She bit her lip before saying, “You’re going to be angry with me, Dad, and that’s okay. You have every right to be. Just don’t yell at me right now, okay? I need your help.”
Looking thoroughly confused, he drew back enough to search her face. “Why on earth would I be angry with you?”
“You asked yesterday if I’ve been seeing someone?” When he nodded, she blurted, “I have been seeing someone, Dad. It’s Liam.”
He stiffened. “Liam—You mean that McCright boy?”
Clinging to his shirt, she nodded. “Yes. Liam and I got back together when I was in London, and we’ve been together ever since. He’s been here visiting me for the last few weeks. He was going to leave this morning, but he got sick. He’s having an emergency appendectomy now, and I think he’s already developed peritonitis.”
Her father sank heavily onto the nearest chair, as if his knees simply wouldn’t hold up to this shock.
She drew a ragged breath, figuring that was about as much as he could handle hearing just yet. “I was going to tell you all that he and I were together again, but then Mother had the stroke and she was so sick, and then the demands of med school were so overwhelming and I…well, I just couldn’t find the courage. It was stupid, I know, and there are more things I need to tell you, but…”
Her breath caught on a sob. “I’ve made such a mess of everything. And now Liam’s in surgery and I don’t know how he’s doing. He looked so very sick when I brought him in. I’m really scared, Dad.”
Her father looked torn between shock, anger and dismay. “I don’t know what to say, Anne. That you’ve actually been seeing him all this time, and you’ve never said a word about it…It’s just…”
“I know. And I still haven’t told you everything—but I will. I’ve wanted to tell you so many times. I just didn’t know how,” she finished miserably. “You were so adamantly against Liam—against me being involved with anyone, actually. You were so sure I couldn’t handle both a relationship and medical school. And it hasn’t been easy, but it’s been working—for the most part. He’s been nothing but supportive of me, so careful not to interfere with my studies. He and I had a quarrel last night about that very thing.”
“Last night? After I called you?”
She nodded miserably. “He thought he should leave before you and Mom found out about us. I was ready to tell you the truth, but he thought it was too stressful a time for me and he wanted to wait until after Step 1. I told him he was just like you—always trying to make my decisions for me, for my own good, and we both got mad. And he was sick the whole time, but I was so wrapped up in my own pride and temper and worry about tests and classes and family issues that I hardly even noticed. What kind of doctor will I be if I’m so self-absorbed that I can’t see someone is suffering right in front of me?”
She was crying now, racked with fear and guilt. Her father hesitated a moment, still dealing with his myriad reactions to everything she had just thrown at him. And then he put his own emotions aside and wrapped an arm around her. “You’ll be a very good doctor, Anne. No one expects you to be ready to practice during your second year of medical school. And maybe he didn’t tell you everything he was feeling?”
“No,” she said with a sniffle. “He hardly complained at all. He said his stomach hurt and that he was a little queasy, but that’s pretty much all he told me. I thought he just had that stomach virus that’s been going around so much lately.”
“Which is exactly what my first reaction would have been if that was all I was told. Was he running a fever? Did he complain of pain in his right side?”
“No. When I got home from class today, he was lying on his side with his knees drawn up. He was running a high fever then, and complaining of nausea and pain. I finally considered what he might have and I did the McBurney pressure test. He had severe rebound pain, which is when I finally realized that he was seriously ill.”
“You can’t blame yourself. Liam isn’t the usual age for appendicitis, and it sounds as if his symp
toms did not present in a typical fashion. That’s something you’ll learn with practice—typical is a very relative term when you’re dealing with individual patients. They don’t all fit on to a neat checklist of symptoms and signs.”
“He’s been back there for a long time,” she said anxiously, twisting her hands in her lap. “What if the appendix ruptured? What if he’s developed sepsis?”
Sepsis was an infrequent, but very serious complication from appendicitis. With sepsis, bacteria entered the bloodstream, traveling throughout the body. It could be life threatening.
Her dad covered her hands with his own big, skilled hand. “Then he’ll be treated with IV antibiotics. You can probably tell me which ones.”
“I don’t want to be quizzed right now, Dad,” she said with a groan. “I just want to know that Liam’s going to be all right.”
He nodded and stood. “Wait here. I’ll go see what I can find out.”
This, she thought, her breath catching on a last sob, was why she had called him. There was no surgeon, no physician she trusted more than her father. Now that he was here, Liam would be all right.
She had to believe that.
She knew there would be much more to be revealed to her family. More explanations, more apologies, more guilt-inducing recriminations from both her parents and probably her grandfather, too. But they would come around, just as she had always known deep inside that they would.
Now if only she would have the chance to bring Liam around, to make him understand how important her family was to her. To convince him that loving them in no way detracted from how much she loved him. That being a part of her family, difficult though they could be, wasn’t such a terrible thing.
The question was—did Liam love her enough to accept the whole package? Her family, her career, her strengths and her flaws? Or would it turn out that their whole marriage had been based on a youthful, passion-driven, fantasy-inspired impulse that could not stand up to the day-to-day challenges of the real world?
Praying that she would have the chance to find out, she drew a deep breath and huddled more deeply into the chair to wait for news.
Liam was so disoriented when he opened his eyes that it took him a little while to figure out where he was. His mind was clouded, probably by the drugs being pumped into his veins through an IV tube, making it hard for him to think coherently.