A Surgeon's Christmas Baby
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Deanne Anders
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CHAPTER ONE
“GOOD MORNING, DR. MURPHY,” Dr. Izzy Jeong said, her cheerful voice making it impossible for Ben to ignore her.
Did the woman have to be so happy every morning? How was he supposed to concentrate on his work when she was standing there, all smiles and bubbling with happiness?
He forced his eyes back to the computer screen, but he’d already lost his train of thought.
The nurses’ station on the pediatric ward was busy today, and it was hard enough to ignore the insistent beep of monitors and the sound of stretchers and wheelchairs as they rattled down the hallways. Add in the sound of crying babies and laughing toddlers coming from the patients’ rooms, and it was all he could do to keep his mind centered on the progress note he was trying to enter into the computer.
And now he had the exasperating, though beautiful, pediatrician to deal with. There was something about her dark wavy hair and those deep brown eyes that drew him in. It was a daily battle that he had to fight when she was around. Which was why he was trying to ignore her.
Unfortunately, there was no way for him to do that this morning without appearing rude to another coworker in front of the staff. The chief of surgery was already on the warpath for feeling that Ben had slighted him.
Ben hadn’t, he’d just chosen to ignore one of his ridiculous rules.
“Morning, Dr. Jeong.” Even to his own ears his reply sounded stiff and snotty. It hadn’t used to be this way between the two of them and if he was honest with himself, he did miss the comfortable camaraderie they had once shared.
But that was before he’d learned that he wasn’t immune to the pediatric ward’s overly cheery pediatrician. Danger lay in getting too close to Izzy. He’d made that mistake once and that had been a disaster he didn’t plan on repeating.
Well, not all of it had been a disaster. The night they’d spent together had been unbelievable. Amazing. And totally unacceptable.
As the sun had come up the next morning, he realized what a mistake they’d made. He was totally wrong for Izzy. She would want a man that could give her the whole white-picket-fence life and that wasn’t who he was anymore. He’d lived that life once, before he lost his wife and unborn son, and he would never be able to do that again. The loss had been too much.
Which was why he’d avoided her for the two years they’d worked together on Boston Beacon’s children’s ward...until one night when they’d gotten carried away by emotions and a passionate connection that he still didn’t understand. Never mind the consequences of sleeping with a colleague.
That night they’d spent together still haunted him three months later, and he had to make sure it didn’t happen again. It was best for both of them that he continue to ignore her and concentrate on his job.
“I just put in a consult on a three-year-old girl named Janie who was flown in last night from Northampton,” she said as she took the empty chair next to his. The sweet smell of honeysuckle floated over to him, bringing memories of a night filled with a sensual passion he had never experienced before.
Was she purposely trying to drive him crazy? He’d chosen to sit at the nurses’ station to review his charts instead of the doctors’ lounge in order to avoid this. Avoid her. She couldn’t be that naive. She had to know what he was doing.
How was it that he’d been able to run off every other well-meaning member of the staff but Izzy? For the last two years, the woman had refused to stop her insistent attempts to fix him. There was nothing wrong with him: he was one of the most highly acclaimed pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons in the country. Couldn’t she see that was enough for him?
After the way he’d left the morning after they’d slept together, he thought she’d stop being so friendly with him. But she’d chosen instead to pretend, like he did, that the night never happened.
“I’m about to see her now,” he said as he stood. It wasn’t like he was running away from her. He had planned to see her patient next before Dr. Jeong appeared.
“I wanted to be present when you spoke with the parents,” Izzy said, her hand coming to rest on the sleeve of his white scrub jacket. “A week ago they thought their child had just come down with a virus or the flu then they found out they were facing something much worse. Now they’re freaking out.”
He’d read the chart. Of course the parents were freaking out. Their child had been showing signs of shortness of breath when they’d taken her to their pediatrician. Unfortunately, instead of the pneumonia their doctor had suspected, an X-ray had shown a lung mass. He didn’t envy the person who’d had to tell them. Breaking that kind of news was his least favorite part of his job, and he’d rather perform an eight-hour heart and lung transplant. Relating bad news to a child’s parents was one of the few things he wasn’t good at now. He’d been there and experienced that heartache himself. He knew the pain that cut through you no matter how kind and understanding the physician tried to be.
And now it would be his turn to possibly give these parents more devastating news if the MRI he was going to request came back showing that the cancer in the little girl’s lung had metastasized.
“I’m not a monster, Izzy. I do know how to handle my patient’s family.” Okay, maybe he wasn’t good at it, but he could do it. Just because the hospital medical board seemed to question every interaction he had, didn’t mean he didn’t know how to do his job.
“I don’t think you’re a monster, Ben. I was planning on seeing them this morning anyway,” Izzy said, the words short and sharp. “Though I did hear you were already trying to run off our new staff member from Hawaii.”
“Who?” he asked. He remembered Javi trying to introduce him to someone, but he hadn’t caught the name.
“Exactly,” she said.
While her eyes never left his, her smile was gone and he realized he hadn’t angered her, but hurt her feelings. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I didn’t mean to imply that you did.”
“You didn’t imply it, you said it.” Izzy’s gaze seemed to bore into him as if looking for any sign of weakness inside the thick armor he wore to protect himself from prying eyes. “Does this have anything to do with the board meeting they held last night?”
A hot rush of embarrassment shot through him and he quickly looked away. Even though he tried to convince his colleagues that he was unfazed by the chief of surgery’s meeting to discuss his defying hospital policies, it still stung that he was being reprimanded for simply doing his job. Everyone thought a doctor’s life was all glamour and fortune. It wasn’t. The pressure of knowing how much impact your decisions had on someone else’s life could be overwhelming. He’d found bottling up all his fear of failure worked best for him. Maybe it didn’t make him the most popular doctor, but it did allow him to be one of the most successful in the operating room.
And wasn’t that what all of this was about? To successfully save a child’s life? And if sometimes he had to break a few rules, wasn’t that worth it?
“No, I just don’t appreciate being treated like a toddler who needs someone to hold their hand,” Ben said before standing and looking back at Izzy, refusing to show any weakness. “But, if it would make you feel better, I’ll be glad for you to accompany me. After all, you are the attending.”
“Yes, I am,” she said, giving him a bright smile that almost made him feel guilty for the hard time he was giving her. If it had been anyone besides Izzy, he would have come up with an excuse to put off this visit until later in the day so he wouldn’t have to feel like he was being supervised like a first year resident.
“Hey, Dr. Ben,” a young boy called out as they passed the door of his room. “Are we still on for a game tonight?”
“Sure, Max, I wouldn’t miss it. Let’s plan for nine.”
“A game?” Izzy asked.
“An online fantasy game,” Ben said, then smiled. “He beats me every time, but it takes his mind off being here in the hospital instead of home with his friends.”
“I don’t understand you, Ben. You go out of your way to help the kids while you avoid the rest of us. You’re a nice guy, so why are you so determined to make everyone think you’re a grouch?”
Unable to answer that question, he decided to ignore it. The resulting silence seemed louder than all the noise surrounding them. There was no way Izzy would understand. He didn’t even understand it himself. Maybe it was because the kids didn’t ask you questions like that. Damaged? Broken? They didn’t care. They accepted you the way you were.
The moment the two of them walked into Janie’s room, all his thoughts focused back on his new patient, exactly where they needed to be. In one of the larger hospital cribs, the tiny girl lay curled up asleep, a worn brown teddy in her hands while a small tube ran from the oxygen machine on the wall to her nose. On a couch pulled up close to the crib sat what he assumed were the child’s parents. Not much more than thirty, the young couple looked up at him the moment he walked into the room. Dark circles surrounded both pairs of brown eyes that were now looking at him with a desperate hope that he always dreaded no matter how much he understood it. He wanted to share that hope. He wanted nothing more than to promise them that he was the answer to all their child’s problems. He wanted to assure them the nightmare they were living was just temporary.
Unfortunately, that was something he couldn’t do. He was always honest with his patients’ families. If nothing else, they deserved that much. Of course, honesty was not always pleasant. Not when your child was sick and you were simply holding on to that small sliver of hope that any moment a miracle would fix everything.
“This is Dr. Murphy, the cardiothoracic surgeon I told you about,” Izzy said as the couple rose to meet them. Their eyes swiveled from Izzy to him, then back again. “How about we take a seat?”
When the parents settled back on the couch and he and Izzy had pulled up chairs around them, Ben began. “I’ve reviewed the records from your doctor in Northampton and spoke with Dr. Jeong. I know your doctor has discussed the results of the lung biopsy that was done last week, but I want to go over it with you again.”
He then launched into an explanation of the test results and the specifics of neuroblastoma, which the biopsy from the little girl’s lung tissue had shown. When he finished, he paused for a moment to give the two of them time to process all the information.
“But you’re going to operate and take out all the cancer, right? That’s what our doctor told us. You’ll operate and Janie will get better.” The little girl’s father said, his fear cutting through the silent room as sharp and dangerous as a fine-honed scalpel.
They were counting on him. Someone was always counting on him. The weight of this man’s desperation was almost more than Ben could stand. He remembered being this desperate. He remembered having complete assurance that everything would be okay. And he remembered when the trauma doctor had told him there was no hope for either his wife or their unborn child. No chance for the life he had dreamed of sharing with Cara and their son.
The memory of his own loss had him forgetting the response he’d memorized years ago when he found himself in the position of dealing with a desperate parent. They were empty words that were used to neither promise nor deny that he could make everything right.
“Dr. Murphy and I will be working together to make sure all the tests and procedures are performed so that the surgery can be scheduled. We want Janie to have the best outcome possible,” Izzy said, then looked at him. “Maybe we should discuss exactly what we’ll be looking for.”
Shaking off the bad memory, he focused on the parents who were giving him their full attention. “Dr. Jeong is right. We need to do a few more tests. I’d like another MRI which will be performed with me present. I want all the information I can get on the tumor’s location before the surgery. Also, we’ll run some blood tests to make sure there isn’t any infection. Something as simple as a viral infection can cause problems with recovery from a major surgery.”
“Fortunately,” Izzy said, in that reassuring voice he’d heard a hundred times as they’d worked together with families, “Janie is a healthy little girl except for the neuroblastoma. She’s had an uncomplicated medical history until now and that is in her favor.”
“She’s barely had a cold before now.” The young father’s body relaxed as he took his wife’s hand in his.
“She’s always been at the average percentile for growth. She’s very active and a real good eater.” The young mom’s eyes darted over to her little girl before returning to Ben’s, then moving quickly to Izzy where they settled.
The woman was obviously more at ease with Izzy than she was with him. Not that he could blame her. Izzy had a comforting way about her that drew in people quickly. It had even worked on him once.
And just like that he was remembering the night they’d shared.
Ben’s phone vibrated with a text, giving him a good reason to excuse himself. After reassuring the couple that he would be back later in the day to examine their daughter more closely, he dug his phone from his pocket and read the message from Javier, the head of Pediatrics.
We need to talk. Now.
Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all. Sighing, he put the phone back in his pocket. It was time to face whatever the board had decided would be his punishment.
Izzy watched as Ben left the room. He’d answered all Janie’s parents’ questions, but still, there was something missing when he talked to them. He was so comfortable with the technical aspects of the surgery. Maybe it was because of the way he’d cut off everyone except for his patients since the death of his wife. She could easily understand how losing the person you loved, especially so suddenly, might cause that. And the fact that his wife was close to term in her pregnancy didn’t help either. He’d suffered a terrible blow the night he lost his family.
He’d shared some of his feelings about his loss with her the night they’d met to celebrate a successful case. It had been enough for her to understand that he still felt a lot of guilt because he’d been in the OR saving someone else’s child instead of with his pregnant wife when she’d had her car accident.
“He’s very intense,” Janie’s mother said as she joined Izzy at the door where she watched Ben retreat down the hall.
“He’s very dedicated to his job and I can tell you that he is one of the best surgeons there is to perform the surgery Janie needs,” Izzy said. If it sounded like she was defending Ben, she couldn’t help it. No matter what anyone in the hospital thought, she knew Ben was a good man inside that stone exterior wall that surrounded him. On the one night she’d spent with him, she’d seen a man who was considerate and caring. They’d shared an intimate night that would forever change their lives. And she had three positive pregnancy tests to prove it.
She just wasn’t sure how to tell him, especially since he seemed determined to pretend that the night they’d shared had never happened. What was she supposed to do? Hand him the pink lined pregnancy tests and tell him to stop being thickheaded and accept that they’d not only had sex together, but they’d also conceived a baby?
She just couldn’t do that. Not yet. She’d ignored all the signs, a light period one month and then none at all the next. She’d had only a few days to accept this herself. Even with the positive tests she hadn’t believed it until she’d visited her ob-gyn and had it confirmed. In some ways she’d been acting like Ben and ignoring what happened between them.
But now, no matter how much the two of them tried to overlook the big elephant in the room, things between them were about to change. All she could do was hope the man he’d shown her that one night was the real Ben. Because right now, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to share her baby’s life with the detached surgeon he portrayed to the rest of the world.
Ben wanted to slam the door. Slam it hard and walk away without ever looking back. That was his first instinct, one he couldn’t allow himself to indulge in.
And why not? He was one of the most sought-after cardiothoracic surgeons in the country. One phone call and he’d have a new position at any of the hospitals in the region.
But storming out would only prove to Javier that the administrative board was right about him. So, no matter how much he wanted to slam the door and stomp away, he carefully closed it behind him before stopping and leaning back against it.
He couldn’t really blame Javier. He’d only been the messenger. Ben didn’t doubt the man’s claim that he had tried to talk the board into being more lenient. The man had always been a good department head and fair with the staff. It wasn’t him that Ben had problems with. It was the unnecessary rules and regulations of the hospital’s administration that tied his hands when he was just trying to do his job.
“Are you all right, Dr. Murphy?”
Ben looked up to find a young starry-eyed resident standing in front of him. What was his name? Joe? Joseph? Did it really even matter? In a few months this one would be gone and a new one would replace him.
“I’m fine,” Ben said, starting to walk away before turning back. “No matter what, always remember that you have to live with every mistake you make, even if it was the right mistake to make. Somehow it still comes back to you.”
As the young man stared at him, jaw slack and eyes wide, Ben turned and walked away before he told the boy to get out of the medical field while he still could.
And the board thought he was short on self-discipline? He’d just proved twice in the last five minutes that he had plenty of self-discipline. Their shortsightedness had created the mess he was in now.
Couldn’t they see he had been right about accepting that kid from one of their own sister hospitals for their ECMO program? A life-saving therapy that provided oxygen for children with lung or heart conditions. Yes, it was protocol to get administrative approval for all ECMO patients before they were accepted for the expensive program. And yes, it had to be confirmed that there was enough specialized staffing available to handle a one-on-one patient, something he had done himself by contacting the nursing supervisor. Why waste the time it took for all those administrative types to get together and make that decision when with one phone call he had the problem handled? So he hadn’t gotten the chief of surgery’s approval. Neither he nor the little boy had the time to waste on unnecessary phone calls. The boy had been in critical condition with his young lungs exhausted from fighting a particularly bad case of influenza.
And even if it did cost him his practice in Boston, wouldn’t it be worth it to have saved that little boy? He’d bypassed all the red tape that continually tied his hands and now the boy was improving every day thanks to the rest his lungs could receive due to the hospital’s specialized equipment and training. Wasn’t that the reason they had developed the program to begin with? To help children who needed the specialized treatment?
It would serve the board right if he turned in his resignation and walked away today. Straightening his shoulders, his mind halfway set to do just that, he headed down the hallway leading to his office, sidestepping a volunteer pushing a wheelchair in front of him. It was only after he passed them that he recognized the little girl in the wheelchair. She’d been born with a heart valve defect he’d repaired earlier in the week. Her parents had spent months going from specialist to specialist before she’d been sent to him.
Suddenly changing his mind, he altered his route and took the hallway that would lead him to the children’s ward.
He paused outside Elly’s room. She was waiting for a heart transplant. Ben had been consulted on the case weeks ago, and all they could do now was wait for a donor heart. Eight years old, the girl was not much bigger than the size of a child half her age. Ben was working with donor registration to get the little girl pushed to the top of the transplant list. It was her only hope.
He stopped at the next door where a teenage boy was up working with physical therapy. Ben had turned to walk away when he heard Jake call after him.
“Dr. Murphy, come see what I can do,” the boy said, his voice full of excitement.
Entering the room, Ben was almost as thrilled as Jake as he witnessed him walk from his bed toward the bank of windows on the farthest wall. Six months ago when Jake had arrived, he’d been a scrawny kid who couldn’t walk from the bed to the bathroom without being hooked to an oxygen tank. His lungs had almost been destroyed by a vicious virus. The boy had sank further and further into depression while he waited for a lung transplant. Watching the boy smile now as he turned from the windows and swiftly made his way back across the room, Ben felt something close to happiness light up inside him. It had only been two weeks since Jake’s transplant and he was growing stronger every day.
He could continue down the hall where he would see patient after patient whose care he was involved in. This was what it was all about. This was why he had gone into medicine.
With a light pat on the boy’s back, he left him with the physical therapist and headed back to his office.
He wasn’t going to let some stuffy “everything by the rules” medical board that didn’t know the difference between a scalpel and forceps stop him from doing what he was meant to do. Hadn’t he already lost enough? The hospital was the closest thing to a home he had now and he wasn’t giving it up without a fight. So he just had to figure out how he was supposed to become the rule-abiding, perfect-attitude doctor they were demanding.
He needed help. He needed someone who understood what it would take to change the board’s opinion of him, and only one person came to mind. No matter how much he wanted to avoid her, he needed Izzy’s help to ingratiate him to the board.
He just hoped that asking her to help wasn’t as big of a mistake as the night they’d shared together. Walking away that morning, leaving her there alone, had been hard. He knew that walking away from what they had shared had been the right thing to do for both of them, but he wasn’t sure he had the strength to do it again.
If his career was the only factor, he might be able to leave Boston. But it wasn’t. The kids on the ward needed him.
