The Groom (17 page)

Lyle merely nodded and followed
her as she hustled to her room and hastily packed a bag. There weren’t many
clothes left, but she took what she could, careful to fold Carmine’s picture
and slip it into the bag’s front pocket. Victor was still there when she
emerged.

“You always were stubborn,” he
said, a hint of admiration in his voice. “Just like her.”

Katrina bristled at the mention
of her mother. “Don’t talk about her, you have no right. You chose this life
over her and left her to the wolves.”

“Remember, cara, it was she who
left me, and the hoodlums from her side of the tracks that killed her, not
mine.”

Katrina scoffed. “If you don’t
mind, I’ll take my chances on my own.”

With that, she shouldered past
him, with Lyle on her heels. They’d barely made it out of the apartment when
Alessandro appeared, trailing them down the hall.

“Lyle, a minute please.”

Lyle shot her a confused glance,
and she shrugged, wondering what Alessandro could possibly want with him. The
two spoke in hushed tones while she waited at the top of the stairs, shifting
impatiently from foot to foot. When Lyle returned, he simply placed a hand at
the small of her back, took her bag, and led her down the stairs. Alessandro
stood watching them go.

“What was that all about?” she
asked when they were downstairs and safely ensconced in a cab.

Lyle shrugged. “He’s just worried
about you. He’s not a bad guy.”

Katrina rolled her eyes. “You
don’t have to tell me, I dated him for years.” She laughed at his surprised
expression. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised. Of course all my previous
boyfriends were Mafia goons. It’s not like I ever had a chance to meet anyone
else. Besides, it seemed easier, being involved with people that understood the
Family and the life that comes with it.”

“Why did you end it?” he asked.
“I’m assuming you ended it, because it’s obvious he still carries a torch for
you.”

Katrina sighed. “Losing Carmine,
getting sober, and realizing that this was not the kind of life I wanted. It
isn’t the sort of thing I want to pull you into either,” she added, turning in
her seat to spear him with a pointed gaze. “Lyle, if this is too much for you,
just say so. I have no right intruding on your life like this and putting you
in danger. It would be selfish of me to ask you to put yourself in that
situation for me.”

Lyle smiled and grasped her hand
on the seat. “Oh no, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“I’m serious, Lyle.”

“So am I,” he insisted, all humor
now gone from his expression. “Sandro wanted me to talk you into going to
Venice. He thinks you will listen to me.”

“He’s got some nerve.”

“Well, if it’s what you wanted,
I’d let you go,” he said, though she could see the thought made him sad. “But
if staying is what you want . . . well, I’m here as long as you want me. The
only danger I am in is of going back to drowning in a life of mediocrity
without you around to keep things interesting.”

Katrina smiled again and leaned
against his shoulder, nestling her head in the comfortable crook of his neck.
“If that’s the case, you’ll never get rid of me.”

_____

Weeks went by in which Lyle found
himself swept up in the whirlwind that was Katrina. His days were never the
same, even those days when he worked long hours. She was always there to remind
him to find the joy in little things, like hot dogs for lunch while sitting on
a park bench between surgeries, or watching the sunset over New York from his
patio, or making love in so many places and ways that he was always delighted
to discover something new in each encounter.

And there was music. Katrina was
filled with it, and as much as he’d known that before, he was still surprised
how happy it made him to wake up in the morning and hear her voice echoing from
the walls of his bathroom as she blow-dried her hair or applied her makeup. The
radio was always blasting, some funky mix of R&B, Soul, Rock, and sometimes
a little Rap. Lyle had never thought he’d know a single lyric of the song Gin
and Juice, but when he found himself murmuring the catchy Snoop Dogg lyrics
while scrubbing in, he knew that he was hooked.

They never talked about Victor or
the Pirellis. Katrina pretended not to notice Alessandro and his crew always
lurking nearby when they were in public and lounging around outside of his
building. Lyle worried every time his eyes locked with Alessandro’s from across
the street, but remained silent on the matter. He really did not know what to
say or do about Katrina’s stubbornness on the matter of leaving the country.
This was new territory for him; he knew nothing about organized crime, or what
it would take to free Katrina from the Pirellis’ deadly vendetta. It was
selfish of him and he knew it, but more than anything he wanted their days to
continue as they had been—as if nothing bad was happening outside of the
cocoon of fun, passion, and spontaneity they’d created.

He was a changed man, and everyone
around him knew the difference. Dan mused that he must be in love or out of his
mind because he’d never seen his old friend act so impulsively. His mother
called him and offered her suggestion that he seek professional help for what
she had diagnosed as a personality disorder. His father chided her that it was
merely a midlife crisis and it would pass soon, as would Katrina. Lyle ignored
them all.

Two people in his life, besides
Dan, were thoroughly charmed with Katrina—Twila and Yolanda. Twila fawned
over their houseguest, cooking for her and praising her singing voice, spending
hours on the couch gossiping with her until Lyle threatened to fire her for
slacking off. Twila merely shrugged him off and they would continue to gab like
old friends.

Lyle had arranged for Katrina to
sing in the surgical floor’s cafeteria a few times a week, remembering how much
everyone had perked up at her presence. Between her guitar lessons during the
week, she was free to come during the day and entertain for hours, after which
she’d sit in Yolanda’s room and keep her company. It always warmed his heart to
walk past his favorite patient’s room and find the two of them giggling over
soap operas or music videos. The slender girl’s confidence reached new heights
when Katrina volunteered to style her hair and teach her to put on makeup. Her
parents were horrified, but Yolanda had never looked happier.

He was sorry to see her go after
she was discharged with her portable LVAD, a smaller version of the device that
would continue to assist her heart in pumping blood to her body. There was no
reason to keep her in the hospital now that she’d recovered and been approved
as a candidate for the portable device. She could comfortably wait for a
transplant at home. Katrina came to see her off, filling the girl’s arms with
books from the gift shop downstairs and a bouquet of flowers.

“In a weird way, I’m kind of
going to miss this place,” she said as she stood in the doorway, handing the
books off to her mother, who followed her suitcase-toting father from the
private room.

Lyle smiled and pulled the girl
into his side for a hug. “You’ll be back here in no time for that new heart,”
he said, even as he silently prayed. With her rare blood type, it was a
crapshoot, but the LVAD would keep her alive while they waited. Already the
color in her face was better, and she was having less trouble breathing. She’d
even walked laps around her floor of the hospital, though Lyle always chided
her not to push herself too hard.

As they said good-bye, Yolanda
leaned in and whispered, “Make sure I get an invitation to the wedding.” Lyle
arched a brow at her, and she laughed. “Come on, dude, you’re totally in love.
Just do it already. Not like you have anything to lose, you’re old. You’re
already getting a bit gray.”

Lyle self-consciously fingered
his temple, though he knew that no salt had settled there yet.
Just do it
already
. He smiled. It really wasn’t such a bad idea.

_________

YOLANDA
WAS BACK two weeks later. When she was wheeled into the ER, gasping and
wheezing for breath, Lyle was having lunch while watching Katrina sing in the
cafeteria. When Dr. Thomas, his resident, came careening into the cafeteria
with horror in his eyes, there were no words that needed to be said. Lyle already
knew. The chords of Katrina’s acoustic guitar died away as she stood, locking
eyes with him from across the room. His heart sank as he ran, following Thomas
to the elevator with Katrina hot on his heels.

“What happened?” he barked as the
elevator began sinking to the first floor where the ER was located.

“A clot formed in the LVAD.
Pulmonary Embolism.”

“God damn it,” Lyle grunted, his
fist making contact with the wall of the elevator. Katrina shrank into a
corner, her hands clapped over her mouth.

“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Is she going to be okay?”

Lyle shook his head as the doors
flew open, launching them into chaos as they entered the ER. There was no time
for talking or answering questions as Lyle found the trauma room where Yolanda
had been wheeled.

“Stay here,” he warned before
disappearing into the trauma room, where Yolanda lay struggling to breathe on a
gurney. Katrina stood outside the trauma room, face pressed to the glass as he
swept in and straight to the girl’s side. He grasped her hand and leaned close
so that she could hear him. “Hang in there, Yolanda. Don’t quit on me yet. That
heart is coming. I just need you to live long enough to get it.”

“Hey, Dr. C,” she gasped, her
blue lips trembling as residents flurried around her, one appearing with an
Ambu bag and ready to assist her with breathing. “Did you do it yet?”

Lyle smiled down at her. “Not
yet.”

“Well . . . hurry . . . the cat’s
not going to wait much cereal. I mean the . . . the . . .”

Lyle’s eyes widened in horror as
the left side of Yolanda’s face went limp and spittle gurgled in the corners of
her mouth as she scrambled for the right words. Her eyes were wide with fear as
she stared up at him, unsure of what was happening as her words came out in a
string of nonsense.

“Bag her!” he commanded the
resident, who promptly placed the mask over her nose and lips before pumping
the bag rhythmically. “Call up and tell them to prep OR 1, we’re coming up for
an embolectomy, and someone page Dr. Ames and Dr. Schaumburg and tell them to meet
me there!”

He had no more than a few seconds
to spare Katrina a glance as they raced from the Trauma room and to the
elevators at the end of the hall. The last thing he saw before the elevators
slid closed was her sinking to her knees on the floor, hands clutched to her
chest as if in prayer.

For hours after, he pushed
everything else from his mind. Because if he thought of her—of Katrina
with tears mingling with the hope that he could save Yolanda in her
eyes—he would lose it. His hands would shake, his throat would constrict,
and he wouldn’t be able to do his job.

So he forgot everything except
for the pinkish color of the organs beneath his fingers and the instruments
extending from his palms. Every chamber, every artery, every vein had a
direction and a purpose. Everything worked together for the greater good of the
body. It was sickening looking at her heart. The poor beat-up organ was nothing
like the beautiful thing he’d spent so many years studying and mastering. Such
a small thing—small enough to fit in the palm of his hand—yet it
was enough to end this girl’s life because of the complications it had caused.

Dan stood on the other side of
the table, only his eyes visible above his mask and below his scrub cap, fixed
on the same problems that Lyle was seeing as the two worked together to save
her life. As they closed her up—her vitals weak but acceptable—Lyle
began to wonder if it was even worth it. She’d obviously had a stroke right in
front of him. There was no way of knowing what her condition would be until she
woke up. At that point, he would know if he should regret his decision to save
her, rather than let her go down. He was sick to his stomach at the thought.

Usually, Lyle couldn’t wait to
leave the OR after a long surgery, but he lingered after this one, standing
where he had been when the final suture was closed, staring at the spot where
Yolanda had once laid. Dan remained as well, chest heaving with breath but
saying nothing. Surgical instruments gleamed in the bright overhead lights. The
gallery above them—where other doctors observed surgeries behind plate
glass—was empty, leaving Lyle staring up into a gaping, dark hole that
left an ominous feeling yawning in his gut.

After a while, he and Dan moved
as one, removing scrub caps, masks, gowns, and gloves and disposing of them
before leaving the OR and re-entering the scrub room. It was outside that door
that he found Katrina, seated on the floor, her eyes glued to the tiny window
allowing a glimpse inside. Lyle left the room slowly with Dan on his heels.

“I’ll go check in on the
post-op,” Dan offered, his voice low before he left them alone in the white,
gleaming hallway. Katrina stared up at him, her knees pulled up to her chest,
her eyes red-rimmed. Lyle sank down to the floor beside her, groaning as his
knees crackled and his back screamed in protest. He was exhausted.

Katrina silently patted her
shoulder, and Lyle sighed with relief, leaning toward her and resting his head
there. He closed his eyes as her exotic scent enveloped him, and he sank into
her, anchoring himself against her as his muscles and bones gave out. She
wrapped her arms around him, taking his weight on as if he weighed no more than
an infant, and he appreciated her all the more for it. He clung to her, the
trembling that he’d held back for so long finally rearing its head, wracking
him from head to toe as his throat became too tight for more than the smallest
amount of air to get through. She rocked him, and he let her, finding comfort
in her nearness.

“How does it look?” she asked
after a while. “Don’t hold back, I can handle it.”

He glanced up at her and sighed,
swiping at the dampness clinging to his eyelashes after removing his glasses.
“Not good,” he said with a shake of his head. “They brought her in with a
pulmonary embolism caused by a blood clot that formed in the LVAD device. It’s
a common complication. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the clot hadn’t broken
off and made a path straight to her brain. She had a stroke . . . right in
front of me, she had a stroke. We were able to stabilize her, but only time
will tell how severe the damage from the stroke is. It’ll take time for
medication to dissolve the blockage in her brain . . . even then, there’s no
telling if she’ll even wake up.”

He delivered the news in monotone,
his voice very much the one he would have used on a patient’s family, the very
one he knew Dan or one of the interns was using on her family now. It was
cowardly, but he was grateful not to have to look Mr. and Mrs. Gutierrez in the
eye while telling them that their daughter was likely to live the rest of her
life as a vegetable.

He had just calmed the shaking of
his hands when the squeak of footsteps over tiles announced the presence of his
intern, Dr. Thomas. The man was pale, his hands clutching Lyle’s cell phone
tight. Lyle stood.

“Everything all right, Thomas?”

The intern had been entrusted
with his phone for weeks while he was in surgery, in case UNOS called with a
heart for Yolanda.

“You missed a phone call while in
surgery,” Thomas said, his eyes lowered and voice barely above a whisper.

Lyle’s stomach clenched. “It was
UNOS.” It wasn’t a question.

Thomas nodded silently. Then, “We
had to let it go down the list. They said . . . if she’d suffered a stroke that
. . . we had to let it pass her over.”

Lyle was silent for several
minutes. Katrina and Dr. Thomas watched him with baited breath as if afraid of
his reaction. They should have been, because it was at that exact moment that
he lost it completely.

_____

“Four weeks suspension. I cannot imagine
what could have gotten into you.”

Lyle rolled his eyes but didn’t
make eye contact with Vivian, who had forced her way over his doorstep only a
day after Yolanda’s stroke. He was sulking at the table on his patio, a cold,
untouched cup of coffee in front of him. His right hand was bandaged, and Dan
had warned him that if he didn’t stop punching people and things his bruised
knuckles would never heel. Lyle didn’t give a damn about his hand. The
throbbing in his hand was nothing compared to the raw ache that had scraped his
insides and left him feeling as if all of his nerves were exposed to the
outside of his body. At the moment, Vivian’s voice was rubbing against them,
causing him to flinch inwardly with every word, every syllable, every
irritating phrase.

“Paid leave of absence,” he
muttered, eyes staring unseeingly into the sickeningly beautiful morning sky.
“Not a suspension.”

“As a physician, one would not
expect you to behave like a rowdy frat boy just because you’re upset. Honestly,
Lyle.”

Lyle clenched his jaw, his
grinding teeth the only thing keeping him from giving his mother a verbal
lashing. As it was, everyone around him had been on the other end of his rage.
First there had been Dr. Thomas, who had moved just in time to avoid Lyle’s fist—the
same fist that left an apple-sized hole in the wall, and then another, and
another. His foot had made contact with a med cart at the end of the hall. His
throat was raw, so he supposed a few forceful profanities has accompanied his
tirade. As it was, he could barely remember any of it.

He did remember being forced to
ice his hand after Katrina managed to calm him and Dan’s concerned eyes peering
over the Chief of Surgery’s shoulder as he administered Cortisol and ice and
lectured Lyle on decorum and keeping his emotions in check. Every word went
through one ear and out the other. He didn’t want to hear “we lose patients all
the time,” or “death is a part of life.” How many times had he said the same to
teary-eyed interns as they watched children and mothers die? Yet somehow in
this situation it just didn’t apply.

Yolanda was not just a patient,
and her death would not be just another part of his life. She had been his
responsibility, and he had failed her.

“Why are you here?” he growled,
shooting her a dangerously narrow glare. Vivian, unruffled, stood from the seat
she’d taken when Twila reluctantly ushered her out onto the patio to intrude on
his solitude.

“I am trying to understand what
is happening to you. You haven’t been the same since that Holly woman ruined
you.”

Lyle stood, hovering over his
mother by nearly an entire foot. “I am
not
ruined,” he argued, his voice
rough-sounding, even to his own ears.

“Aren’t you?” she challenged, not
the least bit intimidated. “Locking yourself away? Cutting off your friends?
Running about looking less like the professional you are and more like a hobo?
Getting involved with that . . . woman.”

Her voice bristled on the word
“woman” as if she could hardly bear to call Katrina one. Lyle’s hands curled
into fists at his sides. She was really starting to piss him off.

“Those snobs at the country club
are hardly my friends, a few days worth of stubble doesn’t make me look like a
hobo, and my relationship with
Katrina
is none of your goddamn
business.”

Vivian’s eyes widened. “Lyle! How
dare you use such language while speaking to me? I may not have been the most
affectionate of mothers, but I deserve your respect, at the very least.”

Lyle wasn’t about to apologize.
“Leave,” he simply said, turning his back on her and striding over to the
balcony’s rail. “I don’t have the energy for this right now. Just leave me
alone.”

Vivian’s heels clicked toward
him, and he could feel her watching him, her eyes burning a hole through his
back. “Snap out of it,” she said as if he hadn’t just dismissed her. “Whatever
this is that you’re going through, it’s affected your life for long enough.
Your plans with Holly fell through. It was her loss. Go to South America or
Africa, or wherever it is Morgan wants to take you. Date a woman in your league.
Take the Chief of Surgery position. It is time to grow up, Lyle.”

Lyle’s hands tightened on the
rail until his knuckles screamed in protest. He held his breath until he was
sure Vivian had left, sure he would unleash hell on her if he allowed himself to
part his lips. He released the breath he’d been holding, and deflated, he hung
his head and closed his eyes. He stiffened when a hand came to rest between his
shoulder blades, but he relaxed the instant Katrina’s sultry voice met his
ears.

“What do you need?” she asked,
her voice barely above a whisper.

He turned to face her, trying to
smile but knowing that it was really more of a grimace. She had done enough.
She’d brought him home and forced him to go to bed the night before, tucking
herself in beside him and allowing him to share his burden with her. Her eyes
were filled with tears for Yolanda, but she never shed a single one, instead,
allowing him to use her as a resting place for his pain. He gazed down into
wide, brown eyes, and his body surged with primal heat. He grasped the back of
her neck, fingers curling through the curls at her nape, bringing her close.
She fell against him breathlessly, hands on his chest.