Page 2 of Look on the Bright Side

“What happened?” Addison asked before she said a word. This was typical for them, not always needing words to communicate.

“I got kicked out of Oncology and was transferred to the Emergency Department,” she said.

“Ouch. Demoted.”

Lark winced at the word, which was all too accurate. “Yeah.” Not that emergency medicine was for stupid people, of course. But being an oncologist took years more training. You spent more time with patients, got to know them, helped them through the worst time of their lives, and hopefully cured them. Plus, the whole life’s-calling part. Her plan had been to work here on the Cape as an oncologist, admitting patients to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston as needed, just ninety minutes away. She’d imagined being absolutely adored by her patients for her intelligence, her compassion and commitment. Her, um, grace under pressure.

Her eyes filled again.

“You were crying too much, weren’t you?” Addie asked.

“Mm-hmm.” Weeping had always kind of been her thing. Addie had gotten the tough genes when their egg had split thirty-three years ago. She’d had Imogen after twenty-seven hours of back labor and not a single drop of painkiller. Lark knew this, since she’d been on one side of the bed, Addie’s wife, Nicole, on the other. It had been one of the best days of her life. Lots of tears then, too, but all so happy.

But if Addie had gotten the tough genes, Lark got the smart genes. Like their older sister, Harlow, Lark had been valedictorian at Nauset Regional High School. She’d gone to Boston University, then Tufts for med school, graduating in the top 2 percent of her class.

“Well,” Addison said, “this doesn’t mean anything.” Lark heard her sister clicking on a keyboard. “You can go back to Oncology. I just checked.”

“My chances just threw themselves off a cliff, though.”

“Try not to overthink it, Larkby,” she said, one of the few who used her full name. “The ER will toughen you up. You’ll see all sorts of amputations and crushed limbs and gunshot wounds, right?”

“More like drug overdoses and tick bites.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re amazing. You’re already an MD. This will all work out in the end.”

“Thanks, Addie.” Lark smiled a little. Addie’s confidence in her was always a boost.

“Gotta go. Esme’s bus is due any second.” Esme was her older daughter, the bio-baby of her wife. Same sperm donor, so the girls were half sisters.

“Send me a picture of the girls, okay? Love you.” She ended the call, waited five seconds and smiled as the picture came through. Addie always had fresh photos of the girls, being one of those moms who posted on Instagram and TikTok at least three times a day. It was the only reason Lark still had social media accounts—to see her nieces. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d posted herself. At least seven years ago, she knew that.

The photo from Addie was of three-year-old Imogen, dressed all in beige, her blond hair shining. She had the same green eyes as Lark and Addie, the same long blond lashes. Lark’s heart gave a happy, hard squeeze. She could spend at least some of her enforced time off with her nieces, and that was never a bad thing.

Her phone buzzed again—the hospital, asking her to call in. She probably needed to do some paperwork, because what was medicine without paperwork? Obediently, she called the number.

“Hi, Vanessa, it’s Lark Smith,” she said to the receptionist, recognizing her voice. Saying Dr.Smith still felt weird. She’d been an official doctor for only two years.

“Hey, hon. You have an urgent message from Dr.Santini,” Vanessa said. “He needs you to return his call as soon as possible.”

“Dr.Santini? The surgeon Santini?” she asked, faintly alarmed. “Maybe you have the wrong number, Vanessa?”

“I’m just the messenger, honey. He was clear.”

“Huh. Okay. He didn’t say what it was about?”

“He just growled your name and said you needed to call him.”

“And it was definitely Lark Smith? Not Odell Smith?” Please, God, let it be Odell.

“It was you, kid. Sorry.” Vanessa recited the number, which Lark typed into her phone.

“Thanks, Vanessa. Tell your handsome hubby I said hello.”

“I will, honey, I will.” Lark could hear the smile in Vanessa’s voice.

Dr.Santini. It was probably a mistake. The man was loathed, feared and admired, the last for his abilities in the OR. Outside of that, he was referred to as Dr.Satan. She couldn’t imagine why he’d need a lowly (now somewhat disgraced) resident. She’d only met him during the painful weeks of her surgical rotation, during which she tried to blend in with the walls. Lark didn’t even know his first name. Though he was probably only around forty, he was definitely old school, the kind of doctor who used terror, intimidation and ridicule to educate. As she well knew.

Happily, he worked only occasionally at Hyannis Hospital, swooping in from the great institutions of Mass General Brigham, Dana-Farber, Beth Israel. On top of being truly gifted, he had also invented a device that kept organs oxygenated during transport, making it much more likely for them to be successfully transplanted. According to rumor, it had made him fabulously wealthy. Lark had seen him getting out of a Maserati one day in the parking lot but had ducked down behind an SUV so as not to attract attention. No one wanted attention from Dr.Santini except his patients.

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