Though she doubted Alice would appreciate the over-protective gesture, Meagan stood in the doorway watching until the girl was safely home. Only then did she go back inside her own house and close the door.
A few days later, Meagan returned home from work at almost ten o’clock at night. She’d been detained at the hospital by a procedure that had taken almost an hour longer than expected that afternoon. Almost before she’d finished with that patient, another patient had been rushed into an O.R. with a complication from surgery the day before. Meagan had to rush to scrub, making an almost superhuman attempt to save the crashing patient’s life.
When she left the hospital after several hours of painstaking reconstruction, she still wasn’t sure her efforts had been successful. She would not have been at all surprised if her patient did not survive the night. As much as she truly hated to admit it, there were times when all her training and skills simply weren’t enough.
Hungry and bone weary, she braked for her driveway. It was raining hard, as it had been all day, and she had to peer through the thumping wipers to see the turn through the downpour. She glanced automatically across the street to a house where warm lights glowed through the storm. She could just see the blue flicker of a TV screen in one window. Perhaps Seth and Alice were watching together in the dry shelter of their cozy den. Seth enjoyed eating popcorn and watching movies on his big TV.
Meagan pictured him and Alice sitting on the sofa laughing at something silly on the screen and mentally inserted herself into the picture, snuggled up with them. The fleeting fantasy did nothing to lighten her mood as she dragged herself into her kitchen and opened the fridge to make a cold sandwich. She was much too tired to cook anything.
She missed him—them, she corrected herself quickly. She enjoyed being with them. But she didn’t belong in that picture. Seth and Alice had been a tight unit long before Alice stumbled into Meagan’s backyard. She wouldn’t be the one to disrupt the dynamics of that cozy household, to risk bringing pain and disappointment into a little family that had already seen its share.
Even as that noble thought crossed her mind for at least the dozenth time in as many hours, she wondered if all her posturing about protecting Alice was really just a smokescreen. More and more, she was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t only Alice she was trying to shield from pain and disappointment. Nor Seth.
It seemed that for all her confidence in the operating room, she was quite the coward when it came to risking her heart. For years, she’d used her training and then her practice as an excuse for not letting down her guard. Was she now using Alice?
A rumble of thunder rattled her windows, followed by another gust of rain. Setting her sandwich aside only half eaten, she wandered into her bedroom and lay fully clothed on top of the covers. She should probably call her mother before it got any later, check on her grandmother. She had a few reports to look through, some notes to dictate. But she was so darned tired. How could she possibly add anything more to her already frantic schedule? And if she tried and failed, how many people would she hurt? How deeply would she suffer, herself?
Closing her eyes, she turned her face into the pillow. If failure hurt any worse than this lonely ache, she wasn’t at all sure she could survive it.
Scrubbed and gloved, Meagan was just preparing to begin a simple lap appy early the next afternoon when her phone rang. Draped and snoozing, the patient lay on the table surrounded by the surgical team waiting for Meagan to begin. A third year medical student shifted restlessly as he waited for directions and undoubtedly hoped he wouldn’t embarrass himself or earn the surgeon’s or resident’s censure. Meagan could hear the resident already giving instructions, warning the student about breaking the field or other operating room transgressions.
Because she hadn’t yet started, she took the call, just in case it was important. She didn’t receive many calls on her personal phone during her working hours, since her friends and family didn’t want to disrupt her schedule. She didn’t want to descrub, so she had the floater nurse hold the phone to her ear while Meagan kept her sterile hands carefully elevated. “Hello?”
“Meagan?” The young voice was choked with tears, hardly recognizable. “It’s Alice.”
“Alice? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
The room went quiet behind her when the chatting team heard the instinctive panic in Meagan’s tone.
“It’s—it’s Waldo. He’s—” The words broke with a sob.
Meagan felt her heart clench. If anything had happened to Alice’s beloved pet…
“He’s missing,” Alice finally finished. “He got out of the fence again, and we can’t find him. He’s been gone for hours. Jacqui and Daddy are looking for him. They told me to wait here at home in case anyone called. But I—I hope I’m not interrupting you, but I just wanted you to know.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I wish I could come help look for him right now, but I’m just about to start an operation. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”
“It’s okay,” Alice said forlornly. “I know you can’t come, but I just needed to tell you. What if we never find him? What if he got hit by a car or something? What if he’s—he’s—”
“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Meagan said
with an optimism she had to force. “Your dad will find him.”
“I hope so. I’m sorry I disturbed you,” she said again.
“No, honey, I’m glad you called. I’ll be there when I can. If you hear anything in the meantime, send me a text, okay? I’ll have someone read it to me. Waldo will be fine, Alice. Your dad will bring him home to you.”
“Okay. Thanks, Meagan.”
Gale, of course, was the only one who had the nerve to question Meagan when she joined the team at the table, moving into position at the patient’s left side, near the shoulder. Gale and Meagan had worked together hundreds of times during the past few years, and had bonded over numerous procedures. Meagan considered the scrub tech one of her best friends among her coworkers.
“What was that about?”
“A young friend’s dog has disappeared. She’s very upset about it. She’s home by herself and I think she just wanted reassurance from someone she trusts that everything will be okay. I hope I was telling the truth when I assured her it would be.”
“What else could you say?” Gale asked with a shrug, positioning the monitor so Meagan could see it clearly while working through three tiny cuts in the patient’s abdomen. A tiny camera held by the resident would be inserted through the umbilical port, and Meagan would focus on that monitor as she removed the diseased appendix using the camera images for guidance.
“This young friend wouldn’t happen to belong to that single dad you’ve been seeing, would she?”