Passing Through Midnight (20 page)

"You're the doctor?" the first medic asked.

"Dr. Dorothy Devries. Chicago. Board-certified ER
Specialist," she told him, to save any future questions or arguments.
"Let's get some lactated ringers going in that arm there. I want to
titrate morphine for his pain and give him a bolus of penicillin to
start with. His pulse is thready, but strong. I need a couple abds and
a roll of gauze here when you can get to them."

She spoke smoothly, politely, and without haste to avoid
flustering the attendants. She watched their work and was well
satisfied, and said thank you when she was momentarily handed the
dressings she'd requested.

"Gil?" she said again in the same tone she'd used before.

"I'll call her back and find out. Hang on," he said,
knowing she was questioning the whereabouts of the helicopter.

Gently removing Baxter's T-shirt and reapplying the
sterile gauze dressing as quickly and simply as she could, there was a
moment when it was as if her mind stepped away from the scene to see it
from another perspective.

It amused and pleased her that Gil was so tuned in to her
that she had only to call his name for him to know what she wanted. But
he was that sort of man. An always thinking, usually logical,
get-it-done sort—a lot like herself. And look at her! She was
covered with blood, her head clear and rational, her emotions crazed
with the rush of adrenaline but under control. A part of her was scared
spitless for the boy, but the rest of her was thrilled with the
challenge of her knowledge and skill against the permanent loss of the
boy's hand.

That was a major part of the whole thing really. One
man—or one woman—against the most sophisticated
machine of them all. The human body. There was the more mortal,
compassionate side of it and, of course, the divine fact that the
Creator of all the fine machines had the final say, but underneath,
there was the tinker's mentality of repairing, adjusting, or
experimenting with that which was broken.

That
was what she loved. That was
what she was good at. Tinkering with the most perfect and fragile
machine ever created.

"Dad! Dad, look!" she heard Baxter exclaiming, his voice
high with excitement.

They actually heard it before they could see it very well.
Amazingly, the shiny little helicopter was smaller than the combine.
But its blades were just as frightening as they stirred up the dirt,
chaff, and stalks in the field until it was almost blinding.

Dorie and the paramedics shielded the boy with their
bodies until the blades slowed and the air cleared and the new set of
highly trained emergency personnel scurried toward the boy.

Dorie gave them a brief history of the accident, the
injuries the boy had sustained, and an accounting of the drugs she'd
given him, before she bent to pick up the cooler and deliver it into
the hands of the rescue team.

"Do you want to come with—?" a male nurse asked
without
looking at her, his head bent as he strapped Joseph onto a stretcher.

"I'd like to, but his father should go. Is there room for
both of us?"

"Sure."

"Gil?" she called, looking around for him. "I'm going with
them. I'll call you later."

He nodded, then kissed her lightly on the lips. "Be
careful."

"Dorie." It was Fletcher. "Your car. Should I drive it
home for you?"

She grinned. Any excuse to drive. He was good at figuring
all the angles. Maybe geometry would suit him better than algebra, she
speculated, tossing him the keys. "Check with your dad first."

When she turned back to Gil, she was smiling, her face
radiant with enthusiasm and purpose, and Gil felt a sad, sinking
feeling in his chest. This was the Dorie who was aware that the
strength and energy she'd been accumulating over the weeks was being
channeled now in a distinct direction… and it wasn't toward
him. This was Dorie the doctor.

He could feel things changing all around him and was
suddenly frightened and insecure. On an impulse, he drew her into his
arms once more and gave her a more thorough kiss.

"Call me," he said, lifting his voice as the helicopter
started up again.

"I will," she said, and because she was feeling the
changes, too, and because it was the first time she'd had to leave him
for an indefinite period, and because it seemed important to say so,
she shouted, "I love you."

Without a backward glance she climbed into the helicopter
and buckled herself in. He stood in the scattered wheat field and
watched her leave until the sound faded away and there was nothing left
but a tiny black dot in the bright blue sky.

Gil drove the two hundred and twenty miles to Denver the
next day to pick her up. He'd been so anxious to hear from her the
night before, he'd accepted her collect call with two yesses and an of
course.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi. How's Joey? How'd it go?"

"Good. He's stable. They'll be in surgery for a few more
hours, but they said the hand looked viable, so there's a fifty-fifty
chance of saving it, which is better than no chance at all."

"Good. How are you?" he asked.

She knew exactly what he was asking. Was she sick at her
stomach? Was she dizzy? Did her head hurt? Was she wretched? But all
she could tell him over the phone was, "I'm fine, but ask me how stupid
I am," she said.

"How stupid are you?" he asked, smiling at the sound of
her voice.

"I'm stranded in Denver without a driver's license or a
credit card, and I had to borrow a quarter to make this phone call."

"That's pretty stupid," he agreed, teasing her.

"And I have no clothes. I had to borrow a set of scrubs
from the OR."

"You're in a real pickle then, huh?"

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and
he chuckled silently, waiting to see what she'd say next. Would she
keep hinting, ask for his help, or stubbornly figure a way out of it on
her own?

"Gil?"

"Yes?"

"Are you going to come get me or not?"

He laughed. "I'm on my way. I'll pick up some of your
clothes. Need anything else?"

"No. But don't come tonight. I'm beat, and they've set up
a place for me to sleep in the doctors' lounge."

"Okay. This'll cancel my Kansas City obligation, right?"

"Absolutely not. This was an emergency."

"Dorie?" he asked, curious.

"What?"

"What was your alternate plan?" He knew she had one.

She laughed. "To write you off as an unfeeling, uncaring
jerk, and ask Matthew to send me a hundred dollars for clothes and a
bus ticket back so I could come home and put you out of your misery."

"Good thing I'm such a nice guy, huh?"

A brief silence. "Yeah, it is. A very good thing."

She still looked a little tired when he picked her up a
little before noon, but she was bubbling with news of Joseph.

It seemed she'd talked to him that morning and even though
he was in a lot of pain, he was doing well and his hand had good venous
return—whatever that meant— and there was a lack of
sensation in the fingers, and that was to be expected for a while, but
he could move his thumb a bit, but they wouldn't want him moving his
fingers too much for a while yet anyway.

She thanked as many familiar faces as she could find for
their hospitality, and together they said good-bye to Harry, Joseph's
father. She was so elated from the entire event that she didn't think
twice when Gil said he'd driven Harry's truck over from Colby and
handed him the keys.

"And the smell," she was saying as they left the hospital.
"Gil, did you smell the smell?" He grimaced and nodded. "It was like
smelling incense in a church on Good Friday. I couldn't believe it. It
smelled so good. And the ER. Going through the ER last night,
everything was so familiar, it—" She stopped outside the big
electric glass doors and looked around. "How are we going to get home?"

"Well, I was thinking that we could probably stand you
under a hot-air balloon and float home, but I think that's the rental
guy waving over there," he said, herding her with a gentle hand on her
back.

"I'm talking too much," she said, feeling foolish.

"A lot, but not too much," he said, smiling at her, his
hand riding up her spine to massage the back of her neck. "It's good to
see you this happy."

She was happy. So much had transpired before she'd had
time to give her last hospital experience any thought that to react to
it in an adverse fashion would have been superfluous, not to mention
silly by then. She hadn't encountered a miracle. She hadn't undergone
some great psychic revelation. Fate had taken the choice out of her
hands. She was a doctor. She was what she was, and no matter what
happened to her in the past, or in the future, she always would be.

Gil could see it. He didn't need an explanation. And as
clear as it was to see that he was pleased for her, it was also plain
to see that he wasn't as happy about it as she was.

They both knew that the inevitable moment they'd known was
coming and neither had prepared for was at hand.
Somebody
was going to have to make a decision.

Gil treated her to lunch in a nice open-air restaurant in
downtown Denver before they started back. She asked about the boys'
reactions to Joseph's accident, and he told her they'd been frightened,
thrilled, awed, and horrified all at once. They talked about Gil's last
visit to Denver and from the midsize rental, he'd pointed out what few
interesting sites he could identify. They talked about the mountains
and the Great Plains and picked out clumps of trees they thought were
particularly beautiful. But they didn't talk about Colby or Chicago.
They didn't let on that they felt the strain between them; they didn't
touch and couldn't look each other in the eye, too afraid of what
they'd see.

They were home by five and after a brief
question-and-answer period, Gil drove away in the big black and silver
pickup with the boys to do the evening chores, and left Dorie to
pretend to help Matthew with supper.

"You're awfully quiet in here," Matthew said as he entered
the family room, wiping his hands on the dish towel he always tucked
into his trousers when he cooked. Dorie was staring at the wall of
pictures again. "If your trip to Denver turned out so well, then what
you got eatin' at you?"

"There's a lot of happiness on this wall," she said,
seeing all the smiles, overlooking the few she knew to be insincere.
Aside from his mother, every woman on the wall had given Gil pain. The
boys gave him love and joy; Matthew gave him companionship. Did he need
another woman's picture on the wall?

Matthew was nodding as he walked to her side and leaned
one hip against the end of the pool table. "A lot of sadness too. But
you know what I see when I look at that wall?"

"What?"

"Pride. Hope. Perseverance. Convictions. I came here in
nineteen forty-seven. Lost my own farm and my family in a twister that
year," he said, lowering his head as if unwilling to inflict the misery
in his heart on her. "I loved my sister, and I never knew a finer man
than Gil's daddy, but in my opinion, their son outshines them both.
Known him from the cradle. Seen him lose. Seen things taken from him.
Seen him knocked down and kicked. But I've never seen him give up. He
hasn't always gotten what he wanted, but he's always been grateful for
what he's gotten."

She sighed, her heart heavy. More than anything, she
wanted to stay with Gil and spend the rest of her life thinking up ways
to make him smile. She wished she could make just one of his dreams
come true for him.

"You're going back, aren't you?" Matthew said softly. "And
you don't know how to tell him."

She looked at him. His old face was wise and kind and
understanding.

"I think I have to," she said. "I love it here, but I
wasn't meant to hang around a farm and bake cookies and pull weeds. And
Gil doesn't need me. He's got you and the boys. Together you're a
family. You don't need anyone else on this wall. I don't belong here.
I'm a city person. A doctor. I… I love Gil very much, but
we're so different and… well, I don't think we're meant to
be together."

He laughed, and his loud amusement startled her.

"Oh, I'm not laughing at you. I'm just surprised you'd say
that," he said, his mirth settling to speculation. "You're an
intelligent gal, no doubt about that, but you've always struck me as
the type of person who did her best thinking with her heart, not her
brain."

She looked back at the wall. At Joy and then Beth.

"My heart and my brain are sending me the same message."

"Are they?"

"I'm not what he needs. I wouldn't be good for him," she
said. There were tears in her eyes and a plea for his help when she
turned back to him. "I don't want to hurt him, Matthew. What should I
tell him? How can I?…"

"Tell him the truth. That's what he understands."

She did tell him. After supper on the porch swing. And to
her great relief—followed swiftly by disheartenment,
surprise, and something close to indignation—he agreed with
her.

"I'm glad for you, Dorie," he said in earnest. "I sort of
suspected what you were feeling the way you were talking today. And
yesterday… Damn, that was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
Everyone in that field was in a panic except you."

"You weren't."

"I was. You kept me too busy to scream. Hell, Joey could
have lost more than his hand waiting for one of us to do something. But
there you were, covered with blood, calm as you please, getting things
done. I… it was something to see."

She smiled and looked down at her hands. Her magic hands
with the power to heal in them. Tears were stinging the backs of her
eyes. She could feel her heart ache and begin to crack and tear apart,
and her hands lay helpless in her lap, unable to stop it.