The phone rang at ten-thirty-five. Olivia was lathering her hair in the shower, and she stepped out quickly, drawing a towel around her as she raced into the bedroom to answer it before the machine picked it up.
It was Paul’s voice, not Alec’s, that greeted her, and for a split second, she was disappointed.
“Are you back?” she asked.
“No. I’m in a hotel in D.C. I’ll get back tomorrow.” He sounded tired. A little tense.
“How are you?” she asked.
He was quiet for a moment. Then she heard a slight laugh, or maybe a cough. “Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally, I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’ve been out of my mind.”
The shampoo was beginning to drizzle down Olivia’s back. “What are you talking about?” She stretched the phone cord down the hall to the linen closet, where she pulled out a towel and draped it around her neck.
“I talked to Gabe at the Gazette and he told me about the flak on Annie’s case. I’m sorry, Olivia. I didn’t think the Gazette was capable of yellow journalism. Maybe if I’d been there I could have prevented it somehow.”
She walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. “You thought I was to blame too,” she said.
“For Annie dying? No, Liv, I know you too well to have seriously thought that. I did wonder how you could have done it, though. How you could work on her when I’d been so obnoxious about the way I felt about her, but I know you did your best. I’m sorry I ever accused you of anything less.”
She cradled the receiver between her palms. “It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I’ve been doing some thinking up here,” he said. “D.C.’s loaded with memories of you—of us together. I stopped in Donovan’s Books tonight.”
“Oh.” The sights and sounds and warm-coffee smell of Donovan’s filled her head.
“I wish we’d never left here. Things were good for us here.”
“But we agreed we didn’t want to raise a family there, whether we had our own children or adopted or…”
“I know, I know.” He paused. She heard him let out his breath. “Can I see you when I get back?”
“Of course.”
“I mean, a date? We’ll go out someplace, get to know each other again.”
“I’d like that.” She matched the tenderness in his voice with her own.
“I should be there around five.”
“I work until seven.” She cringed, waiting for him to chastise her for allowing her work to interfere with her marriage again.
“Seven is fine,” he said, then he hesitated for a moment. “Liv? Why aren’t you fighting this thing with Cramer? It’s so unlike you to just sit back and take it.”
She ran her hand over her bedspread. He was right. She usually took her adversaries head-on, battling them just as she had battled every other obstacle in her life.
“My only recourse would be to ask for a medical review panel,” she said, “but I’m not sure I have the strength right now to go through that process.”
“Do it, Liv. I’ll be behind you all the way. I promise.”
She thanked him, surprised and somewhat guarded, unable to completely trust his words, his warmth. Yet by the time she’d hung up the phone, she’d made a decision, and despite the hour, she called Mike Shelley.
Mike listened quietly as she told him her plan. She could guess what he was thinking. A review panel would not only put her on the line, but the emergency room itself.
“Please hold off a day or two on taking any action, Olivia,” Mike said finally. “Let me think about it a bit.”
She got off the phone, feeling better, feeling less helpless than she had a half hour earlier. She stood in front of the full-length mirror on her closet door. Her hair was white with lather. She let the towel drop to the carpet and turned to look at her profile. There was no denying the slight protrusion of her belly. If Paul touched her, he would know. It had been enough to make Alec pull away from her.
Instead of putting on her nightgown, she dressed in a T-shirt and the only pair of jeans she could still zip closed. Then she walked outside to the storage closet and took a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench from the small hardware kit Paul had left her when he moved out. She carried them into the nursery, along with the radio and a glass of ginger ale, and settled in for a long and satisfying night of crib construction.
At the change of shift the following evening, Mike called Olivia and Jonathan into his office. Jonathan sat near the window, wearing the sour smirk that was a permanent part of his demeanor these days, while Olivia took the chair closest to the door.
Mike leaned forward, his forearms on his desk. “Jonathan,” he began, “I want you to retract your ‘cover-up’ statement to the press.”
“I’m not going to retract something I think is the truth.”
Mike shook his head. “Olivia is planning to request a medical review panel, and if that occurs, I will be telling that panel the truth as I see it, which is that both of you were right in the O’Neill case.” Mike spoke slowly, as if he expected Jonathan would have difficulty following him. “Olivia was right to take the action she did because she has the skill and the experience to perform that type of surgery. A case could be made for malpractice if she had not attempted to save Ms. O’Neill’s life in that way. But you, Jonathan, were also right. Do you know why?” He didn’t wait for Jonathan to respond. “You were right because you do not have the skill or experience to perform that procedure. It would have been malpractice if you had attempted it. So.” Mike sat back again, his eyes on Jonathan. “Is that what you’d like this community to hear?”
Jonathan’s eyes had narrowed. There was a thin bead of sweat above his upper lip. “You’re twisting the…”
“I’m twisting nothing,” Mike growled, leaning forward again, and Olivia was as surprised as Jonathan by the force of his reaction. “You make that retraction or Olivia is calling for a review panel to clear her name. And clear it she will, which isn’t going to make you look too good, is it?”
She felt Jonathan’s eyes on her, felt his burning, penetrating glare. “Don’t bother,” he said to her, standing up. “I’m resigning, effective immediately. Then you can tap abdomens till your heart’s content, for all I care.” He took off his stethoscope, and in a exaggerated gesture, slapped it down on the desk before storming out of the office.
Mike looked at the stethoscope, and Olivia thought he was trying not to smile. He raised his eyes to hers. “I apologize for not doing that sooner, Olivia. Please wait on the review panel until we see what the outcome of this is.” He nodded toward his phone. “Shall I call the Gazette and tell them the news?”
She changed her clothes in the lounge for her date with Paul, ignoring the rumors that were already crackling through the ER about what had taken place in Mike’s office. She dressed in a blue skirt that masked her expanding middle, and a white, short-sleeved sweater. When she stepped out of the lounge, she spotted Paul in the waiting room and felt a nearly forgotten flutter of longing for him.
He’d brought her a delicate blue tea rose in a silver bud vase, and she recognized it as the rare variety she had grown in the yard of their old house in Kensington. Her throat ached to see it, the remnant of a happier time.
“I cut it this morning,” he said as they walked out to his car. “Snuck into the yard before the sun was up.”
His out-of-character wickedness made her smile.
He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, glancing over at her once they were on the road. “You look good,” he said.
“Thanks.” She noticed he was wearing his wedding ring again. He was serious about this, about missing her, about getting back together. She studied his profile. He had a lovely chin with the suggestion of a cleft, and a fine, straight nose, but he really did not look well. He had lost a good deal of weight these last few months. His skin was sallow, his cheeks drawn, and she felt a little sorry for him.
She told him about her meeting with Jonathan and Mike, thanking him for his encouragement. “I’d gotten sort of paralyzed, I guess,” she said.
“What’s it been like for you since the story came out in the Gazette?”
She described the bilious letters to the editor that had appeared in the last two issues of the Gazette. Their irate tone and the mushrooming of negative sentiment toward her were humiliating. She told him about her stiffness at work and her sudden lack of faith in her own judgment, surprising herself with her willingness to talk to him so openly. Then she told him about the petition. “I expected to see your name at the top,” she said. “I figured the only reason you weren’t on it was because you were out of town.”
He reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “Forgive me for ever thinking you wouldn’t do your best with her. It hurts me to see your name dragged through the mud this way, Liv. Really, it does.”
At the next stoplight, he pulled out his wallet and handed her a picture of Joe Gallo’s granddaughter. He told her about his conversation with Joe and how proud he had felt to be her husband, but she only half listened.
She would have to tell him she’d gone to Norfolk with Alec, that she’d done that talk show. He was sure to hear about it at the next lighthouse meeting, and it would be better if he heard it from her. Not now, though. She didn’t want to damage the closeness she felt to him here in his car.
When they pulled into the restaurant parking lot, she turned to lay her sweater on the back seat of the car and saw the small oval of stained glass attached to the window. It was too dark to see the design, but she had no doubt it was one of Annie’s, and the hope she’d felt these last twenty-four hours was abruptly tempered by reality.
She carried the rose into the restaurant, exchanging it for the carnation on their table. After their drinks had been served, she folded her hands on the edge of the table and drew in a breath.
“I was on a radio talk show in Norfolk last Saturday,” she said. “About the lighthouse.”
“What?” His eyes widened behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”
“Alec O’Neill called me. He was supposed to make two appearances up there on the same day, so he asked me if I’d be willing to handle one of them since I had experience doing that sort of thing.”
“That’s ridiculous. You don’t know a thing about the lighthouse.”
“I do now.”
Paul pumped the stirrer up and down in his drink. “Did you and Alec drive up together?”
“Yes.” He let out his breath, ran a hand over his chin. “What have you told him, Olivia? I mean, does he have any idea why we’re separated?”
“He doesn’t know anything about you and Annie.”
“Well, what did you talk about for…what is it, two hours each way?”
She thought back to all she had told Alec, to how thoroughly she had let him into her personal life. “We worked on our presentations going up and talked about how they went coming back. That’s all.”
Paul sat back in his chair and shook his head. “I don’t get this at all. Why you? Why do you care about the lighthouse enough to speak about it?”
“Why do you care so much?”
He colored quickly. “I’ve always had a fascination with lighthouses,” he said. “You just didn’t know about it because we lived in the District, where lighthouses are few and far between.” He bent his stirrer between his fingers until it snapped. “It just makes me uncomfortable to know you’re talking to O’Neill. Do you have any more of these speaking engagements lined up?”
“No.”
“Don’t take any more, all right?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “If I have the time and interest, I’m going to do it, Paul. You really have no right to tell me not to.”
The woman at the next table glanced over at them, and Paul lowered his voice. “Let’s not talk about this now, okay?” he said. “I wanted tonight to be good. Let’s talk about Washington.”
“All right.” She leaned away from the table as the waitress set her salad in front of her.
“I felt good there, Olivia. I haven’t felt that way in so long. I’ve been back just a few hours and I’m already tensing up. It’s this place.” He shuddered. “The Outer Banks. It reminds me too much of Annie here. It’s too small. Everywhere I go there are reminders of her. The way the air smells makes me think of her.”
“I love the way it smells,” she said, alarmed with herself for baiting him. The way the air smelled made her think of Alec and the evening they stood on the balcony of the Kiss River Lighthouse, the beacon pulsing above them. Every time she stepped outside now, she breathed in the air in huge, cleansing gulps.
Paul looked down at his salad. “If you and I get back together, we’ll have to leave here.”
She felt stricken. “I love it here, Paul, in spite of the fact that half the populace would like to see me lynched. I’m hoping that will blow over. I think this would be the perfect place to raise a family.”
“What family?” he asked, and the woman at the next table could not resist glancing at them again. “You’re thirty-seven years old and the surgery only gave you a twenty percent chance of conceiving. Not very good odds.”
Olivia leaned closer to him to avoid being overheard. “I’m more convinced than you are that I could conceive. If I don’t, we could adopt. We’ve talked this out before. It’s nothing new.”
“Things have changed since the last time we talked about a family.”
The waitress delivered their entrees, and Olivia watched the muscles in the side of Paul’s jaw contract as he waited out the intrusion.
“You don’t understand,” he said, once the waitress had left. “I have to get out of here, Olivia, that’s all there is to it. Whether it’s with you or without you, I have to leave. I drove down here today feeling good and optimistic about us and looking forward to seeing you, but as soon as I crossed the bridge into Kitty Hawk, this black cloud dropped over my head. My mood got worse and worse as I drove down the island, and by the time I got to my house and out of the car…” He shook his head. “It’s like she’s still here, more powerful than she ever was when she was alive.”
Olivia felt her patience slipping. “What do you expect? Your house is full of reminders of her. Maybe if you got rid of…all the icons, all the tangible evidence that you ever knew her, you’d start to forget about her.”
He looked, briefly, angry, and she suddenly realized she could not just forgive him and go on. She was filled with her own anger.
“There’s nothing I want more than for us to get back together,” she said, “but I refuse to live in Annie’s shadow again.”
“Then we have to leave here.”
“I’m not going to leave a place I’ve come to love until I see real evidence that you’re over her. Throw out the stained glass. Break it into pieces.”
He started visibly.
“Oh, Paul.” She crumpled her napkin and set it next to her plate. “You’re not ready, are you?”
“Not to destroy the stained glass, no.” He looked exhausted, his eyes red and half-closed behind his glasses. She thought of Annie as a succubus, coming in the night to drain the life out of him. Perhaps Annie was more Paul’s nemesis than she was hers.
He drove her back to her car in the emergency room parking lot after dinner. She was glad he was not driving her home, where she would have felt the need to invite him in, where the night before she had worked on the crib until she was giddy. He walked her to her car, holding her hand. He kissed her lightly on the lips, and she turned abruptly to unlock the door of the Volvo. She would give him no chance to touch her, no chance to discover her secret.
She arrived home to find a message on her answering machine from Clark Chapman, the medical director of Emerson Memorial. She frowned as she listened to his deep, resonant voice.
“Please give me a call when you get in tonight,” he said. He left a number and told her he would be up until eleven. It was not quite ten now.
She dialed his number, curious.
“Dr. Simon!” He sounded delighted to hear from her, as if they were old friends. “How are you?”
She hesitated, wondering if perhaps she had met him somewhere and had forgotten. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said.
“You’re wondering why I’m calling, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“I’d rather have this conversation in person, of course, but I didn’t want to put it off that long. I’ve been following your story, Dr. Simon. It was more than idle curiosity on my part, of course, since your patient—Mrs. O’Neill—would have ended up in our trauma center had you opted to transport her.”
“Yes.”
“And you and I both know she would have come to us DOA.”
Gratitude and relief rushed through her, and her eyes threatened to fill. She cried too easily these days. “You and I seem to be the only people who are certain of that,” she said.
“I’ve spoken to some colleagues of mine at Washington General,” Clark Chapman continued. “People who can attest to your clinical skill and sound judgment. You made the far more difficult choice with Mrs. O’Neill, didn’t you? You demonstrated initiative and courage, at considerable personal risk.” There was a smile in his voice. “Are you wondering what I’m leading up to?”
“Yes.”
“I’m offering you a job. You’d be co-director of our trauma team. It’s a great group of people. They already think you’re a bit of a hero.”
It was perfect. One of those weird serendipitous occurrences that suddenly made everything fall into place. She and Paul could be together in a new location, without the rush of Washington, yet without reminders of Annie for either of them. Still, aside from feeling vindicated by Clark Chapman’s words, she felt no enthusiasm.
“I’m very flattered,” she said, “but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave the Outer Banks. I don’t want to simply run away from my problems here.” It was not exactly the truth, but Clark Chapman seemed to accept it.
“It’s an open invitation,” he said. “Come visit us.” He gave her his work number, and she jotted it down in her appointment book. “The position would be created for you,” he added. “It doesn’t exist right now, but we’ve got a few extra bucks for that department, so it’s yours whenever you say the word.”
She hung up the phone, feeling strangely flat. Wary. She couldn’t allow herself to hope, couldn’t give herself over to a new dream of the future when she didn’t yet trust her husband to be a committed, contented part of it. But Paul was back, she told herself. Paul had missed her. Surely they would be able to work things out.
Once in bed, though, once she had closed her eyes, all she could see was that telltale oval of glass on the window of his car.