Page 6 of The Doctor's Promise
“Leo… please. I need at least one of you to be on my side.” Noemi’s voice cracked, and Leo’s face softened.
“Oh, sweetie…”
They decided notto tell their parents until everything was settled, but to their surprise, Marian and Frank were stoic. “We knew something was coming,” Marian told her daughters, “so this isn’t unexpected. Do what you need to do, Noe. Just please stay safe.”
“I will.”
The daybefore she flew to Syria, Noemi asked her family to give her some time alone. She took a cab out to the cemetery where Thomasina Ballentine was buried and laid flowers on the other woman’s grave. “I’m so sorry, Tomi. You deserved better.”
She stayed there for a time before turning to go. She looked up and froze. Rafael Genova was standing a little way behind her, watching her with an unreadable expression on his face. Noemi didn’t know what to say to him. The pain in his eyes was unbearable to see.
“Rafa… Mr. Genova… words can’t express how sorry I am…”
Rafa turned and walked away from her, stumbling a little. Noemi felt tears drop down her cheeks. “Oh, Rafa,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry…”
The next morning,she got on a plane and flew to the Middle East, not knowing whether she would ever come back.
4
Chapter Four
Two years later…
Noemi shruggedinto her white coat and shut her locker. There was no good reason why she should be so nervous—after all, this was her home, her hospital. But on this, her first day back at the Seattle workplace she’d known so well, she felt like a stranger.
“Hey, kiddo! Come walk with me, would you?” Lazlo smiled at her as he appeared at the door of the changing room.
Noemi smiled and nodded, joining her old friend and mentor as they walked through the hospital. Lazlo smiled at her.
“Now… there’s something I didn’t tell you when you first came back, and I’ve struggled with how to share it with you.”
“Lazlo, I told you—I don’t care that Finn is my superior now. I haven’t been doing much cardio surgery and I’m behind. We both knew that if I went to Syria, my training would suffer, and I’d have to catch up—and I have new skills now that we might find useful.”
“It’s not that.” Lazlo stopped and fixed her with a steady gaze. “Rafael Genova is now on the Board of the hospital.”
That she wasn’t expecting. “I thought he moved away.”
“He did, but he came back. He told me he couldn’t be away from Thomasina, and that Bepi wanted to visit his momma’s resting place. Rafa told me if he couldn’t escape the pain, he wanted to at least face it head on and to do something positive. I thought you should know, Noemi.”
She nodded, her emotions in turmoil. Noemi had counted on the fact that she wouldn’t run into Rafa again, that he was safely in San Francisco, or she might not have agreed to come back to Seattle. Don’t be a coward. “It’s fine, Lazlo. It’s not like I run in the same circles as the Board.”
Lazlo nodded but Noemi sensed he wasn’t done. “And then there’s the clinic.”
“The clinic?”
“The Thomasina Ballentine Clinic for Cardiology.”
It was a shock to her entire being. “What?”
“And Rafa wants you to run it.”
Noemi couldn’t breathe. “What?” Lazlo must have been aware of this way before she returned home—was she being punished? “Lazlo… I…I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Now, obviously, until you’re an attending, you’ll be supervised, but yes, I and the Board agreed—you are the person to lead this.”
From his voice, Noemi could tell that her friend was nervous about pulling rank on her like this. “Are you trying to punish me?”
“Far from it, Noe. You’ve had two years, and the moment you came back from Syria, I could tell you still hadn’t forgiven yourself for Thomasina. You still haven’t processed it.”
