Keeper of the Light

you did your best. I’m sorry I ever accused you of anything less.”

She cradled the receiver between her palms. “It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I’ve been doing some thinking up here,” he said. “D.C.’s loaded with memories of you—of us together. I stopped in Donovan’s Books tonight.”

“Oh.” The sights and sounds and warm-coffee smell of Donovan’s filled her head.

“I wish we’d never left here. Things were good for us here.”

“But we agreed we didn’t want to raise a family there, whether we had our own children or adopted or…”

“I know, I know.” He paused. She heard him let out his breath. “Can I see you when I get back?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, a date? We’ll go out someplace, get to know each other again.”

“I’d like that.” She matched the tenderness in his voice with her own.

“I should be there around five.”

“I work until seven.” She cringed, waiting for him to chastise her for allowing her work to interfere with her marriage again.

“Seven is fine,” he said, then he hesitated for a moment. “Liv? Why aren’t you fighting this thing with Cramer? It’s so unlike you to just sit back and take it.”

She ran her hand over her bedspread. He was right. She usually took her adversaries head-on, battling them just as she had battled every other obstacle in her life.

“My only recourse would be to ask for a medical review panel,” she said, “but I’m not sure I have the strength right now to go through that process.”

“Do it, Liv. I’ll be behind you all the way. I promise.”

She thanked him, surprised and somewhat guarded, unable to completely trust his words, his warmth. Yet by the time she’d hung up the phone, she’d made a decision, and despite the hour, she called Mike Shelley.

Mike listened quietly as she told him her plan. She could guess what he was thinking. A review panel would not only put her on the line, but the emergency room itself.

“Please hold off a day or two on taking any action, Olivia,” Mike said finally. “Let me think about it a bit.”

She got off the phone, feeling better, feeling less helpless than she had a half hour earlier. She stood in front of the full-length mirror on her closet door. Her hair was white with lather. She let the towel drop to the carpet and turned to look at her profile. There was no denying the slight protrusion of her belly. If Paul touched her, he would know. It had been enough to make Alec pull away from her.

Instead of putting on her nightgown, she dressed in a T-shirt and the only pair of jeans she could still zip closed. Then she walked outside to the storage closet and took a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench from the small hardware kit Paul had left her when he moved out. She carried them into the nursery, along with the radio and a glass of ginger ale, and settled in for a long and satisfying night of crib construction.

At the change of shift the following evening, Mike called Olivia and Jonathan into his office. Jonathan sat near the window, wearing the sour smirk that was a permanent part of his demeanor these days, while Olivia took the chair closest to the door.

Mike leaned forward, his forearms on his desk. “Jonathan,” he began, “I want you to retract your ‘cover-up’ statement to the press.”

“I’m not going to retract something I think is the truth.”

Mike shook his head. “Olivia is planning to request a medical review panel, and if that occurs, I will be telling that panel the truth as I see it, which is that both of you were right in the O’Neill case.” Mike spoke slowly, as if he expected Jonathan would have difficulty following him. “Olivia was right to take the action she did because she has the skill and the experience to perform that type of surgery. A case could be made for malpractice if she had not attempted to save Ms. O’Neill’s life in that way. But you, Jonathan, were also right. Do you know why?” He didn’t wait for Jonathan to respond. “You were right because you do not have the skill or experience to perform that procedure. It would have been malpractice if you had attempted it. So.” Mike sat back again, his eyes on Jonathan. “Is that what you’d like this community to hear?”

Jonathan’s eyes had narrowed. There was a thin bead of sweat above his upper lip. “You’re twisting the…”

“I’m twisting nothing,” Mike growled, leaning forward again, and Olivia was as surprised as Jonathan by the force of his reaction. “You make that retraction or Olivia is calling for a review panel to clear her name. And clear it she will, which isn’t going to make you look too good, is it?”

She felt Jonathan’s eyes on her, felt his burning, penetrating glare. “Don’t bother,” he said to her, standing up. “I’m resigning, effective immediately. Then you can tap abdomens till your heart’s content, for all I care.” He took off his stethoscope, and in a exaggerated gesture, slapped it down on the desk before storming out of the office.

Mike looked at the stethoscope, and Olivia thought he was trying not to smile. He raised his eyes to hers. “I apologize for not doing that sooner, Olivia. Please wait on the review panel until we see what the outcome of this is.” He nodded toward his phone. “Shall I call the Gazette and tell them the news?”

She changed her clothes in the lounge for her date with Paul, ignoring the rumors that were already crackling through the ER about what had taken place in Mike’s office. She dressed in a blue skirt that masked her expanding middle, and a white, short-sleeved sweater. When she stepped out of the lounge, she spotted Paul in the waiting room and felt a nearly forgotten flutter of longing for him.

He’d brought her a delicate blue tea rose in a silver bud vase, and she recognized it as the rare variety she had grown in the yard of their old house in Kensington. Her throat ached to see it, the remnant of a happier time.

“I cut it this morning,” he said as they walked out to his car. “Snuck into the yard before the sun was up.”