you’re forever off on one, aren’t you? For all we’re together, I may as well be single. I…I’ve made up my mind, Michael. I’m filing for divorce.”
“Divorce,” he said in a strangled voice. “God, Lacy.” His knees buckled and he dropped heavily to the bed just as a sharp rap sounded at the front door. Michael couldn’t force words past the lump in his throat. He knew things hadn’t been good, but—
Lacy left the bedroom. Moments later she led Bettis in to get her bags. The doorman eyed the broken glass. He made no comment, only gathered the cases as Lacy directed.
Michael caught her wrist or she would have gone without saying goodbye. “Don’t do anything rash until I get back,” he begged in a low voice. “Give me a chance to put things right. I’ll take a few weeks off. We’ll go to the Bahamas or something.”
She jerked from his hold. “It’s over, Michael. I’ve never been anything more to you than your first transplant.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes. Find another star patient. I want a man who sees me as a woman.”
Stunned, Michael watched her walk away. It was some time before he stood and resumed filling his shaving kit. He studied the hands reaching for his razor. A surgeon’s hands. His skill had brought them together. Well, technically, Lacy’s sister, Faith, had brought them together. She was a nurse at the Boston hospital where Michael had done his residency. Lacy was the one who’d demanded he set up practice in New York.
How had they gone from building a future together to…contemplating divorce? With hands not quite steady, Michael knocked a packet of pills from a shelf in the medicine cabinet. Absently he retrieved it. Lacy’s birth control pills. In her haste she must have forgotten them.
Michael dashed out of the apartment to catch her. Halfway to the elevator, he stopped. This was a full dispenser. Probably an extra that Lacy’s gynecologist had given her in case they had to travel on short notice.
A shiver coursed through Michael’s body as he recalled what had happened earlier. Replaying the scene in his mind, he felt his blood begin to flow again. Granted, Lacy could be impulsive, but she wasn’t foolhardy. Those were just angry words she’d thrown out, hoping to make him stay home. Her threats had become habit—a way to manipulate him. And he’d refused to bend. They were both at fault.
Sighing, he retraced his steps. He’d phone her the minute he reached his hotel in Trondheim. Once he turned the patient over to her own team for follow-up care, he’d talk to his partner about taking time off. Dominic would understand.
Michael finished packing and wrote a note to the housekeeper, letting her know that he and Lacy would be away for a week or so. He felt better for having a solid plan in place. Shifting his bags, he locked the door and went down to meet his cab.
CHAPTER ONE
August
A PERSISTENT RINGING dragged Faith Hyatt from a deep sleep. As one hand fanned the air above her nightstand in an effort to silence the sound, her sleepy brain insisted the call had to be a wrong number. She’d just come off two weeks of back-to-back shifts at the Boston hospital where she worked. Half the staff was laid low by flu. Maria Phelps, who scheduled shifts, had promised Faith four uninterrupted days off.
“’Lo,” she said in a raspy voice, burying the receiver in the pillow under her ear. Faith covered a yawn and tried to focus on the voice at the other end of the line.
In spite of exhaustion, she shot upright. Her head and heart began to pound, and the receiver slipped from her shaking fingers. Scrambling to find it in the dark, she brought it to her dry lips again and croaked, “Gwen, you’re positive the woman admitted through E.R. is my sister? Lacy Cameron?”
Long used to being ejected from bed in the middle of the night, Faith turned on a light and found clean clothes as the caller relayed details. “Yes,” Faith said, bending to tie her sneakers, “It’s possible she’d revert to Hyatt now that she’s divorced. I’ll be there in ten minutes, Gwen.” Smack! The receiver hit the cradle. Faith’s mind continued on fast-forward as she splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her short brown hair.
Her last contact with either Cameron had been in June. It was now the end of August. Lacy’s husband, Michael Cameron, had thrown Faith for a loop when he’d phoned late one night in early June to inform her that he and Lacy had divorced. At the time Faith had been crushed to think her sister hadn’t confided in her. But family ties had never meant to Lacy what they did to Faith. In fact, it was pretty typical of Lacy to arrive here in the middle of the night after months of silence, expecting her big sister to haul herself out of bed and put in an appearance at a moment’s notice. Lacy had always thought the world revolved around her needs. And when hadn’t Faith turned herself inside out for family? Sighing, she strapped on her nurse’s watch and rushed from the building. Lopsided though the relationship was, she and Lacy were bound together by blood.
Faith set out to jog the four night-shadowed blocks that separated her apartment building from the hospital. Passing the corner deli, she realized she hadn’t asked Gwen what was wrong with Lacy. No one detested being sick more than Lacy did. As her worry increased, Faith broke into a run.
At last, lights spilled onto the street at the corner where Good Shepherd had stood for over fifty years. Breaking her stride only long enough to press the button that operated the front doors, Faith rushed into E.R.
“Hi, Cicely.” Breathing hard from her sprint, Faith latched on to the plump arm of a passing nurse, another friend. “Gwen phoned. About my sister,” she managed after the next deep breath. “Do you know where she is, or which doctor admitted her?”
“Finegold. He sent her up to Three East. Said he’d do a complete workup after he finishes the emergency surgery that brought him in tonight. Your sister just dropped in, said she hadn’t seen a doctor. Finegold ordered tests, which Lacy refused until after you see her.” The nurse rolled her eyes. “The great Finegold doesn’t take kindly to anyone vetoing his edicts. I don’t envy you having to unruffle his feathers.”
Faith gave a puzzled frown. Finegold was senior staff gynecologist. “Uh…Cice, did Lacy say why she happened to be in Boston at this hour? She lives in New York City.” Faith frowned again. “Or she did. Perhaps Newport, Rhode Island, now. Her husband, er, ex, said she’d received their beach house in the divorce settlement.”
“I thought her chart listed a Boston address, but maybe not. Uh-oh. Hear those sirens? Headed our way. You’d better get out of here, girl, while the gettin’s good.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Faith ran and boarded the elevator as two ambulances screeched to a halt under the portico. Loudspeakers began to drone the names of staff who were needed in E.R. Doors opened and nurses spilled out.
By comparison to the E.R. chaos, the third-floor ward was silent. Faith stopped at the nursing station and spoke to a nurse she knew. “You admitted my sister, Lacy Camer…er, Hyatt.” Shedding her coat, Faith tossed it over a rack. “May I see her?”
Two nurses at the desk appeared to be relieved. “In 312,” one of them said. “We hooked her up to oxygen, Faith. It was all she’d allow.”
“Lacy hates hospitals.” Especially this one. First, their mother
