Page 81 of Summer with the Single Dad

“Go on, dear. It’s therapeutic to let it out.”

“Yes. I was the fiancée. They used their names while talking. I recognized the non-pregnant one, but not the pregnant one—apparently she was a scrub nurse, usually in the pediatric wing, but was picking up extra shifts in the cardio wing, which was why I didn’t recognize her name. But they used my fiancé’s name. There aren’t too many people with his name in the hospital either. It’s not that common.”

Keturah merely nodded. They’d reached her house now, a cute little shake sided bungalow covered in wisteria and flanked by wildflowers on all four sides.

“So, I waited until they left before I came out of the stall. I was …”

“Devastated.”

“Yeah. But I had surgery. So I needed to leave those feelings on the other side of the OR and do my job. I needed to save Mr. O’Malley like I promised him I would.”

“But something happened in the OR”

“She was my scrub nurse. I’d never had her before—because she was picking up shifts in the cardio wing—when my resident asked her for the bovie, using her name, this icy feeling filled me from the nape of my neck all the way down to my toes. It was like someone poured glacier water down the back of my shirt.”

“So now, your feelings weren’t on the other side of the OR. They were in your OR, because she was in your OR.”

Justine nodded. “And I couldn’t ask her to leave. That’s not professional. I’d be reprimanded for creating a hostile work environment. For putting my own personal needs ahead of my patient’s.”

Keturah nodded, causing the loose skin around her neck to wobble.

“My hand shook—and it never shakes. My nerves claimed me and … I froze. A man was open on my OR with his heart exposed and I froze. For the first time in my career, I didn’t know what to do. People looked at me like I was having a stroke. Several of them said, ‘Doctor, what do we do now?’ But I couldn’t answer. Then that stupid little pregnant nurse said, ‘Oh shit. You know.’ My eyes went to hers and rather than fear staring back at me. Rather than shame or embarrassment, I saw triumph. Like she was glad I finally knew. But she was too stupid to figure out that I only learned of her homewrecking status a moment ago. That I didn’t know sooner. I tried to rally. I tried to focus on the patient, but when she passed me a scalpel and handed it to me with the blade down and into my palm, cutting the glove and causing me to bleed, I lost it.”

Shame swept through Justine with the force of a thousand winter storms until her ribs became too tight around her lungs and she struggled for breath. She unclipped her seatbelt, opened the driver’s side door, leaned out, and vomited.

A warm, reassuring hand rubbed her back as she expelled the pizza from earlier. And it’d been such good pizza. A slice really was the size of your face.

“It’s okay,” came Keturah’s gravelly voice. “It’s okay.”

Justine reached into the side pocket of her door for a tissue and wiped her mouth. “After I re-scrubbed …” She sat up and faced Keturah again. “After I re-scrubbed and re-gloved, I thought she would have left the OR out of human decency. But she was still there. Still wearing that smug smile—or at least her eyes were smug. You can’t see a person’s mouth because of the—”

“I get what you’re saying.”

God, now Justine was rambling. She never rambled.

It did feel good to get it all out though.

“It felt like one mistake after the other after that. We couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. The tumor around his heart was connected by too many blood vessels. I thought I could—” She swallowed. “I thought I could excise the tumor and—”

“It’s okay.” Keturah rubbed her back, offering her an encouraging smile.

“I don’t even remember doing it, but I must have nicked the aorta, and he bled out on the table.”

Keturah’s mouth dipped into a frown so deep it seemed to pull the skin on her entire face downward. “That wasn’t because you brought your emotions into the OR. It was because he was gone before you opened him up. Admit it. It was a long shot saving him, wasn’t it?”

Justine shook her head and bit her lip as the tears fell with abandon. Oh, her mother would be so disappointed in her right now for getting emotional over a patient. Brazeaus didn’t do that. “I could have saved him. Or at least given him more time with his family.”

Pulling in a deep breath through her long nose, Keturah squeezed Justine’s shoulder. “As long as you keep telling yourself that, you’ll never move on. Until you forgive yourself, until you let that patient go, life will continue to feel like this. Your heart will continue to feel like this. You won’t be able to open it up to anyone or anything. Not properly anyway.”

Exhaling through thinly parted lips, Justine nodded. “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

“I bet I’m the oldest though. I bet I’m the only one who has seen more people die, unable to forgive themselves than you. And most of the people I met as a coroner were already dead.”

That made them both laugh.

“Are your parents in your life dear?”

Fresh guilt swirled in Justine’s belly enough to make her possibly vomit again. She swallowed down a bunch of saliva and told herself to be tough. “Yeah. They’re doctors, too.”

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