She loved running in the rain. There was no escaping it, so it made no sense to try. She let it soak through her T-shirt and plaster her hair to her scalp. The sand was as dense as concrete beneath her feet and she sent wet clumps of it behind her with every step.
Cole had been right. At four months, better than four months really, Boston would have been a mistake. She felt wonderful and strong, but to put a baby through twenty-six miles of jostling would be cruel. Even on these four-mile runs home from work, she imagined that something would pull loose or that her baby’s little head might take one too many knocks against the wall of her uterus. Cole said that was nonsense, but still she worried.
The house rose up in front of her like part of the rain-soaked landscape, its features blending into the gray evening sky so that it was hard to tell where the sky ended and the house began. It reminded her of the photograph that hung above the mantel in the living room.
Jay met her at the sliding glass doors of the kitchen, water dripping down his raincoat. His hair clung to his head and he looked tired. His face was full of lines.
“Have you heard anything from Cole?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
“I thought he’d be home by now.” Jay rubbed his hands together, slowly, as if he were trying to flatten a piece of clay between his palms. “He left the hospital around two, and he wasn’t in very good shape. He lost a patient today.”
An obstetrician losing a patient? “A mother patient or a baby patient?” she asked calmly, as if the answer didn’t matter.
“Abortion.” Jay took off his raincoat and laid it over the back of a kitchen chair. “It was bad. He had this patient, forty-one or forty-two, I think, with severe cardiac disease. Really obese. Nice woman. Nice husband. Anyway, she gets pregnant after twelve years of a childless marriage. First pregnancy.” Jay’s Brooklyn accent was almost too thick to follow when he spoke fast. “There’s no way she could have had this baby. Her cardiologist said she couldn’t survive the pregnancy. Her husband wanted her to have the abortion. Cole recommended it too, of course. She was only ten weeks. She knew she had to abort, but that didn’t stop her from being really upset about it. Crying on the way into the treatment room and all. I’m sure Cole felt like shit. Then in the middle of the procedure her heart stops.”
“Oh, God.” She pictured the scene in her mind: the glaring lights, the woman draped and asleep—or maybe she’d only had a local? Maybe she knew exactly what was happening the whole time. She could see Cole, his eyes above the mask full of terror. Or panic. Or maybe he’d stay perfectly calm through something like that. She really didn’t know.
“Cole did everything he could,” Jay continued. “He did everything right. No way was it his fault. But you feel like it at times like that, like, damn, maybe I could have done something else. They worked on her twenty minutes but . . .” He turned his palms up in a gesture of defeat. “I saw Cole afterward and he was really shaken up. Cheryl too. She blew lunch in the scrub sink. Cole spent some time with the husband, and then he said he needed to get out of there and left.”
She wondered where he was. Driving in the rain? What was he thinking? Did he blame himself?
They were still in the kitchen when he came home. He walked through the room without a word and threw his raincoat on the table, knocking over a vase. Kit rescued it before it fell to the floor and grabbed a paper towel to mop the water from the oak tabletop. Either he didn’t notice it or he didn’t care. He walked into the library and slammed the door behind him.
If he still wanted to be alone, he wouldn’t have come home, Kit thought. She walked toward the library.
“You’ve got guts, girl,” said Jay.
He was sitting in the chair closest to the window, and the cool April rainstorm cast a gray tint to his face. He stared out at the darkening beach.
She closed the library door behind her and stood in front of it, ready to make an escape. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Lousy weather.”
She hurt for him. “Jay said there was nothing you could have done.”
He made a noise in his throat as if he were choking on a laugh, and a sick-looking smile came to his lips. “Nice of him,” he said.
“You don’t agree?” She walked toward him and sat on the ottoman. She was shivering. She still had on her wet shorts and T-shirt.
He spoke without looking at her, and she saw the reflection of the rain in his eyes. “I knew there were risks. I thought I’d taken every precaution. I did. It just wasn’t enough.”
She shrugged. “These things happen.”
“Tell that to her husband.”
They were both quiet for a moment.
“Maybe I should have let her try to carry that pregnancy and not pushed so hard for the abortion,” he said.
“Could she have lived?”
“I don’t see how. And she was taking drugs for her heart that would have damaged the fetus. But she was happy about being pregnant. At least she could have tried.”
“That’s ridiculous. You know you’re not responsible for her death, and you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to blame yourself.”
“Don’t counsel me.” His eyes hit her like bolts of lightning. “The last thing I need right now is a goddamned counselor.”
She stood up, ready to retreat, but he caught her hand.
“Don’t go,” he said. I’m sorry.”
She sat down again, thinking that maybe she’d better just listen. She watched his face as he spoke, studied the sharp, strong features that couldn’t save him from looking vulnerable. She wished she could hold him, comfort him. But for months now they’d been cautious in their touching.
He was still holding her hand, though, and he stroked the back of it with his thumb. His eyes had softened. “Her husband fell apart,” he said. “She was all he had and they really doted on each other. Did Jay tell you she was one of my first patients?”
She shook her head.
“She had such complete trust in me. Shit. I keep remembering her face when they wheeled her into the room.” He shuddered. “She was crying and I thought, she’s not ready for this. But she squeezed my hand and said, ‘Do what you have to do, Cole.’ She was comforting me.”
“It was as if she knew.”
“Exactly. It was just like she knew.”
“Where did you go, Cole?” she asked. “Today, when you left Blair?”
“The inlet.”
The muscles in her chest contracted but she kept her face calm. “Why?” she asked. “Did you have a sudden urge to watch the boats go out to sea or was it the condo?”
He smiled. “I can’t say. I just drove straight there. I walked out on the jetty for about ten minutes, and I could feel the condo behind me saying, come on in, Cole, it’s been a while. And when I looked up I half expected to see Estelle on her balcony.”
“You were hoping.”
“Yeah, I guess I was hoping. I don’t know why. She was never much good at comforting. Anyway, I went in and talked to the guy at the desk. It’s sold. I thought maybe she’d just rent it out, but she sold it. So . . .” He shrugged, let out a sigh. “Then I went back to my car and sat there watching the boats and the fishermen and feeling sorry for myself.”
“Oh, babe.” She wrapped her arms around his calves and laid her cheek on his knee. It felt good to be this close to him.
He set his hand on the back of her head. “This has implications for you. Kit.” His voice sounded different, and she lifted her head to look at him. He wound a strand of her damp hair around his finger. “I did a lot of thinking this afternoon and I decided that I don’t want to be your doctor any longer.”
“Cole. You have to be.” She felt panicky.
“If anything happened to you, I could never forgive myself.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. Cole, I’ve been counting on you. Please.”
“You shouldn’t trust me as much as you do. I’m not infallible. And I don’t think straight when my emotions are involved.”
“You did Janni’s hysterectomy without any problem.”
He groaned. “That was torture for me. She was so excited, finally thinking she was pregnant after all those years, and I told her not only wasn’t she pregnant but I was going to take away any chance she’d ever have of getting pregnant. You know she didn’t talk to me for two weeks after the hysterectomy? It’s wonderful, taking care of a patient who won’t talk to you.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“I’m asking a favor, Kit. Let me refer you.”
She felt hot tears forming in her eyes and put her head on his knees again so he wouldn’t see. “How would you feel if you referred me to someone else and they made some terrible mistake while they were taking care of me?”
He was quiet and she hoped she’d hit a nerve.
“I’d rather die at your hands than at anyone else’s.”
He laughed. “That’s a pretty inane statement.” He sat back in the chair, sighing again. “Let me think it over,” he said. “What happened today is too fresh in my mind.”