Keeper of the Light

She took the paper, raising it into the stream of light from the kitchen, and read the headline: K.D.H. EMERGENCY ROOM ACCUSED OF COVER-UP IN O’NEILL DEATH.

She frowned at him. “A cover-up?” she said. “I don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, Alec.”

He pulled the paper from her hands. “It seems as though you left out a few details when you told me what happened the night Annie was brought to the ER.” He spoke with a controlled sort of calm, yet she could hear anger behind the words.

She pulled her robe more snugly around her, remembering the messages from the reporter on her answering machine the night before. She was afraid she did know what lay below that headline. There certainly had been no “cover-up” of Annie’s treatment in the ER, but everyone involved had known better than to discuss the case publicly. There were people—including some of the ER staff—who thought her attempt to save Annie had been preposterous. Reckless. Alec knew enough about medicine that, with the facts presented to him by someone other than herself, he might draw a similar conclusion.

Right now, he had the same accusatory look in his eyes that he wore in that photograph in Annie’s studio, and she wished there was a way to change that, to bring back his smile. She was about to lose something that had become precious to her. Alec’s friendship. His trust.

“Shall I read it to you?” he asked, and he began reading without waiting for her reply. “Olivia Simon, one of the Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room physicians vying for the position of medical director, was involved in a cover-up in the death of one of the Outer Banks’ most beloved citizens, Annie Chase O’Neill. So states Dr. Jonathan Cramer, another emergency room physician who is also in the running for the director’s position. ‘Dr. Simon has made serious mistakes in judgment,’ Cramer said yesterday. ‘She often acts as though she owns the emergency room.’ He cited in particular the O’Neill case. Ms. O’Neill was shot last Christmas while working as a volunteer at the Manteo Battered Women’s Shelter. Cramer stated that, ‘in that type of case, usual procedure is to stabilize the patient and send them by helicopter up to Emerson Memorial, where they have the facilities to deal with severe trauma. We can’t handle that sort of thing here. I argued that we should prepare the patient for transport, but Dr. Simon insisted we treat her in the ER. Annie O’Neill didn’t stand a chance.’”

“Oh, Alec, that’s crazy,” Olivia said, but Alec continued reading, and Olivia knew this one article was enough to kill any chance she’d had at the directorship position.

“Dr. Simon worked in the emergency room of Washington General in the District of Columbia for ten years prior to coming here. ‘She’s used to the heavy stuff in D.C.,’ Cramer said. ‘She doesn’t understand the limitations of a small facility like this.’

“Michael Shelley, current director of the free-standing emergency room, denied any cover-up and said the entire case was being blown out of proportion. Dr. Simon could not be reached for comment.

“Because,” Alec said with a biting touch of sarcasm, “as we all know, Dr. Simon had unplugged her phone.” He dropped the paper on the coffee table and stared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me there was some question about how to treat her?” he asked. “Why did you hide the facts from me?”

Olivia sank wearily into the nearest chair and looked up at him. He stood in the center of the room, directly in the light spilling from the kitchen, like an actor caught in the spotlight.

“Alec,” she shook her head. “There was no cover-up. I didn’t tell you there was a question about treating her because in my mind there was no question. Jonathan Cramer dislikes me and he’s afraid I might be selected over him for the director spot. He’s looking for a way to hurt me.”

“Right this minute I don’t give a damn what he’s doing to you,” he said. “I want to know what happened to my wife.”

“I’ve explained everything that hap…”

“You made it sound like you only had one option.”

“I felt like I did.”

He paced, out of the spotlight, into it again. “It’s always struck me as insane—the idea of one lone physician performing open heart surgery, whether you had the necessary instruments or not. I tried to put that thought out of my mind, but this article just…” He shook his head and turned to look at her again. “Why didn’t you send her up to Emerson?”

This way her blood’s on your hands.

“I didn’t think she could possibly make it, and…”

Alec gestured toward the newspaper on the coffee table. “This guy obviously thought her chances were better if she went up, and he’d been working there longer than you. Didn’t you stop to consider that he might have known what he was talking about?”

“I really thought that surgery…”

“You don’t do that kind of surgery in that kind of setting, Olivia. You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure that out. You’d intubate her, put a couple of IV lines in her, and get her out of there as fast as you could.” He stood directly above her now, and his voice had risen, hurting her ears. “If you’d sent her to Emerson, maybe she would have had a chance. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

Tears spilled over Olivia’s cheeks. She looked up at Alec. “Jonathan was scared,” she said. “He’d never seen that kind of wound before, and he had no idea what to do with it. Think about it, Alec. Please. She had two holes in her heart. Jonathan neglected to mention that to the press. How do you stabilize a person with two holes in her heart? I had no choice but to operate. She would have died in that helicopter. I have absolutely no doubt about it. She was losing blood so quickly.”

Olivia paused. Above her, Alec was breathing hard, his eyes still narrowed, angry, but he was listening to her, hearing her out.

“Jonathan walked out on me when I said we should operate. He left me alone to take care of her. I realized that I was taking a risk when I elected to do surgery, especially by myself. Maybe it was crazy of me to try. I knew I was walking a fine line, legally and medically. But not ethically.” She brushed the back of her hand across her wet cheek. “Sending her up, making her someone else’s responsibility, would have been the easy way out, but she would have died. I did what I thought was right, and if we could have somehow closed that hole in the back of her heart she might very well have made it.” Her hand