Code Triage (19 page)

Lord, help me.
He made himself wait until his heart stopped thudding in his ears. “There is—I still love you.”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Don’t do this.”

“I’m doing the only thing I can do, Leigh. I’m trying to understand. Can you really give up on our marriage so easily?” He regretted his choice of words even before he saw her reaction.

“Easily? Is that what you think this past year has been for me—easy?”

“I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that. C’mon.” He reached out, decided against it, and drew his hand back. “I guess, what I’m really asking is . . .” The thudding in his ears started again. “Have you really stopped caring for me?”

“Our divorce is final on the third—that’s Friday.”

“I have the paperwork. That’s not what I’m asking.”

She squeezed her eyes shut again and whispered something that may have been a curse. He’d never heard her do that. Her eyes opened, and the tears surprised him. “Why are you doing this?”

Please, God . . .
He grasped her hand. “I told you. I love you. I can’t give up.”

She shivered. “And I can’t do this. I can’t go through this again. It’s too hard.”

“Tell me what to do,” he said quickly. “Anything. I’ll do anything. Tell me what to do—what to say.”

Her lips twisted as if she had a sudden pain. “And how would I believe you, Nick? How would I trust anything—
anything
—you had to say?”

Guilt strangled him. “It would take time; I know that. But if you give me a chance, a little more time, I’ll show you. We could try the counseling again. Get a different counselor if you want. You call the shots. Just give me a chance. Leigh . . . I’m sorry.”

Her eyes were huge in the moonlight. “And what about Sam?”

“What about her?”

“She’s around. She’s everywhere.” Her body tensed.

“Sam doesn’t matter. She’s not part of my life. You are. Only you.”

“But the court date is set, the paperwork . . .” Her eyes met his, and for the first time in months, hope seemed within his grasp. Like Leigh reaching for that pot rack.

“We can postpone it. We’ll drive by the court,” he told her. He lifted her hand and touched his lips to her fingers. “Please.”

“I don’t know,” she said, her expression still wary, but softer.

“Just say you’ll think about it—that we can talk again tomorrow.”

“I work tomorrow, Tuesday too. Maybe Tuesday evening . . .” Her expression hinted at wariness again.

Don’t push her.
“Tuesday night, after work. We’ll talk. And meanwhile, you’ll think about what I said?”

She was quiet. Forever, it seemed, until . . . “I’ll think about it,” she whispered.

Relief flooded through him, choked his voice. “Thank you.”

He brushed the back of his fingers gently along her cheek. It took everything he had not to pull her into his arms, cradle her close, kiss her. But anything more would overwhelm her—he knew that—and for now, he’d received the blessing he’d been praying for. A second chance to try to be the husband Leigh deserved. “Tuesday, then.”

+++

Sam frowned, licked the chocolate frosting off her thumb, then leafed through another stack of papers spread out across the dining room table. Why couldn’t she find it? Every other phone bill was there. She was careful, organized, paid bills on time, kept the receipts. She was responsible to a fault—had to be, she was a single mother. She frowned again, thinking of Kristi Johnson’s stupid mistakes. Despite what Sam had told the young mother about finding a “good guy”—and as much as she wanted to believe in that for her own life—the truth was, Kristi’s kids were very likely headed to foster care. She’d make another hospital visit tomorrow, compile reports, but it didn’t look good. The kids’ father was a loser and he’d show up again. Sam had no doubt about that. He’d slap Kristi around, steal her paycheck, bring friends by who would abuse her children; she’d be as guilty as he was for letting it all happen, putting her children at risk. Exactly as Sam’s mother had been.

November. The receipt for the phone bill should be in that pile—no mistaking the date. The month Toby died. A month of endings and beginnings. Despair. And hope too, those few days that Nick was here with them. If she was ever going to have a chance of making that happen again, she had to—
ah, there it is.
She pulled the November phone bill from the October slot in the tabbed file, ran her finger down the list of numbers, checked the dates.

November 18, 19. Three calls. Less than a minute each. Long enough to leave messages. Nick’s outgoing calls, made from her phone when his cell died. Calls to his wife that were never answered.

She reached for her wineglass and drained the last few drops of the cabernet that had almost ruined her new skirt. Then she picked up her cell phone to punch in the private number of the woman she refused to let ruin her life.

+++

Leigh sat on the porch and watched the Z4 pull away from the curb, then pulled her barn jacket close, not sure if her shivers came from the bay fog creeping in or because she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. More than the morning when she’d celebrated her graduation from med school by leaping from a skydiving plane thirteen thousand feet above a Lodi vineyard. Or the time, in her ER residency, when she’d opened the battered chest of a man struck by a speedboat, grasped his heart with her gloved hand, and squeezed it in her palm, forcing it to pump. Both times a life had been on the line—hers, over the vineyard; a husband and father’s that day in the ER. Tonight felt the same. Could she trust Nick? Was she crazy to even consider it just days from her divorce? when only two days ago, his lover had marched into her ER and as much as claimed him?

She stared at the full moon, shrouded now in wisps of fog but still brilliant and ethereal. Was this all some cosmic lunar mishap that filled her ER with chaos, turned her house into the Fairmont Tonga Room with Tony Bennett crooning, her sister hanging plastic leis from the chandelier . . . and her soon-to-be ex-husband declaring his love?

Nick.
Her heart cramped as she remembered what he’d said about his restaurant, how feeding the homeless meant the most to him, that police work made him feel that way too. Despite what his mother-in-law said, he hadn’t settled for being a cop. He’d said it was who he was. She believed him; how could she not after what she’d seen him do for Harry and Antoinette tonight? And how could she not hope—when he’d looked into her eyes, pressed his lips to her hand—that he was sincerely sorry and that he wanted their marriage to work? and that Sam Gordon wasn’t part of his life?

She hugged her arms around herself, remembering the conversation she’d had with Caro in the kitchen before everything had whirled into full-moon madness. About their mother. How she’d told them both that there was no such thing as happily ever after. And Leigh had grown up believing it, steeled her heart because of it, expected less, always. But what if she was wrong? What if it was okay to trust Nick, what if loving him . . .
is part of who I am?

She closed her eyes, remembering his words:
“I still love you. . . . Only you.”

He was asking her to postpone the court date, to think about it. Was that so risky?

She stood, gazing out across the slice of cityscape. The breeze had moved the fog enough that she could see their glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, red-orange and lit up in the distance.
“I left my heart in San Francisco. . . .”
Maybe Mr. Bennett had a point. Maybe the worst thing she could do was call it quits and leave. Maybe it was time to start trusting.

Leigh rubbed her arms against another rush of shivers. The next few days could change a lot of things.

+++

Sam heard Leigh’s phone ring for the third time and tried not to imagine why she wasn’t answering; she refused to accept that Nick was making love to his wife. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the phone, head swimming from nearly an entire bottle of cabernet.

“Hello?”

Sam waited, heart hammering as she strained to hear. Was Nick there?

“Hello?” Leigh repeated. “Is that you, Nick?”

Sam nearly groaned aloud with relief. “Dr. Stathos?” she asked, hoping the wine wouldn’t sully her voice like it had her skirt. “This is Child Crisis, Samantha Gordon.”

She loved the sharp intake of breath on the other side of the phone.

“Yes?” Leigh’s tone was wary, curt.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, pressing her finger against cake crumbs on the table as her skin tingled with an intoxicating surge of control. “But I have a county meeting first thing tomorrow, and I need some information. I have another child who would benefit from the therapy program at Golden Gate Stables. I want to suggest it at our meeting but can’t recall the last name of the owner. I know her name is Patrice. But I should really have the last name for the paperwork. You understand. I’ve left messages on the stables’ voice mail, but—”

“Owen.”

She smiled at the way the doctor’s voice quavered as if she were the stunned and defensive victim of a home invasion. “Great. I appreciate that.”

“Is that all?”

Sam licked the cake crumbs off her finger. “Yes, thank you. And again, I’m sorry for disturbing you at home. I tried to reach Nick, but no luck.” She paused, the moment much more delicious than any chocolate. “I should have asked him when he was here tonight.”

There was a long stretch of silence, and then the call disconnected.

Sam hit the End button. Tomorrow the ball would bounce back to her court.

Chapter Fourteen

“What’s this?” The flower vendor—purple beret pulled low over one brow and silhouetted in the morning light against buckets of outrageous blooms—peered into the paper sack. “Oh, my goodness, a
marranito
?” He lifted the molasses-rich pastry from the bag. “You brought me a cute little gingerbread pig?”

Nick shrugged. “Got up early to run the Panhandle and passed by this Mexican bakery next to a tattoo shop.”

The middle-aged man shot him a wide-gapped, toothy grin. “That big gun doesn’t fool me a bit, Officer Stathos. You are one sweet guy.”

“Careful, Oly,” Nick warned, pretending to scowl. “My new partner’s next door getting coffee. He won’t want to hear a ‘sweet guy’ has his back. Just sell me my
Chronicle
, same way you’ve been doing every morning for five long years.” He winced.
No, not the same, my friend. You’re alone now.

Nick watched as the man reached toward a pile of papers stacked below a photo of himself with an elegant older woman—gracefully tall and slender next to his short and stocky, but with identical smiles—taken at the Brannan Street flower mart. Two engaging grins, a million blossoms. He’d added a second photo, a well-worn black-and-white, the same woman maybe forty years younger, in ballerina shoes, a gauzy dress, and a crown. The lead in the San Francisco Ballet’s production of
Cinderella
, Oly had often boasted—his mother and business partner. Until a few weeks ago.

“So how are you doing?” Nick asked gently as Oly handed him the newspaper. He waited, watching the man’s face. The sounds of morning—under-caffeinated honks, the ding-ding and brakes of cable cars, and soft cooing of pigeons—filled the short stretch of silence.

“Oh, you know . . .” Oly glanced away and broke off a bit of pastry to toss at the clutch of birds strutting, heads abob, on the damp curb. “Selling mostly mums now that fall’s here. Burnt copper, lemonsota, maroon pride; thinking I’ll make an adorable stack of mini pumpkins and New England leaves, pull out my kitchen witch . . .”

He met Nick’s gaze and cleared his throat. “Sometimes I forget. I wake up thinking that I need to get over to the hospital, take her a fresh nightgown—she refused to wear those hideous hospital gowns. Or I’ll circle a theater review in the
Chronicle
, thinking I’ll read it to her so we can plan delicious revenge on those heartless critics. And sometimes I hear her setting the table for dinner . . .” Oly’s eyes glistened. “She fought hard. Wouldn’t quit; she thought she could hold on forever. You know?”

“Yes.” Nick had hoped for that, too. Prayed for these good-hearted people. Seeing the pair together, their playful banter and unconditional love, had let him imagine the way it might have been with his own mother, if only . . .

“So I’m not going to quit either,” Oly said, beginning to smile. “I’ll be okay. I have my sister, my baby niece, my friends—” he raised the pastry—“and a fresh
marranito
. What more could I ask for? Except maybe that you’d start buying flowers again.”

Nick hesitated for a moment, imagining the look on Leigh’s face if he showed up at the hospital with flowers. “No,” he said, tucking the newspaper under his arm. “Just the paper this time.”

“Think it over.” Oly’s smile widened. “It would support your image.”

“Image?”

“Sweet guy.”

Nick groaned. “One more word and I confiscate the pastry.” He pointed toward someone looking at flowers on the other side of the cart. “You’re ignoring your customers.”