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And at fifteen, Molly got bone cancer. Two years later, she’d died, and Rachel had nearly gone with her, her grief was so consuming. Standing by, watching her friend’s body waste away was the most excruciating experience of her life, and from that time on, nothing had swayed her from her course.
It was in medical school that Rachel realized she couldn’t help anyone if she was engulfed in grief herself, so she decided she simply wouldn’t let it in. It was as if she’d created an invisible bubble around herself, and nothing came through.
Nothing.
The strategy had worked so well it almost scared her, whenever she let herself think about it. Because there was one problem: she’d never been able to figure out a way to let the positive emotions enter through the barricade.
Not that she was unhappy. The satisfaction she got from her job was deep and fine. But was it enough?
Waking up alone, going to sleep alone, cooking for one…It fell short. Not short enough to make her give up her career or even curtail her hours. If she ever did meet anyone, he’d have to deal with that, or hit the road.
For some unknown reason, she thought of Guy again. She needed to think of him as her boss, not a man. A really attractive man.
That was one road she wasn’t going down. Nope. No way. He was off-limits. Completely and utterly. He was the reason she preferred the night shift and why she did all she could to keep their communication on paper.
Rachel threw the covers back and headed for the shower. Her shift didn’t start until nine, but she had shopping to do, some calls to make. And she wanted to get to the hospital early to review her paperwork and check on Heather Corrigan’s baby boy.
CHAPTER THREE
ELEANOR FITZ, the charge nurse in the NICU, wasn’t someone Guy new well. He dealt with her during administrative meetings and whenever a preemie was born in the E.R. They’d never talked, aside from work. He didn’t understand his reticence to approach her now, and he pushed it aside, intent on seeing Heather’s child.
When Eleanor saw him standing just inside the room, she seemed startled, but she quickly hid her surprise. “Dr. Giroux, how can I help you?”
He walked directly to the large sink and scrubbed his hands as if preparing for surgery. Then he draped a sterile mask around his neck and walked across the room to the nurses’ station, his gaze sweeping the incubators, isolettes, infant warmers and bevy of monitors hooked up to the tiny charges. The other nurses, most of whom he recognized, were busy, and there were two fathers, one holding his child, the other looking desperately through an incubator at his.
“I’m looking for Heather Corrigan’s baby,” he said.
For a split second Eleanor’s forehead creased, but perhaps he imagined it because when she smiled, she seemed all business. “He’s right over here.” Turning, she led him to the incubator at the far end of the room. Both a heart and a respiratory monitor were connected, and when he got closer, he saw an IV tube inserted into the hand of an incredibly tiny, very yellow baby.
“What’s his condition?”
The nurse didn’t even pluck the chart from the corner of the incubator. “He’s doing better than he was, but that’s not saying much. Very low blood pressure. You can see his jaundice is advanced and his kidney is only at ten percent. There’s still a lot we don’t know. His blood work isn’t finished.”
Guy stopped himself before he snapped at the woman in his frustration. “Please call the lab immediately and have his bloods done, stat.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, the words an unasked question.
“This is my stepdaughter’s child. I’d like to be informed immediately of any changes. You have my beeper, I assume.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, and it was if she had changed into another person. Softer. Sympathetic.
He wanted to make her leave, and he could have with a glance, but he didn’t. The child deserved all the sympathy in the world, considering his stepgrandfather.
“I’ll get right on it, Doctor,” Eleanor said, stepping aside. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”
He nodded, his gaze on the boy.
“Doctor?”
He turned, surprised that the nurse was still there. “Yes.”
“Does he have a name?”
Guy stared without seeing. Thought about his girl, the way her hair insisted on flying about in the most undisciplined manner, no matter how she tried to tame it. About the way her laugh made him smile, even when he was in the foulest mood. “Heath,” he said. He looked at the baby once more. “His name is Heath Corrigan.”
RACHEL WAS STILL a little stunned at the storm damage she’d seen on her errands. Roofs had blown off, trees had toppled, electrical wires had been ripped from their housings. It was amazing the E.R. hadn’t been ten times as busy.
She’d finished her grocery shopping, gone to the post office and to the dry cleaners. Tonight would end her graveyard shift, and the day after tomorrow she would begin days. It wasn’t an easy transition to make, not only because of her body clock, but because of the social aspects of the day shift.
There were more patients, more interactions, more staff. She’d be doing rounds with Guy, seeing him in the call room, in the lounge. It was also time for her yearly review, and while she felt confident her performance was up to par, she didn’t like the fact that Guy had so much power over her.
Not that she hadn’t had supervisors and bosses before. She’d done her residency at Baylor in Houston, and they were notorious for their brutal reviews, but no one had ever flustered her the way Guy did. For all her expertise at disassociating her emotions, she failed miserably when she was around him.
She’d given up denying her attraction to him. It was there. Big time. But just because she felt it didn’t mean she had to act on it.
She just wished it would go away—that she could cure her attraction like a headache and be done with it.
And now, given his grief at the loss of Heather, she needed to be extra attentive, more personal, giving.
Okay, she wanted to be those things because no one should have to go through his pain, but the territory was dangerous and she had to be so very careful not to let him get too close. Not to let her guard down.
Once Rachel arrived at the hospital, she headed straight for the NICU.
In the elevator to the fourth floor, two nurses joined her. Rachel smiled at them and stood to one side. Of course she knew them both—they worked in cardiology—but not well.
“I know,” Cathy said, her voice just above a whisper, yet clear as a bell to Rachel. “I couldn’t believe it. His own stepdaughter.”
“I heard he was just devastated,” Ilene whispered back.
The elevator stopped on Two, and the nurses left without a backward glance. Rachel sighed. Courage Bay was a small hospital, and rumors raced through it like a fire. That was another reason she had no intention of letting Guy’s situation get to her. Nothing went unnoticed around here, and she would rather die than be the subject of staff gossip. It was enough that she’d earned herself the nickname of the Iron Lady. No one had ever said it to her face, but she’d heard it in the lounge, even on the floor. Better she should be known by that moniker than as a soft touch.
At the fourth floor, she headed toward the NICU, but as she passed the big windows, she came to an abrupt halt. Guy Giroux, her tough-as-nails boss, sat in a rocking chair, a sterile mask covering the lower half of his face, a tiny bundle, still hooked up to an array of monitors, cradled in his arms.
A wave of compassion swept through her, as strong as the winds that had toppled the trees last night. Without her permission, tears filled her eyes and she had to blink them away as she struggled to regain her composure.
This wasn’t the plan. She hadn’t even spoken to the man and she was getting blubbery. This never happened to her. Not anymore.
She got a grip on herself, straightened her shoulders and headed into the room, stopping to wash her hands and grab a mask before she walked over to him.
Guy didn’t look up. She doubted he knew she was there, the way he was watching the child.
Oh, God, the baby was so small and so jaundiced. Her gaze went to the monitors, and she was immediately concerned about both the BP and the heart rhythm.
“Hello, Rachel,” Guy said.
She smiled, but her body was almost rigid with control. “Hello, Doctor. I came up to see how the baby is doing.”
“I wish it was better,” he said, and that’s when he looked up at her.
It was as if she were staring at a new man. All she could see were his eyes, but the change in him was palpable. Guy had always been compassionate—that was one of the things that made him such a good doctor—but this was…different. There was a softness she would never have guessed, right there in his dark gaze.
“What can I do?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Before we get into that, I want to apologize for this morning. I had no business barging in—”
She held up her hand, her face filling with heat as she remembered her outfit, or lack of one. “It’s not a problem. I’m sorry I didn’t finish up the paperwork yesterday. I came in early to do just that, but if I can help here, I’d like to.”
He smiled. Not that she could see his lips curve through the mask, but the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you did everything possible for Heather. I’m still stunned about all this. I spoke to her mother. Seems she thought Heather was in Los Angeles with her father.”
“Oh, no.”
“Tammy didn’t even know about the pregnancy.” His gaze went back to the boy. “This little guy had no help coming into this world. No prenatal care, no grandparents. I just don’t understand. This wasn’t like Heather. She’s always been a good kid.”
In the two years she’d been at Courage Bay Hospital, she’d never had such a personal conversation with Guy. Her first instinct was to get out, go back to the world she knew, but she could tell he wasn’t finished. That he needed to talk.
So she walked over to an empty incubator and grabbed the rocking chair positioned next to it. She placed it close to Guy’s chair. Settling into it, she crossed her legs and leaned back. “Tell me about her.”
Guy touched the baby’s tiny arm with his index finger. “I only had Heather for four years. Her mother and I got divorced when she was thirteen. She was bright. Heather, I mean. Inquisitive. I’d hoped that someday she’d become interested in medicine, but back then, all she cared about were boys and music, music and boys. Oh, I forgot clothes. Those were big, too.”
“She sounds like a typical teenager.”
“In a lot of ways, she was.” Guy looked at her, although Rachel had the feeling he wasn’t really seeing her. “She loved to sail. I suppose that’s where we spent most of our time together. I was always getting home after she went to bed, leaving before she woke up.”
“That’s the doctor’s curse.”
“It cursed that marriage, all right. But I learned my lesson. Never again. I wasn’t there for either of them. They needed me, but I didn’t give much of a damn. Tammy…”
She didn’t press him to finish the sentence. In fact, she didn’t want to hear the rest. His confession was hitting her in a place long buried. The two of them were so alike. At least Rachel had never made the mistake of getting married. She knew it would be just as Guy said. She wouldn’t be there in a way a wife or mother needed to be.
“Tammy’s in France, but she’s going to get here as soon as she can. I still haven’t connected with Heather’s father. I left two messages, but the number I have may be old.”
“Do you think he knew what was going on?”
Guy shook his head. “I never cared much for Walter. The idiot. He was unfocused and a wastrel, but I never imagined he was this negligent.” His voice hardened into something Rachel recognized a lot more than his previous gentle cadence. “I’m going to find out exactly what he knew, and when. And how he could have let this happen. I blame him for Heather’s death.”
His head bowed a little farther, as if she wasn’t there. Rachel barely heard his next words, they were whispered so softly. “And myself.”
“Guy, you’ve been divorced from Tammy for how long?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “Five years.”
“And the last time you checked, Heather was supposed to be with her mother in Europe?”
He nodded. “Yeah. The last time I checked. Which was months ago.”
“I know this is hard, but don’t borrow any more grief than you already have. There’s no way you could have known that Heather wasn’t with her parents. Or that she was pregnant. Her own mother didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t absolve me, and you know it. But I’ll tell you one thing, Rachel—I’m going to get to the bottom of this. And I’m going to make sure Heath is taken care of. In every way.”
“Heath?”
“After his mom,” Guy said, rocking the baby gently. “He needs to get better. I have to figure out exactly what’s going on here and fix it.”
“Then let me help.”
His chair stopped. “How?”
“I’ll go to the lab and I’ll go over the reports with a finetooth comb. Let me call Tim Burns…get him in here.”
“He’s on vacation.”
Rachel knew the neonatologist was away, but she also knew that he was only in Palm Springs, and that if he understood the situation, he’d get back here, pronto. She also knew the specialists on staff were perfectly capable of handling preemies and all the problems that went with them, but Burns was the best. And he was Guy’s friend. “Let me worry about that.” She stood up, put the rocker back. “I’ll page you as—”
The baby’s heart monitor went off that second, and even though every instinct she had was to rush in to see what was wrong and what she could do, she stepped back as the team swarmed around Guy and the incubator.
After a few moments, she realized Heath had gone into arrhythmia, and the medical staff had to do some pretty fancy footwork to stabilize him. Which they did, thank God. Now it was a matter of keeping him stabilized, and that’s something she could help with.
Guy was standing at the foot of the incubator, his skin paler than she’d ever seen it before. She touched his arm. “I’ll call,” Rachel said softly.
He barely acknowledged her.
She wished she could do more. Say something, be someone who could ease his torment. But she couldn’t.
GUY WENT TO HIS OFFICE and sat down, his head still muzzy with so many thoughts. Heath was stable for the moment, but the information Rachel had gotten from the lab strongly indicated that the boy had a genetic problem, perhaps Noonan’s syndrome, though more tests had to be run.
The thing was, he knew for a fact that there was no indication of Noonan’s in Walter’s or Tammy’s background. So if that was the final diagnosis, the disorder had to have been transmitted through the father.
Noonan’s. It was a relatively common birth defect, and Guy had seen his share of cases. Some severe, some blessedly mild. From Heath’s current physical symptoms, the slight webbing on his neck, his low-set ears, it didn’t appear that he had severe Noonan’s, but there were still heart tests, the karyotype analysis and the genetic tests for mutation in the PTPN11 gene. What no one knew yet was if the boy would be developmentally challenged, which happened in about a fourth of the cases.
Nothing was more important than finding Heath’s father and getting his medical history. If the same genetic testing could be done on the father, Heath’s chances for survival would be greatly enhanced, but Guy didn’t have a clue where to begin.
Rachel was checking into Heather’s belongings, and he’d put in four calls to Walter. Guy wanted to kill the son of a bitch for not calling him back.
He wanted coffee, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to get up and get it. He didn’t like asking Connie, but today would have to be the exception to the rule. Leaning over his desk, hardly looking at the paperwork he couldn’t deal with yet, he buzzed his secretary.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“I hate to ask, but could you make me a pot of coffee?”
Connie chuckled. “It’s already made, just five minutes ago. So you just sit right there, and I’ll bring you a cup.”
Guy smiled. “Thank you.”
“No sweat.”
He sat back in his chair, knowing full well why there was a fresh pot of coffee made. Everyone in the hospital, including Connie, knew about Heather. About Heath. And they would all be solicitous and pitying and it would be a nightmare on top of a nightmare for Guy.
Putting his hand on the back of his neck, he rubbed the tense muscles as Connie entered his office, tapping first, as she always did. She looked bright and sunny today, her dress a brilliant red that made her café au lait skin appear smooth and vibrant, belying her fifty-plus years. She’d been with Guy for the past three years, and their relationship was one of businesslike companionability. He appreciated the fact that he never had to ask for anything twice. Connie was proud of her work, and it showed.
