Chapter 3
How was it possible that Kyle had felt relatively well just five hours ago and now, despite pain meds, felt really sick?
He shifted on the bed, waiting for Gerry or someone from the team to appear.
Even one of the medical staff would do. The minutes ticked away, and without a phone, without someone to talk to, he was conscious of how glaring the bright white overhead light was, how many beeps filled the air, how his eyes and ears hurt along with his side.
Was it his kidneys? He wished someone would come to tell him what was going on.
He closed his eyes, shutting off the painful light burning into his retinas. Would Gen show again? It didn’t seem likely after her coldness earlier. But really, could he blame her after what he’d done?
Footsteps snapped open his eyelids. Then his heart swooped in disappointment as a new white-coat-clad doctor, accompanied by Gerry, approached.
“Hello, Kyle. I’m Dr. Winthrop,” the man said. He looked to be in his late thirties.
Kyle nodded. “What’s the verdict?” He didn’t need preambles or politeness. Just the truth.
“The scans show that you have a laceration of your kidney.”
“What? That sounds bad.”
“It could be worse. You have what’s known as a grade four laceration with a deep extension, so the blood supply has been affected. The scans show there is internal bleeding which means—”
“But how? I haven’t broken any ribs to puncture inside, have I? Someone would’ve told me if that was the case.”
Dr. Winthrop checked his chart. “You don’t have to have a rib fracture to cause this kind of injury.
Sometimes it’s just the sheer force of energy transferring that causes a tear in the kidney.
And because the kidney has to clean the blood it has high levels of blood supply, so if it’s cut then there are potentially high levels of bleeding.
And while normally we might treat this more conservatively, the scan revealed injury to the veins, along with the fact you’re not hemodynamically stable—”
“Unstable blood pressure,” Gerry explained.
“—which means I’m afraid we need to perform surgery.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible. We need to stop the bleeding as soon as an OR opens up.”
“How long until I can play again?”
“The scans suggest a significant degree of damage, but we won’t know until we open you up.
But a conservative estimate would put that at a minimum of four to six weeks until you’re feeling better, but no strenuous activities for a lot longer.
I think it’s safe to say that if the surgery goes as planned, it’s unlikely you’ll be playing for at least three months. ”
“What?”
“These kinds of injuries usually mean no contact sports or strenuous activities for at least that long.”
Not play in the playoffs? His heart tensed, releasing higher-pitched beeps on the machine. Then the other part of what the doctor had said filtered in. “What do you mean if the surgery goes as planned? Is there a chance it won’t?”
“There’s always a chance, but let’s not focus on that. We want you to think positive, okay?” He smiled, like thinking positive was as easy as putting on a Band-Aid.
Huh. Positive thinking still hadn’t dealt with the soul-deep shame that prickled into awareness every so often. You’d think believing in God, knowing one’s sins were washed away, would deal with this by now, but nope. Still there. Triggered afresh by seeing her, no doubt.
A short time later a nurse approached with the news a surgery spot had opened up. “Is there anyone you want us to contact?” she asked.
Kyle glanced at Gerry. “My folks know?”
Gerry nodded. “They’re on a plane as we speak.”
“Good.” After all they’d sacrificed for him, he hated being the cause of interrupting their weekend, but they’d feel even more ticked to be out of the loop. And with no girlfriend to inform, they were the only ones who really needed to know. Apart from—
“Hey, Gerry, you got my phone?”
Gerry passed it to him, and he winced at the number of text messages steadily piling up.
Sure enough, more than a few were from the Northwest Ice crew, his Christian brothers-in-arms who played pro hockey while doing their best to live for Jesus.
And while Kyle was a newer member, it did his heart good to see their messages of concern.
He typed in a prayer request in the group chat:
Thanks for your prayers. I’d appreciate some more as I go under the knife. Gotta stop my kidney bleeding.
That might not be strictly true medically speaking, but he’d never claimed to be an expert.
His skills lay in the hockey and business worlds, not medical procedures.
The thought of who apparently was now an expert in medical procedures made him hesitate for a second, wondering if he should mention her.
But he knew as soon as he did, he’d be opening a can of worms that would be impossible to put back, and he really didn’t have the head or heart space to deal with people’s curious questions about someone he hadn’t seen in years.
“Ready?” the nurse asked.
He nodded, passed his phone to Gerry, who promised to let his folks know where things were up to and bring them in as soon as possible.
He again felt that urge to ask whether someone else could be found and kept updated, before quickly nixing that idea.
She’d made it pretty plain before just how much of a nonentity he was to her.
He grimaced. Why hadn’t he checked to see if she wore a wedding ring?
“You’ll be fine,” Gerry assured, misinterpreting Kyle’s face.
“Yeah.”
God was with him. Had never left his side. This injury hadn’t taken Him by surprise.
It was only when the anesthetist covered his mouth and asked Kyle to count backward from one hundred that Kyle was reminded of another truth.
That just as God obviously hadn’t been taken by surprise by this injury, so He hadn’t been taken by surprise by Kyle’s awkward encounter with Genevieve before.
Which made him wonder just what was going to happen next.
* * *
Worry drummed within Gen’s veins as she finished her shift. Another motor vehicle accident, a drug overdose, and a patient who was obviously high, yet none of them had snagged a corner of her heart the way an earlier admittance had managed—
Stop!
She didn’t have room to play favorites, to let herself get emotionally involved with any of her patients.
But unfortunately, there was a difference between knowledge and practice, and some patients managed to slip under her guard.
Patients like Lily, a foster girl who had first presented to the ER as a ten-year-old, putting up a brave front as she tried not to cry about her broken arm, courtesy of her soon-to-be-ex foster brother.
Poor girl. With all the pain and suffering Gen was exposed to on a daily basis, some days she questioned why she did this, but the memory of Lily and others who desperately needed her kept her going.
You never knew who would enter the doors and need help.
Even if some of those had made it plain in the past that they didn’t need her or want her.
Her heart panged, and she wondered how he still had this hold on her. Why did her body have to betray her like this? She wasn’t a child, she wasn’t led by emotions. She’d done that and now lived with the consequences so knew the danger of letting emotions get the better of her.
Although…
Was it so bad to have a smidge of concern about how he fared? He was an old high school acquaintance, after all, as well as her first and only—
She clamped that thought down. But still. As Dr. Singh liked to remind her, she was a human, not a robot, and humans were allowed to veer occasionally from the cold, hard facts.
And Kyle had to be out of surgery now. Would it hurt to find out how he was doing? She moved to the nurse’s station.
Cindy glanced up. “You’re still here? Good. I’ve got some more paperwork for you.”
“Great.” Bane of every doctor’s existence.
Cindy handed over a screen and pointed to the areas requiring signatures. “Can I remind you that your shift finished twenty minutes ago?”
“Technically, yes. But I wanted to check in on the status of some of my earlier cases.”
Cindy’s eyebrows lifted but she only said, “Any in particular?”
It’d look far too obvious to inquire about a certain hockey player. “How is Janice?”
“The hit-and-run vic? She’s doing okay. Up in recovery, should get discharged soon.”
Past midnight on a Saturday night wasn’t the ideal time to be going home, but still, they needed the beds. “That’s good.”
“Oh, and in case you’re interested, they found a grade four laceration on the kidney of Kyle Tinker.”
Her pulse increased even as she nodded, poker-faced. “He’s out of surgery?”
“Yeah. They’re keeping him overnight to make sure his blood counts don’t drop. He’s up in recovery if you want to see him.”
“I don’t.”
“Mm-hmm.”
She busied herself with signing documentation, refusing to meet the speculation sure to be in Cindy’s eyes.
“His parents are coming here,” Cindy announced.
“Whose parents?” she asked.
“Kyle’s.”
Her head rose, and she quickly scanned the room, peering out to the waiting area. “Where?”
“Huh. Interesting that you seem more concerned about seeing them than you are about him.”
That’s because she’d always known they hadn’t liked her.
She’d never been good enough—in all senses of the word—for their goals for their son.
Her lips tweaked without amusement. And hadn’t she proved them right.
So now, to think they were here at her workplace, a place where she felt increasingly safe and mostly secure yet still sometimes struggled to find acceptance with colleagues like Dr. Visek, well, she sure didn’t want to bump into them unknowingly.
She scrawled the last signature, laid down the stylus pen. “Sorry, gotta go.”
“Yes, you do.” Cindy smirked. “They’re not here yet, in case you need to know.”
“I don’t,” she said. “See you Monday.”
“I forgot you’re not on call tomorrow. Drive safe.”
“Will do.”
She always did. While she often took public transit during the day she knew it was hard to feel safe around here at night. And living in the burbs with her mom meant driving was a no-brainer.
A careful reconnaissance of the emergency’s waiting area revealed nobody she needed to avoid.
So she went to the multistory parking garage, beep-unlocked her old battered car, got in, and started the winding descent of coiled ramps until she reached street level.
Then it was the slow merge onto the freeway heading south.
At least it wasn’t as busy as during peak hour.
Her fingers drummed the steering wheel as she thought over that earlier encounter. Of all the hospitals in all the world he had to roll into hers. Then she had to be the one to initially treat him. What were the chances?
Pretty good, apparently.
She blew out a breath, shivering a little. Seattle’s temperatures never got truly cold, but things were feeling a little nippy for her today. She blasted on the heat, frowning.
Kyle had looked good. In obvious pain, but as Marcie had said, he was young, fit, and should make a full recovery soon. Which was good. People needed their sports stars to be well, seeing as they apparently existed on a different level to the rest of humankind.
She rolled her eyes at herself, but it was an attitude fairly prevalent in society.
Certain people were esteemed as being more valuable than the poor, or those who didn’t have medical insurance.
What was she to do? As a doctor, she was obliged to treat all those who needed assistance, rich, poor, and all those in between.
She didn’t have the luxury of saying no.
Even if the person was an obvious criminal her instinct was to help. She pressed the accelerator.
So why had her encounter with Kyle left her feeling so unsettled? He was supposed to be nothing to her. He was nothing to her. Except, apparently, from the way she’d been left feeling rattled he wasn’t as nothing as she’d prefer.
But there was a good reason to perhaps pay him more attention than she preferred. And no, not because of any quality of “hotness” despite what others might assume.
She steered into her suburb, her street, her driveway, parked and killed the engine. The house was dark, everyone inside asleep, except for Betsy the Cat.
Gen stroked Betsy’s soft black fur and dumped her keys, found her room, dropped her bag on the bed, then stole down the hall to the last room on the right.
She opened the door, thankful she’d taken time last weekend to oil that persistent squeak, then stood in the doorway, gazing at the figure in the bed.
The little figure that bore the same color hair, possessed the same unusual eyes, as the man she’d tried so hard to forget.
Outside, a cat screech fluttered little eyelids wide.
“Go back to sleep, Bella,” Gen murmured.
“Is that you?” Bella whispered, her voice catching on a yawn.
She nodded, pushing away from her spot near the door to give the girl a hug. “Did you have a good day?”
“Yes. Did you?”
“It was busy, but okay.” She pressed her lips to the crown of Bella’s head. “Now go to sleep.”
“Okay. G’night.”
“Good night Bella. Love you.”
“Love you too, Mommy.”
Her heart twisted.
That word was exactly why she needed to tread carefully.
No way was she going to admit the truth and blow her world up into what would surely be a million pieces.
She’d done that once, and everything had changed, and she wouldn’t willingly go there again.
Mom would never forgive her, for starters, and Bella was finally secure.
But still, guilt strummed as the decade-old question gnawed inside. What would Kyle do if he was to ever learn he had a child?