“Mattie? What are you doing here?” He peers past me into the trauma room. “Who is that in there?” He looks concerned but also confused, no doubt because his first thoughts are that it’s my mother or sister in there, but one quick look makes it obvious the patient is a man.
“It’s Steve Hurley,” I tell him.
“That cop? What happened to him? Did he get shot?”
I shake my head. “Jackie Nash went nuts and stabbed him. She tried to stab me, too.”
I see curiosity flit across his face and know he wants more of an explanation but he stays focused. “Are you okay?” he asks, eyeing me from head to toe.
“I’m fine,” I say, glancing into the trauma room. “But Hurley is in bad shape.” I look back at my husband, the man I once loved, the man I was married to for seven years, the man who just a few nights ago pleaded for another chance, and realize he may hold Hurley’s life in his hands. “Please help him, David.” The words barely get out before my throat closes with emotion. Tears sting behind my eyes; I make a brief but futile attempt to keep them at bay, then swipe irritably at them as they course down my cheeks.
David stares at me a moment, then sighs. “You have a thing for this guy, don’t you?”
I don’t answer; I just stare back at him, my eyes pleading. I’m afraid to say too much, afraid to admit too much. I hear the clicks of the portable X-ray machine and Dr. Cannady’s voice follows.
“Dr. Winston? We could use your help in here.”
With that, David disappears into the room. The flurry of activity continues and moments later the X-ray tech returns with film in hand. David puts it up on a wall-mounted light box and studies it for a few seconds. From where I’m standing I can see the X-ray clearly and note with relief that both of Hurley’s lungs appear to be well aerated and expanded.
David confirms this. “The lungs look okay. I think the bleeding is our biggest problem. Let’s get him upstairs so I can open him up.”
As the nurses are making the final preparations for sending Hurley to the OR, David comes back out of the room and pulls me off to the side. “I can’t say I’m happy about you moving on to someone else already but I know it’s my own fault. And despite my feelings, you know I’ll do my best.”
I do. Despite his personal failings in the husband department, David is a dedicated and talented surgeon. Even if it’s a bit awkward, I’m glad David is here because I know Hurley will be in good hands. “Thank you, David.”
David takes off to get himself ready for surgery. I hear the nurses in the trauma room releasing the brakes on the stretcher and getting all the attached equipment ready for transfer. I turn to head back into the room to get one last look at Hurley, hoping to say some final words of encouragement even if I’m unsure he’ll hear them. But before I reach the door, someone else rushes into the room. I blink hard, barely believing what I’m seeing. Alison Miller dashes to Hurley’s bedside, grabs his hand, and leans over the railing to look at him.
“Oh, Stevie,” she cries. “Are you okay?” She looks over at Dr. Cannady. “Is he okay?”
“He has some internal bleeding. We’re taking him to the OR.”
“Can I go with him?” Alison pleads.
Cannady defers to the nurses, one of whom nods and says, “You can come with us as far as the doors to the surgical suite but then you’ll have to go to the waiting room.”
Alison nods. “Thank you,” she says. Then she raises Hurley’s hand to her mouth and kisses it. “He has to be okay,” she says. “We’re supposed to have dinner tonight.”
What the hell? I’m not sure what surprises me most: the inanity of Alison’s thought processes or the knowledge that she and Hurley had a dinner date planned. But then, what did I expect? Hurley clearly overheard me telling Alison that I had no romantic designs on him, that he was merely a toy to help me pass the time.
As the nurses whisk Hurley’s stretcher out of the room and toward the elevator, I briefly consider trying to muscle Alison out of the way, or at the very least taking a spot on the other side of the stretcher and going with them. But then I catch a glimpse of Hurley’s face and see that he’s awake. He’s looking up at Alison’s face as if she is the angel of mercy herself, and then he smiles and says something to her.
My heart sinks. I realize what a huge mess I’ve made of things—romantically, personally, and professionally—and wish I could go back and undo some of what I’ve done. But I can’t. My first thought is to head home and share my sorrows with Ben and Jerry and my fuzzy companions, but I don’t want to leave the hospital until I know Hurley is okay. Nor do I want to share waiting room space with Alison. So I do the next best thing instead and head for the hospital cafeteria.
One Reuben sandwich and piece of peach pie later, Izzy walks into the cafeteria.
“Figured I’d find you here,” he says. “I heard what happened when I was upstairs visiting Mom.”
Typical. News always has traveled fast in this place.
“It was awful,” I tell him. And then the whole story bursts out of me. “I went to take your pictures and I found this receipt Nelson had for a nanny cam and figured out that he had one mounted in the ceiling in his counseling room so I tried to take some pictures of it but then Jackie appeared out of nowhere and started waving this huge knife at me with this crazy look in her eyes and I didn’t know what to do.” I pause for a second to suck in a ragged breath and then continue. “Then Jackie tells me how she and Nelson have been dating and how Shannon found out about Nelson’s little side activities with his patients and was going to report him, so Jackie killed her. She killed Carla, too,” I add, telling him how I figured out Carla’s death wasn’t a suicide. “That car accident Jackie was in years ago scarred a lot more than her skin,” I conclude. “She’s crazy, Izzy, totally and completely crazy. I don’t know how I never picked up on it before. And today she wanted to kill me. I tried to keep her calm by talking but then I ran out of things to say and she was coming at me so I tried distracting her by looking behind her as if someone was there, thinking maybe I could make a run for it. Except all of a sudden Hurley really was there and then Jackie just stabbed him.” I lose it then, and start to sob. “She just stabbed him and now he might die and it’s all my fault.”
Izzy frowns and puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Mattie. You didn’t stab him, Jackie did.”
I dismiss his objection with an impatient wave of my hand and try to get myself under control, using my napkin to blow my nose. “You know what I mean, Izzy.”
“The nurses upstairs said Hurley was in surgery,” Izzy says, and I nod. “They said David was operating on him,” he adds, and I nod again. “Interesting situation,” he concludes.
“David won’t let his personal feelings get in the way. And he’s an excellent surgeon. Hurley is in good hands.”
Izzy nods thoughtfully, then says, “I can have Arnie help me with the autopsy today so take the rest of the day off. After all you’ve been through you’ll be pretty useless in the office anyway.”
I smile at him. “I should probably be offended by that comment but I suspect you’re right. And I would like to hang here until I know Hurley is okay. So I think I’ll take you up on the offer. Thanks.”
“No problem. If you don’t mind, I’m going to hang until Hurley’s out of surgery, too.”
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
“Want to head up to the surgical waiting room?”