are you going?” she asked, looking half-asleep with her sultry eyes and tousled hair. Her lips were parted, prettily plump. She looked beautiful, vulnerable.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Realizing the lamplight still shone, she became more awake, glanced at the clock, and propped herself up on her elbows. “You’re just now coming to bed?”
“I took the sofa.”
“You’re sleeping on the sofa?” Her forehead creased in confusion. “Why?”
“You need to sleep.”
“I need you to hold me,” she countered, her eyes dark and needy.
This was why he’d come in here. He hadn’t needed to check on Liz. He’d known she was just fine, that she was asleep, because if she hadn’t been she’d have come to find him. He’d hoped she’d awaken. Hoped she’d invite him into his bed.
Because he’d been the one needing.
Needing to hold her, feel her warm body next to his, to breathe in the fresh scent of her shampoo.
Because he needed Liz. Needed her to comfort him. To allay his fears regarding whatever was going on inside his body. But how could he tell her? He couldn’t. Why worry her when there might not be a thing to worry about? Telling her at this point would only be cruel.
He’d keep hiding his symptoms from her until he knew what he was dealing with, could assure that he wasn’t going to be a burden on a woman who’d already faced more than her fair share of burdens.
“Adam?” She flipped back the covers, indicating for him to lie down next to her. “Hold me.”
Adam eyed the bed, eyed the woman wanting him to join her, the woman he cared more for than anything else in life. He needed to hold her, to feel the aliveness within him that being with Liz always gave him.
He crawled between the sheets, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head. So perfect for him. So what he’d never believed in prior to meeting her.
“Adam?” His name held questions, as if she sensed his unease, but her sweet warmness thawed the cold fear gripping him and he relaxed.
“Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
Yawning, she laced her fingers with his and snuggled closer. “Goodnight, Adam.”
It was now, he thought, closing his eyes and almost instantly falling asleep.
Adam ignored the fatigue clawing at his body and carefully removed another section of Beverly Gilley’s left breast.
He placed the tissue in a specimen tray. The pathologist would check to see if the forty-two-year-old’s breast cancer had spread outside the lump that weeks of radiation had shrunk to a more surgically manageable size.
Resisting the urge to shake his hands back and forth to ease the tingling sensation burning his fingertips, he finished removing her left breast tissue and began examining the left axillary nodes. He’d remove a few of those to send to pathology, too. All he’d have left was to clean up the surgical site to make reconstruction easier at a later date and to sew up the incisions he’d made. If his hands kept bothering him, he’d let the nurse sew up the incision. Although not his normal routine, doing so was a common enough practice that no one would think too much of it.
He’d yet to remove a single node when the anesthesiologist became alarmed.
“Her oxygen sats are dropping,” the doctor said, increasing the amount of oxygen he was delivering and simultaneously checking placement of Beverly’s mask. “Something’s not right.”
“Pulse is up,” the nurse said at his side. “Blood pressure is slightly elevated. Is she going into shock?”
Squelching the voice in his head asking if he’d somehow done something wrong, if he’d missed something because of his distraction with his hands, Adam did a quick assessment of his patient. Erythematous welts began appearing on her skin.
“She’s breaking out in a rash,” he said. “DC the anesthesia. Stat. She’s reacting to it.” He turned to the nurse. “Give epinephrine subcutaneously stat and then add diphenhydramine to her IV line.”
“Yes, sir,” the nurse said, giving the injection seconds later.
Adam hoped no one noticed that he massaged his fingers through the rubber gloves. What was wrong with him?
His gaze met the nurse’s. He feigned calm, reassuring himself that she’d think his hand motions were due to stress, worry over his patient. He was worried about his patient. “We’ll finish once she’s stable.”
Adam stayed with his patient until her vitals settled down, and he felt confident he could proceed without fear Beverly was in greater danger than normal.
Two hours later he propped his head against the doctors’ lounge wall. The cold concrete soothed the throb in his skull. He ran over everything with Beverly’s mastectomy, trying to recall if he’d done anything out of line, anything that might have made a difference in her outcome. He hadn’t. Sure, he was tired, his right eye blurred and his fingertips burned. But even if he’d been at his best, he couldn’t have prevented Beverly from reacting to the anesthesia.
Fortunately, they had gotten her severe allergic reaction under control before the situation had become even more critical. Before he’d been forced to deliver bad news to Beverly’s waiting family.
“You OK?” Dr Roger Bell asked from behind him.
Startled, he raised his head. He hadn’t heard the orthopedic surgeon enter the lounge.
“I heard what happened this afternoon,” his friend said. “Dr Krick told me if you hadn’t realized what was happening so quickly you might have lost the woman. Good going, man.”
Adam shrugged. He couldn’t let go of the idea that he might have somehow been at fault. “It’s my job to keep my patients safe.”
Was he compromising his patients’ safety just by operating on them? But he couldn’t put his life on hold while he awaited test results. Tests he needed to reschedule and have done so he could await results. Why was he procrastinating?
“But not your job to predict the future,” Roger countered, pulling items from his personal locker. “No one can say when someone’s going to have an unexpected allergy like that. Not even you.”
Hearing his earlier thoughts from an excellent surgeon like Dr Bell reassured him that what happened with Beverly truly hadn’t been his fault. Still, he couldn’t quite shake his guilt.
“Just thought you should know that those in the OR with you this afternoon were impressed with how quickly you came up with the correct diagnosis and credit you with saving the woman’s life. The nurses are saying you’re brilliant.” Dr Bell added the last with a grin.
Brilliant? He’d been tired, distracted, wrestling with his fingers, and hadn’t been at his peak. Far from brilliant. “Like I said, I was just doing my job.”
Dangling
