The Baby Who Stole the Doctor's Heart (15 page)

“She's right here in my lap,” Dinah said.

“Can I talk to her?” Angela waited for a moment then said, “Mama loves you, Sarah.” Feeling so much better knowing that Sarah was on the other end of the phone, and feeling sad that Mark didn't have that kind of an anchor in his life, she made an exaggerated kissing sound. “That's for your left cheek, and this one's for your right…”

On his way back through the hall, Mark heard the kissing sounds. Listened to Angela talk to her daughter. It was an amazing thing to behold. More than that, Angela was amazing. A woman who deserved…everything. For a moment he felt guilty about accusing her of hiding behind her ambitions. She wasn't hiding behind them. She was embracing them, living life to the fullest, taking everything she could take from it. While he was contented to…to what?

Actually, he wasn't sure, because nothing contented him anymore. Nothing, except being with Angela. Another thing on his growing list of things he loved about her—the way he felt when he was with her. “I think we need to move on. Gear up to go outside.”

“I don't do that…the mountain rescue,” she said. “I'm not part of the team, and I don't want to get in the way. For the first time, Mark, I really
do
understand.”

“But I want you with me.” He smiled, held out his hand to her.

“Are you sure?”

Mark pulled Angela roughly to his chest. “I didn't intend on meeting you in White Elk. Or anywhere else, for that
matter. And it bothers the hell out of me that I did. But, yes, I do want you. So, ten minutes. We may be out there for a while, so dress appropriately.”

He wanted her
. The question was, how?

 

“No luck inside,” Eric shouted from the other end of the corridor. “I'm going to leave several of my people searching inside the lodge in case she came back, but the rest of us are headed out. And Neil's here with his group. They're starting at the bottom of the foothills and working their way up. We're going to the top and start working our way down.”

“I'll start on the middle ground, see if I can track anything,” Mark said. “Angela's with me.” In front of everyone he gave her a tender kiss on the lips, wishing it was the time and place for more, then dashed off to huddle with Neil and Eric for another moment, as the three of them took one final look at the grid they'd laid out for the search.

“He doesn't scowl anymore,” Emoline said. “I wondered why. Guess I have my answer now.”

Emoline had her answer. So did Angela. But her answer came with so many other questions…questions she didn't have time to think about right now.

 

“Time to take a break,” Mark said, dropping down into a bed of pine needles. They'd been searching for three hours, nonstop. The area was relatively small, because Mark, Eric and Neil all agreed that Aimee wouldn't have wandered very far. She was too young, would have been too frightened and too cold. So the search assignments were specific and the areas fairly limited. But with so many places to hide…behind rocks, under bushes…the search was exhaustive, and everyone was literally turning over everything they encountered on their various paths. It was slow. Frustrating. Somber.

“Do you suppose Karen is lying about this?” Angela
asked, dropping down next to him. “I know we considered that earlier, and maybe…”

That thought had crossed his mind. More than once. “The thing with a search is that sometimes you don't know. The best-case scenario would be that Aimee is safe and sound somewhere her mother has hidden her. But you can't count on that. I mean, what if she really is lost? Or what if Karen has hidden her somewhere that could be harmful? In a situation like this, there are always so many things to consider, and the only thing a rescuer can do is assume there's a reason to search, and hope that, ultimately, there isn't.”

“Thank you for letting me come with you. I feel like I might be slowing you up, though. And if I am…”

“It's a basic search. Right now we're just walking and looking for signs. Anybody with a good eye can do it. And you're not slowing me up.”

“But what you're going to teach…”

“Advanced field technique. Field medicine. Survival. It goes well beyond the looking stage. It's what I…” He stopped, swallowed hard. “I grew up searching. In some ways, it's all I've ever done.”

“For whom, Mark?”

“Remember how I didn't want you to quit on Scotty?”

Angela nodded. “You were right about that. And he's doing so much better right now.”

“Well, I wasn't right for the reason you think. When I was Scotty's age, my father quit on me. Simply got up one day and left. Never came back. And the thing about it was he blamed me. It wasn't a case of the child taking on the blame for his parents' separation. My old man came right out and told me it was my fault he was leaving, that he'd had enough of me, that I'd taken up too much of his time. So I'm this seven-year-old kid who has absolute knowledge that it was my fault…like Scotty would have if we'd have him leave camp.
And I know you weren't going to quit on him, Angela, but that's how he would have seen it.”

She shut her eyes. Shook her head. “I know. And I'm glad you argued me out of it. I wasn't…wasn't thinking.”

“Don't be hard on yourself, because you were thinking…about everybody involved. It's just that I was that seven-year-old little boy who got rejected, and I know what can happen. My dad, in so many words, told me I was the worst kid in the world and I believed him, spent years trying to prove him right. I became a problem child. Not bad, but hard to handle. My mother's idea of parenting was not getting involved, so after he left I started turning myself into the child he told me I was. His rejection of me gave me free rein to be the child he rejected. But the thing was, I spent my whole childhood looking for him. When I was young, I wanted to beg him to come back, wanted to promise him I'd be a good boy. Then later on, as I got more and more angry, I wanted to confront him show him just how bad I was. I was planning it in my mind. Always searching…crowds, stores, on the street. That's all I did.”

“That had to be awful,” Angela said. “Did you ever find him, or did he ever come back?”

“No. By the time I was eleven or twelve, I'd given up on that and was concentrating on being that bad child he'd predicted, fully inundated in the things bad children do.”

“Not bad child,” she said. “Hurt child. Heartbroken child.”

“Except at that age you don't understand the emotions. It was just boiling out of me in anger.

“I was shoplifting, committing vandalism, bullying…nothing serious, but things that put me well on the way to bigger crimes. And I knew I was justified because I was bad enough to break up my parents' marriage, which made stealing the occasional candy bar seem petty by comparison.
Then one day there were three of us in the corner mini-mart. One of the guys was stealing cigarettes, one was after beer. I was going for the usual candy. We were fourteen, by the way. The only thing I can say in my defense was that I didn't smoke or drink. Anyway, we were busy helping ourselves, and we got caught. It was my first time, my buddies were pros. Had been arrested a few times already. No big deal to them, but it was to me when I was taken, in handcuffs, into the courtroom to be arraigned after a night in jail, huddled in the corner with my back to the wall.

“At that point, the bad kid wasn't quite as cocky as he thought he was, and he…I was scared to death. But on my way to the courtroom, I encountered a man. To me, he just seemed strange, standing there staring at me, while I was waiting my turn to go into the court. He asked me if my parents were there to stand with me. I smarted off some stupid answer to him, and he simply smiled at me. Then he asked me if this was my first time. Naturally, I was ready to square off with him…my big, bad attitude on the defense. I told him it was my first time
getting caught
. Then he asked me the oddest question…
Will you get caught next time?

“Next time? Did I want a next time? I'd spent the longest, roughest night of my life in the corner of that jail, and hated it. Well, I'm not sure what he saw in me, what he read in my face…he never told me. But he asked me if I wanted another chance. I didn't hesitate to say yes. And that's the day my real life started. Tom Evigan went to the judge and arranged to mentor me, while my buddies went off to lockup for six months. It seemed Tom volunteered medical services to the juvenile detention facility, which was my big break because he was the one who kept me out of jail. I can't even imagine what would have happened to me if he hadn't found me… Anyway, Tom required me to do one year cleaning his office floors, swabbing the messes, emptying trash cans. And one
day a week he took me to the hospital where I…” Mark paused. Smiled, remembering. “Let's just say that my duty there was a real eye-opener for a cocky teenager. If there was a bedpan that needed to be collected, or a vomit basin rinsed out, I got the call. A whole year of that. A whole year of seeing other things going on that were…worthwhile. Tom was also the one who persuaded me to turn my searching into something useful. He was the base-camp medic for an outfit that did rescue in the California wilds, and he started letting me tag along… Saved my life literally by taking the time to help me.”

Angela didn't say anything for a moment, but tears were welling in her eyes when she thought of Mark as a child who'd always looked for his father, a child who'd shouldered so much brutal blame. “I'm so sorry for all the things you went through, Mark. There's no excuse for any parent to do that to a child and I don't even know what to say except I'm glad Tom found you.” She worried about Sarah, though. Would she always search for
her
father?

As if reading her thoughts, Mark reached out and squeezed her hand. “My mother was weak. Emotionally absent. But Sarah has you and you'll never let anything like what happened to me happen to her. It takes the kind of love you have for your daughter, and it doesn't matter if it's from one parent, two or an entire army. It's only about the love.”

“Parenting scares me, though.” Angela leaned her head against his shoulder. Liked the feel of his strength. Liked the feel of the arm that closed in around her and pulled her closer. “I keep wondering what will happen if she grows up and makes the same bad choices I did.”

“We all make bad choices, but we make good ones, too. Somewhere along the way we just have to realize that the good ones outweigh the bad ones. And the good choices
are never so far away when we have someone who loves us waiting, with open arms, for us to come back.”

“Did you ever get over it? Over your father rejecting you?”

“Yes and no. Remember when you accused me of having those unrealistic expectations of myself? You were right. I've always put myself up there higher than anybody else, probably trying to prove to my father that I wasn't that bad kid he'd walked out on. Tom Evigan turned me around in so many ways, but he couldn't remove that hurt little boy from me. Not completely. But I don't think your ex-husband would hurt Sarah that way. You said he's not mean.”

“He's not. He just doesn't want her.”

“Which is something you'll have to deal with when she's old enough. Because it will have its impact, and I'm not going to lie to you about it. At some point Sarah will be hurt, but you'll be prepared to deal with it, to help her through it. And she'll know your love, Angela. That's what's important. She'll know your love.”

“You knew Tom Evigan's love, and look what you've done with your life because of it. You shouldn't have had to prove yourself to anyone, not even your father.” She laid her hand on his chest, over his heart. “Everything you do comes from here. And leaving medicine to shake yourself of your dad's shadow won't shake anything.”

“My dad's shadow?”

“He said you were a bad boy, and after your father-in-law died and you blamed yourself, didn't that just prove it again?”

“When I leave medicine, I won't have to deal with that shadow anymore, will I?”

“But don't you love being a doctor? At the beginning of the day, and even at the end of the day, isn't that what your life is about? The thing that matters most to you?”

“What matters most is…” He shrugged. “Hell, I don't even know where I'm going, so until I do, I don't have a right to anything that matters most.”

“When Brad left me, I was a mess. I wanted him back. Took him back a couple of times, only to find out that the more I was away from him, the more I didn't need him. The adversity is what made me stronger. What gave me direction. Maybe more direction than I need because I do tend to hide behind it, as I'm only beginning to realize. Nevertheless, I did have direction. Knowing what I
don't
want to be is what's turning me into what I
do
want to be. And that's what you need for yourself, Mark. Not so much a clear understanding of where you're going as a clear understanding of where you're
not
going.”

“Like I said before, I didn't expect to meet you here, Angela. Didn't expect to find anything good.”

She snuggled in a little closer. “The way you say it sounds like you almost think that meeting me was a bad thing.”

“Not a bad thing. Maybe more of a challenge than I'd wanted at this point in my life. But
definitely
not bad.” He held on tightly for a moment, then finally pushed himself up, extended a hand to Angela and pulled her along with him. “Ten minutes are up, and now it's time to get going again. And for what it's worth, I appreciate what you said. I'm not where I need to be yet, to take it to heart. But I want to, Angela. I want to because I respect you. Respect everything about you, even though I haven't been good about showing that.”