FROM HOUSECALLS TO HUSBAND Read online

  She was at her kitchen table, searching the small basket for the right shade of brown, when she heard him order a string of medications meant to stabilize a dysrhythmic heart. She'd assumed he was just calling whoever he was meeting for dinner.

  His pager must have gone off, she thought. Listening, because it was impossible not to, she sat down and snipped off the torn threads from the shoulder seam. When that was done, she began stitching the small rip. Mike paced past her a dozen times, his slow, measured steps more a way to expend energy than a sign of impatience.

  "A double bypass was just readmitted through emergency. Eva Horton," he added, hitting the off button on the phone with his thumb.

  Katie glanced up midstitch. Mike had his broad back to her as he returned the phone to the end table by the sofa.

  "What happened?"

  "She was having trouble breathing. Her niece brought her in."

  His deep voice rumbled with terminology that Katie understood all too well as he went on to say what the EKG and blood tests had shown. The news wasn't good, but Mike was so accustomed to dealing with such situations that, when his glance fell to the jacket bunched in her lap, he revealed nothing but mild surprise.

  With the tear no longer visible, his dark eyebrow winged upward. "You're finished?"

  His expression would have amused Katie had she not been so busy scrambling to keep up. A double bypass, he'd said, identifying the problem first, then the patient. She did that herself sometimes. And she knew it undoubtedly sounded cold and callous to anyone who'd never worked with pain and suffering; to anyone who'd never had to guard against becoming too involved because the emotional drain over the years could be so devastating. It was simply an occupational form of protection. But separating patient from problem didn't always work for her. Not as well as it seemed to for Mike.

  Now was not the time to ask him how he did it; how he kept from worrying when he cared.

  "I'm finished," she said, making the last, neat stitch so he could be on his way. "I'm not going to make you any later for dinner than you already are. Who're you meeting, anyway?"

  "Claire Griffen."

  "Dr. Griffen?"

  "Why do you say it like that?" he asked, watching her bite off the thread and hand him back his jacket. "She wants a consult on a patient. We've been trying to get together for three days, but something keeps coming up. Lately, it seems as if everyone's going in eight directions at once."

  "Must be a full moon," Katie muttered. "Just a consult?" Caught by a twinge of something she preferred not to define, she cocked her head and smiled. "You sure that's all it is?"

  "Of course, I'm sure." He scowled at her teasing, looking as if he couldn't imagine why else he'd be having dinner with the woman. "We need to talk, and we both need to eat. It's the two-birds-with-one-stone method of time management."

  "Have you been out with her before?"

  "What for?"

  "Well, for starters," she drawled, amazed at the total lack of comprehension in his normally intelligent blue eyes, "she's pretty, she's nice, she's single and you have a lot in common."

  "You know I don't have time to date."

  Which was why you asked me to the Heart Ball, she thought, but she kept the faintly chiding thought to herself. He didn't have time because he wasn't making time. He didn't want a relationship. That knowledge should have worried her. It probably would have, too, if his disinterest in his very eligible, female colleague hadn't just relieved her somehow.

  Not caring to consider what the attractive internist might have on her own menu for the night, she moved to where Mike shrugged on his jacket by the door.

  "Are you going to get a ladder from your folks, or do you want me to leave mine?"

  Checking the back of his jacket to make sure her handiwork didn't show, she considered her alternatives. "Well, there's no way for me to get one over here in my car," she said, thinking out loud. "And Mom's car certainly wouldn't work." The miniscule size of the car alone precluded any further consideration there, but the thought of petite, perfectly groomed Karen Sheppard driving down the road with a twenty-foot extension ladder poked through the windows of her little Mercedes made Katie smile. "If you don't mind," she began, but Mike cut her off as she moved around to face him.

  "Ask your dad to drop it off. This is practically on the way to his office."

  The knot she'd felt before reasserted itself. "I'm not going to ask for his help with something like this."

  "Did you ever consider that he might like you to ask for his help?"

  "Frankly? No. And there's really no point in discussing this further," she insisted, holding up her hand to cut him off before he could get started. He'd never been able to understand her relationship with her father—or, rather, the lack of one. And since he knew her dad quite well, he couldn't comprehend how she, who'd lived in her father's house for eighteen years, scarcely knew him at all. "Thanks for your help. Really," she added, her voice softening with apology and fatigue. "I appreciate it."

  "Why do you have to be so stubborn?"

  "Mike, please. Why can't you just accept that my father and I don't have the same sort of relationship that you and your dad do? Or the same sort of relationship you have with him for that matter." She drew a deep breath, and pinched the headache threatening behind the bridge of her nose. Mike made her absolutely crazy when he started in on this particular subject. He simply didn't—couldn't—seem to understand that she did not want to discuss it with him. It wasn't worth the anger and hurt she felt every time they did.

  "You're going to be late," she said, her patience straining. She couldn't do this. Not now. She was running on reserve as it was. "I'll keep your ladder for a while, if you don't mind."

  The defeat in her tone silenced him. For a moment, he just stood there looking big and solid and strong, and seeing far too much.

  "You know I don't mind," he finally said, and absently pushed back the curl that had fallen against her cheek.

  The gesture was one of conciliation, and it forced the corner of her mouth to curve. He matched her weak smile with one of his own.

  "You're looking a little flushed," he murmured. "Is your throat still bothering you?"

  She shook her head, her fingers lingering on the spot he'd just touched when she pushed the curl back again herself. "It's a lot better. Really," she insisted since he looked as if he didn't quite believe her.

  "You push yourself too hard."

  "You have no room to talk. I'm not the one heading off to a consultation after working all day."

  "Yeah, but I'm not sick."

  "I'm not either. I'm better." Almost.

  His lips thinned, but more in exasperation than doubt. Shaking his head at her, he reached out again and brushed his knuckles over her cheek. "Get some rest."

  It had to be the craziness of the day—the week—that made her reach toward him as he turned to the door. He didn't see what she'd done, though. With his back to her as he let himself out, he didn't notice, either, how she drew her hand back to cross her arms, or see how tightly she held herself as she listened to the heavy click of the latch when the door closed.

  It was just as well she hadn't caught his attention. She didn't know what she'd have said she wanted if he had. There were just so many times lately when she'd wanted a pair of arms around her. Not just any arms, either. But it didn't seem wise to think about how good it would feel to have Mike hold her, even though there were times she wanted that more than she dared admit.

  Three days later, all Katie wanted was to walk out the front door of the hospital and never go back. Eva Horton coded that morning. They'd worked on her for over an hour before she passed away in CICU.

  The desire to simply chuck it all didn't last. There were too many other patients to attend, too much else to be done for Katie to indulge herself in something so easy. The reaction was knee-jerk, anyway; a response that occasionally came when circumstances made her question her skills, her judgment, her choice of occu
pation. With other patients needing her attention, she couldn't dwell on how unfair it was for Eva's fire and spark to be snuffed out when there had been so much the woman had wanted to do. But Katie couldn't ignore the tugs of sadness that told her she'd failed once again to keep professional compassion from getting personal. Being the pro she was, however, she continued efficiently about her duties, soothing anxious patients, practicing patience with imbecilic insurance red tape, and working around the odd little ache such a loss always left.

  Still, she didn't think she'd ever been so glad to leave a place when, having logged in only two extra hours of overtime, she finally left to join Dana and Lee at Granetti's for a drink after work.

  Granetti's Pub was something of an institution among the hospital crowd. The cozy trattoria and bar was only a block away, a short dash through the parking garage. Its owners, an Italian chef and his Irish wife, took pride in the fact that much of the hospital's staff thought of the place as they would a friend's kitchen.

  When Katie hurried in from the rain, her friends were already there, occupying one of the green-clothed tables under a trellis of faux grapevines and a Guinness beer sign that proclaimed the brand was good for one's health. Dana, looking chic as always with her stylishly short blond hair, held up a glass of white wine to indicate she'd already ordered for her. Across from her, Lee raked her fingers through the dark strands of her wind-tousled shag. With her warm, easy smile, she motioned to the chair beside her.

  "Can you believe she actually applied for that promotion?" Lee asked, picking up the conversation as if it hadn't been hours since she'd called about getting together that afternoon.

  Katie eyed the basket of warm garlic cheese bread on the table, struggling between the lure of the bread's heavenly scent and the need to shed the last of her holiday weight. The only drawback to having finally shaken her sore throat was that her appetite had returned.

  "It's about time," she replied. Inhaling the intoxicating blend of garlic, parsley and Parmesan, she smiled at Dana. "You waffled about it long enough. How long before you hear?"

  Dana was an excellent nurse, and her organizational abilities made her the perfect choice for nurse manager of the surgery department. It had just taken a little arm-twisting on their part to get her to see her potential. But then, arm-twisting was what friends were for.

  "It'll be weeks. They've just started taking applications. But enough about that." A shining wedge of her hair swung forward as she leaned closer, her blue eyes sparkling like the sapphire studs in her ears. She still looked as fresh and crisp as she undoubtedly had that morning. Even her dewy peach lipstick was perfect. "I want to know what you're wearing to the Heart Ball."

  Lee, who rarely bothered with mascara, much less anything with color in it, paused midbite. "What?" She swallowed, nearly choking. "You're going to the Heart Ball? With who? Whom?" she corrected, dropping the bread to the plate in front of her.

  "Just Mike," Dana said before Katie could. "But it's the idea that she gets to go. It's like Cinderella night. She gets to wear panty hose and everything."

  "I can get into the Cinderella part," Lee admitted, not at all opposed to indulging in a little fantasy. "But you had me worried there, Katie. For a minute I thought you were actually going on a date with a doctor."

  Katie's expression turned chiding. "Bite your tongue."

  "Look, you two." Dana sighed in exasperation. "There's no harm in enjoying a doctor's company if one asks you out. As long as he's single, anyway. Just because you date someone doesn't mean you have to marry him."

  "You can take chances if you want," Lee informed their reckless friend. "I'm not interested. When it comes to personal relationships, any man with an MD behind his name is a lousy risk. So," she continued, blatantly changing the subject as she turned back to Katie, "what are you going to wear?"

  Though Katie quietly shared the conviction, Lee was definitely the most militant of the three when it came to the old pledge they'd signed. Despite Dana's somewhat looser stance, Katie knew that Dana shared it, too. Her mom had regarded doctors as white knights, perfect marriage material for herself and her daughter. But Dana wasn't about to waste her life the way her mother had, waiting to be rescued. Katie and Lee, however, had seen up close and personal what involvement with a doctor meant. Lee's father had also been a physician. But he'd abandoned his daughter in a more profound way. He'd used her mother for comfort, companionship and sex, then refused to marry her when she became pregnant, leaving her to raise a child alone.

  Bad risks, indeed. And no one knew better than they did that life was precarious enough without deliberately setting yourself up for a fall.

  The thought of just how precarious life was tugged at the lingering thoughts of what had happened in CICU that morning. But Dana and Lee unwittingly rescued her, demanding her attention as they debated the kind of gown she should wear, and whether she should stick with basic black, or throw caution to the wind and go for red. Something arterial rather than veinous. Bright red, rather than burgundy. It had to be long, of course. And clinging.

  That decision, made by Dana, had Katie wishing she hadn't reached for the bread, even though she'd only nibbled through half of the piece she'd taken. Once she'd thought of Eva, she found she had less of an appetite than she'd thought.

  "Are you okay?" Dana asked, eyeing her suspiciously. "You haven't said a dozen words since you got here."

  She could have told them what was on her mind. They would have understood. But her friends were having a good time. Rather than put a damper on the evening by telling them she'd lost a patient, she kept it to herself, much the way she did a lot of things that had no solution. "That's because I can't get a word in edgewise."

  "You could always interrupt," Lee murmured.

  "So what's it going to be?" Dana asked. "Something dramatic or something bold?"

  "I'd say that depends on what either one of you have hanging in your closet. The only things even remotely formal in mine are a memento from our last prom and that gold lamé sausage casing you two talked me into buying during a clearance sale a couple of years ago. The sausage casing is out, and I can't afford to buy 'dramatic' or 'bold.'"

  "The gold lamé looked stunning," Dana defended. "It's just out of style now is all. But you wouldn't want anything in my closet, either. The only formal wear in there are bridesmaid's dresses."

  "Ditto," replied Lee. "In fact, I think we all have a couple of the same ones. Hey! What about that royal blue number we wore in Candy Schumacher's wedding last year? You could take off the big bow and the lace from around the neckline."

  "And get rid of the ruffle on the cuffs," Dana added, apparently seeing the possibilities. "And lose that flippy little train thing in the back."

  "I think the flippy, train thing is the back," Katie observed. "The only thing that dress had going for it was the color."

  "You're right." Lee propped her elbow on the table and plopped her chin into her hand. "You're going to have to buy something, kiddo. No way around it. Maybe we can hit a sale."

  "Sale?" a female voice asked from behind Katie. "Where's a sale?"

  All three women glanced up to see Melba Martin, one of the OR nurses Dana worked with, drop her coat over a chair at the next table. Right behind Melba was Alice from Katie's unit and the impossibly young-looking resident she'd taken under her wing.

  Granetti's was not a place for privacy. It was where people went to wind down, or to connect. Unless heads were together in serious conversation, anyone was free to pull up a chair, which was exactly what the newcomers did. More bread was ordered, along with fresh drinks for everyone—except for Katie who, within minutes, was searching desperately for a graceful way to leave without looking as if she were bolting. Everyone's spirits were up, laughter prevalent as conversation shifted from shopping to a quick round of the jokes that had circulated through the hospital that day. She tried her best to get into the party mood, but her best just wasn't good enough. "What's going on?"
/>   She didn't have to turn around to know who'd come up behind her. Mike's voice was as familiar to her as the feel of her own heartbeat.

  "Want to join us?" Dana asked, scooting over to make room for another chair.

  "There's room here, too," Melba quickly offered, smiling hopefully at the darkly attractive surgeon.

  "Thanks. I just came in to pick up some dinner, but I'll hang around until it's ready."

  He wedged a chair into the open space by Dana, since she'd offered first, tactfully avoiding the other nurse's obvious invitation. Though he kept his overcoat on, open over his suit jacket, he immediately loosened his tie. Lines of fatigue etched the corners of his eyes, deepening with his quiet smile when he told the waitress who appeared at his elbow that he wouldn't be staying.

  The topic presently under discussion was the Trailblazers' chances at the Western Conference title. Basketball was a passion in Honeygrove. And during basketball season, signs rooting the Blazers could be seen in store and car windows all over town.

  Katie was a fan herself, but tonight her enthusiasm simply wasn't there. She wasn't even saying much, which wasn't like her at all.

  Mike caught her eye, his own narrowing in question at her silence.

  Are you all right? that glance seemed to ask.

  Her only response was a shrug and a halfhearted smile.

  She hadn't seen him since Eva had coded. He'd been in surgery when his patient had turned critical. And once Eva had been sent to CICU, Katie had no longer been involved in her care. She hadn't even known Eva had died until she'd called over to CICU a couple of hours later to see how the patient was doing.

  By now, Mike would have reviewed the chart and talked with the family. She knew he'd gone back to his office to see patients that afternoon, too. One of the nurses in the telemetry unit had called him there to verify a change of medication.

  "Here you go, Dr. Brennan." A waiter set a white paper bag on the table in front of Mike. "You have a nice evening, sir."