Pulling Home (12 page)

“I’m not asking for an outright name. Just a few clues here and there.” How could two or three inconsequential tidbits about the person in question be interpreted as betraying August’s ecclesiastical oath? Anyone who knew the man knew he sat on the right hand of the Creator. Lord Almighty, some even said August Richot was the Savior in the Our Savior Lutheran Church. Doris would have to say she agreed.

“You know as well as I, that I can’t give you what you’re asking.” He set the

baster and violet on the ledge and sat in the vinyl chair next to the bed. “Why do you want to dredge this up now? Thirty years is a long time. People move on with their lives.”

She yanked a Kleenex from the box on the table and swiped at her eyes. The

memories pounced on her again, as they had since the day Corrine told her she was pregnant. “Because I can’t move on,” she whispered in a small voice. “Corrine tried to come to me and I abandoned her.”

“Visiting your aunt in Connecticut for the summer was not abandoning her.”

“I shouldn’t have gone. I should have paid more attention to those visits she made to that damn Bartholomew Benedict to cleanse her heart and soul of impure thoughts.”

The pain of regret gouged her senses, rendering her incapable of feeling anything but guilt and neglected responsibility.

“Don’t talk like that. Father Benedict is a good man.”

August stroked her back and spoke in a reassuring voice as one would to a caged

animal. He was right to treat her that way—she was caged in a brain and a life that refused to set her free.

She squinted at him, the haziness of his words taking shape into meaning. There

was a clue there, she sensed it, if only she could pull it out. Doris blinked hard, wishing they hadn’t forced that valium on her earlier. She focused on August’s eyes, the mirror of his Christian soul. They couldn’t lie. Then she opened her mouth and forced sound to the suspicion she’d held for almost thirty years. “Is Father Benedict Audra Valentine’s father?”

“How do you think Christian would want us to handle this?”—Peter Andellieu

“How long has she had these headaches?”

Audra shifted in her chair and glanced at her daughter who lay on the exam table, eyes closed, breathing even, a much different scene than forty minutes ago when Peter carried her into the doctor’s office in a near panic.

“A few months. I’d get phone calls from school about Kara complaining of a bad

headache. At first, we thought maybe it was a fabrication to get out of math class, where most of the headaches occurred. But one look at her face and I could see she was in pain.”

Dr. Jacob Gressling made a few notations in Kara’s chart. “I see she had an eye

exam two months ago.”

“Her vision is perfect.”

He nodded as doctors do when they’re assimilating information into diagnosis.

“The CT scan is unremarkable.”

“Meaning?”

“It looks fine. Kara’s been through quite a bit this past month and a half and we can’t discount that,” he said, casting Peter a cursory glance. That look had followed them everywhere these past several weeks. Inquisitive. Suspicious. Not the admiring stares Christian and Peter always received which negated Audra’s presence. Now that Christian was gone, the glances were more direct. People assumed she and Peter shared more than simple conversation, some even asked if Kara was their child.

But Dr. Perfection was well known and well publicized. Women wanted him.

Men wanted to be like him. If the questions continued, how long before Audra found herself on the cover of
People
? Wouldn’t Alice Wheyton and that gossiping clan of cronies have a ball with that? And what if someone from the West Coast discovered her past? An illegitimate child of a whore.

“Yes, it’s been difficult for all of us,” Peter said, his blue gaze challenging Dr.

Gressling.

Jacob Gressling nodded, tore a piece of paper from a pad and handed it to Audra.

“I’d like you to keep a headache chart for the next few weeks. Jot down the day and time of the headache, duration and intensity. Let’s see if we can establish a pattern.”

Audra thanked him and scheduled a follow-up appointment for three weeks. The

doctor had touched on an issue Audra wondered about herself. Had Christian’s death exacerbated or even created Kara’s recent headaches? Stress could bring about all manner of ills, the least of these, headaches. Maybe once they settled back into a routine, the headaches would diminish and then disappear. Routine was the key right now. No extra stressors either, certainly not Alice Wheyton’s nightly calls to Kara. Those would go first.

“How do you think Christian would want us to handle this?”

They hadn’t spoken since he pulled out of the parking garage three stop lights

ago. “What do you mean?”

He glanced in the rearview mirror. “She’s asleep?”

Audra looked at Kara whose soft, even breath shifted her tiny chest in rhythmic

motion. Head bent, eyes closed, she clutched the stuffed gorilla Joe Wheyton had bought her. “She’s asleep.”

“People are noticing us, Audra.”

“So?” She didn’t like the resignation in his voice.

“So, I’m wondering how Christian would want us to handle this.”

“He’d want you to be here for us.” She touched his sleeve.

“But at what cost?”

“I need you. Please.” She’d just lost Christian, she could not lose Peter, too.

He merged onto the highway, his long fingers moving gracefully from the turn

signal to the wheel. “You know I’d do anything for you. And Kara”—the edge of his jaw tensed—“I love her like my own child.”

“We need you, Peter.”

For all the public attention he received, Peter still protected his privacy and the privacy of those close to him.
People
and
Entertainment Weekly
thought they knew the man behind Dr. Perfection, but they had no idea the man on and off screen were two very different people.

“I’m serious, Audra. I won’t put you at risk. If the public got a hold of you, they’d be worse than vultures at a road feast.”

“They won’t get a hold of me. I won’t let them.”

“Craftier women than you have found themselves burned by tabloids.”

***

what went wrong with Nathan Menden. He’d practically memorized the boy’s file,

spoken with the anesthesiologist on the case, even consulted with his friend and colleague, Bernie Kalowicz. No one could give him insight into
why
the boy coded, other than the obvious—post operative complications. Bernie said sometimes there were no answers, sometimes a Higher Power takes over.

Jack was a man of medicine and theory who relied on skill and knowledge to help

his patients. Faith had a role but he left that to the patients and their families. They came to him for help and he was not about to start spouting off philosophical rhetoric or pulling out rosary beads.

He’d seen pretty much everything over the years, from holy water sprinkled

outside the operating room door to crosses painted in magic marker on a patient’s body.

If the patient believed, great, if he trusted his doctor, better. Jack knew about the statistics claiming prayer helped heal, which he considered a mere bonus for a well-performed surgery. If a patient had an incompetent surgeon, all the prayers in the world weren’t going to help him.

He ran a hand over his face and pushed back his chair. Bernie told him to chill or Jack would go into his next surgery with a monkey on his back. Bad enough he had Grant Richot questioning and second guessing everything he did. The guy was an arrogant bastard with a chip on his shoulder the size of Massachusetts and if he weren’t Leslie’s brother and Jack’s boss, he’d tell him to take his speculations and shove them.

But he wouldn’t, partly because of Leslie, but mostly because McMahon

Children’s Hospital was still one of the most well-respected hospitals for pediatric neurosurgery and congenital anomalies—Jack’s specialty. Richot might insist Jack dot every bureaucratic ‘i’, but the man knew Jack’s skill and reputation as a premier surgeon and Richot was not going to throw that away. They tolerated one another for the sake of the hospital and of course, for Leslie.

The sharp knock on the door disrupted Jack’s thoughts but before he had a chance to respond, the door opened and Jack’s nemesis entered carrying an official looking file with an embossed hospital emblem on the front.

“Jack. I heard you were here.”

“I’ve got surgery in an hour. Can’t it wait?” He glanced at Grant’s right hand,

glanced away. Too late.

Grant’s face tightened like he’d had one too many Botox injections. “Actually,

no, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”

And there it was, the animosity stretching between them, year after year. When

Jack broke the district record for discus in eleventh grade, Grant won the state title. When Jack earned a partial scholarship to Syracuse University, Grant had a full ride to Rutgers.

Jack chose neurology as a field of study, so did Grant. Jack always wondered if Grant chose that particular specialty simply because he knew it was Jack’s passion and wanted to best him at it. Grant Richot was always two steps ahead of Jack and medical school was no exception. He graduated from Boston University a year earlier from an accelerated program and took a job at McMahon Children’s Hospital. The Neurology community called him their new wonder boy. He appeared in newsletters and panels, always with a ready smile and words of encouragement. Families traveled hundreds of miles in hopes the new doctor’s skill and innovative techniques would save their child.

Jack graduated from SUNY at Buffalo and took a job as a pediatric neurosurgeon

at Syracuse Medical Center. His upward climb through the medical community was

steady but not the rocket launch Grant’s had been. In three years, Grant was named Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery. He met a fellow doctor with blue eyes and a wicked sense of humor and married her six months later. Their beautiful faces splashed across the front page of
The Holly Springs Sentinel
. Then it was all over.

While honeymooning in the Dominican Republic, Grant and his bride took a side

trip to a neighboring village reported to have hand-crafted silver jewelry. The driver misjudged a curve and the car flipped over an embankment and trapped all three

occupants. The new Mrs. Richot died instantly of internal injuries. The driver escaped with a slight limp and a bloody face. As for Grant, he lost a wife and forty percent of the nerves in his right hand, which had been smashed against the car door.

Despite extensive surgery and therapy, Grant Richot, brilliant surgeon and wonder boy, could not work a potato peeler with efficiency much less a scalpel in a patient’s cranium. He was given the position of Assistant Professor of Pediatric Neurosurgery and while the hospital tried to find a surgical replacement, it proved near impossible to discover a candidate with even half the qualities and skill of Grant Richot.

Then McMahon Children’s Hospital discovered Jack. They courted, they

promised, they cajoled, throwing opportunity and money at him in great quantities. The only drawback was Grant Richot and his role at the hospital which meant Jack reported to him. McMahon Children’s Hospital promised Grant would stay out of the operating room. Jack accepted the position though he felt partly guilty for winning by default.

Richot never mentioned the surgery days or the competitiveness between them, and certainly not his dead wife. Jack and Grant were like two pacing lions waiting for the other to make a fatal move. There were days Jack sensed the man studying him, looking for a way to steal his ability to perform surgery, thus placing them on equal ground once again.

Leslie tried to temper the strain between them and sometimes she was almost

successful. She only wanted the best for the two men she loved, that’s what she told Jack every time he called her brother a tight ass or other equally vulgar name. She maintained Grant needed a woman and made it her second job to find him one. Not that the man needed any help. Half the nurses were in love with him, the other half hated him, but only because he’d summarily dated and discarded them.

“What do you need, Grant? I’ve got a case in an hour.”

Grant Richot smiled, a tight smile that made Jack want to smear it off his face.

“Nathan Menden,” he said, and slid an open file across the desk. He reserved the right hand for gross motor movements not involving specific fingers. Permanent nerve damage in a person’s hand and fingers was a nightmare, but to a surgeon, it was unimaginable. “I’d like to see a report on Nathan Menden by tomorrow morning.”

“Are you accusing me of negligence? You can talk to Bernie Kalowicz, or any of

my team, for Chrissake, see what they say.”

“I will certainly do that.”

“Good.” Grant Richot might have screwed up his operating days, but he was not

going to cut out Jack’s. “When you have a real case and real questions, come back to me.

Other than that, I’ve got to prep for surgery.”

“Please, Jack. Please save my baby.”—Audra Wheyton

Audra sat on the edge of the bed, staring at Christian’s loafers lined up side by side next to the chair which held the last minute items he’d planned to pack for the trip to Holly Springs—lint brush, two books on the history of the Cold War, Dramamine for Kara. She hadn’t had the will to unpack his suitcase or clear away memories of the planned trip, as if by ignoring the task, she might erase that fateful morning.

She sighed into the filmy blackness of early night. Sooner or later, she would have to unzip the suitcase and touch the neatly folded polos and khakis, the socks and underwear. The Aramis cologne. She squeezed her eyes shut but the tears came anyway, sprouting from her soul, pouring out grief and loss as she contemplated nights and years without Christian.

“I need you,” she whispered into one of his cashmere sweaters, a powder blue that made his eyes sparkle. She bunched the fabric in her hands and clutched it against her chest. “Kara’s been having these headaches. Bad ones, worse than the time you picked her up from school.” More tears fell, scalding her cheeks, her chin, her neck. “I’m so scared. Peter and I are going to see the doctor tomorrow to get her MRI results. It was of the back of her brain, where the headaches are.” She smoothed the cashmere along her cheeks, inhaled Christian’s scent. It gave her strength to say the words she’d only thought. “What if it’s a tumor? What if I lose her, too? Dr. Gressling said not to worry until we had the results, but I saw his face. Something’s wrong.”