“I’m sorry,” Liam said as soon as she set her phone aside. “I didn’t know you were on the phone.”
“It’s okay. That was my mom. She thinks you’re one of my study group. I didn’t bother to correct her.”
“I did study with you earlier. So it wasn’t entirely a lie.”
She made a face at him. “Nice rationalization. Did you need something?”
“Oh. Yeah. Do you have any extra file folders lying around? I’m trying to get organized before I dive into the revisions.”
She was beginning to wonder if there was a reason he kept procrastinating about those revisions. “There’s a whole box of folders on the top shelf of the office closet. Far right corner. Help yourself.”
“Thanks. And sorry again about the call. I’ll be more careful in the future.”
“Good idea. This situation is tricky enough.”
“Don’t worry, Annie. I promised I wouldn’t blow our secret by staying here, and I’ll keep my word.”
“I know.” She reached for her notes again. “Let me know if you have any trouble finding those folders.”
“I will. Thanks.”
Left alone with her books again, Anne gazed into the distance for a few moments before returning to work. Liam had seemed genuinely concerned he’d blundered into her chat with her mother. He’d always assured her he was no more anxious than she was to have their marriage discovered, by her family or by anyone else.
He’d admitted being seen as single was advantageous to his career. Producers were less hesitant to send him into potentially risky situations, celebrity magazines found him more intriguing and he didn’t have to bother with answering questions about his wife or their unusual living arrangements. She had always secretly worried that he liked being thought of as single for other reasons, but she refused to dwell on those concerns now or at any other time.
They’d had vague plans to announce the marriage once Anne had a chance to prepare her family for the news. A month or two at the most, they’d agreed. They’d been prepared to spend most of their time apart for the first few years, but they hadn’t really expected to keep the secre
t this long. Her mother’s stroke had changed those plans. Anne just hadn’t had the heart to upset the family even more at that time, and Liam had agreed—maybe a bit too quickly?—there was no need to go public anytime soon.
Just about the time when Anne had thought she couldn’t maintain the lie any longer, her mother had suffered a setback. So, here they were, a year and a half into their marriage and still living a lie. It was no way to maintain a marriage, especially when combined with the long periods of separation. Their phone calls had been less frequent, their lives so different, so very separate.
She had tried to brace herself for the time when Liam confessed he had grown tired of the pretense—or worse, that he had met someone else. She had chided herself for not having more faith in him—in them—but the fears had lingered regardless. When she tried to look into the future, it was growing harder and harder to see them settled down together somewhere with the traditional picket fence and retirement plan.
Maybe this time together would reinvigorate their relationship. Or maybe it would show them once and for all they’d made an impetuous mistake on that beautiful summer day in Scotland.
The patient lay on the examination table in front of Anne and the other three medical students in her ICM group Monday morning, his thin body covered by a hospital gown, a tolerant smile on his lined face. He smiled at them all as they finished their lesson about his condition, Crohn’s disease.
“Thank you, Mr. Dalrymple.” She shook his hand, as did the other students, all thanking him for making himself available to them.
The patients they saw in ICM were volunteers. During the first year, they had seen actors who taught the physical exams; this year, her patients had real ailments, giving the students a chance to see for themselves the physical characteristics of the maladies.
Anne thought she was getting pretty good at taking patient histories and doing a preliminary checkup, but she was still a little shaky with some of the more detailed exams. Second-year students spent so much time in class every day there was little chance for patient interaction. Her only real-world medical experience that year came from shadowing her preceptor, a surgical mentor who’d been assigned to her at the beginning of the school year, and whom she’d followed into the operating room three times since. She didn’t actually get to do much during those days, but she was allowed to scrub in and observe closely. Dr. Burkhaven had even let her put in a few sutures the last time, which had been both scary and exciting.
She looked forward to third year. Step 1 would be behind her and she would rotate through several different medical specialties. She knew the hours would be long and her performance would be judged critically by the mentors in each area, but at least she would be seeing real patients, not sitting at a desk listening to seemingly endless lectures.
As they had agreed earlier, she met Haley in the cafeteria at just after noon. Both still wore their short white coats over professional clothing. The pockets of the hip-length student coats bulged with examination tools, note cards and pens.
Sitting at a small table with their salads, they had to raise their voices a bit to be heard over the noise in the large dining room. Employees and visitors milled around the room and sat at other tables, talking and laughing, some almost shouting into cell phones. Trays and silverware clattered on a conveyor belt that ran across the back of the room, moving dirty dishes into the kitchen for washing.
A pregnant woman sat at the table next to Anne and Haley, talking emotionally to an older woman who could be her mother. Anne tried not to eavesdrop, but it was hard not to overhear snippets of their conversation—apparently, the younger woman was experiencing difficulties and had been told she would have to undergo a C-section the following week, a bit earlier in the pregnancy than she or her doctors would have liked.
Anne would have liked to know what those complications were, but she refused to allow herself to blatantly listen in. She concentrated on her friend instead.
Haley had been telling her about the man she had met at a friend’s house the evening before. “So, anyway, he seemed really nice and he asked if I’d like to go out for dinner sometime. I told him how crazy my schedule is right now, and he seemed very understanding about it. I said I’d think about it and let him know later today.”
“Is he cute?” Anne asked with a grin.
“Very cute. Dark blond hair, blue eyes, a dimple in his chin that made me want to poke it with my pinkie finger.”