The Doctor's Recovery, page 2
“You’ll continue daily sessions in the hyperbaric chamber and physical therapy. We’ll need to keep monitoring you for infection.”
“But you won’t stitch it all up?”
“Lacerations sustained in a marine environment are susceptible to uncommon pathogens. There is a serious risk for infection in extremity trauma such as yours.” Dr. Hensen added another stiff pat on her shoulder, once again stepping out of his textbook. Compassion softened his voice. “Sutures won’t get you discharged.”
Her skin absorbed that unease, kicking her pulse into overdrive. How would she convince her Bay Water Medical team she was ready to leave?
The information dry-erase board across from her bed listed today’s wound care nurse: Kellie K. Her hyperbaric physician: Dr. West. Her physical therapist: Robyn. Her team’s lead: Dr. Hensen along with a handful more support staff. The hospital employees overseeing her care outnumbered her documentary film crew by three to one. As if she was a critical patient.
If she was critical, she’d have to admit the severity of her injuries, and that meant admitting she’d made several crucial dive mistakes. Those phantom pins and needles pierced through her stomach, letting the dread and distress leak in. Her father had died from his mistakes.
But she’d promised her dad she’d honor each of his final wishes. She’d always coveted her father’s love, and that meant she’d take over the Fiore Films business, continue his life’s work and not fail him. You always lacked discipline and focus, Mia. But now you can make me proud. She didn’t have time to debate her character with her father’s ghost. She had one too many open wounds to contend with now.
“So I’m supposed to just lie here and do nothing? Then lie in the chamber and do nothing again?” She’d only ever been a visitor at the hospital. She’d never been the patient waiting on her own visitors. “And just keep on doing nothing.”
“Your body needs rest to facilitate healing. It may seem like nothing, but restoration of injured tissue is a complex process.” Dr. Hensen looked at her, his smile a small twitch. “Healing is quite an exhaustive process for the body.”
“But I have an actual job.” She clutched Dr. Hensen’s arm, holding him in place. The startled look behind his round glasses hinted at his retreat back inside his mental textbook. Mia continued, “And an important deadline to meet.”
A brisk knock and sure footsteps preceded the order from a familiar voice. “Right now, your only job is to heal.”
Dr. Hensen tugged his arm free and darted toward Wyatt Reid. Relief coated Dr. Hensen’s voice and slid into his extended handshake with Wyatt. “Nice to see that they let you out of the ER, Dr. Reid. We could certainly benefit from your skills up here.” He pushed on his glasses and glanced at Mia. “I agree with my colleague, Mia. You need to concentrate on your recovery. Don’t fight the process. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Mia nodded. This was so not how she’d envisioned her first meeting with Wyatt. She excluded their ER encounter, as her hallucinations and her reality had collided and become indecipherable throughout the night.
But there was nothing imaginary about Wyatt now from his navy scrubs to slate eyes to his hair still long enough to run her fingers through and rearrange. That was all wrong. Confusion must be a side effect of her pain meds. The only running she intended to do was out of the hospital and away from Wyatt. The blood pressure cuff squeezed her arm as if on cue to censure any thoughts about leaving.
An IV line and monitors tethered her to a hospital bed. That she couldn’t tether the giant moths that escaped her stomach and fluttered through her chest annoyed her. Why hadn’t she prepared for this better? Of course, seeing Dr. Wyatt Reid again had never been on her schedule. Neither had an extended stay in the hospital.
She held on to her smile until Dr. Hensen closed her door before glaring at Wyatt. “You didn’t have to admit me. You could’ve treated my wounds and sent me home with Eddy.”
“Should I have sent you home when you passed out in the ER? Or after the hyperbaric chamber when you passed out again?” He moved to the foot of her bed and stared at her. “And the blood loss? Was I supposed to give two CCs of blood to Eddy to pump into you that evening?”
The logic in his questions and composure in his tone grated on her. That something inside her sighed at his presence shoved her into the irrational. “I have a job.”
“So do I.” He gripped the bed frame and leaned forward, fully prepared to take her on. “I took a Hippocratic oath to save lives, including yours.”
An oath that he lived and breathed. Always. Just like she lived for her job. She tipped her chin up and held his gaze. “I cannot miss my deadline.”
“It can wait.”
“Easy for you to say,” she said. “You’re walking around, doing your job just fine like always.”
“You’ll be back doing your job soon enough.”
“Not if I miss this deadline.”
“They’ll understand.”
He didn’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to be the patient. She didn’t make mistakes that could cost her her life or those of her best friends. Those pinpricks turned her stomach inside out, stealing her breath. If they’d just let her leave, then perhaps it wasn’t such a big mistake. And her life could return to normal like she wanted. Why did her old life make her hyperventilate now? She loved the life she’d built with her father.
Wyatt tilted his head and studied her. “Are you afraid to be here?”
“Of course I don’t want to be here.” Not with Wyatt close enough to touch, but so far out of her reach. But that was all wrong. She wanted discharge papers, her old life back more than she’d ever wanted Wyatt. She pressed her fist into the bed. “You do know what happens in places like this.”
“Yes, I know what happens in hospitals.” The softness in his voice slid into his gaze, tempering the cool sleet color. “We save lives.”
“Or not.” She scowled at the fragile crack in her voice and blamed Wyatt for making her weak.
Wyatt walked around to her side and lifted his arm toward her.
Everything in Mia stilled. The air in her lungs, her pulse, all of her waited and wished.
He made a midcourse correction to adjust her IV line, denying her his touch. “I’m really sorry about your dad.”
Mia buried her arm under the covers. She didn’t need his support. She’d never needed that. She’d handle her grief like she handled everything else: on her own terms. Besides, it was his fault she was there. Not entirely, she admitted, but she needed someone to blame to keep her sanity. Otherwise she might crumble beneath the ramifications of her accident. “Why are you here?”
“I work downstairs in the ER.”
“I know that.” She tugged on the blankets, refusing to look at him. “Why are you up here?”
“My mother is down the hall, recovering from a second hip replacement.”
That brought her focus to him. “I’m not your mother.”
“I’ve noticed.” The laughter in his voice melted into his smile.
And ping-ponged something warm through her like the first sip of homemade hot chocolate. She remembered that comforting feeling from their time together. But she hadn’t missed him. She’d chosen to leave and live her life. “Why are you in my room specifically? I’m not your patient.” His name wasn’t on her information board. She was thankful for that, wasn’t she?
“I can’t check up on a friend?” he asked.
“Is that what we are?”
“Unless you prefer another definition for our relationship.”
They had no relationship. Wasn’t that the point? “We haven’t spoken in twenty-six months.”
“That’s rather exact,” he said.
“Yet true,” she said.
“I promised Eddy I’d check on you.”
“Eddy was here?” Relief rushed through her. Nothing had happened to Eddy. Her friend hadn’t suffered because of her error.
“Eddy, Frank and Shane have all been here.” His eyebrows pulled together, highlighting his perplexed voice. “Your crew still follows wherever you lead.”
“They work with me because they want to,” she said. Unlike Wyatt, who’d never follow. He’d wanted to be with her, too, at one time. But only on his terms. And those were terms she would never accept. She crammed her pillow behind her head. “Well, you’ve checked up on me. Dr. Hensen told me to sleep and let my body heal. Could you dim the lights on your way out?”
“I’ll be back.” There was a hint of warning in his tone.
With any luck, she’d be asleep. Mia closed her eyes, shutting him out and severing her awareness of him as anything more than a doctor. Wyatt Reid was a doctor first and always, same as she was a filmmaker first and always.
“If you need me, the nurses know how to find me,” he added before the lights dimmed and silence rushed through the room.
Mia wanted to stuff the pillow over her face and scream. That would no doubt get her another specialist for her care team and a psychological evaluation. There had to be at least ten hospitals in San Francisco, and she’d ended up at the one where Wyatt Reid worked. Not even fate could’ve conjured that twist.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DOOR TO Mia’s room clicked shut, soft and quiet, despite Wyatt’s tight grip on the steel handle. Slamming the door might’ve satisfied him, but he doubted that would be enough to disrupt Mia’s determination to greet her father in the afterlife. Stubborn woman couldn’t see past her current deadline. She’d almost died. Died.
Yet she railed at him for admitting her as if the entire incident was his fault. As if he prevented her from finishing her precious film. Had she learned nothing from her father’s death? She’d brushed off his condolences about her dad like a decade-long chain-smoker given a pamphlet on how to quit.
Still he’d treat her like any other patient, the same as he’d declined to make an exception for his mother. He refused to lose his objectivity only to have them suffer for his misstep. Emotional lockdown was the only prudent course of action. Not that he had to worry with his mom. However, Mia triggered something inside him, something that rattled that lock and disturbed his composure. He simply had to regulate his neurological response to Mia with more precision and resist any urge to be more than a doctor who knew what she needed even if she didn’t. It was past time Mia slowed down, reassessed and grieved.
Of course, knowing what was best for someone didn’t guarantee the person’s agreement or cooperation. That much he learned every day with his mother. He seemed to be surrounded by difficult women. Good thing he’d never walked away from a challenge.
Wyatt slowed at the nurses’ station and met Nettie’s gaze, waiting for the charge nurse’s signal. Wyatt believed in gathering as much information as possible before any confrontation, and when it came to his mother, he’d gather information from any source willing to release it. Nettie smiled. Her thumbs-up allowed the breath he’d been holding to slip out.
His mother’s references to her final days had quadrupled since her first hip surgery eight weeks ago. It’d gotten so bad, her parting line most evenings had been: you’ll need to look for me in the morgue tomorrow if you wish to visit me. After her second hip surgery, she’d revised her morgue commentary and now suggested suitable places to scatter her ashes depending on the season she’d arbitrarily determined would be her last. Fortunately, his mother hadn’t referenced pushing up daisies in the last three days, and every signal from the charge nurse had been positive.
Wyatt knocked on his mom’s door and entered the room. His mother wore her receiving pajamas, the ones with roses and vines that she’d deemed appropriate attire for visitors. That made three days in a row. Wyatt frowned as his mother muttered. Her face was pressed close enough to her notepad screen that her nose would leave an imprint. Even with her glasses on, the strain could trigger another seizure. He’d need to talk to her primary care physician about her seizure medications after her discharge.
“Mom.” He kissed her wilted cheek and imagined she leaned in for his greeting like she’d used to when he was a clumsy kid climbing onto her lap for a good-night hug. But mother and son had stopped leaning on each other years ago. He shoved his useless childhood memories aside and nudged her notepad lower before enlarging the image on her screen with his fingers. One quick glance confirmed the photographs that absorbed all of her attention. He’d forwarded that latest set of pictures he’d taken in her greenhouse to her email account last night.
“Well, that’s much better.” Her focus remained fixed on her screen, but appreciation tinged her voice.
While his mother continued to check the vitals on her precious plants, he took an inventory of her, searching for anything the medical team might’ve missed like last time: new bruises on her arms, involuntary winces of pain, signs of infection. Anything that might signal another unexpected decline.
“The begonia needs to be repotted before the weekend.” She flipped through several more photographs. “The snapdragon seedlings need more light.” She glanced at the window, her eyebrows pulling in behind her round glasses at the fog swirling against the pane. “Bring them into the house and put them under the lights for the next few days.”
“We already put the primrose seeds under the house lights,” he reminded her. Newborns with jaundice belonged under special lights. Preemies required such meticulous care and attention, not plants. But that wasn’t an argument he intended to revisit with his mother. Her greenhouse was a sacred place; everything inside those glassed walls was her family now.
She flicked her hand back and forth as if sweeping away his words like spilled soil. “The pots aren’t too big. They can share the space.”
If only everything in life was so easy and simple. Wyatt and his mother struggled to share the same space.
“You could buy a new light.” She lifted her gaze above her oversize glasses.
No way. He wasn’t adding another UV light. Soon enough the DEA would be knocking down the door to bust him for growing illegal substances, as he had too many lights going now. Either that or the neighbors were convinced he had a deep-seated fear of the dark. The lights matched his night-shift schedule: on all night, off in the morning. With his work schedule changing to days, he’d have to change the plants’ schedule, too. His mother preferred consistency, but it was the best he could do to keep everything alive. In another time, she’d concentrated on her family with the same meticulous consideration. Now her devotion belonged to her plants and the nursery she’d built in her backyard. Not that he wanted her fawning over him as if he was one of her struggling plants. “I’ll make it work.”
She smiled and pulled up another photograph. “The orchid has taken to the new food mixture. There’s happiness in the blooms now.”
But not in his mother. He hadn’t seen real joy in his mother in over five years, long before his brother’s unexpected death. He remembered the lightness in her laughter and happiness on her face when his father would come home and dance her to her seat at the dinner table every night. He’d even witnessed the same dance, the steps slower and more cautious, when he’d returned home from college, months before cancer stole his father and dimmed his mother’s light. Still there’d been moments after the grief had settled and the memories no longer stung. Then came Trent, when love had proved to be a poor antidote to his brother’s inner turmoil and anguish and nothing had slowed his downward spiral. Then not even Wyatt could reignite any sort of happiness in his mother.
He cracked his knuckles. The pop realigned his bones and his focus. He hadn’t slammed the door to Mia’s room, but he could slam the door on memory lane and lock it.
Besides, he needed his mother to concentrate on her recovery and talk about her living situation after room 326 on the transitional care floor at Bay Water Medical. After her discharge, all of his mother’s love could return to her flowers. He only cared that she was safe when she left the hospital. That was his duty as her son. He had her love as a child, that was enough. Something scraped across his insides like a dull razor, leaving deep gouges in its wake. He rubbed his chest and discarded the phantom ache. “Your neighbor in the Craftsman brought over his cactus last night. It’s dead.”
“You didn’t tell Samuel that, I hope.”
“I suggested that he drop it in the recycle bin on his way back home,” Wyatt said.
“I raised you with better manners than that.”
He smiled. He did consider dropping the pathetic plant in the recycle bin himself on his way to work. Even a tempered truth had less cruelty than false hope.
His mother eyed him. “Where’s the cactus?”
“Sitting beside the other neighborhood plants begging for resuscitation and prompt care.” His mother had a plant-based ER in her nursery. The neighbors and her so-called friends were obviously taking advantage of his mom’s green thumb skills. Her greenhouse wasn’t the local garden center at the hardware store or inside one of the city’s impressive parks with multiple staff to attend to it. She was one person, living alone, among her plants. In his opinion, her garden and greenhouse had gotten more than a bit out of control. She needed to say no more often.
“What kind of cactus is it?”
“The cactus kind.” Wyatt dropped his keys and cell phone on the window ledge and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Really, Wyatt. If you asked for details about a gunshot victim downstairs, you’d hardly accept bullet wound as an appropriate response.”
Bullet wounds and his patients were not even in the same stratosphere as a dying cactus. Especially a cactus that could be replaced with a trip to the local home improvement store and a five-minute walk through the garden center. Wyatt sighed, picked up his mother’s tablet and searched cactus images on the internet. “Maybe this one, if its shoots weren’t all shriveled up.”
