Love's Healing Touch (6 page)

Sometimes, like now, she wanted more. Now that she'd reached her professional goal, she needed to look ahead. What she wanted now was a family of her own.

Odd— she hadn't thought about marriage for a long time, not since high school when Tommy Schmidt had wanted to marry her after graduation. Her drive to be a doctor had broken up their relationship. There hadn't been anything serious since. Oh, she'd dated, but she'd been so wrapped up in her family, in her push to finish medical school and her need to learn everything she could, to be the best doctor possible, to finish the residency, that she'd never found time for a relationship. Hadn't really wanted one.

Now that she was almost there, what would she do?

Was it too late for her to have a life and family of her own? If she did, she was going to have to leave the warm, comfortable circle of her family and enter the world of dating. The whole idea bothered her. She wasn't good at flirtation or chatter, and her intensity frightened men.

Then the image of Mike Fuller's unsmiling face danced in her brain. As much as she tried to force his image away, she couldn't. As far as she could tell, she didn't intimidate him.

She could not, would not even consider him. How many times did she need to remind herself he was too young for her? No, that was an excuse. How old was he? Twenty-two, twenty-three? Six or seven years wasn't that much of an age difference.

But there were other reasons. To her, he seemed unmotivated and that bothered her, a lot. And he was so guarded, so wary and uncommunicative.

No, Fuller wasn't the man for her, but, well, other than Raul's friends he was the only unmarried man under fifty she knew.

W
hat really scared Mike was that he could always tell when Dr. Ramírez was in the hospital. He knew when he walked into the E.R.— without even seeing her— if she was there. He didn't understand how this happened. It couldn't be the scent of her perfume because she didn't wear any.

So how did he know?

He refused to believe in psychic phenomena, but every time he spotted her in the E.R. for the first time in a shift, it didn't surprise him.

If he wanted to know for sure, her schedule wasn't hard to figure out. She worked three of seven nights each week. Sometimes he thought about going to the nurses' station and trying to glance at her schedule. Inconspicuously of course because staff was always around.

Besides, the idea of actually planning this and carrying it out felt a little strange, as if there was actually something between the two of them, a relationship of some kind. He shuddered. After Cynthia and with the uncertainty of his life now, even the word scared him. No, there wasn't a relationship between him and Dr. Ramírez, and he could never consider the possibility.

Nevertheless, when he walked in that day at 3:00 p.m. for a double shift, he knew she was there.

Ana gently probed the leg of the crash victim. She couldn't feel anything odd. Of course, the swelling didn't allow for a complete manual examination. "X-ray," she shouted and turned to glance over her shoulder.

He was there. Fuller. Getting ready to transfer the victim to a gurney so the other orderly could push the gurney of another patient into its place.

His presence made her feel a little giddy.

Get a grip, she lectured herself.

"Dr. Ramírez," said an RN. "You have another patient."

"Thanks, Olivia." She dried her hands and held them out for the nurse to slide the clean gloves on her.

The entire night passed in the same way, patient after patient rolling in, being attended to, then moving on. Between those emergencies, she enjoyed the tantalizing glimpses of Fuller transporting patients or checking with an EMT or picking up a patient's chart. As she did with everyone, she nodded to him or thanked him or got out of his way so he could take the gurney to surgery or a room. At midnight, her aching back forced her to lean against the wall and stretch her muscles. Fuller hurried past, this time giving her a smile, much to her surprise.

He had a great smile. Too bad she didn't see it more. Or, maybe it was a good thing. If he smiled more often, she might behave more foolishly, if that were possible.

During a lull a few hours later, she decided to take a nap. She had two choices. The first: she could hurry over to the on-call rooms on the fifth floor of the east wing. Narrow little places, each with a bed and little else. The problem was, every time she took off her shoes, settled in the bed and pulled the covers over her, her cell rang. Walking all the way over there wasn't worth the trouble.

So she decided on the second choice. She headed for the sofa in the break room and hoped she didn't have to pull rank to get it. Fortunately, she got there first. When she was almost asleep, the door swung open. She knew it was Fuller. How? She still couldn't figure it out.

She opened her eyes a slit to see if she was right. She was.

As she watched, he stepped into the room and watched her with a gentle expression, one that didn't fit the Fuller she knew, the Fuller who seldom spoke to her. It must be the dim light that allowed the deviant thought that Fuller might look at her in that way, caring and— oh, certainly not— tender.

After a few seconds, he backed out and closed the door silently. She sat up. What had just happened? Quickly she halted the absurd tangent her brain had taken off on. Tenderness in Fuller's eyes? Ridiculous.

She had to stop thinking about the orderly. It was not professional. He was not the man for her.

But something inside her didn't agree, and she was left to wonder why he'd looked at her like that.

Driving home, Mike could barely keep his eyes open. Not the safest thing to do when he was driving, but the extra money from those long double shifts allowed him to breathe more easily. For the first time since college, he had a small savings account. For the first time in weeks, he felt there might be better times ahead that didn't consist of constant work, that held the promise he might be a doctor someday.

Not that doctors had easy lives, but they had partners to trade off with, got paid a good bit more and didn't have to do the scut work.

"Orderly," he imagined himself saying in some far-off day when he was Michael Robert Fuller, M.D. "Transport this patient to X-ray, then check on the woman bleeding in Trauma 8. And while you're there— " He almost smiled. Life was getting better when he could see a little humor in the situation, when he felt there might be a future for him in medicine.

He turned onto his street in time to see Tim ride away in his friend's car. Where were they going? He didn't have a job yet. He'd ask Tim later where he'd gone, if he remembered, but he wasn't worried. This was too early in the day to get in trouble, even for Tim.

Pulling Francie's car into the drive, he got out and stretched. He waved down the street toward the neighborhood kids waiting for the school bus as he walked across the lawn and onto the porch. It was hot already, even though it was only late May. That was central Texas.

He unlocked the front door, shoved it open and took a step inside. Silence surrounded him, the usual situation with Tim gone except normally his mother was drinking coffee and reading the paper in the kitchen when he got home. Today the door of her bedroom was shut and a line of light glowed from beneath it. Was she sick?

He knocked and said, "Mom, are you okay?"

When she threw the door open, the dazzling light from her smile and several lamps made him blink.

"I'm magnificent, dear. Look at this." She swirled and gestured around her.

The blast of brilliance made him stand still for a moment. Then he took three steps inside and blinked in an effort to take the scene in.

On the wall to his left, his mother had painted a view of a meadow with two women walking through it. Vibrant green grass and a dazzling sky filled the entire area. On the wall in front of him, she'd begun to paint a pond with gauzy water lilies floating on its shimmering surface.

Wearing one of his shirts and old jeans smeared with paint, his mother stood in the middle of an amazing blaze of beauty.

"I see you're Claude Monet today," he said stunned by the joy in his mother's face and the glow of the painting on the walls. Mixed with all this was the realization this was a rental house for which he'd signed an agreement: all plans to paint had to be approved by the landlord. He didn't think the landlord would appreciate the swirling glory on the walls, but it was too late to worry now. He and Tim could paint over it before they moved out.

Walking to the center of the room, he allowed the paintings to fill him with joy. "When did you decide to do this?"

"After you left yesterday afternoon, I took a walk." While she talked, she picked up a paper towel and wiped the plate she'd used as a palette. "There's a wonderful art store only three block from here. Did you know that?" She glanced up at him with a smile, the kind he remembered from when he was a kid.

He dropped on the bed to listen.

"They had a bin of old paint really cheap, so I bought some and a few brushes, and, well, everything I needed. It cost almost nothing." She turned in a slow circle to study her creations. "Once I got started, I couldn't stop. I painted the rest of the day and all night, stopped to feed Tim dinner and breakfast then came back here." With a sigh, she put the plate down and sat next to him on the bed.

"I didn't know how much I missed it. The painting." Her eyes shone. "Not until I put the first stroke of color on the wall and inspiration flowed through me. It kept coming and coming, like it had been locked up inside me all these years."

"You painted for twenty hours?"

"Almost." She smiled. "It was wonderful. It was like coming home, coming home to you and Tim and my painting." She stood to twirl in the middle of the room.

Mike pulled himself off the bed. "I'm glad, Mom. It's great."

"Thank you, dear." She patted his cheek. "Now, let me get you some breakfast. We can eat together. Then I have to take a nap. Although," she said, "my brain is so filled with images, I don't know if I can sleep."

"Mom, it's beautiful. What's next? Another Monet? Degas's dancers? Seurat?"

"Never Seurat. I find painting all those little dots so tedious."

She was happy. He'd let her finish her bedroom, which wouldn't take long at the speed she was going.
Then
he'd help her find a job.

Almost a week later, his mom still hadn't found work although she'd made several calls and filled out lots of applications. On the other hand, a Degas dancer stretched her long right leg across one corner in the kitchen. In the hall, the start of his mother's interpretation of a Pisarro view of a street made Mike feel as if he were walking through Paris. The landlord might be able to use the house as a gallery or charge higher rent with all the art filling it.

"Fuller, there's a kid in the E.R. who needs you," Dr. Armstrong said, interrupting Mike's thoughts.

In the past few weeks, Mike had gotten a reputation for being good with kids. This was good because he liked children, but bad because he really hated to see a kid hurt.

After finding the child, comforting her and getting her prepped for surgery, he transported her to the OR and promised he'd be there when she got out of surgery.

A few hours later, Mike glanced at his watch. Almost 6:00 a.m. His mother would be picking him up after the shift change. She'd needed the car to go to the doctor yesterday afternoon, only a routine visit, she'd said. He hoped everything had gone well.

Because he'd expected her to arrive an hour later, seeing her in the E.R. hallway surprised him. Even more amazing, she supported a gray-haired man with one hand and tried to staunch the blood dripping from the towels wrapped around the man's arm with the other.

"Mom?"

"Hello, dear." She gave him a quick smile. "I met Mr. Ramírez in the parking lot and helped him in." She lowered the man into a chair. "He says his daughter works here. Do you know her?"

"Yeah." Mike pulled gloves from his pockets, slipping them on as he ran to the nurses' station. "Page Dr. Ramírez, please." Then he grabbed a couple of towels from a hall cabinet, dropped the blood-soaked towels from Mr. Ramírez's arm on the tile floor and wrapped the clean ones around it. Before he could do more, Dr. Ramírez rushed toward her father.

"Papi, what is it?" She kneeled in front of him and glanced at the already-bloody towels. "Fuller, get a wheelchair and take my father to— " she checked the whiteboard "— Trauma 2."

"I don't need a wheelchair." Mr. Ramírez pulled himself to his feet and took a step.

Dr. Ramírez didn't say a word, just gave her father the look that stopped orderlies in their tracks or had them leaping to do what she expected. He sat.

"Marvin," she said to the clerk, "check my father in and get housekeeping here stat to clean the area and get rid of the towels."

Mike pulled his gloves off and dropped them in a closed bin. "Mom, get some soap from Marv and wash your hands and arms and face really well. Scrub hard."

Then he helped Dr. Ramírez's father into the wheelchair and pushed him to the desk where the older man handed his insurance information to Marvin.

"Marv, I'll get you the rest of the info in a minute. I need to check on my father." Dr. Ramírez grabbed the chair and wheeled it into the cubicle. "Fuller, transfer."

Once her father was lying on the examining table, Dr. Ramírez started to unwrap the arm. "How did you do this, Papi?"

"I was trimming the hedge— "

Mike took the wheelchair away as nurses and an intern and other personnel crowded into the trauma bay.

"Papi, you know you should leave those jobs for one of the boys to do," Mike heard her say as he left.

"I'm not a baby, Ana. I can do this."

"Papi," Dr. Ramírez said. "You always think you're so macho, invincible."

When Mike left the wheelchair in the corridor, he reminded himself to have housekeeping clean it well. He entered the waiting room, and his mother looked up at him.