Nights in Rodanthe (4 page)

In New Bern, a quaint town situated at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers, he stopped for lunch. From a deli in
the historic district, he bought a sandwich and cup of coffee, and despite the chill, he settled on a bench near the Sheraton
that overlooked the marina. Yachts and sailboats were moored in their slips, rocking slightly in the breeze.

Paul’s breaths puffed out in little clouds. After finishing his sandwich, he removed the lid from his cup of coffee. Watching
the steam rise, he wondered about the turn of events that had brought him to this point.

It had been a long journey, he mused. His mother had died in childbirth, and as the only son of a father who farmed for a
living, it hadn’t been easy. Instead of playing baseball with friends or fishing for largemouth bass and catfish, he’d spent
his days weeding and peeling worms from tobacco leaves twelve hours a day, beneath a balled-up southern summer sun that permanently
stained his back a golden brown. Like all children, he sometimes complained, but for the most part, he accepted the work.
He knew his father needed his help, and his father was a good man. He was patient and kind, but like his own father before
him, he seldom spoke unless he had reason. More often than not, their small house offered the quietude normally found in a
church. Other than perfunctory questions as to how school was going or what was happening in the fields, dinners were punctuated
only by the sounds of silverware tapping against the plates. After washing the dishes, his father would migrate to the living
room and peruse farm reports, while Paul immersed himself in books. They didn’t have a television, and the radio was seldom
turned on, except for finding out about the weather.

They were poor, and though he always had enough to eat and a warm room to sleep in, Paul was sometimes embarrassed by the
clothes he wore or the fact that he never had enough money to head to the drugstore to buy a Moon-Pie or a bottle of cola
like his friends. Now and then he heard snide comments about those things, but instead of fighting back, Paul devoted himself
to his studies, as if trying to prove it didn’t matter. Year after year, he brought home perfect grades, and though his father
was proud of his accomplishments, there was an air of melancholy about him whenever he looked over Paul’s report cards, as
though he knew that they meant his son would one day leave the farm and never come back.

The work habits honed in the fields extended to other areas of Paul’s life. Not only did he graduate valedictorian of his
class, he became an excellent athlete as well. When he was cut from the football team as a freshman, the coach recommended
that he try cross-country running. When he realized that effort, not genetics, usually separated the winners from losers in
races, he started rising at five in the morning so he could squeeze two workouts into a day. It worked; he attended Duke University
on a full athletic scholarship and was their top runner for four years, in addition to excelling in the classroom. In his
four years there, he relaxed his vigilance once and nearly died as a result, but he never let it happen again. He double majored
in chemistry and biology and graduated summa cum laude. That year he also became an all-American by finishing third at the
national cross-country meet.

After the race, he gave the medal to his father and said that he had done all this for him.

“No,” his father replied, “you ran for you. I just hope you’re running toward something, not away from something.”

That night, Paul stared at the ceiling as he lay in bed, trying to figure out what his father had meant. In his mind, he was
running toward something, toward everything. A better life. Financial stability. A way to help his father. Respect. Freedom
from worry. Happiness.

In February of his senior year, after learning he’d been accepted to medical school at Vanderbilt, he went to visit his father
and told him the good news. His father said that he was pleased for him. But later that night, long after his father should
have been asleep, Paul looked out the window and saw him, a lonely figure standing near the fence post, staring out over the
fields.

Three weeks later, his father died of a heart attack while tilling in preparation for the spring.

Paul was devastated by the loss, but instead of taking time to mourn, he avoided his memories by throwing himself even further
into work. He enrolled at Vanderbilt early, went to summer school and took three classes to get ahead in his studies, then
added extra classes in the fall to an already full schedule. After that, his life became a blur. He went to class, did his
labwork, and studied until the early morning hours. He ran five miles a day and always timed his runs, trying to improve with
each passing year. He avoided nightclubs and bars; he ignored the goings-on of the school athletic teams. He bought a television
on a whim, but he never unpacked it from the box and sold it a year later. Though shy around girls, he was introduced to Martha,
a sweet-tempered blonde from Georgia who was working at the medical school library, and when he never got around to asking
her out, she took it upon herself to do so. Though worried about the frantic pace he held himself to, she nonetheless accepted
his proposal, and they walked the aisle ten months later. With finals looming, there was no time for a honeymoon, but he promised
they’d head someplace nice when school was out. They never got around to it. Mark, their son, was born a year later, and in
the first two years of his son’s life, Paul never once changed a diaper or rocked the boy to sleep.

Rather, he studied at the kitchen table, staring at diagrams of human physiology or studying chemical equations, taking notes,
and acing one exam after the next. He graduated at the top of his class in three years and moved the family to Baltimore to
do his surgical residency at Johns Hopkins.

Surgery, he knew by then, was his calling. Many specialties require a great deal of human interaction and hand-holding; Paul
was not particularly good at either. But surgery was different; patients weren’t as interested in communication skills as
they were in ability, and Paul had not only the confidence to put them at ease before the operation, but the skill to do whatever
was required. He thrived in that environment. In the last two years of his residency, Paul worked ninety hours a week and
slept four hours a night but, oddly, showed no signs of fatigue.

After his residency, he completed a fellowship in cranial-facial surgery and moved the family to Raleigh, where he joined
a practice with another surgeon just as the population was beginning to boom. As the only specialists in that field in the
community, their practice grew. By thirty-four, he’d paid off his debts from medical school. By thirty-six, he was associated
with every major hospital in the area and did the bulk of his work at the University of North Carolina Medical Center. There,
he participated in a joint clinical study with physicians from the Mayo Clinic on neurofibromas. A year later, he had an article
published in the
New England Journal of Medicine
concerning cleft palates. Another article on hemangiomas followed four months later and helped to redefine surgical procedures
for infants in that field. His reputation grew, and after operating successfully on Senator Norton’s daughter, who’d been
disfigured in a car accident, he made the front page of
The Wall Street Journal.

In addition to reconstructive work, he was one of the first physicians in North Carolina to expand his practice to include
plastic surgery, and he caught the wave just as it started to swell. His practice boomed, his income multiplied, and he started
to accumulate things. He purchased a BMW, then a Mercedes, then a Porsche, then another Mercedes. He and Martha built the
home of their dreams. He bought stocks and bonds and shares in a dozen different mutual funds. When he realized he couldn’t
keep up with the intricacies of the market, he hired a money manager. After that, his money began doubling every four years.
Then, when he had more than he’d ever need for the rest of his life, it began to triple.

And still he worked. He scheduled surgeries not only during the week, but on Saturday as well. He spent Sunday afternoons
in the office. By the time he was forty-five, the pace he kept eventually burned out his partner, who left to work with another
group of doctors.

In the first few years after Mark was born, Martha often talked about having another child. In time, she stopped bringing
it up. Though she forced him to take vacations, he did so reluctantly, and in the end, she took to visiting her parents with
Mark and leaving Paul at home. Paul found time to go to some of the major events in his son’s life, those things that happened
once or twice a year, but he missed most everything else.

He convinced himself that he was working for the family. Or for Martha, who’d struggled with him in the early years. Or for
the memory of his father. Or for Mark’s future. But deep down, he knew he was doing it for himself.

If he could list his major regret about those years now, it would be about his son; yet despite Paul’s absence from his life,
Mark surprised him by deciding to become a doctor. After Mark had been accepted to medical school, Paul spread the word around
the hospital corridors, pleased by the thought that his son would join him in the profession. Now, he thought, they would
have more time together, and he remembered taking Mark to lunch in the hopes of convincing him to become a surgeon. Mark simply
shook his head.

“That’s your life,” Mark told him, “and it’s not a life that interests me at all. To be honest, I feel sorry for you.”

The words stung. They had an argument. Mark made bitter accusations, Paul grew furious, and Mark ended up storming out of
the restaurant. Paul refused to talk to him for the next couple of weeks, and Mark made no attempt to make amends. Weeks turned
into months, then into years. Though Mark continued the warm relationship he had with his mother, he avoided coming home when
he knew his father was around.

Paul handled the estrangement with his son in the only way he knew. His workload stayed the same, he ran his usual five miles
a day; in the mornings, he studied the financial pages in the newspaper. But he could see the sadness in Martha’s eyes, and
there were moments, usually late at night, when he wondered how to repair the rift with his son. Part of him wanted to pick
up the phone and call, but he never found the will to do so. Mark, he knew from Martha, was doing fine without him. Instead
of becoming a surgeon, Mark became a family practitioner, and after taking several months to develop the skills he needed,
he left the country to volunteer his services to an international relief organization. Though it was noble, Paul couldn’t
help but think he’d done it to be as far away from his father as possible.

Two weeks after Mark had gone, Martha filed for divorce.

If Mark’s words had once made him angry, Martha’s words left him stunned. He started to try to talk her out of it, but Martha
gently cut him off.

“Will you really miss me?” she said. “We hardly know each other anymore.”

“I can change,” he said.

Martha smiled. “I know you can. And you should. But you should do it because you want to, not because you think I want you
to.”

Paul spent the next couple of weeks in a daze, and a month after that, after he had completed a routine operation, sixty-two-year-old
Jill Torrelson of Rodanthe, North Carolina, died in the recovery room.

It was that terrible event, following on the heels of the others, he knew, that had led him to this road now.

After finishing his coffee, Paul got back in the car and made his way to the highway again. In forty-five minutes, he’d reached
Morehead City. He crossed over the bridge to Beaufort, followed the turns, then headed down east, toward Cedar Point.

There was a peaceful beauty to the coastal lowlands, and he slowed the car, taking it all in. Life, he knew, was different
here. As he drove, he marveled at the people driving in the opposite direction who waved at him, and the group of older men,
sitting on a bench outside a gas station, who seemed to have nothing better to do than watch the cars pass by.

In midafternoon, he caught the ferry to Ocracoke, a village at the southern end of the Outer Banks. There were only four other
cars on the ferry, and on the two-hour ride, he visited with a few of the other passengers. He spent the night at a motel
in Ocracoke, woke when the white ball of light rose over the water, had an early breakfast, and then spent the next few hours
walking through the rustic village, watching people ready their homes for the storm brewing off the coast.

When he was finally ready, he tossed the duffel bag into his car and began the trip northward, to the place he had to go.

The Outer Banks, he thought, were both strange and mystical. With saw grass speckling the rolling dunes and maritime oaks
bent sideways with the never-ending sea breeze, it was a place like no other. The islands had once been connected to the mainland,
but after the last ice age, the sea had flooded the area to the immediate west, forming the Pamlico Sound. Until the 1950s,
there wasn’t a highway on this series of islands, and people had to drive along the beach to reach the homes beyond the dunes.
Even now it was part of the culture, and as he drove, he could see tire tracks near the water’s edge.