Kitabı oku: «The M.D.'s Surprise Family»
He was coming unglued.
She knew it, knew that it would be like this.
Knew the second she had seen the tall, dark, brooding doctor, and heard his voice.
Knew that there was trapped emotion within him that if she could only tap, would sweep her away.
And she needed to be swept away, needed to feel, just for a moment, as if every star in the universe was in the right place and that everything, everything would be all right.
Anything less was unthinkable.
The M.D.’s Surprise Family
Marie Ferrarella
To Gail Chasan,
with thanks and delight
MARIE FERRARELLA
This RITA® Award-winning author has written over one hundred and twenty books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.
What’s Happening to the Bachelors of Blair Memorial?
Bachelor #1: Lukas Graywolf + Lydia Wakefield = Together Forever IN GRAYWOLF’S HANDS (SIM #1155)
Bachelor #2: Dr. Reese Bendenetti + London Merriweather = True Love M.D. MOST WANTED (SIM #1167)
Bachelor #3: Dr. Harrison MacKenzie + Nurse Jolene DeLuca = Matrimonial Bliss MAC’S BEDSIDE MANNER (SSE #1492)
Bachelor #4: Dr. Terrance McCall + Dr. Alix Ducane = Attached at the Hip UNDERCOVER M.D. (SIM #1191)
Bachelor #5: Dr. Peter Sullivan + Raven Songbird = ??? THE M.D.’s SURPRISE FAMILY (SSE #1653)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
“Are you God?”
The soft, somewhat high-pitched voice punctured a tiny hole into his train of thought. Seated at his desk and studying a new AMA report regarding brain surgery techniques, Dr. Peter Sullivan looked up sharply. He wasn’t expecting anyone. This office was supposed to be his haven, his island away from the noise and traffic just outside his door.
His haven had been invaded.
A boy stood in his doorway. A small-boned, black-haired boy with bright blue eyes. The boy’s manner was woven out of not quite a sense of entitlement, but definitely out of a sense of confidence. He had on an Angels sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that looked baggy on his thin frame.
As the boy looked at him, his perfectly shaped eyebrows wiggled together in a puzzled expression as if, now that he’d asked the question, he had doubts about the assumption he’d made.
Served him right for not making sure his door was properly closed, Peter thought, annoyed at the intrusion. Beyond his door all manner of people wandered the halls of Blair Memorial, especially on the ground floor, where all the doctors’s offices were located. But traffic wasn’t supposed to leak into here.
He carefully marked his place, then gave his attention to the task of sending the boy on his way.
“Excuse me?” Peter knew his voice could be intimidating. To his surprise, the little boy looked unfazed. Peter didn’t feel like being friendly, especially not this morning. He’d heard that one of his patients hadn’t made it.
It wasn’t supposed to matter.
He purposely distanced himself from the people he operated on, thinking of them as merely recipients of his skills, almost like objects that needed repairing. To approach what he did in any other way was just too difficult for him.
And yet, Amanda Peterson’s death weighed heavily on him.
He’d learned of her passing by accident, not by inquiry, but that didn’t change the effect the news had had on him. He’d thought that he’d been properly anesthetized by the knowledge that there was only a two percent chance the woman would survive the surgery, much less the week.
Still, two percent was two percent. A number just large enough to attach the vague strands of hope around.
Damn it, why couldn’t he just divorce himself from his emotions? Why couldn’t he just not care anymore? Every time he thought he had that aspect of himself under control, something like this would happen and he’d feel that trickle of pain.
Rather than leave, the boy in his doorway crossed into his office, moving on the balls of his feet like a ballet dancer in training.
“Are you God?” he repeated, cocking his head as if that might help him get a clearer handle on the answer.
“No,” Peter said with the firm conviction of a neurosurgeon who’d just had God trump him on the operating table. The boy didn’t move. “What makes you ask?” Peter finally ventured.
The boy, who couldn’t have been more than about seven or eight, and a small seven or eight at that, pulled himself up to his full height and watched him with eyes that were old. “Because Raven told me that you can perform miracles.”
“Raven? Is that some imaginary friend?” His daughter Becky had had an imaginary friend. Seymour. She’d been adamant that he address Seymour by name whenever he’d spoken to the air beside her. There had even been a place for Seymour at the table. And she’d insisted that he say good-night to Seymour every evening after he’d read her a bedtime story, otherwise Becky would look at him with those big brown eyes of hers, waiting.
God, he’d give anything if he could say good-night to Seymour again.
“No,” the dark-haired boy told him patiently, “Raven’s my sister.”
“Well, your sister’s wrong.” He wondered if he was going to have to escort the boy to the hall. “I’m not God and I don’t do miracles.”
Because if he could have, if he could have just performed one miracle in his life, it would have been to save Lisa and Becky. He would have willingly and gladly given his own life to save them. But the trade hadn’t been his to make.
The small invader seemed unconvinced. “Raven’s never wrong.”
Peter snorted. Women never thought they were wrong, even short ones. Becky had been as headstrong as they came. He’d always laughed at what he called her “stubborn” face whenever she’d worn it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.
“First time for everything, kid.” He nodded toward the doorway behind the boy. “Why don’t you go now and find her?”
The boy half turned. As if on cue, a woman came up to his doorway. A woman with long, shining blue-black hair and eyes the same intense color blue as the boy’s. She was of medium height, slender, with alabaster skin—the kind of woman that would have inspired one of the Grimm Brothers to pick up his pen and begin spinning a story about Snow White. The family resemblance was glaring.
As was the fact that the relieved-looking woman standing in his doorway was very possibly one of the most beautiful women ever created.
Even a man whose soul was dead could notice something like that, Peter thought vaguely.
She could have shaken him, Raven thought, her hands clasping her brother’s shoulders. He’d given her a scare. Again. “Blue, what did I tell you about wandering off?”
“You were talking to that nurse, looking for Dr. Sullivan,” Blue told her matter-of-factly. He gestured toward the man at the desk. “I found him for you.”
At seven, Blue had the reading level of a twelve-year-old. He had his father’s penchant for absorbing everything and his mother’s ability for optimistic interpretation.
Raven pressed her lips together. There was no arguing with Blue. Talking by the time he was a year old, Blue had been called precocious by her parents. He was their change-of-life miracle baby. Free-spirited, Rowena and Jon Songbird accepted everything that came their way, finding the very best in life and mining that vein until that was all there was.
They’d infused that talent, that view of life, within her ever since she could remember, but there were times when that ability was severely challenged.
Blue’s present situation challenged her optimism to the limit.
Raven placed her hand on the boy’s shoulder in a protective gesture. “I was asking that nurse directions to the office.”
“I know.” Blue looked up at her with a smile that took up half his face. “But I found him.”
It was more than apparent that he couldn’t see what the problem was. Couldn’t see why his sister would get upset if he went off on his own as long as he was undertaking the present mission at hand. The offspring of a neo-hippie couple, Blue marched to his own drummer and, at times, the tempo drove her crazy.
For a moment the duo seemed to be completely oblivious to Peter. Not that he minded, but he didn’t want it happening while they were taking up space within his office.
“Excuse me,” Peter interrupted the exchange. “But just why were you looking for me?”
The woman turned to give him just as radiant a smile as the boy with the improbable name of “Blue” had.
“I’m your ten o’clock appointment.” Lacing her arms around the boy she’d drawn closer in front of her, she amended, “We are your ten o’clock appointment.”
Peter glanced at his calendar. He didn’t have anything scheduled until his one o’clock surgery this afternoon. He raised his eyes to her face. “I’m sorry, but—”
Just then his phone buzzed, interrupting him. Peter yanked up the receiver and said, “Yes?” in less than a friendly tone.
“Oh, thank God you’re in.” The voice on the other end of the phone breathed a sigh of relief. The voice belonged to Diane, the chief administrator’s niece who, as the general secretary, was well-meaning but far less than perfect at her job. “Um, Dr. Sullivan, I think I forgot to let you know that you have a ten o’clock appointment this morning. Did they show up yet?”
“Yes, I’m looking at them right now.”
“Oh, good.”
“A matter of opinion,” he informed her tersely as he hung up. He didn’t like being caught unprepared.
“You weren’t expecting us?” Raven concluded.
“Not until this moment.” He looked at the boy she was holding in front of her. Children didn’t belong in this office. What went on here was far too serious for their childish voices and innocent demeanors. Besides, being around children painfully reminded him that he no longer had one of his own. “Madam, people who come to see me don’t usually bring their children—”
The smile she gave him had a very strange, almost tranquilizing effect on him. It seemed to effortlessly enter into every pore of his body like steam.
“He’s not my child, he’s my brother and, since this concerns him, I thought he should have the opportunity to meet you.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed. The appointment had been made without his knowledge and he certainly hadn’t said whether or not he was going to take the case. “I’m on review?”
She laughed. It was a light, breezy sound that made him think, for no apparent reason, of springtime and tiny green shoots on trees.
She glanced at her brother before answering. “I suppose, in a manner of speaking.” The woman indicated the two chairs in front of his desk. “May we?”
For the moment he had no choice but to incline his head. Blue scrambled right up into the chair closest to the desk. Facing him, Blue smiled up at Peter with his sister’s mouth, generous and friendly.
The young woman sat down. Rather than perch on the edge, the way he’d seen so many people in this office do, she slid back, making herself comfortable.
Almost succeeding in making him comfortable.
Peter had to pull himself back to recapture the edge he always felt, the edge that separated him from anyone who sat on the other side of the desk. The edge that kept him separate from everyone.
“I’ve heard you’re the best.” Raven paused for half a second, in case Dr. Sullivan wanted to pretend to be modest. But when no such pretense materialized, she continued, “But I also wanted to get a feel for you myself.”
“A ‘feel’ for me?”
He stared at her as if she were speaking another language, had descended from another planet. What was she talking about? What went on in this office and the operating room—if he agreed to undertake the surgery—had nothing to do with “feelings.” It had to do with facts, with the latest procedures and available technology.
She made him think of some latter day free spirit who had accidentally stepped across a rift in time. She certainly looked the part with her colorful clothing and her surfboard-straight hair.
“My parents taught me that you could tell a great deal about a person by the way they behaved both on their home territory and on yours.” And then she flashed a dazzling smile at him, as if she could read the thoughts running through his mind. “Don’t worry, I’m not inviting you to my house.”
“Look, Miss—” He stopped, looking to her to fill in the gap.
“Songbird,” Raven supplied. “But you might find it easier to call me Raven.”
Songbird. It figured. The woman was definitely as flighty as they came. She meandered around enough to imitate the flight pattern of a slightly dizzy bird.
“Miss Songbird, is there a point to this?” he asked impatiently, looking at his watch. He felt as if he was wasting precious time here and as he spoke, Peter began to rise from his chair. “Because if there isn’t, then I have got—”
The woman with the mesmerizing, almond-shaped eyes reached out and placed her hand on his, staying his exit. For half a second, immobilized by surprise, Peter left his hand beneath hers. The next moment he pulled his hand back, staring at her as if she were some kind of alien creature. He was willing to concede the point without debate.
“Sorry, still getting a feel for you. You are awfully tense. Are you operating soon?”
Not a retro-hippie, he decided, but a Gypsy. All that was missing was a tambourine and a colorful scarf around her head. She already had the bright outfit. “Just who are you?” He wanted to know.
“No,” she said as if he’d asked her another question entirely—or was about to, “I don’t believe in tarot cards, or fortune-telling, but there is such a thing as an aura and I can feel yours.” She felt it prudent not to tell him about her mother’s heritage. It might only served to spook him, or worse, to make him more cynical. “It’s very, very uptight. Brittle, you might say,” she added.
Beyond brittle, he thought. Damn close to broken. His aura, if there was such a thing, had long since been destroyed. Lisa and Becky had been his only reason for living and now they were gone. If he was alive, it was just because he’d been going through the motions for so long, he’d forgotten how to stop.
He looked from the boy to the woman. She’d come in with a manila envelope tucked under her arm. He assumed this visit had something to do with that. “Would you like to tell me why you’re here?”
“My brother’s pediatrician thought we should come to see you.” This time, she did slide forward on the seat, as if what she was saying made her uneasy and she wanted to say it quickly. “Blue has three tumors along his spinal cord. He needs to have them removed as soon as possible,” she recited as if she’d rehearsed the words for hours in her vanity mirror. “I have an X ray.” She laid the large manila envelope on his desk.
With a barely stifled impatient sigh, Peter took out the X ray she’d brought and looked at it. He was aware that the boy was leaning forward and had propped his chin on his fisted hands, staring at the same X ray.
“That’s my spinal cord,” he said as if he knew exactly what a spinal chord was. “Kind of messed up, isn’t it?”
Peter looked at Raven. “How old did you say he was?”
“I’m seven,” he said.
“Seven,” Peter repeated. The same age that Becky had been before… Before. He didn’t remember Becky sounding this old. “He doesn’t sound seven.”
“He was reading at three,” Raven told him proudly.
Peter nodded. “Impressive.” He turned his attention to the X ray.
It was the barest of introductions to the problem. He would need extensive films taken if he decided to undertake the surgery. But what he was looking at was enough to tell him that the boy’s pediatrician wasn’t mistaken. There were indeed tumors clustering at the base of the boy’s spinal cord.
“Your brother’s pediatrician is right,” he informed Raven crisply, sliding the X ray back into the manila envelope.
“Yes, I know.” She looked at him. “Dr. DuCane’s been Blue’s doctor ever since he was a week old and I trust her implicitly. That’s why we’re here.”
He looked from the boy to the woman. “What kind of a name is Blue?”
Blue grinned at Raven and launched into an explanation. “It was the color of the sky my mother was staring at when she gave birth to me in the field.”
Peter looked sharply at Blue’s sister. Had the boy’s mother gone into premature labor while they were out on the road? “‘In the field’?”
Raven pressed her lips together, obviously struggling with something. “My mother didn’t like hospitals. She said they always made her think about people dying.”
He noticed the grim set to the woman’s mouth, such contrast to the smile that had been there seconds ago. The change vaguely stirred a question in his mind, but he let it go. He didn’t indulge in personal questions, unless they had something to do with the outcome of the surgery. “Is that why she’s not here right now?”
“No.” Raven took a breath, as if that could somehow buffer the pain that assaulted her each time her mind turned to the subject. “She’s not here because she died in a car accident when Blue was two. Both of my parents died in the crash.”
She didn’t add that they, along with Blue, had been on their way to her college graduation. They’d gotten a late start because her mother had been finishing up a project that was due. In a hurry, they weren’t paying strict attention to the road. The highway patrolman told her that a trucker who had fallen asleep at the wheel had plowed right into them.
Blue, in the back seat, had miraculously managed to survive, but both of her parents had died instantly.
She saw an odd expression come over the doctor’s face. She was accustomed to looks of pity or sympathy. This was neither. “Is anything wrong, Doctor?”
The words “car accident” had instantly raised myriad thoughts in his head, bringing with it an unwanted image that he strove, every day of his life, to erase from his mind.
He’d been on the scene only minutes after it had taken place.
The surgery had run over and he’d been hurrying home to his family because he’d promised to be there early for once. Lisa and Becky were taking him out for his birthday. He’d had no idea that they had been on their way to the hospital to surprise him. Driving fast, with one eye out for the highway patrol, he’d passed an overturned car on the side of the road.
The scene was already behind him when the delayed recognition had hit him.
He didn’t know how many seconds had passed before he’d realized that the mangled blue Toyota hadn’t just resembled Lisa’s car, it was Lisa’s car.
He remembered praying as he’d spun his car around. Praying he was wrong. That someone else’s family was there, beneath the sheets, and not his.
It was the last prayer he remembered praying. Because the answer had been negative.
Peter blew out a breath slowly, shutting away the memory. Shutting away the pain.
“No,” he told her in a dead voice, “nothing’s wrong.”
Chapter Two
Peter frowned. He could tell the woman sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk was about to launch into a full-fledged recital of her family history. Being trapped here, listening to a long-winded recitation of who had what was the last thing he wanted. It was bad enough that she had brought the boy to the preliminary consultation. He didn’t need to see the boy until he’d made up his mind as to what was necessary. After all, it wasn’t as if he had X-ray vision to study the boy’s problem and, whatever he needed to know, the boy’s sister could tell him.
And tell him and tell him.
Peter held his hand up, visually stopping her before she could sufficiently warm up to her subject matter. “I don’t need to hear that.”
His sharp tone cut her dead.
Raven pressed her lips together. She was beginning to have serious doubts about Dr. DuCane’s recommendation. Dr. Peter Sullivan might very well be a wizard with a scalpel in his hand, but for Blue she required more. She required a doctor with something more than ice water in his veins. She wanted a surgeon with a passion for his work and a desire to save every patient he came across. She was beginning to think that Sullivan was not that surgeon.
“Why not?” she asked.
The simple question caught him up short. He wasn’t accustomed to being challenged professionally, not by patients or the relatives of patients. There was emotion in her voice, something he strove to keep out of his realm. He never had anything but crisp, clear, economic conversations with the people who entered one of his offices. They told him their problem, usually coming in with extensive scans and films, and he studied the odds of succeeding in the undertaking. He liked beating the odds. It was his way of shaking his fist at the universe.
It was the only time he felt alive.
She was still waiting. The woman honestly expected him to answer. He bit back an exasperated sigh. “Because in this case, it has nothing to do with what is wrong with the patient.”
He made it sound so sterile, so detached. Raven looked Dr. Sullivan in the eyes and corrected quietly, but firmly, “Blue.” She glanced at her brother. “He has a name.”
“And rather an odd one at that.” The words had escaped before he’d had a chance to suppress them. Trouble was, he wasn’t accustomed to censoring himself—because he rarely spoke at all.
Raven glanced at Blue. To her relief, the doctor’s words didn’t seem to affect him. She should have realized they wouldn’t. Like his parents before him, Blue was a blithe spirit, unaffected by the casual, small hurts that littered everyday lives. It was as if he examined a larger picture than that which everyone else saw. Twenty years her junior, Blue was very precious to her and, she vowed silently, if she had to move heaven and earth, she was going to find a surgeon who could help Blue. Really help.
In her opinion, that surgeon wasn’t Dr. Sullivan.
She raised her chin just a tad. Peter noticed for the first time the slightest hint of a cleft in it.
“We prefer to think of it as unusual—just like Blue is.” She reached across and took Blue’s small hand in hers. She closed her fingers around it. Peter got a sudden image of union and strength. Odd thing to think of when he was looking at a mere slip of a woman. “Well, Doctor, I think that you’ve told me all I really need to know.”
Obviously the woman was woefully uninformed. But then, this was his domain, not hers. “I don’t think so. There are CAT scans to arrange to be taken. I need to study those before I agree to do the surgery.”
He had no more emotion in his voice than if he was talking about deciding between which colors to have his office painted. She was right. This wasn’t the man for them. Centered, her mind made up, Raven smiled as she shook her head. “That won’t be necessary.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed. Feeling like someone whose turf was challenged, he told her, “I’ll decide what’s necessary.”
Her eyes never left his. “No,” she replied softly but firmly, “you won’t.” Rising to her feet, she closed her hand a little more tightly around her brother’s. “Thank you for your time, Doctor.”
It took a great deal of conscious effort on his part not to allow his mouth to drop open as she and her brother walked out of his office.
Astonishment ricocheted through him. He had just been rejected. The woman had rejected him. That had never happened to him before. Patients were always seeking him out because he was reputed to be one of the finest neurosurgeons in the country. And ever since he’d found himself without his family, there was nothing left to fill up his hours but his work.
Oh, he stopped by occasionally at Renee’s to see how she was doing, but that hardly counted. Renee had been, and in his opinion still was, his mother-in-law. By her very existence, she represented his only connection to Lisa and his past. Besides, he got along with the woman. She was like the mother he could never remember.
Neither he nor Lisa had any siblings. Only children born of only children. It made for a very small Christmas dinner table. Especially since his mother had died when he’d been very young and his father had passed away before he’d ever met Lisa.
He had promised Lisa that they would have a house full of kids. It was a promise he never got to keep.
As twilight crowded in around him, bringing with it a heightened sense of loss, he found himself driving not to the place where he slept night after night, but to the house that had once seemed so cheery to him. The house where he would see Lisa after putting in an inhuman amount of hours at the hospital. Because Lisa had been his bright spot. She had made him laugh no matter how dark his mood.
Now the laughter was gone, as was the brightness. He’d sold his own house shortly after the funeral and moved into a one-bedroom apartment. He didn’t require much in the way of living space and the memories within the house they had bought and decorated together had become too much to deal with. He preferred being in a position where he had to seek out the memories rather than have them invade his head every time he looked at anything related to Lisa’s or Becky’s life.
Peter pulled up in the small driveway and got out. Telling himself that he should be on his way home instead of bothering Renee, he still walked up to her front door. He stood there for a moment before he rang the bell.
Renee had given him a key to the house, but he never used it. He always rang the bell and on those rare times when she wasn’t home, he’d turn around and leave. The house where Lisa had grown up was too much to bear without someone there to act as a buffer.
Renee Baker answered the door before the sounds of the bell faded away. A tall, regal-looking woman with soft gray hair and gentle brown eyes, she greeted him warmly as she opened the door.
“I was hoping you’d stop by.” She paused to press a kiss on his cheek, then stood back as he crossed her threshold. “You look like hell, Pete.” She closed the door behind him. “Bad day?”
He let the warmth within the house permeate him a moment before answering. “There aren’t any good ones.”
The expression on Renee’s face told him that she knew better. “There are if you let them come, Pete.” She cocked her head, looking at him. “Did you eat?”
His reply was a half shrug and a mumbled, “Yeah.”
Because he wasn’t looking directly at her, Renee repositioned herself so that she could peer into his face. “What?”
This time the shrug employed both shoulders. “Something.”
She shook her head. The short laugh was a knowing one. “You didn’t eat.” Turning slowly on her heel, she led the way into her kitchen. “C’mon, I’ve got leftover pot roast.”
He knew better than to argue. So he followed her into the kitchen, because, for a little while, he needed her company. Because he felt as if every day he stood at a critical crossroads and he had no idea which way to go. Today was one of those days when he didn’t know why he even continued to place one foot in front of the other.
When his mood was darkest, he came to talk to Renee. And to remember a happier time.
Moving quickly for a woman who wrestled daily with the whimsy of rheumatoid arthritis, never knowing when she would be challenged and when she would receive the green light to move freely, Renee put out a plate of pot roast and small potatoes. His favorite meal, as she remembered.
Peter said nothing as she prepared the plate.
She gave him a look just before she went to retrieve a bottle of soda from the refrigerator.
“Am I going to have to drag the words out of you?” Then she laughed. “Why should tonight be any different than usual?” she speculated. Placing a glass in front of him, she looked down at Peter. “Talk to an old woman, Pete. Tell me about your day and why you’re here tonight instead of last night or tomorrow.”
She went to get a glass for herself when she heard him say, “I lost a patient today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Renee crossed back to the table and helped herself to the bottle of soda. Her voice was filled with understanding. She’d told him more than once that it took a special person to do what he did, day after day, and not break down. “But it does happen. You’ve saved more than you’ve lost.”
Peter realized that she’d misunderstood him. “No, I don’t mean that way. I meant, I lost a patient,” he repeated between forkfuls of pot roast that melted on his tongue. “He walked out of my office. Actually, his sister took him away.”
Renee set down her glass. “Sister, huh? You probably scared her away.”
Not likely, not someone like the woman who’d been in his office this morning. “I don’t scare anyone.”
Like a mother studying her child, Renee took his face in her hand and pretended to scrutinize it carefully, just to be certain that she was right. “Not with your looks, Pete, but I have to tell you, you were definitely hiding behind a pillar the day they were teaching all about bedside manners.”
He shrugged as she withdrew her hand. “A surgeon doesn’t need a bedside manner.”
“Don’t you believe it. A lot of the times—and especially in the field you’re in, Pete—the surgeon is all that stands between the patient and the big sleep. Patients want to hang on to what you tell them. They want you to make them feel better even before they get wheeled into the operating room.”
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