A Wedding in December

“We couldn’t. Her injuries were—catastrophic.”

“I’m sorry.” His hand tightened and this time she felt the firm pressure of his fingers locked protectively over hers.

“Her father was distraught. I had to tell him. That was my job. And he was on his own. She was all he had in the world. His little girl.” His love, and his heartbreak, had been so palpable that she’d lived the agony with him. She’d hated her job then. Hated its limitations. Her limitations.

“I can’t even imagine how hard that conversation must have been.”

“It’s part of the job. The worst part.” She clung to his hand. “He couldn’t make sense of it, and there was nothing much I could say because how can you make sense of something that makes no sense?”

“I’m guessing that was a particularly difficult conversation.”

“We were talking, he was asking me for details. The police came. They’d found the car. One of the girls gave a description and—” she closed her eyes “—there was—they were able to identify the car because—DNA—traces of blood—it doesn’t matter. You don’t want to know.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You’re probably thinking that a good doctor should be able to detach from it.”

“I’m not thinking that.”

“He was drunk. The man who killed her. They picked him up and arrested him. I think that tipped the father over the edge. His baby, killed by a guy who should never have got behind the wheel. Senseless. Avoidable.” She felt the sympathy coming off Jordan in waves. “The police went to talk to the other girls, I was left alone with her father. I don’t know what happened. Everything changed in a moment. He was—deranged with grief. He picked me up by my throat and slammed me against the glass window of the relatives’ room. Kept saying, Why couldn’t you save her? Why?” She’d seen stars, then darkness, then his voice—call yourself a fucking doctor? “A nurse came into the room. Tried to pull him off, but he was too strong so she left the room to get help.”

“He let you go?”

“The glass behind me shattered. I think it shocked him. He let me go, people arrived to help—that was it.”

Jordan swore and ran his hand over his face. If he’d looked shocked before, now he looked shaken. “You were badly hurt?”

“Cut my shoulder. It was nothing. He lost a child. He lost his baby. I wanted them to show that drunken loser her broken body. I wanted him to see what he’d done, but of course that isn’t how it works.” She picked up her wine again and took a mouthful. Her hand shook. She’d told him. She’d told someone. “When you’re a doctor, you try to let things slide off you. If I allow myself to feel, I can’t do my job. That doesn’t make me callous, it makes me efficient.”

“But you’re human.”

It was a quiet statement of fact and it made her feel better. For the first time in weeks she wondered if, perhaps, she wasn’t such a failure. Perhaps she was human.

She drained her glass. “That incident—that death—didn’t slide off me. It buried itself in me like a shard of that glass. On the outside, I’ve healed.” They’d removed pieces of glass, stitched her, told her she’d have a scar. She hadn’t even cared. Part of her even thought that maybe she deserved it. “I wanted to save his little girl. That’s why I became a doctor. I kept wondering if there was more we could have done to save that child, even though I knew there wasn’t. My brain keeps thinking of scenarios where she’d been brought in sooner, where the ambulance had taken five minutes instead of ten—I don’t even know that would have made a difference, but I haven’t been able to let it go.”

“Flashbacks?”

“All the time. If only. What if. Did we do everything? Did we try everything?”

“Of course the real question is why he had a drink and then got behind the wheel.”

“I know you’re right. But logic doesn’t make me feel better.” But Jordan did. He made her feel better, as if his thoughtful, carefully chosen words were stitching together those parts of her that had been torn apart.

“Technically he assaulted you.” He let go of her hand and reached for the bottle of wine. “Knowing you, I’m guessing you didn’t press charges.”

“No. The man was beside himself. He—” Her eyes filled. “It wasn’t the first sad, difficult case I’ve handled. I don’t know why that one got to me, but it did. I feel—I’ve lost confidence.”

“Because you couldn’t save his daughter?”

“Not only that. I should have seen how upset he was. I should have seen the risk. I misjudged it totally. It could have been one of my staff he attacked, and not me. It could have been worse. And then he would have been dealing with assault charges on top of grief.”

He was silent for a moment. “You ask a lot of yourself, don’t you? You’re human, Katie. You feel. You have compassion.”

“I was so busy feeling, I abandoned judgment. He was distraught, understandably. Angry, too. I probably should have anticipated the possibility of violence.”

“You’re a mind reader? You’re supposed to be able to predict human behavior?”

“To an extent, yes. I’m wondering if I was tired, if I wasn’t engaged enough in the job. Or maybe I’m not good enough. And now I can’t untangle any of it.”

He topped up her glass. “You expect perfect. I bet you were a Grade A student all the way.”

She managed a smile. “You’re a psychologist?”