“Was your mother there?”
Kiah shook his head and swallowed before answering. “I was worried that she’d turn up, even though she wasn’t invited, but thank goodness she didn’t. Apparently, I’m not the only person she’s alienated and cut out of her life.”
“No doubt,” she agreed, knowing better than to ask if he’d be looking her up while he was in Toronto.
Kiah’s relationship with his mother had been fraught for as long as Mina had known him, and he’d often said he thought she had an undiagnosed mental disease. Mina wasn’t so sure. To her it seemed more like a personality problem. Mrs. Langdon could put on a nice face to outsiders, but to her children she was mean, selfish and controlling. The kind of person who, because they weren’t happy, felt everyone else around her should be unhappy, as well.
Her assessment seemed to be confirmed when, after Karlene’s death and Kiah’s last big run-in with his mother, Miss Pearl had said, “I’ve known your mother since she was a child, and her parents spoiled her by making her feel she was the most important person in the world. Your father, God rest him, was such an easygoing man he continued that when they married. She never could stand it when she didn’t get her own way, and has to take it out on everyone else when it happens.”
That strained and often frightening relationship with his mother had scarred Kiah in so many ways.
Obviously not wanting to talk about his mother anymore, Kiah said, “I asked Roydon who in their right mind has their wedding in Calgary in January, and you know what he said?”
“What?” she asked, already chuckling. His cousin was a jokester.
“‘Man, what better time to do it? I get to go off on my honeymoon to somewhere warm, while everyone else is here, freezing.’ They’re going to Mexico for two weeks.”
“Hey, you can’t fault his logic,” she said, laughter making her lighter in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. “Lucky them, heading for the sunny south.”
Yet, even with the amusing conversation as he described the wedding and reception, she was on edge, knowing it was only a matter of time before he got on her case about her life.
He finished eating before she did, and leaned back in his chair, his coffee in hand. Mina immediately tensed. She knew that overly casual stance.
“I want to talk to you about something.”
Here it comes.
Trying to be as nonchalant as he pretended to be, she made herself pick up a slice of bacon and wave it in his direction.
“What?”
Had she kept the defensiveness out of her voice? Mina wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
“I want you to come to St. Eustace with me and register as an orthopedic specialist.”
Dumbfounded, she stared at him, the strip of bacon suspended about two inches away from her lips, and like a ninny could only once more say, “What?”
Kiah must have heard the shock in her voice, because he held up his hand and leaned forward, all pretense of casualness gone.
“Hear me out,” he said as she gaped at him. “There’s a new Caribbean Clinicians’ Union formed, and St. Eustace has joined. It gives new doctors a chance to go to various islands and learn from a variety of doctors and specialists. You can help us prepare, in the eventuality we’re accepted into the program.”
Mina just stared at him, still at sea, and Kiah made an impatient sound.
“Don’t you see? We have great doctors, but this is a whole new world to us. We’re not a teaching hospital, so there is some confusion about how to put together a comprehensive training program. This is an area you’re extremely knowledgeable in, and it’s a great way to put some of that knowledge to use. And while you’re there, you can upgrade some of our surgical abilities, too. It would only be for a month or two, or as long as it takes you to put the program together.”
The pain that flashed through her was primal, the anger instinctual and blazing.
“Are you crazy?” Mina realized she was shouting but couldn’t stop herself, and she got up so fast her chair toppled over behind her. “I can’t expose myself like that, in a hospital. What use is a one-handed surgeon? Am I really even a doctor, still?”
She turned away so Kiah couldn’t see how close she was to crying, and the rage left her as swiftly as it had arisen. Her shoulders slumped under the weight of the truth she was about to articulate out loud for the first time.
“Don’t you see? I’m of no use anymore.”
“Nah,” came the stern reply, Kiah’s voice hard, almost cold. “I don’t see that. But what I do see is that you’ve become a coward.”
Mia spun around so fast she almost lost her footing, and Kiah had to stop himself from jumping up to catch her if she fell. There was a sheen of tears in her eyes, but, as he suspected, she was once more furious, rather than sad.
He much preferred her that way.
“What did you say?”
She wasn’t shouting now but speaking softly, slowly, and that was even more dangerous. But he was committed.
“You’re a coward. Here you are, hiding away, letting all the knowledge you have in your head go to waste, and when I offer you a way back to life, you call me crazy. When you don’t have a feasible argument, turn to insults, huh? Is that how things are going to be?”
Her jaw worked, as though she was trying to get words out, but they were stuck in her throat.
Probably choked by the rage he clearly saw in her eyes.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Kiah? Didn’t you get the memo? I lost my hand. I can’t operate anymore—”
“But you can teach and supervise, help us figure out how best to train the doctors that’ll come to us,” he blatantly interrupted her, which he knew she hated almost more than anything else. “Your
