Chapter 38 #2
“As long as you want to be busy, I know of some very worthy causes that could use the services of a talented writer,” Mitzi said with a shy smile. “We’re down one Duffy on the charity circuit, so I’d enjoy having you there.”
“I’d like that, Mitzi.” Caroline grasped her mother-in-law’s hand. “I’d like that very much.”
The worst part about leaving Children’s Hospital Boston was leaving the children.
By the time he set out for Concord at ten o’clock that night, Ted was drained.
He’d had tearful farewells with his coworkers, the kids on the in-patient ward, and with several of the parents he’d become close to.
He still felt weepy as he crossed the New Hampshire border.
But there was no sense looking back. Now was the time for moving forward.
An hour later, he arrived in the quaint city of Concord and checked into the first hotel he found.
He’d have to go back to Boston at some point to get more clothes and a few other things he needed.
To do that, though, he would have to see Caroline.
Maybe he would just buy new clothes. That would be easier and less painful.
As he lay down on the hard bed in the nondescript hotel room, he wondered how she was doing.
He wished he could call her and talk to her about how it had felt to leave his kids.
She would understand, and she would know just what to say to make him feel better.
But he couldn’t call her. That wouldn’t be fair.
Over the next two weeks, Ted settled into his new job.
It was more administrative than he preferred, but it was a challenge, especially overseeing all the pediatricians at the hospital.
Fortunately, he had been given a highly efficient executive assistant who handled the worst of the paperwork for him.
On the medical side, he became accustomed to seeing mostly healthy kids with minor illnesses and injuries and realized that once he had removed the word “cancer” from his daily vocabulary, he had also stopped constantly anticipating disaster.
He went to Weston for a somber Thanksgiving with his family—the first without Smitty in more years than he could remember, the first without his grandmother, and what should have been his first with Caroline—and returned to Concord the next day.
Only the presence of his baby niece Lilly had saved the holiday from being a total disaster.
On Saturday, he spent most of the day on the sofa pretending to watch football, but all his thoughts were about Chip and Elise getting married in New York and how he was supposed to be in the wedding party. He hoped that Parker, at the very least, was with Chip.
Unfortunately, Ted knew all too well what it was like to get married without his closest friends by his side.
He hurt to think of Chip going through the same thing.
He hurt to think of them all, and for that one day, he allowed in the pain.
If anyone had told him a year ago that Chip and Elise would be getting married and he wouldn’t be there . . .
As time went by, word got out that a nationally renowned pediatric oncologist was now practicing in Concord.
Before he knew it, he was treating six children with cancer from various corners of northern New England, in consultation with his former colleagues at Children’s.
Ted was satisfied to able to keep a hand in his former specialty and to save their parents the extra travel time.
When he wasn’t working, he ran—usually twice a day—and worked on the old house outside of town he had bought on a whim. He kept his distance from the people in town, especially the women who eyed the new doctor with interest.
He’d called Caroline only once, to give her his new cell phone number and address and to discuss a few financial matters pertaining to the condo in Boston.
He’d been in Concord for six weeks when he finally worked up the fortitude to ease the wedding band off his left hand and put it on his dresser.
His parents and grandfather came up for a weekend visit, but Ted refused to discuss Caroline, his friends, his career, or any of the painful memories he had worked so hard to put behind him.
A few days before Christmas, he went into town for dinner at an Irish pub he had heard good things about.
He was sick of his own cooking and his own company after a Saturday spent sanding floors.
A live band entertained the crowd of locals.
Ted recognized a few of them from his practice and nodded to say hello but didn’t encourage anyone to approach him as he took a seat at the bar.
He had ordered the roast beef special and was nursing a beer when the band took a break and switched on some canned music.
The Lifehouse song “You and Me” filled the pub, transporting Ted back to their wedding night at the Ritz.
The pain of losing Caroline shot through him like a bullet, leaving him breathless with longing.
He got up, tossed a twenty on the bar, and left the pub.
Because he couldn’t bear another stiff-upper-lip holiday in Weston, he volunteered to cover Christmas Day at the hospital so the other doctors could be with their families. The day after Christmas, he received an invitation in the mail.
John & Marjorie Smith
request the honor of your presence
at a dinner to celebrate their marriage
Saturday, January 9
7:30 p.m.
21 Club
21 West 52nd Street
New York, New York
Across the bottom, in his familiar scrawl, Smitty had written, “I expect you to come. It’s the least you can do.”