Chapter 5
Five
Ted’s abrupt departure resulted in a flurry of phone calls from all three of his friends, who wanted to know if something was wrong. Ted told each of them the same thing: Everything’s fine, something came up, and I’ll see you in two weeks since he was on call the following weekend.
As he ran through the marina near his condo late that afternoon, he tried to put the emotionally draining weekend behind him by making a plan to get over his infatuation with Caroline. What I need is a girlfriend of my own. That will set things straight.
Contrary to the gossip in the hospital, he was aware of the appreciative looks he got from the women he worked with and the whispering that went on behind his back as they speculated on his personal life—or lack thereof.
He knew they wondered if he was gay or afflicted with some sort of social disorder that kept what they considered a highly eligible bachelor out of the hospital’s dating frenzy.
Since the doctors, nurses, residents, and fellows worked so many hours together, the inevitable romances developed, but Ted had never indulged.
Maybe it was time he did. Maybe if he hadn’t been living like a monk he wouldn’t have had such a strong reaction to Caroline.
The majority of his love and attention went to the kids he cared for, but at the end of the day he was left with an empty home and an even emptier bed.
Suddenly, the life he had been so content with just a few short days ago wasn’t enough anymore.
Meeting Caroline had shown him exactly what he had been missing, and now he yearned for more.
Determined to jump start his love life, Ted decided to pay closer attention to the women at work over the next week and to find one he could ask out to dinner by the following weekend.
He needed to start somewhere. Having drawn up a plan for his love life the way he would compile a treatment plan for a patient, Ted jogged the last mile back to his condo with a newfound sense of relief, if not satisfaction.
The late-afternoon sun hung like a ball of fire over the busy marina.
As he watched a boat come in under sail, he found that despite his good intentions his thoughts had already wandered back to Caroline.
He wondered how her ankle was, if she was in pain, and if she too was thinking about him and the instantaneous connection they’d shared.
She had felt it, too. He had no doubt about that.
Ted groaned, realizing that not thinking about her was going to be a project in and of itself.
He needed to get a life, not to mention a sex life.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex.
No wonder why she’d rocked his world. But even as he told himself it had been far too long since he’d been truly attracted to a woman, he had to acknowledge there had never been another attraction quite like the one he felt for her.
He used the key he kept under a flower pot on his front porch to let himself into his house.
The sleek condo, like the Mercedes, had been a gift from his grandparents, who took such tremendous joy in doting on their only grandson that he had long ago given up on trying to put a stop to their boundless generosity.
While Ted had used the trust fund they had set up for him to pay for his education, his younger sister Tish had blown through hers to fuel a ferocious addiction to heroin that had preoccupied the entire family for almost a decade.
Only when she had run out of money and options had Tish entered rehab.
Now, six years later, she was married to a nice guy and had a baby on the way.
Her years of drug addiction seemed like a bad dream since she had gotten her life together, and no one was more proud of her than Ted.
He checked his messages and found one from Roger Newsome, the colleague who covered for him on summer weekends.
“Hey, Ted. Pretty quiet weekend, so no need to check in with me before tomorrow. I admitted Matthew Janik because his fever hit 103, and he was dehydrated after the last round of chemo. I’ll check on him tonight.
Also, Hannah Ohrstrom’s mother called. Hannah had a fever, too, but it broke after two doses of Tylenol.
That’s about it. Call me if you have any questions. ”
The next message was from his mother.
“Hello, darling,” she said in that breathless, Main Line Philadelphia voice of hers.
“Just a reminder about the party on the twenty-first. Do feel free to bring someone with you and remember it’s formal.
Also, remind the boys they’re invited as well.
We’d love to see you out here before then if you can tear yourself away from Newport one of these weekends.
Hope you’re not working too hard. Give me a call this week. Love you bunches.”
Ted mimicked the kisses that Matilda “Mitzi” Dunbar Duffy predictably tacked on to the end of the message.
The party she referred to was Ted’s parents’ fortieth anniversary and his grandparents’ sixty-fifth anniversary, which would be held under a tent at his parents’ summer home on Block Island.
The two couples celebrated their common anniversary with a fancy soiree every five years.
Another weekend in Newport down the tubes, Ted sighed, as he thought of the social event of the season his mother and grandmother were no doubt planning.
He had grown up attending their little parties for two hundred of their closest friends and knew exactly what to expect.
But despite their love of all things social, his mother and grandmother were the two best women he knew: loving, faithful, protective, and fun.
All his life, Ted had considered them the ideal, and the women he dated had the misfortune of being measured against them and often found lacking.
Mitzi, who’d had a stiff and difficult relationship with her own mother, had found the mother of her heart when she married Dr. Edward Theodore Duffy Jr. She and Lillian hit it off from their first meeting and had been fast friends ever since, bonding over their love of a good party, a rousing tennis match, a frozen margarita at the end of a long summer day, and the blessings and burdens that came with marriage to pediatric oncologists.
Their grandparents had been such a big part of their lives that Ted and Tish had grown up feeling like they had two mothers and two fathers. Even in their late eighties, Lillian and Theo kept up an active, busy life that still included at least eighteen holes of golf each week.
While Ted adored them all, the only fault they had was their ongoing meddling in his life.
They were forever calling about a woman he just had to meet, a stock he just had to invest in, a party he just had to come to, or a tidbit of gossip from their various social circles he just had to hear.
Sometimes when he received calls from the four of them in the same day, it was all he could do not to remind them of how busy he was and how trivial their news was compared to what he was doing.
He never stopped being amazed at how easily his father and grandfather had slipped into retirement, seeming to forget about how challenging, heartbreaking, and overwhelming their work had once been—and still was for Ted.
The one thing he had succeeded in was getting them to drop the annoying nickname they had given him at birth, until he left for college and let them know he would no longer answer to “Third.” He had told them on his way to Princeton that although his name Edward Theodore Duffy the third, he’d decided to go by Ted in college, and he had better not hear any more of that other ridiculous name.
There must have been something in his tone or the expression on his face that told them he meant it because none of them had ever called him that again.
Occasionally his grandfather still slipped up, but Ted had perfected an icy look that usually set him straight.
The name change was one of very few major battles he’d ever won with the mighty foursome, and he was proud of it.
Ted picked up the phone in his home office and dialed a number he almost knew by heart after three years of caring for Hannah Ohrstrom. As he waited for someone to answer, he gazed out the window at the sun setting over the marina.
“Hi, Peg. It’s Ted Duffy.”
“Oh, hi, thanks for calling. Dr. Newsome said you were out of town.”
“I was, but I’m back now.”
“I hope you did something fun,” she said wistfully.
Ted knew her life had been anything but fun since Hannah had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at the age of six.
After two years of chemotherapy, Hannah had been in remission for a year, and Ted was optimistic about her long-term prognosis.
“I was in Newport where I rent a summer place with some college friends, but I heard Hannah was down with a fever, so I wanted to check in. How’s she doing? ”
“A little better today than last night. She’s still kind of listless, though.”
“Any temp today?” He fired up his laptop to log into the hospital’s scheduling system.
“It was 101 this morning, but it’s normal now.”
“Any other symptoms?”
“No, just the fever.”
“Why don’t you bring her by the clinic tomorrow? I can get her in at eleven if that works for you.”
“Sure,” she said haltingly. “I can do that.” She paused. “It’s not back, is it?”
“I know it’s hard to believe after everything you’ve been through, but not all fevers are sinister. I just want to take a quick look and do a CBC to be safe, okay? I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Okay, thanks. I appreciate you checking in. I’ve told so many people about how great you’ve been to us. No one can believe we have a doctor in this day and age who makes house calls and cares the way you do. Thank you so much.”