A Matter of the Heart. Patricia Davids

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      Nora walked to her chair and sank onto the familiar seat. A second later, she put her elbows on the desk and dropped her head into her hands.

      Why now? Why after all these years? The pain of her past never truly went away, but there were days that she didn’t think about those difficult, sad hours and what she had lost. In the past year, there had even been times when she didn’t think about Bernard and the terrible debt she had to repay.

      How ironic that the charity work she was doing to make amends was the very thing that might shine a spotlight on things best left hidden.

      Looking up, she focused on Pamela’s picture. Her stepdaughter had endured enough pain in her life. Nora wasn’t about to let Rob Dale add to that burden.

      He might appear cute and harmless, but so did a terrier puppy. It was only after one had turned your backyard into a crater-filled moonscape that you realized their true purpose. They had been bred to dig out vermin.

      Rob Dale of Liberty and Justice struck her as the same kind of animal. He was no one’s lapdog.

      She needed to steer him away from anything that involved her personal life. As a plan it wasn’t much, but it was all she had.

      She rose and quickly changed out of her skirt and blouse and into her scrubs. She didn’t have any surgeries today, but she needed to follow up on three of her patients who were still in the hospital.

      At the door leading out to the reception area, she paused with her hand on the knob. Letting Rob or anyone on the staff see her rattled would only undermine what she hoped to accomplish at Mercy Medical Center. When she felt she had control of her emotions, she exited the room with brisk strides. Rob, already changed, hastened to follow her.

      “Where are we going?” he asked, working to tighten the drawstring on his scrub pants while he tried to keep pace with her.

      “We are going to the PICU. That stands for Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. I have three patients there.”

      “I thought we were going to surgery.”

      “Not today, but I have an AV canal repair scheduled for the day after tomorrow.”

      “AV canal. What kind of injury is that?” He finished cinching up his pants and pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket.

      “An atrial ventricular canal is a congenital cardiac defect, as are the vast majority of the patients I see at this hospital. When I work at the base hospital, I do mostly follow-ups on adult patients after bypass surgery.”

      They passed the elevators, but she didn’t stop. Instead, she pushed open the stairwell door and headed up. Two floors later she opened another door and strode out onto the pediatric floor. Unlike the rest of the hospital, the walls here were brightly colored and decorated with oversized cutouts of cartoon characters.

      Rob noticed she didn’t seem winded by the rapid climb. “So you don’t get many injures like Ali’s?”

      “To be perfectly honest, I have never seen a case like Ali’s and I’ve only read about a very few in the literature. Most of them were adults involved in motor vehicle accidents. The vast majority of people who sustain enough trauma to tear apart an internal structure of the heart don’t survive.

      “The fact that Ali has is amazing. Two of the cases I studied healed on their own. Two required surgery to repair the tear when they began to show signs of fluid buildup in the lung. Three others died due to heart tissue death after approximately four days. However, Ali’s operation will be the same as for a simple VSD repair.”

      “How can you operate on the kid if you haven’t had a case like this before? What’s a VSD?”

      Nora paused outside a pair of wide double doors marked with PICU in large letters. “A VSD is a congenital cardiac defect.”

      “You said that before.”

      “And my answer was correct both times. We have several good handouts that we give to parents explaining the defects in detail and how they are repaired. I’ll make sure Carmen gets you some to study.”

      “When do you see patients in your office?”

      “Consults and a few follow-ups are scheduled once a week on Mondays. Ninety-five percent of my patients are direct admits to the PICU. Heart defects in children often go undetected until they are in crisis. Unless they have need of a second surgery in the future, I don’t normally see them after they leave the hospital.”

      “Doesn’t that make it hard to get to know the families?”

      “My focus is on my patients, not the families. There are social workers and others who deal with any issues that arise with them.”

      Pushing open the doors, Nora entered the unit and walked to the nursing desk. Theresa СКАЧАТЬ