her. A patient crisis, another tsunami, anything?
“I see you’ve met Maria.” Nico appeared and put an arm around Maria. She smiled adoringly at him like he was her teenage crush. Then realization struck.
“Wait, are you the same Maria he went to high school with?”
They both nodded and Anna felt sick to her stomach. Nico’s second cousin, who had also gone to the same school, had told her all about the girl Nico dated who had moved away in their junior year. While Nico had been nonchalant when he described the relationship, his cousin told her that Nico had long considered Maria to be the one that got away.
“My parents moved us to Hawaii when I was sixteen, but once I got my master’s degree in administration, I decided to come home and work here.”
“Maria is our hospital administrator. She came back to do some good for the island.” The pride in Nico’s voice made Anna feel like a three-year-old whose lollipop had been taken away. She wanted to hit the other woman. Of course Maria was his childhood love who had returned home to make the island a better place while Anna would continue to be the white woman who’d left her husband for her own selfish reasons.
Maria snuggled against his arm, then turned to Anna. “I want to thank you for going to see Congresswoman Driscoll-Santiago.”
Anna looked up in surprise. She didn’t know anything had come of all the conversations she’d had with the congresswoman about supporting more medical infrastructure for the island.
Anna had met the congresswoman when she was Kat Driscoll, a professor who had recently discovered that she was the secret daughter of a powerful senator. At the time, Anna had set up a meeting with the senator’s chief of staff, Alex Santiago, to make a plea for funding for Guam. Alex had rebuked her, but Kat, who was a silent witness to the meeting, had come up to her afterward to ask for more details.
Eventually, Kat had become a congresswoman—and married Alex. Kat’s chief of staff was her half-sister, Vickie Roberts. Vickie was the one who often called Anna to get specific information about Guam on Kat’s behalf.
“That’s how we got this hospital built so fast and were able to buy state-of-the-art equipment. The congresswoman got us special federal funding. Ironically, it was disaster preparedness funds. She came here to tour the island last year and emphasized that you were the one who compelled her to do something.”
“I didn’t do much, I just brought the issue to her attention,” Anna said shyly, thrilled that Kat had actually kept her promise. She made a mental note to send the congresswoman a thank-you note. Kat had invited Anna on that trip to Guam, and Anna had flatly refused, ending their conversation awkwardly. Since then, their relationship had cooled and Anna was afraid she’d offended the congresswoman.
Nico cleared his throat. “I’ve been meaning to thank you too, Anna. It escaped my mind with everything going on.”
Maria slapped him playfully. “Nico, I can’t believe you. It’s the first thing you should have said when you showed her this building. I bet he went on and on about how he built this place with the best stuff and that’s why it’s still standing.” She gave Anna a conspiring look. “Isn’t that just like him?”
Anna’s stomach churned. “I should check on the other patients.”
“I’ll take you to the next unit,” Nico said quickly.
As Anna stepped out from the nursing station that had separated them, Maria came and gave her a hug. “I’m so glad to meet you. I know you’ve been a big part of Nico’s life, so you will always have a place in my heart. Will you please let me make you dinner one night?”
Is she kidding? Who invites the not-so-ex-wife to dinner? Anna searched for malice in Maria’s eyes but all she saw was an open invitation. Maria was exactly the kind of woman Nico should be marrying. She shared his generous heart and his Chamorro hospitality.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be leaving in thirteen days and there’s a lot to do between now and then.”
Maria began to protest but Nico gently dissuaded her and walked out with Anna. The tense silence stretched between them until Nico finally broke it.
“Our wedding date is set for one month from now. As soon as I can, I’ll get you those divorce papers.”
