FROM HOUSECALLS TO HUSBAND Page 18

  "Thank you for talking to him," she quietly said, crossing her arms over the nerves jumping in her stomach. "I knew he'd listen to you."

  Mike stood behind her, his hands on his hips, his faint reflection towering over hers in the window glass. He hadn't seen her since he'd left her parents' home two days ago, and he'd tried very hard to put his behavior that evening out of his mind. His conscience hadn't allowed it, though. He couldn't escape what he felt for this woman. And he couldn't deny his purely selfish reaction when he'd received her message a while ago. He could think of a couple of reasons why she would have called him about her father. But underscoring his immediate concern for the seriousness of her dad's condition had been the hope that she'd wanted him there for her.

  Apparently that hadn't been the case at all. If her body language was any indication, she didn't want him anywhere near her.

  Her head was bent, her face hidden from him, but she held her back straight, as if she refused to lean on anyone. Despite the rigidity of her shoulders, something about the position struck him as oddly vulnerable.

  She'd said she was concerned about her mom. He didn't doubt that for an instant. Karen Sheppard had never struck him as a particularly strong woman. But it was the worry Katie wouldn't express about her father that bothered him. For years, he'd watched her take care of everyone but herself, putting other's concerns, other's needs, before her own. Just as she was doing at that moment with her mom. But watching her now, seeing her hold herself in, he had the uneasy feeling she might well be using her concern for others to deny her own needs; to deny what she felt the strongest, the deepest.

  As a man whose profession demanded a certain detachment, suspecting he'd mastered the art a little too well himself, he recognized exactly what she was doing. He'd bet every skill he possessed that she was using her concern for her mother, real as it was, as an excuse to hide from the fear she felt for her father. He just wondered what else she was denying.

  "Are you still on duty?"

  She shook her head, her soft curls gleaming in the overhead lights. Against the backdrop of dreary gray, the strands of amber and dark wheat glinted like summer sun.

  "I reported off to a couple of the other nurses after Mom got here and they divided my patients between them. I'd already finished my discharges and worked up the new admit—"

  "I'm not asking if you covered your work," he muttered. "I'm certain you made sure everyone was taken care of. All I'm asking is if you have to go back."

  He hadn't intended to sound exasperated with her, but her professionalism was an unwanted barrier at the moment. The fact that he hid behind the same wall himself was something he didn't care to consider. The past forty-eight hours—the past several minutes, for that matter—had given him more than enough to think about.

  "I just wanted to know where you'd be," he clarified, trying to ignore the undercurrents shifting between them. "I have to check my patients … unless you need me for something else right now."

  He would stay if she needed him. Seeming to understand that, she turned slowly and looked up. "Please. Go do what you have to do," she said, sounding as if she'd imposed enough. "Your talking with Dad was a huge help. He'd probably have talked Mom into letting him wait."

  She deliberately avoided mentioning that she'd have had little influence on her father herself. Mike didn't have to ask why that was. He knew she felt her father wouldn't care about her opinion. But she cared about her father whether she wanted to admit it or not.

  "I think there are other things he might need to hear, too." He chose his words carefully, cautiously, well aware that he was entering forbidden territory. "Maybe there are some things you'd like to say to him yourself."

  He'd caught her with her defenses down, her vulnerabilities exposed. The disquiet that sliced through her eyes was immediately veiled by the sweep of her lashes as she turned. But he wouldn't let her block him the way she did every time he tried to talk to her about her father.

  "He's eighteen hours from major surgery, Katie. What if something happens and you don't get a chance to talk to him?"

  "Nothing's going to happen." Her voice was as low as his, but her suddenly shaky tone was far more insistent. "You said yourself there's no reason—"

  "There isn't any particular reason, but you know as well as I do there are no guarantees. Yes, he should come through just fine. People in Las Vegas would kill for the odds he has of sailing through this." His voice lowered as a visitor and a pink-jacketed hospital volunteer passed by. "No surgeon is God," he continued, his tone hardening to a near whisper. "And you know as well as I do that there are things even the surgeon can't control. If something should happen and he doesn't make it, then you'll have to live the rest of your life wishing you'd dropped the wall between you two."

  "And if I do that, and tell him I love him," she countered, "and he just looks at me like he can't figure out why I'm bothering him with such a thing, then I get to live the rest of my life knowing for sure that he didn't want me."

  His uncomprehending glance froze on her face.

  "Didn't want you? What are you talking about?"

  Hurt melded with defiance. Holding herself so tightly that her knuckles went white, Katie turned her head away. Mike had shifted his body to block her from the other people moving behind them, and the window and a potted tree provided barriers of their own. But she suddenly felt more trapped than protected.

  "I know what you're trying to do, Mike. I've done it myself when I've worked with families in this position. You try to make everyone set aside their differences and focus on healing. Well, I don't expect you to understand how I feel about him. You know you've always seen him differently than I have."

  "Then make me understand," he insisted, truly at a loss. "Tell me why it is that a man I've always admired is practically estranged from his own daughter."

  "Because he chose everyone else but me," she snapped back, her throat tightening as a lifetime of hurt surged forth like uncorked champagne. "He was always there for everyone else, Mike. Including you. Remember how you used to come over on Sunday afternoons when you were in high school and the two of you would talk in his library? Sunday was usually his only day off, and Mom never wanted me to disturb him. But you could talk to him any time he was home."

  "Katie," he cut in, looking torn between defending himself or his mentor. "He was probably just advising me about colleges or something."

  "Stop taking his side!" The words were a fierce whisper. "You always do that. You wanted to know why I feel the way I do, but I can't tell you if you won't listen. What you and he were talking about isn't the point. The incident itself isn't even important." It was just one of dozens over the years. Insignificant alone, it was the constancy that had mattered. "The point is that you could be in there and I couldn't. He cared about you. Not me. You were my friend, but you were my competition, too. There were times when I didn't know if I loved you, or hated you."

  The vehement admission had her quickly looking away, protecting herself from his reaction to thoughts she hadn't intended to voice. They were talking about her father, not how she felt about Mike. And the last thing she wanted to deal with just then was how complicated her feelings were for him. "Even if you hadn't been there," she said more deliberately, hurrying past what had only been part of the bigger picture, "he'd still have had something else to do. Work always came first. Other people always came first.

  "I know that most of those other people were sick kids," she admitted, remembering her ambivalence over that unfortunate fact. "Mom had always made a point of making sure I understood that. But she had time with him, and when they were together, it was like I wasn't even there." Unprepared for the instant replay of the emotions triggered by the possibility of her father's death, she pulled a breath, forcibly calming herself. "On some level I know I understood that what my father was doing was good, but all I remember is how I felt. And I felt like an ingrate for wanting him to be with me when some sick child needed him.
"

  The knowledge had also made her feel unimportant, selfish, petty and guilty, feelings most children weren't equipped to handle. But she saw no point in mentioning that. Especially since that was how she was feeling at the moment. She was thirty years old, but in the past few minutes, the years had been stripped away, leaving her feeling more like ten.

  Hating how easily the feelings had surfaced, upset with Mike for uprooting them and herself for allowing them, she tightened her arms around her middle.

  "I don't expect you to change the way you feel about him," she said, wishing she had Mike's indomitable control. She could read nothing in the blue eyes silently studying her face; nothing to indicate that a word she said even mattered. "I'm not even trying to change your mind. I know a lot of people think the world of him, and I'd never dream of mentioning this to anyone else. He's helped a lot of people and he deserves the respect he's earned. But you asked how he and I could have so little to do with each other," she reminded him. "Well, that's why. He wasn't interested in me, so somewhere along the line I decided not to be interested in him."

  She averted her eyes, turning to the window. "I'll go in there. I'll tell him I'll be thinking of him. But please stop trying to push a relationship that isn't there."

  Mike said nothing. He just stood still and unnervingly silent. Knowing how analytical he could be, she was sure he was weighing every word she'd said. Considering the way he'd never failed to defend her father, she was also certain he was preparing some sort of rebuttal.

  Or so she was thinking when he reached over and tipped her face to his.

  Something strangely like apology shifted through his eyes in the moments before she saw his mouth harden.

  His pager was beeping.

  Without looking from her, he dropped his hand to reach for the small, black instrument clipped to the waist of his scrub pants, and turned it off. A second later, his sense of duty getting the better of him, he glanced at the number on the digital display to see where he was to call.

  "That's the unit," he murmured, speaking of the area behind them.

  "You'd better see what they want."

  His mouth thinned again, his thoughts clearly torn. He didn't move, though. And when he spoke, his deep voice held caution. "Are you going to be all right out here?"

  She swallowed as she nodded, her glance falling to the corded muscles of his forearms. Of all the places in the world she could be right now, she found it rather ironic that the only place she wanted to be was less than three feet away.

  She was thinking that it might as well have been a mile, when she saw that gap close. Mike reached out, his hand hovering like a blessing near her shoulder. Breaching his hesitation, he slipped his fingers along her cheek and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. The gesture was as familiar as the pattern of her own breathing, and for reasons that went far beyond unexpectedness, it caught her breath in her throat.

  "I'll come back when I'm through … if you want. To check on your folks."

  She had no idea what thoughts churned in his mind. At the moment, she didn't care. She didn't even care that he'd qualified his concern. All that mattered was that he seemed willing to sidestep the emotional baggage stacked between them for a while if she needed him. Having needed him for as long as she could remember, all she could do was whisper, "Please."

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

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  "I promise, Mom. They'll call if there are any changes. He's off the respirator, they've already had him sitting on the edge of his bed, and they're talking about transferring him to the telemetry unit in the morning. You were just with him a while ago. You saw yourself how much better he looks tonight than he did this afternoon."

  Katie shifted on the waiting room's well-worn sofa and ran a worried glance over her mother's face. Her mom sat next to her, her back straight and her hands knotted in her lap. She looked to Katie as if she'd aged ten years in the last thirty hours. The lines around her eyes she'd faithfully fought with creams and masks had etched themselves as deeply as the twin furrows between the wings of her eyebrows, and her skin was as pale as milk. Beth Brennan, who flanked her mom on the other side, looked equally concerned about her.

  "You haven't eaten and you haven't slept since yesterday," Katie continued, sounding more like a parent talking to a child than the other way around. "You won't do him any good at all if you wind up in the hospital yourself. If you don't want to go home alone, I'll stay with you."

  Threading her fingers through her hair, her mother released a long, steady sigh. "You don't need to stay with me, honey. I'll be fine by myself." She reached over long enough to pat her daughter on the knee. "I just hate to leave him."

  "She knows that, Karen. But your daughter is right." Mrs. Brennan slid her arm around her friend's shoulder. "You're not doing Randy or yourself any good right now. He's resting, and you should be, too. Let me take you home."

  Clearly outnumbered, and desperately in need of sleep, her mom finally capitulated. "I'd really rather not drive. Can you bring me back for my car in the morning?"

  "Of course."

  "Then you'll stay for a while, Katie? Make sure he doesn't wake up needing something?"

  "I'll check on him. I promise."

  "Karen," Beth admonished, tagging her to her feet. "Let's go. If he needs anything, he has a nurse right there."

  With a grateful smile for Mrs. Brennan, Katie rose to give her mom a hug. Her own eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep and her stomach burned from too much coffee and too little to eat herself. It was nine o'clock at night and, except for the snatches of sleep she'd managed on the waiting room sofa last night, she'd been up since five-thirty yesterday morning. The quick shower she'd taken when she'd run home to feed Spike that afternoon had revived her, but those effects had worn off long ago.

  Her vision was blurred with fatigue when she noticed Mike standing near the door of the CICU waiting room.

  He was in street clothes, a brown suede jacket over a cabled sweater and slacks. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been in a lab coat. Or maybe, she thought, wearily rubbing her forehead, he'd been in scrubs. He'd come and gone several times over the course of the day, relating the progress of the surgery, checking on her dad afterward, staying for a minute, or ten, depending on how much time he had before he was needed for his own patients. He'd been there for her parents and, though neither she nor Mike had said a word that didn't relate to the present circumstances, he'd been there for her, too.

  She had no idea how long he'd been standing there now. She didn't even hear what he said to their mothers as he glanced toward her, then returned his attention to them as he walked them out.

  She wished he had stayed. He possessed a quiet strength that she needed desperately. She always had, she supposed. But what she needed, what she wanted and what she could get, bore little relation to each other. Even though he'd been there for her, there had been no mistaking the cautious distance he'd kept.

  Their truce was tenuous, at best.

  Bending to pick up her purse, she became aware of a hollow ache deep inside. She'd never thought of herself as being alone before. She had her family, her friends, her volunteer work, her job and her cat. But as she slipped the strap over the shoulder of her beige jacket, she couldn't deny the dull ache filling her chest.

  She missed her friend.

  Telling herself not to think about it right now, she headed off to check on her dad.

  Visiting times for CICU were severely restricted. No visitors were allowed in at all after eight in the evening, but since she was on staff, the warden of a nurse who intercepted her at the door let her in. Though only for a minute.

  The unit was dim, and the voice of her father's nurse was hushed. After he assured her that her father was resting comfortably, and asking her to not wake him, he left her standing at the side rail.

  Her dad was asleep, his head turned toward her, his usually neat silver hair falling over his forehead. The equipment
surrounding his bed and the tubes and lines running every which way were so familiar to her she scarcely noticed them. The man in the bed didn't seem familiar at all. The ordeal of open-heart surgery had taken its toll, and left him weak and dependent. The circumstance was only temporary. Yet, each time Katie had seen him like this today she couldn't help thinking how very … human … he was.

  In her mind, her father had always been an icon of sorts, a walking reputation who cast a shadow a mile long.

  "Katie?" Her name was a painful rasp, his throat still raw from where the tubes had been. "Is that you?"

  "Yeah, Dad." She moved closer, curling one hand over the rail. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I just told Mom I'd check on you before I go."

  "Are you taking care of her?"

  She nodded, adding a quiet, "Yes. We just got her to go home and get some rest."

  "Good. I worry about her." He lifted his hand and gave hers a weak pat before it fell back to his side. His eyelids drooped, then closed. "She's not like you."

  Katie hesitated, old inadequacies waiting to be felt. "I don't know what you mean."

  "You're independent. Always have been," he added, the rasp in his voice making the words barely audible. "You don't need anyone."

  There was no particular criticism in the observation. No compliment, either. The drags in his body could easily be responsible for the lack of inflection in his voice. The man was so heavily sedated that he was already drifting off again. But he'd sounded as if he were merely stating some simple and obvious fact that those who knew her had accepted long ago.

  She blinked at the still figure on the bed, disbelief vying with incomprehension. He hardly knew her. Yet he believed she didn't need anyone? She'd once needed him. And at that very moment she needed her old friend back so badly she ached. But thinking about Mike just then made the ache deepen all the more. And trying to figure out her father was something she'd given up on long ago.

  Suddenly feeling precariously close to tears, she told herself not to think at all and turned away.