Page 17 of Every Rose

“He was here earlier. Think he’s gone off shift.”

She grabbed Vin’s arm and lowered her voice. “Dr. Ogilvie is not operating on my father. Do not think about calling him. Give me ten minutes.”

She hauled out her cell and rang Matt. Straight to voice mail which meant his phone was probably off.

She ran out and checked his schedule. He’d gone off shift ten minutes ago.

She sprinted, faster than she’d ever run in her life, to the call room. She was positive he wouldn’t leave without showering off the grunge of the day. As little as she knew him, she knew this was his routine.

“Matt!” she yelled when she got there.

She heard singing above the sounds of a shower running. The singing was not in English. “Matt!” she yelled again.

The water turned off. “What?”

Oh, thank God. “I need you.”

“Rose?”

“Yes. Hurry!” Fear and anxiety churned within her.

He didn’t answer. But in less than twenty seconds stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and water still running down his skin where he hadn’t taken the time to dry himself.

“What is it?”

“It’s my dad. He needs emergency surgery.” She gulped air and forced herself to calm down. “He needs a pacemaker. Please, can you do it?”

He blinked water out of his eyes. “I’ve just finished twelve hours. I’m not sure I–”

“Please, Matt. The cardio-thoracic surgeon on duty is Ogilvie. I can’t let him cut my dad. I need you.”

Their gazes connected. Wordlessly, he nodded. “Get me clean scrubs.”

He stepped back into the cubicle and while he dried off, she grabbed a clean set of scrubs from the supply cupboard and passed them to him.

When she sprinted back to Emergency, Matt was at her side.

Rose did not like feeling helpless, but she was helpless. After racing back to emergency, filling Matt in along the way with her father’s condition, she was able to introduce Jack Chance to his surgeon. Matt pushed the wheeled bed himself and she walked beside him right up to the doors to the surgical unit. Here Matt stopped. “This is as far as you go, Doc,” he told her.

She nodded and moved closer to her dad. She leaned in and grabbed his shoulder, held on. “I’ll be right here when you wake up,” she told him.

He answered with a weak smile. “Don’t worry your mother. She’ll only fuss.”

She turned to the man who’d gone back to work after twelve hours because she’d asked him to. “Thanks, Matt. I know he’s in good hands.”

Matt nodded briefly and pushed the bed containing her father through the doors and into surgery.

Rose never generally thought about the essential ghastliness of hospitals. She’d worked around and in them so long that she’d become immune to the smell of sickness and disinfectants. The people who came into hospitals, with their life-threatening illnesses and terrible accidents, had families who loved them. She was reminded that a hospital was a scary place where not everybody made it out alive.

Jack had refused to call Daphne on the grounds that he didn’t want to worry her, and he’d ordered Rose not to call her either. But he didn’t tell Rose that she couldn’t call one of her siblings, so she got on the phone to Marguerite who lived right on the property with Daphne. Marguerite promised to bring their mother to the hospital right away. “How serious is this?” she had wanted to know.

“Honestly, I don’t know. The pacemaker surgery is pretty routine. What’s worrying me is what’s going on with his heart that makes him need one.”

Marguerite and Daphne were more than an hour’s drive away. Rose began to pace. She knew pacing up and down was a waste of energy, but she couldn’t sit still, she couldn’t focus, all she could do was believe. She believed in Jack’s core strength and stubbornness. She believed in Matt’s surgical abilities.

The minutes creaked by as slow and rusty as old machinery. She walked to the window and stood looking out. It was dark. Her view was of the parking lot. Streetlamps illuminated puddles and she could see dimples on their surfaces where it was still raining. Every once in a while, a car or truck would drive into the lot, or drive out again. She wondered idly who these people were, who they were visiting.

She gave up after a while and went back to pacing.

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