FROM HOUSECALLS TO HUSBAND Page 17

  Only minutes ago, Alice had pulled Katie from a patient's room to tell her that her dad was on his way to the cath lab from emergency. After a couple of frantic calls, she'd learned that her father had suffered a heart attack, that he was unstable and that Dr. Chapman was prepping for the angiogram. Her mother had been notified by Trina and torn out of the house in the middle of a bridge luncheon. Katie had intercepted her at one of the elevators in the third-floor lobby.

  Because the CICU waiting room was small and a couple of other families had pretty much taken it over, they had more privacy in the sitting area of the lobby. So that atrium-like space with its forest green carpet and mint green chairs was where they paced after Katie called Mike's office to see if he was there. She didn't consider why the knot in her stomach tightened when she punched the numbers, or why she'd instinctively needed him the moment she'd heard the news about her dad. She just made the call.

  He wasn't in, so she'd tracked him down to the OR and left a message with the secretary to tell him that Dr. Sheppard was in CICU before returning to join her mom at the window overlooking the street. They were still there, Katie's tightly crossed arms mirroring her mother's stance as they watched umbrellas bob along the sidewalk, when Dr. Chapman stepped off the elevator.

  "Dr. Chapman," she called, hurrying forward to stop him before he reached the wide, double doors leading to the Cardiac Intensive Care unit. "The angiogram you just did on Randall Sheppard. He's my father," she hurriedly explained. "How is he?"

  "Katie. Of course," he said, the relationship immediately registering. "You'd be who I was coming to see. They're bringing him up now."

  He nodded to her mom, the silver rims of his glasses glinting when Katie introduced them. His manner straightforward as always, he then returned his attention to the person he knew would understand him best.

  He didn't waste time softening the news for Katie. "He has triple vessel disease and needs a CABG."

  "A cabbage?" her mom echoed.

  "It means coronary artery bypass graft. It's a bypass, Mom. All three arteries are blocked and he needs open-heart."

  "Open-heart?"

  "Surgery," she translated, wondering at the amount of verbal shorthand the medical staff used over the course of a day.

  "The sooner the better," the cardiologist added. "I'll call scheduling and see if we can get him in in the morning."

  "Have you told him?"

  "Not yet. I want you both present. I'll need you as a buffer," he explained, motioning them toward the doors marked Restricted Entry. "He's not going to like the idea of being out of commission for a while. Once we had the pain under control, he was already trying to talk us into letting him go back to the office so he could finish out the day."

  Karen Sheppard's distress visibly increased. "His work is his life, Doctor. He won't listen to me."

  "Then, Katie," Dr. Chapman replied flatly, "it's up to you to convince him."

  The proclamation had her reaching out to stop her mom from following any farther, which caused the doctor to pause with his hand on the door he'd just pushed partway open. Behind him, the long wide room was divided by curtains, the areas inside those open spaces crammed with so much equipment that it looked like a launch room for NASA.

  "I think we should wait for Mike. Dr. Brennan," she expanded, for Dr. Chapman's benefit. What the doctor wanted was impossible. Her father wouldn't listen to her. "He was still in surgery when I called down over an hour ago. Dad will listen to him." She swallowed past the hint of envy she hadn't wanted to admit was there. "He thinks of him as a son."

  "I knew your families knew each other, but I didn't realize you were that close. I'd better get someone else to review the films. I was going to recommend him for the surgery, but he won't want to do it."

  "But I'm sure he will," her mother interrupted, looking a little frantic. "He's very fond of Randy."

  "That's exactly why he won't want to, ma'am. No surgeon wants his or her concentration hampered by a personal involvement. I don't think you'd want that, either.

  "Katie," he continued, drawn back to her by her composure. "I'm going to call surgery to schedule your father for the morning. While I'm at it, I'll check on Dr. Brennan." He nodded toward Mrs. Sheppard. "I'll see you both in a few minutes."

  With that, he disappeared into the CICU.

  Her mom's worried glance darted from the closing door to her daughter. "Can't we go in?"

  "Not yet."

  "Why not?" she demanded, tears gathering in her eyes. "If he's in there, I want to see him. I want to see my husband."

  Of course she did, and seeing her so distraught severely tested Katie's outward calm. Her mom's entire life was devoted to the man lying somewhere on the other side of those doors. And while Katie didn't understand how she could be so devoted to someone who'd missed the birth of his own daughter, who'd routinely missed anniversaries, and who had sent his family off for summer vacations without him, she knew she needed to be strong for her.

  "It'll take them a few minutes to get him hooked up to everything. And we need to wait until Dr. Chapman finds out about scheduling and Mike gets here. Dad will have questions and it's best to have as many answers as possible before confronting him with all this."

  "But, if I could just—"

  "He's in good hands in there," she told her, wanting to relieve as many fears for her as she could. "You'll want those answers, too. Come sit down until Dr. Chapman gets back."

  Her mom didn't budge.

  The entire time the doctor had been speaking to them, Katie had been aware of the furrows pinching her mother's brow. That consternation was undoubtedly due to what she was hearing, the enormity of the news, the foreign-sounding lingo. But there was censure in that pinched look now, and no small amount of disbelief.

  "You sound just like the people downstairs who wouldn't let me see him when I got here. He's your father, Katie. How can you stand there and calmly talk about waiting for answers when you haven't even seen for yourself if he's still breathing. Aren't you even a little upset?"

  "Mom," she said, forcing patience past the sudden burning in her throat. "I sound like them because I am one of them. And I am upset. It's just not going to do either one of us any good if we both fall apart."

  "She's right, Mrs. Sheppard." Mike settled his hand on the older woman's shoulder, his incisive glance sweeping the distress in both women's faces. He was still in scrubs and sounded just a little out of breath, as if he'd taken every flight of stairs on the run. "Why don't we do what Katie suggested. Let's sit down over here so we can talk."

  Mike had heard their conversation as he'd crossed the lobby from the stairwell door. He'd also seen the tortured accusation in Mrs. Sheppard's face and caught the stiffening of Katie's shoulders as she'd braced against the attack. Katie was well aware of how the stress of such a situation could cause even the closest of relatives to lash out. But this wasn't someone else's distraught relative, and he knew her armor wasn't anywhere near as thick as she pretended it was.

  "I saw your dad's films," he told her, a chink pitting his own armor at the confused hurt she tried bravely to mask. "I called to check his status and see what had been done as soon as I got your message when I came out of surgery. Who's Chapman calling in?"

  Having seen the seriousness of the problem himself, Mike's priority was getting the best surgeon available for his friend. Right behind that came concern for Katie. He didn't question it. Nor did he wonder at the protectiveness that had made him step between mother and daughter a moment ago. While he listened to Mrs. Sheppard tell him how glad she was that he was there and Katie asked if he would talk to her father about how imperative it was that the surgery not be delayed, he considered only that she hadn't hesitated long to call him.

  After the way he'd acted toward her at her parents' home a couple of nights ago, he considered it a miracle that she was still speaking to him.

  Dr. Chapman returned a minute later. After a quick consultation between the two
doctors, they were all moving through the surreal atmosphere of the critical care unit. The place seemed bathed in twilight, the voices here sounding softer somehow. Computer screens and monitors cast glows of gray and green. Machines blipped and beeped. Screens danced with oscillating and spiking lines. There were only three patients in the unit, each in curtained spaces, but all had what looked like miles of tubing coming and going from various parts of their bodies, and every vital sign was emblazoned on the appropriate digital readout or monitor for anyone passing to read.

  Mike's expert glance slid over the displays on the array of instruments surrounding Dr. Sheppard. His bed had been elevated at the head so he could breathe more easily and the neckline of his white hospital gown was pulled down on one side, exposing swirls of gray hair and the cardiac leads attached by adhesive circles to his chest. Despite the look of war in his eyes, Dr. Sheppard's skin was the color of ash.

  Mrs. Sheppard was already at her husband's side, worry etched in her face as she clutched his hand.

  "There's no reason for all this fuss," he insisted, his voice gruff with irritation. "I told them there was no reason to scare you, Karen. And there's certainly no reason to pull you away from your work," he admonished Mike. "I feel fine."

  "That's because you're loaded to the gills with drags to stabilize your heart and cut the pain," Mike muttered.

  Preferring to ignore what he regarded as a minor detail, Dr. Sheppard's glance sharpened on his daughter.

  Katie hung back, looking as if she weren't sure she should be there at all. She'd been all right before she saw her dad. Now, Mike watched her glance move from the IVs, to the oxygen cannula under her father's nose, to the monitor above his head. He knew she understood the lines and waves and readings on the instruments, but it didn't appear that anything registered. She wasn't a nurse at that moment. She was a daughter looking at her father, and finding him far more vulnerable than she'd ever believed him to be.

  "Katie?" Dr. Sheppard took in the ID tag and her scrubs. "You don't work here, do you?"

  From the way he lifted his hand toward the room, it was apparent that he meant the CICU, not the hospital itself. Katie obviously realized that as she quietly told him that she worked across the hall, and approached the silver side rail near the foot of the bed.

  "Well, they shouldn't have bothered you, either," he insisted. "Except I'm sure your mother needed you. Trina probably scared her half to death. Now," he said, dismissing her and everything else that didn't immediately concern him. "Who do I talk to about getting out of here?"

  "That would be me," Dr. Chapman announced. The doctor nodded to Mike, the glances passing between them making it clear each understood what had to be done. "But it's in your best interest to stay put for a while."

  In his briskly efficient manner, he explained why that was by slapping chest films onto the light box on the wall to show Dr. Sheppard exactly which arteries were blocked where. There was no worse patient than a doctor, even one whose specialty had little to do with his own problem. As a pediatrician, her dad knew enough about what was going on to question everything. Which he did. Up to and including the need for the surgery being recommended.

  That was when Mike stepped in.

  As the cardiologist had suspected he might, her dad balked big-time at the idea of immediate surgery. But when he was told he'd be laid up for about three months after the operation, he nearly went ballistic—which had three of the four people around the bed casting quick, edgy glances toward the cardiac monitor. He rattled off every excuse in the book, ticking them off on his fingers as he recounted each one. He had patients scheduled for the next two months. His partner had the same backlog and he couldn't put the burden of his patients on him and expect him to cope with all the emergencies that arose during the course of a day with a practice devoted to children, many of whom were dealing with serious illnesses. Some of his patients wouldn't see anyone but him, anyway. Children and their parents were counting on him. As an afterthought, he remembered that he had a conference to attend and a meeting of the medical review board he chaired.

  When he finished, no one said a word. But just as he seemed to think he'd driven home his point, Mike slowly shook his head.

  "No disrespect, sir," he began, in a no-nonsense tone. "But there's something you need to understand. No one's going to be counting on you for anything if you don't have this surgery. You don't have the luxury of waiting until you have time to fit this into your schedule.

  "You told me something I've never forgotten," he continued, crossing his arms in a stance that made him look as inflexible as a granite pillar. "When I was fourteen years old, you told me that the only way a man ever accomplished anything was to keep his priorities straight and his sights on his goals. I've kept that advice in mind every day since then, and I can honestly say I wouldn't be where I am without it.

  "Now, I don't know if you've accomplished everything you've set out to do," he continued, conscious of Katie's eyes on him, "but the fact that you've driven yourself the way you have for the past thirty or forty years could well be responsible for why you're where you are right now."

  The strong angle of Mike's jaw tightened with that conclusion, his words jerking hard at something inside himself as he swept a dispassionate glance over the lean frame in the bed.

  "You're only sixty years old," he finally said, wanting to drive home the point of how young that actually could be. "With your energy and determination, you have decades left to contribute. But your heart is a ticking time bomb. If you don't want to do this for yourself, then do it for your family and all those other people who count on you. Take your own advice and get your priorities straight. You won't be around much longer if you don't."

  There wasn't a soul in that crowded little space who would accuse Mike of mincing his words. But then, her father wouldn't have listened to anyone who'd soft-pedaled his prognosis. Hearing it laid out so bluntly hadn't been easy for her mom, though. She had visibly paled at the stern warning.

  Praying her mom wouldn't do what some spouses did and faint, Katie was about to move to her side when she saw her dad reach out to touch her mother's cheek. An instant later, her parents' eyes were locked on each other, blocking out everyone else. Including her.

  Knowing she wasn't needed, she stepped back, her arms tightly crossed.

  "Dr. and Mrs. Sheppard," Dr. Chapman said to the silent, stunned couple. "I'm sure you'll want a few minutes alone to discuss this."

  "Mom, I'll be…"

  Katie started to say she'd be right outside, but her mother was already nodding, seeming to know she'd be where she could find her. Her father, looking as if someone had just kicked a ladder from under him, said nothing.

  She felt the brush of Mike's hand against the small of her back as she turned away. For one brief moment, she teased herself with the idea that he meant the gesture as one of support. But his oddly pensive expression became shuttered, and when his hand fell, she realized he only wanted her to move so her parents could have some privacy. Her father was already nodding to her mother, agreeing to the surgery. Now, there would be releases to sign, tests to run, things to be explained to both of her parents about the procedure and what they could expect afterward. But the CICU staff would take care of all that. And Mike and Dr. Chapman would take care of getting the best surgeon available. She could hear their hushed conversation behind her even as she turned for the door.

  "Don't worry about him," Rick, one of the CICU nurses, said to her as he headed toward her dad's cubicle. "We'll take care of him for you."

  Lu, a tiny Asian nurse with a billion kilowatt smile, echoed the sentiment on her way past with a tray of medications for another patient.

  Murmuring a quiet, "Thanks," feeling a little numb, Katie kept going. There was nothing for her to do but wait. As critical as the patients were in this area and as busy as the staff was, she didn't need to be hanging around and getting in the way.

  That was exactly how she felt, too—as i
f she was in the way. She'd grown up with that feeling.

  Jamming down the unwanted thought, she hurried toward the doors.

  Mike was right behind her.

  "We've got more tests to run," he said, hitting the button that swung the doors inward, "but your dad seems to be in good shape except for his heart. You know how well bypasses work. There's no reason to think he won't be just fine."

  The assurance was appreciated, especially considering the expertise of the man delivering it. Mike was speaking as a surgeon, as a man well versed in the very surgery her father needed to save his life. On a certain level, to him, it was strictly a matter of plumbing and parts, and if he saw no particular cause for alarm, then she shouldn't, either.

  Intellectually she knew that. She knew, too, that she would accomplish nothing by thinking of all that she'd personally seen go wrong with such patients. But she wasn't feeling terribly intellectual at the moment. What she felt was … lost.

  "It's my mom I'm worried about. He's her whole life."

  The strain she tried to mask in her voice was visible in her eyes when she stopped by a tall, potted ficus in the lobby. Looking around the comfortable area, she felt as if she'd never seen the place before. She was never in this area except to pass through it on her way to somewhere else. Now, having been relegated to it twice, she understood how exposed people forced to wait here felt to everyone who walked by.

  She felt exposed to Mike, too. She hated the way he was watching her, his intense blue eyes seeing too much, offering so little.

  Turning to the wide window, she avoided him and the curious glances of a couple talking quietly near one of the sofas. It was nearly dusk now, and it had stopped raining, but the cars moving along the street below scarcely registered.