Chapter 12
Quinn unlocked the cabin and ordered Brutus to be nice as he introduced the adorable dog to Mallory. In the scope of two seconds, Brutus managed to lick most of her face and make her laugh so hard, she nearly forgot she’d been crying two minutes earlier.
“Brutus! Stop it. Sit down and be a good boy.”
Brutus’s rump dropped to the deck, and his tail thump, thump, thumped with excitement. A mixed breed of multiple colors, he had floppy ears and big paws. Mallory immediately thought he was adorable.
“What a good boy you are,” Mallory said, framing his face with her hands and scratching his ears.
“He loves that.”
“I can tell,” she said, laughing when Brutus’s eyes seemed to roll back in his head from pleasure.
“You’ve made a friend for life.”
The comment touched her and made her wonder if he was talking about the dog or him.
“Keep an eye on him while I get the boat ready?”
“Yep.”
Quinn went up to the front of the boat to do something with the sails, and by the time he returned to the cockpit, Brutus was practically in Mallory’s lap.
“Push him away if he gets to be too much.”
“He’s a love.”
“He does good snuggle.”
“He certainly does.”
Quinn pulled the navy cover off the sails, cranked on something and tugged on some ropes, the combined effect raising a huge sail that flapped in the wind.
Brutus barked at the sail.
“Hush,” Quinn said. “You know what that is.” He went back up to the front of the boat to cast off the mooring, setting them free.
Mallory noticed that he was careful in the way he moved about the boat, as if he didn’t entirely trust the prosthetic.
She wanted to ask him about that but wasn’t sure if the question would be welcome.
Instead, she contented herself with petting Brutus and watching Quinn assess the wind and the sails as he took the big silver wheel to steer the boat.
Ropes were adjusted until he was satisfied.
Then he sat on the other side of the cockpit, propping one leg on her bench and keeping one hand on the wheel. “Now you can say you’ve been sailing.”
“I love it.” She found the entire experience exhilarating, from the salty sea air to the glide of the boat through the blue water to the heat of the sun on her face and her handsome companion. “Thanks for taking me.”
“Happy to have you.” He glanced up at the sails, made an adjustment on the wheel and then turned his formidable gaze on her. “You doing okay?”
She nodded. “Sorry about that before. Sometimes… It’s just hard to be reminded of what I was denied my entire life by my mother.
My feelings toward her are very complicated these days, and of course, that makes me feel bad after everything she did and sacrificed for me.
And it’s compounded by the fact that she’s not here anymore and can’t defend herself. ”
“You can still appreciate the things she did for you while being angry about what she kept from you.”
She smiled at him. “I can? Really?”
“Yes, I give you permission to do both at the same time.”
“She was afraid he’d try to take me away from her.”
“Did she have reason to fear that?”
“Not because of him. I think it was more because her parents disowned her when she got pregnant out of wedlock. That was a big deal back then. She probably panicked at the thought of ending up all alone.”
“I’ve known him all of five minutes, and I can already say he doesn’t seem the type to take a baby from its mother.”
“I knew that right away, too, but she was young and alone and afraid. That’s all I’ve got when it comes to defending what she did.
” She looked down at Brutus, who was now sleeping with his head on her chest and his body between her legs.
“I keep thinking I’ve gotten over the anger, and then something will happen, like just now, to remind me of what I missed. ”
“And then you’re mad all over again.”
“With a dead woman who can’t defend herself and who did everything for me.”
“You should cut yourself a break, Mallory. What she did, for whatever reason she did it, was unfair to you and your father. Admitting that doesn’t take anything away from what a good mother she was to you. If you can, try to separate them in your mind.”
“You’re absolutely right, and that’s what I’m trying to do, but every so often, it gets muddied.
I have a whole lot of emotions where she’s concerned.
Mostly I miss her and wish we’d had more time together.
I don’t know what I would’ve done without her when Ryan died so suddenly.
She came out to San Francisco the day he died and stayed for a month. ”
“Maybe if you think about that stuff when the anger hits, you’ll be able to reconcile it a little better.”
“Maybe so.”
“After I got back to the boat last night, I was thinking about you losing your husband the way you did and how awful that must’ve been.”
“It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, by far.”
“I was wondering—and don’t tell me if it’s too hard to talk about—but how did you hear about it when it happened?”
Touched by his interest in knowing the details, Mallory shifted her gaze to the water rushing by the boat as she thought back to that long-ago day that had changed everything.
“I was in the NICU with a set of micro-preemie twins, thinking the very worst thing that could happen to me that day would be losing one of them. It was a really complicated case, and my attending had put me in charge of their care, and nothing else, for my entire shift. I’ll never forget what he said when he left me to do rounds.
‘Don’t take your eyes off them for a second, not even to pee or eat or anything until I get back. ’”
“Sounds like a real prince among doctors.”
“He was actually the best. I learned so much from him, but he was exacting, to say the least, and I never wanted him to be unhappy with me. So I did exactly what he told me to and watched over them like a hawk.”
She took a deep breath before she continued.
“One of the NICU nurses came in to tell me I’d received an urgent call from the surgical ward, asking me to come down there immediately.
I had no idea why they’d want me there. What’s funny is that it never occurred to me for one second that it was something to do with Ryan.
I took my eyes off my babies to look at her, and the expression on her face told me whatever was going on, it was bad.
She said my attending was on his way to take over for me, which scared me even more than I already was.
By then I was certain I was about to get fired, although I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.
The attending came rushing in a few minutes later and told me to go.
Just go, he said. The nurse was a friend, and she went with me down to the surgical ward, where I was met by what seemed like the entire medical staff.
One of them, Ryan’s closest friend at work, put his arm around me and took me off to the side to tell me he’d collapsed in surgery.
“At first I thought, oh, good, he only fainted. We can work with that. But then I asked which room he was in, and his friend started crying. Even then, I still wasn’t prepared for him to say that Ryan had basically dropped dead.”
“Who would ever be prepared for that?” Quinn said softly. He turned the boat and switched to her side of the cockpit, nudging Brutus to move to the other side so he could sit closer to her. He raised his arm, and Mallory slid closer to him, loving the way his arm felt around her shoulders.
“I don’t remember much after that. I have big blank spots in my memory.”
“I don’t remember much of anything for two weeks after I was injured. I swear that’s the brain’s way of protecting you from things you’re better off not knowing.”
“Probably. That day marked the start of a long downward spiral for me. I went from being a married doctor to widowed and, a couple of months later, unemployed when I couldn’t work up the fortitude to return to a job I’d loved. I never stepped foot in that hospital again.”
“Can’t say I blame you.”
“I lasted about six months in San Fran before I packed up our place and went home to my mother in Providence. The drinking got pretty bad after that, until my mom got my best friend, Trish, involved, and the two of them wrestled me into rehab. They saved my life, but you couldn’t tell me that then. ”
“It started with pain meds for me after I was injured. I know what it’s like to not want help that others are forcing on you.”
“Mom and Trish did the right thing, but it was a long, hard-fought battle that was finally won the second time I went to rehab.”
“What did the trick that time?”
“A counselor helped me see I was using alcohol to numb the pain of my loss rather than confronting the pain head on. So I confronted the pain head on, and that was tons of fun. But I was better afterward. Something clicked that time, and when I got out, I had no desire to go back to the way I’d been living before.
That’s when I started taking steps to become an RN and pick up the pieces of my professional life, such as it was. ”
“Why’d you decide to become a nurse rather than finishing your medical training?”
“I wanted to be more involved with patient care than I’d been as a resident. I used to envy the nurses who had a real rapport with the patients that we often didn’t have the time to establish.”
“I can understand that. As a trauma surgeon, I had very little contact with the patients under my care. I pieced them back together and handed them off to the clinical staff. The nurses did most of the heavy lifting.”
“It won’t be like that here, you know. You’ll be very involved with all of them—and their families.”
“Believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to that. Hey, are you hungry?”
“I could eat something. Oh, and I brought some snacks that are in my bag.”
“Take the wheel and keep it right where it is.”
“Wait, you want me to drive the boat?”