First Real Kiss
Chapter 28
Luke
“First day back in the O.R., eh?” DadJoke chortled in his annoying way as I ran into him in the hallway. “How’d it go? Triple bypass, I heard. Do you still have the old magic?”
I just kept walking toward my clinic, but DadJoke met my gait. Did he know how close he’d come to feeling the wrath of Filer’s pipe wrench?
“Why are nurses afraid of camping? Too much poison IV. Get it? I-V, not ivy?”
“That’s a good one.” I offered a courtesy laugh, hoping that was the magic potion for getting rid of him.
No good. I’d only encouraged him.
“Hey, I also heard there were judges in the theater during your surgery today,” he said, referring to the viewing room for students and other doctors. “Did they pin a rose on your nose the second you told Trent to close? Shake your hand and name you the MVS of the Universe right then and there?”
I halted and balled my hands into fists. “No,” was all I said, but the memory of the last three hours raced through my brain. Especially the moment when I nicked the aorta with my scalpel and nearly killed the guy.
I don’t make mistakes.
Except today, I’d made one. A gusher of a mistake, only saved by clamps and fervent prayers and divine intervention. The judges from the hospital network had been there to watch my massive error.
“I don’t think I’ll be getting MVS after today.”
“What?” DadJoke sobered. “What’s wrong?” It was the first time he’d ever not been a total drip.
But that didn’t mean I was going to reveal that I’d been so busy picturing the same image in my thoughts that had burned there a couple of days ago—Sheridan’s despairing face telling me goodbye.
“Hey, you all right?” Dr. Chortle sashayed out of the cafeteria and stood beside DadJoke. “I heard about the mishap.” She snickered behind her hand.
Ugh! “Are you seriously laughing right now? A man nearly bled to death, and it was my fault.”
She hiccupped, frowned, and she and DadJoke slinked away.
The rest of the afternoon, I caught up on paperwork. Dr. Gottlieb filled in for my second surgery of the day. My hands were too unsure, too out of practice, I told him. But the truth was my problem was with Sheridan. Or, to put it in a more convoluted term, my problem was without Sheridan.
Without her, I suddenly had no gravitational center. Whereas I used to come back to my surgical skills anytime things felt off in my life, now my core had shifted. The bulk of my spiritual mass had transferred to her, and I was off-kilter. I was like a potter who couldn’t get the lump of clay into the middle of the wheel, and the bowl kept coming out wonky, not even looking like a bowl at all.
She didn’t want to talk to me, if her ignoring my texts and calls was evidence. Obviously, I couldn’t let Sheridan go. But I also had no idea how to make amends. Not that I’d done anything really wrong, other than not understanding her.
I called Lola.
“You missed dinner with me Saturday. Were you with Sheridan?”
Oh, wow. I’d been so caught up in that woman I’d forgotten dinner with my sister. “Yeah, but that’s what I want to talk to you about.” I spilled everything to Lola. Lola would understand. She and Keith hadn’t been able to have children, although not for the same reasons as Sheridan’s. But still, the heartache was of a similar vein. “What do you think I should do?”
Lola didn’t answer right away. I could hear her fingernails drumming on some kind of loud surface. Eventually, she said, “Do you know whether a traumatic injury to the pelvis always causes infertility?”
“No.”
“Find that out.”
That would mean asking one of those twits I’d just berated in the hallway. “Okay. But after that?”
“I’ll think about it. Call me when you have your other answer.”
***
Why is it that when you want to avoid someone annoying, they seem to pop up everywhere you turn, but when you need to see them, they can’t be found?