"Dad, you should go on home. It"s been a long day."
"I"ll stay."
"No, really. The last thing I need is for both of you to be laid up. I"d feel a lot better if you waited at home. I"ll call."
"I"m staying," he said in his deep actor"s voice.
He had known. He had known all along that the father of her son was a doctor, living here in Crystal City, and he had never bothered to tell her.
"d.a.m.n it." The coiled tension in her sprang up. "You make me nervous, sitting around and waiting. Please, Dad-"
"I"ll give Mich.e.l.le a ride home when we"re done," Sam said, an edge of impatience in his voice. And he was right to be impatient. He had to concentrate, not mediate family squabbles.
Gavin hesitated; then he nodded and got to his feet. He came over to the table and gave Cody"s shoulder a squeeze. "Take care now, you hear?"
Other than their first handshake, this was the only time she had seen him touch her son.
"Yeah," Cody said. "See you."
"We"re going to numb the area now," Sam said. Nurse O"Brien finished clipping, then disinfected and draped the wound.
Because of the draping, she could no longer see his face. A calculated move, she surmised once she saw the needle Sam was using.
"This"ll sting," he warned, being honest but not alarming. "You"ll feel a pinch, and it"ll probably make your eyes water."
Pretty smooth, thought Mich.e.l.le. Giving the kid an excuse to cry if he needed to.
Cody squeezed again. She squeezed back. Sam injected Xylocaine in a few spots, then set aside the syringe.
"Okay, we have a few minutes to talk," he said. "Need to give the anesthetic time to work."
Mich.e.l.le swallowed, the lump in her throat still painful. "So talk."
"It"s a big laceration." Without touching Cody, he followed the curve of it with a finger. "Cody and that mare were really up close and personal. It could have been worse, but Edward removed the horse"s shoes last night, because we knew the birth was imminent. So the damage is slightly less than it could have been."
She thought about the strange yet familiar smell on Cody"s damp clothes. It was musky, faintly sweet, yet with an oceanic tang. The birth smell. Her son was drenched in it.
Sam pointed again. "See how this goes down to his temple?"
She nodded, thinking how delicate the tracery of tiny veins looked. How vulnerable. The terror pushed upward from her chest, but true to form she contained it.
"That means I"ll be st.i.tching in the region of his face, just here."
There was about an inch between his brow and hairline. The wound was stark there, the flesh amber in color from the disinfectant. "Now, I"m not a plastic surgeon," he said. "I usually refer cases like this to a specialist."
"But this is unusual?"
"Somewhat. I"m inclined to do this myself, here and now. I can take a lot of tiny st.i.tches-I had practice during a clinical rotation I did with a cleft palate specialist in the Yucatan."
The Yucatan? It was strange to think of all the places Sam had been, all the things he had done in the years they"d been strangers. He had gone to the Yucatan while she had raised his son.
"You"re probably going to see a scar," he concluded.
"So is there an alternative?" she asked.
"I could clamp the wound, and then you could take him to Missoula. There"s a great face guy there."
"The plastic surgeon wouldn"t come here?"
Sam hesitated. "Not this guy."
"So you want me to decide."
Sam regarded her for a long time. She wondered what was going on in his head, what it was like for him to have his wounded son lying here yet to have no say in his treatment. She thought of all the times she"d had to make a decision about Cody, wishing for someone else to talk it over with. She"d felt so alone on those occasions.
"I"ve given you the options, Mich.e.l.le."
"I don"t want to know the options. I want to know what to do."
"Chances are excellent that a trip to Missoula won"t do him a bit of harm-"
"Quit being such a... a doctor. I want you to tell me the right thing-"
"Just st.i.tch the d.a.m.n thing up." A small, annoyed voice crept out from under the draping.
Both Sam and she looked down at Cody. "Really?" she asked.
"Yeah. I want to get it over with. A drive to Missoula doesn"t exactly sound fun."
"How big a scar?" she asked Sam.
"You can see where it"ll be. A thin line. Red at first, and eventually it"ll fade to white."
A shiver eddied over her. It was an accident, yes, but Cody was going to be marked by this incident, marked for life. He"d never be the same.
"Go for it," Cody said miserably.
"All right." Her voice was soft. "Go ahead and finish, Sam."
He held himself very still for a few moments. He didn"t move, though she sensed an odd calm settling over him. It was invisible, yet she could see it happening, like some new sort of medical Zen.
True to his word, he took tiny st.i.tches, working with a needle and silk so fine she had to squint to see it. During the procedure, she sat holding Cody"s hand as he lay silent and still.
Despite what Sam said about not being a specialist, she could tell one thing for certain. He was a good doctor. He worked smoothly with the nurse. The two of them had a comfortable rapport as if they"d known each other a long while. From time to time the attending clerk came in, and he answered her questions without so much as glancing up or breaking his concentration. His hands moved with a precise, mesmeric rhythm.
Through it all, Cody lay motionless and admirably calm, his hand in Mich.e.l.le"s.
As Sam was finally finishing up, she decided to say what was on her mind. "So I guess this means you know about my father."
"I"m a family pract.i.tioner."
"But you know about his illness."
"My partner, Karl Schenk, is his primary-care physician. Gavin didn"t tell you?"
"It"s all I can do to keep up with the nephrologists and surgeons."
Sam tied off a st.i.tch. "He"s getting good care in Missoula."
"He"s getting one of my kidneys."
He hesitated for a beat, then took another st.i.tch. "That"s really something, Mich.e.l.le. I figured they"d eyeball him for a transplant."
"How did you figure that?"
Without even looking up, he seemed to sense her getting defensive. "Now, don"t turn all p.r.i.c.kly on me. Gavin"s general health is excellent. Nonsmoker, nondiabetic. Physiologically, he couldn"t be a better candidate. That"s all I meant. No doctor I know would use Gavin"s fame to make a transplant poster boy of him."
He removed the draping. Cody looked pale but relaxed, his eyelids heavy.
"Okay, cowboy?" Sam asked.
"I guess." He took his hand away from Mich.e.l.le"s. He seemed embarra.s.sed that he"d been clinging to it the whole time.
Sam beamed a pen-sized light in Cody"s eyes, first one, then the other. "You"re not going to kick me in the head like your last patient did to you?"
"I"ll decide after I see the st.i.tches."
Mich.e.l.le liked Sam"s ease with the boy. He"d only known him two days, yet his manner was open and natural. Sometimes she wished Brad would- Alice, the nurse, held up a hand mirror.
Sam grinned. "Take a look, Frankenstein."
Cody grimaced. "Nice haircut."
"You can have Hazlett fix it. He"s the local barber, does house calls at the hospital. Or you could wait until you"re discharged," Sam said.
"Hey," said Cody. "Do I have to stay?"
Sam"s gaze was level and direct. "Yep. Just overnight, okay?"
Mich.e.l.le studied Cody"s dubious face, then Sam"s. Dear G.o.d, she thought, they look alike. The similarity was apparent now that Cody"s long hair had been cropped. He looked almost exactly like Sam did, back when Sam had been the beginning and end of her world.
She got up quickly. "I"ll stay with him."
"Oh, no you don"t, Mom," Cody said. "I can handle spending one night in the hospital."
She patted his leg. Again she felt that dark hollow of loss, as if her little boy had disappeared before her eyes. "Tonight"s going to be a lot harder on me than on you."
"Don"t worry about me, Mom."
"I"ll always worry about you." The lump in her throat swelled. "Thanks for holding my hand through that."
He lifted half his mouth in a crooked grin. Sam"s grin. "Right, Mom."
Chapter 13.
When Sam left the hospital, he found Mich.e.l.le sitting in the dark outside, cradling a Styrofoam cup of tea and crying.
The sight of her on the concrete bench, looking so small and alone, stopped him in his tracks. "Hey," he said, easing down next to her. "Have a Kleenex."
Nearby, the door opened and Alice O"Brien came out, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She had that weary sort of prettiness common to a lot of nurses, and she regarded him with more kindness than he deserved, given their history together. " "Night, Sam," she said.
"See you tomorrow, Alice."
Mich.e.l.le"s gaze followed her until night cloaked her in darkness. "She doesn"t call you doctor."
At some point he"d have to explain about Alice. But not now. There were other things to discuss now. "To these folks I"m just Sam McPhee. One of them. One of the tribe." He turned to her, noticing the silvery track of a tear on her cheek. He wanted to touch it. Taste it. Make it go away. Christ. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. "You okay?"
She wiped her face with the tissue. "A little overwhelmed, I guess. It"s been a long day."
"You held together like a champ in there," he said, and he meant it. If she was like other mothers of injured kids he"d treated, her insides were a train wreck. Yet outwardly, like so many of those steel-spined mothers, she had been calm and efficient while helping Cody get settled into his room. She"d bought him a paperback Anne Rice novel and a kit of toiletries from the gift shop, sat with him for a while, then left after dinner was served and a Bruce Willis movie came on.
"I can always hold together for Cody," she said.
"He"s never seen you lose it?"
"No." She scrubbed away the last of her tears. "I told myself right from the start that I"d be the Rock of Gibraltar for him."
His heart heard what she would not say. That she had been all alone. That in two-parent families, one had the luxury of the occasional breakdown while the other took over. That during all her parental crises, no one had ever been there to hand her a Kleenex.
He couldn"t help wondering what it would be like to be in that picture with her. Couldn"t help wondering what this strange grown-up Mich.e.l.le was like. Did she still cry when she heard a sad song on the radio, still get the hiccups when she laughed too hard? Did she still make that funny sound in the back of her throat when she came?
He stood up, his head spinning with anger, frustration, loss-and a lingering fascination with this woman who, despite years of separation, had never quite left him. "Let me buy you dinner."
"No." Her refusal came swiftly, automatically.
"Wrong answer, ma"am. Remember, I"m your ride home."
"But-"
"No buts. Stay right there. I need to change out of my scrubs, and then I"m taking you out to Trudy"s for a steak." He walked toward the automatic doors. "People from Seattle eat steak, right?"
She lifted her face to him, the parking lot light carving graceful shadows on her cheeks. And finally, fleetingly, she smiled. "I guess people from Montana would be insulted if we refused, right?"