Chapter Five
Wren
After
“ T his is Dr. Bianchi,” I spoke softly yet authoritatively, picking up the call.
“Birdie?”
It was gruff and coarse, and for a quick second I thought I’d heard wrong.
“Hey, Birdie, you there?”
What in the world does he want?
There was only one he who would call me Birdie… And it had been forever since I’d heard that nickname or from him. Sadly, it hadn’t been so long since I’d thought of him.
The aforementioned he cleared his throat into the phone. “Wren? Are you there?”
My actual name shook me out of the spiral I’d collapsed into, my brain in a free fall of memories.
To be honest, this entire freaking day had been in the toilet since the moment it began.
Maybe I should’ve listened and let my patient fix me up for the holidays.
Five hours earlier
“Cherry red! They’re sexy. Vroom, vroom. Right, Doc?”
My patient waggled her fingers in the air, the light catching the wedding band on her finger.
“When my darling, David, was alive, he’d say the tips of my fingers looked just like maraschino cherries and he wanted to take a bite of each one. He’d make a big show of nibbling on my fingertips before bringing his lips to mine. He was such a Casanova, my David…but I was the only woman for him…the only one…”
“Good morning, Mrs. Anthony. How are you feeling today?” Much to the tornado of a woman’s dismay, I interrupted the manicure and love chatter and tried to bring the conversation back to earth.
For me, time was of importance.
With a touch of grace, the woman ran her fingers through her silver hair and playfully winked. “I’m right as rain, Doc. Look, my granddaughter painted my nails,” she said, wiggling her fingers at me for a second time.
“Red, very nice. You must have been happy to see your granddaughter.”
“Oh! Did I tell you she is about to graduate from Boston University? She’s the youngest of the gang. Twenty-year span between all my grand kiddos. A true blessing.”
I nodded. She’d told me at least ten times, but who was I to take away her pride?
“When you have five kids, that’s what you get…a whole brood when they have their own babies.”
I’d heard it all. As usual, I plastered a smile on my face, trying to replicate what the warm feeling must look like.
As an only child from an unhappy couple, it was a foreign language to me.
“She’ll be here for both Christmas and New Year’s, and guess what? So, will my grandson. The oldest, he’s forty-one and has an MBA from Harvard. Big Boston people, like you know,” she added at the end.
I did know this. The Anthony family had a long history in Boston’s North End, owning a number of restaurants and a bread bakery.
“That’s very nice. I’m trying to make sure you don’t miss Christmas. Time to get you home to your family.”
Although I didn’t have to be here, I waited for Marybeth, the physical rehab nurse, to complete her notes in the electronic medical record.
Often people asked why I was so dedicated or accused me of being a control freak; neither derailed me from waiting for Marybeth to free up the computer for me. As I looked at the information from overnight and this morning, I made a few calculations in my head, half listening to Marybeth and my patient still discussing her deceased husband.
“David used to have one of his employees dress up as Santa when the kids were little…and then later, he’d joke with me…he’d put on the Santa hat and say, come sit on my lap…”
I reminded myself I was here out of my own free will, and it was impolite to roll my eyes when with a patient.
“What about you, Dr. Bianchi? What are you doing for Christmas?”
“What?” I asked, looking up.
“Christmas? What are your plans?” My patient stared at me.
I blinked, pretending there was something stuck in my eye when it was really my pride twitching… “Oh, don’t you worry about me. Your hip seems to be healing nicely and rehab is going well. We should have you out of here by the end of the week.”
“Really?” A bright smile lit up the sweet older lady’s face, and I couldn’t help but wish my life had turned out as full of love as Mrs. Anthony’s.
“Absolutely, and then you’ll follow up with me, in the office. Six weeks or right after New Year’s for you!”
My curls bobbed against my neck; I kept my hair short because wearing it up all day gave me a headache. There was a time when I’d allowed my hair to grow, blow drying it straight, but those days were long gone. That was in my late twenties. Now, I was about to hit the big 4-0, and practical it was.
“Then you must celebrate the holiday with us. I bet you signed up for extra shifts here at work. By the way, I know you don’t have to check on me here in rehab, but you do anyway. You work too hard, Dr. Bianchi. Take some time off.”
“Someone has to take care of all those people—you know, the ones falling off ladders, hanging their lights and mistletoe,” I joked.
“I wanted to hang the bells where they have been for decades…” Mrs. Anthony explained her fall for the millionth time.
“I know, and we got your hip all patched up,” I responded. I didn’t get into how I was one of a handful of women in orthopedics, a male-dominated field, and I had to work that much harder than everyone else. Christmas wasn’t at the top of my priority list—also, I was half Jewish but that was a different story.
“You must meet my grandson, Andrew. I insist. He will be so appreciative of who helped his grandmama. I’m very dear to him. You’ll come…I won’t take no for an answer.”
To be clear, I wasn’t going to Christmas or to meet Andrew, but there was no sense in arguing with Mrs. Anthony. And as luck would have it, Regina, my PA, appeared at my side, which usually meant one of two things: I was needed for an emergency, or the head of the department was looking for me.
For the record, there was another service who took care of this floor, but it was within my rights to check on my surgical patients who were recuperating there.
“Hi, Mrs. Anthony,” Regina said. “Looking good.”
“Did you see my nails?”
“Give me one sec. I need to borrow the doc, and I’ll be back to take a look.”
Regina was the yin to my yang, the patience to my hustle, the calm to my temper, the excitement to my lackluster attitude. She’d look at red nail polish all afternoon if it made a patient feel cared for. She’d probably be set up with said patient’s grandson too…
“What’s up?” I stood a few feet from Regina in the hallway, our voices soft so as not to disturb anyone.
She rocked from one foot to another.
“Someone need help in the OR? An emergency? What’s got you pacing like a lion at the zoo?”
She shook her head. “No, no emergency.”
“Spit it out, Genie . I got a code hot red—a potential fix-up with a grandson named Andrew to get out of—and an office full of patients to see downstairs.”
“Sorry, this is unusual, and doesn’t happen often. There’s been someone calling all morning, saying you’re old friends and somewhat insisting you’d take his call. Honestly, he seems kind of nice, not mean, but I’ve never heard you mention an old friend. He asked if I would page you, and I told him if he left a message, I’d get it to you, but he refuses to leave one. He kept saying he needed to tell you himself. Pretty sure it was his sexy accent that convinced me to say anything at all, so here I am.”
“His what?”
“ What what?” She stared at me as if I had three eyes. This was one of the downfalls of Regina—she loved to spin a tale. Her medical knowledge was top-notch, but her penchant for drama could get to me.
“Genie,” I prompted.
She finally answered me. “Accent. Maybe Irish?”
“Scottish,” I corrected without hearing any more.
There was only one person in my life who had an accent, who would also be considered bossy or belligerent. I knew him way back…when we’d shared two dates and a lifetime of emotions.
We’d known one another for all of a few weeks, and it had been enough to change the entire course of my life.
“Yeah, that’s it! His name is…”
I filled in the blank. “Daniel Campbell.”
“So you do know him?”
I nodded. “I did. A long time ago.”
“Ohhhh.” Regina’s eyes lit as she spoke, her mind likely spinning theories.
“Send me his number and I will call him after I see my patients. If he calls back, let him know I’m working.”
“Should I let him know you’ll call him later?”
“Genie, stop getting that starry look in your eyes and give me his number. I’ll let him know not to bother anyone again.”
“Don’t do that! We don’t mind. It’s no bother.”
“I mind.”
I didn’t wait for a response. Stepping back into Mrs. Anthony’s room, I told her to call my office to make her follow- up appointment and narrowly escaped another fix-up request, before heading to see my consults.