The Promise of Stardust (30 page)

The truth was, even when I started seeing Carol, I knew she was too slick for me. I knew it, but hell, when I was with her, I couldn't tell if I'd stepped into heaven or boarded a plane destined to crash. After a while it didn't matter. Neither of our residencies allowed enough free time to seek companionship elsewhere. I cleaned up well enough that her Park Avenue parents didn't object to my presence on her arm. She was a brilliant conversationalist, clever enough to outwit me, and good in bed.

I didn't need more. I didn't want more, but there were more perks. She'd grown up among the New York elite, and she introduced me to people and places I never would have dared approach. After a while, though, I started wanting a relationship that mattered. Call it loneliness or longing or a desire to love someone. She was beautiful and accomplished. What wasn't to love?

But we weren't a match. Not really. Whenever I tried to convince her to stay over at my place, she made excuses. No. That's not true. She never even tried to pretend that my digs met her standards. One night, as she pulled her blouse over her camisole, I played with her long black hair, cajoling her.

“I have an early surgery. I want a good night's sleep.” She tipped her head to one side. “But I'll miss you.”

“I'd rather not think of you out around the city at night.”

“You're so provincial with your small-town-boy ethics,” she replied, smiling.

“Stay. Sleep.”

“I don't come here to sleep. I come here for your body.” She stroked my inner thigh.

I laughed. “I feel so used.”

She grabbed her designer handbag and stood at the door, waiting for me to unlock it. “And as much as I like you, this place—not so much. Get a decent apartment and I'll stay.”

I'd like to say the disparaging remark didn't bother me, but it did when the one-upmanship turned from sexual banter to my lack of financial strength. I tried to shift the power balance, and the easiest, cheapest, and most predictable method at my disposal? Seduction. It didn't cost me a thing. I traced her collarbone then took her face in my hands. She moaned softly, and for a second I thought, however mistakenly, that I'd won.

But the telephone's ring interrupted, and Carol closed her mouth around my tongue for a moment, then broke away, and shot out the door.

Damn. I glanced at the clock and grabbed the phone. It was too late for my family to call. “Yeah, hello.”

“Uh-oh. Did I wake you?” Elle said.

I locked the door and leaned against the wall. “No.”

“Any chance you'll be home for Christmas after all?” Elle asked.

“I can't. I'm on call at the hospital.” I tried to picture my family and hers, gathered around the dining room table of the house where I grew up. Mom would cook every artery-clogging dish known to mankind. My nephews would spill gravy on Aunt Beth's heirloom tablecloth. Everyone would catch up. And this year, once again, I would be absent. I missed that sense of belonging. But it was strange that even though neither Elle nor I lived with our families anymore, talking to her made me feel like I was home.

She stayed quiet for a few seconds but I could hear her smile as she spoke. “I have a surprise, and I'll probably wait to tell the family at Christmas. Four weeks. It may kill me. I'm bursting. But if you won't be home … Listen, I can't keep this inside.”

Shit, here it came, the announcement she was finally marrying Adam. I tried to hide my contempt for the asshole. “Congratulations.” A little flat, but at least I'd choked out the word.

“You don't even know what it is yet,” Elle said.

“I can imagine. Adam's a lucky guy. He'd better treat you well.”

“What? Oh. No way. I'm not getting married.” Elle almost giggled. Not marrying Adam didn't seem to sadden her at all. “You're so funny.”

Relief spread through me. “Okay. What's your news?”

“Something huge.” The pitch of her voice rose. I thought I was supposed to guess, but before I had a chance, she said, “Space. The final frontier.”

“No way. Seriously?”

“I got word this morning. NASA just assigned me to the
Atlantis
mission. It's going to take us two years to prepare, but we're upgrading Hubble.”

“The telescope?”

“Yes. And, Matt,” she said. “I'm doing an EVA!”

“What's a—”

“EVA. Extravehicular activity. A space walk. Can you believe this?” Her voice was as bubbly as champagne.

I rubbed my forehead, absorbing it. My pride in her. My joy for her. My concern for her safety. This time, when I offered congratulations, I did so with enthusiasm. “Peep, I'm
so
happy for you.”

“Thank you. I haven't told anyone else yet.”

“Except Adam?”

“Not even him. I'm supposed to keep it mum until they announce it at work next week. But I had to tell someone, and I wanted to tell you.”

   31   

A little more than a year later, on February 1, 2003, traveling at twelve thousand miles per hour, the Space Shuttle
Columbia
broke up during its reentry. As Houston waited for confirmation in silence, the television stations broadcast what usually went without note. I mourned for every one of the crew, but I felt grateful for Elle's safety.
Atlantis
was scheduled for the following year.

NASA grounded the Space Shuttle program while they investigated and concluded that a suitcase-size block of insulating foam broke off the external tank and damaged a heat tile on
Columbia
's left wing.

As a spectator with a vested interest, I watched the news, popped onto NASA.gov every day, and covertly hoped the Space Shuttle program ended forever. But after the safety experts came up with a number of rescue scenarios, officials gave the program the go-ahead.

However, Elle's scheduled flight to Hubble remained problematic. Rescue would be impossible from the telescope's orbit. If the shuttle were damaged during takeoff, it would not have sufficient fuel to make it to the International Space Station to await help. Thus Elle's mission was scrubbed.

“So close to bliss,” she said. “Adam thinks they'll assign me to another mission.”

Screw Adam
, I thought.

My relationship with Carol moved forward or backward according to how much our surgical rotations overlapped or conflicted. If someone asked me if I had a girlfriend that winter, I probably would have said no, instead categorizing our relationship as friends with benefits. But during the early spring of 2003 Carol and I began spending more time together. Our rotations were in sync, and so were we. I all but moved into her place, leaving a razor and toothbrush and a drawer full of clothes. There was nothing official, not even a key, and I didn't stay there in her absence, but sometime, somehow, we became a couple.

Dr. Shah told me to close as he snapped off his surgical gloves. He wandered back to the MRI and studied the film one more time while I put in the last few sutures.

“Get him to the recovery room,” Shah said. “Write the operative note and postop orders, and I'll check in after I speak with his parents.”

“Will do,” I said, not envying Shah the task of delivering the grim prognosis.

As the team rolled our patient past OR 7, I saw Carol through the window. Both in the fifth year of our residencies, Carol's in pediatric surgery, mine—of course—in neurosurgery, we were both logging many hours in the OR.

Ten minutes later I was sitting in the recovery room, charting on the eight-year-old boy. And there wasn't a damn thing we could do. Sure the biopsy would determine the treatment, but he would still be dead before he reached middle school.

Carol smiled at me as she slipped into the chair next to mine, her surgical mask pulled down around her neck, her black hair still hidden beneath her OR cap. Her warm eyes met mine, saying something more than the hello she murmured aloud.

“I don't know how you do it, working with kids.” I leaned back in the chair.

She pulled my chart over and skimmed my entry. “Damn. Brain-stem glioma. Poor little guy.” Furtively, she glanced around then she took my hand in hers.

I tried to shift the conversation. “What kind of case are you coming from?”

“Oh, an easy one,” she said. “A pyloric stenosis repair. Some things are easy to fix. Six-week-old comes in with projectile vomiting. I rehydrate him, find the cause, and after a quick in-and-out surgery, he goes on to live a normal life. Happy ending. Not all of them are, but I get a lot more happy ones than not.”

“This one won't have a happy ending,” I said, pointing at the boy's chart.

She pulled my knuckles to her mouth, kissed them quickly, and let my hand go. “That's outside your control.” She ran her finger along my cheek. “You know what I love most about you? You genuinely care about your patients.”

“So do you,” I said, but my gut clenched on her words. What she loved most—about me? Yes, we were … sexually intimate, but we had never—even in the heat of the moment—ever uttered—the four-letter word
love
.

The sound of the infant's wails split the silence of the recovery room; the smallest patient is capable of making the loudest sound. Carol jumped up even before the nurse summoned her.

“Dr. Wentworth? I need an order for pain medication.”

“Be right there,” Carol said. Then she turned back to me. “Let's stay home tonight and drive out to the beach in the morning.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let's stay home.” The word swung down like a pendulum finding its equilibrium, swinging back and forth, slowing at the center point. Home. The word. The word
love
. And I was at home with Carol, more and more. And oddly, I almost added,
I love you
. But I bit my tongue. The only woman I'd ever told I loved her was Elle.

Nevertheless, as I watched Carol cross the room, as I watched her write orders then stop by the crying infant's crib, as I watched her lay hands on the child to soothe him, I realized there were things I loved about this woman, too. And for the first time I felt like I could be happy if I allowed her to get close, if I let myself love her.

The next day we drove out to her family's beach house in the Hamptons for the weekend. Although I'd been there before, as we pulled up, I saw the place differently. In spite of my desire to move home after I completed my neurosurgical residency, I could see the appeal of the big-city lifestyle, at least Carol's socioeconomic version of it: an apartment with a park view and a doorman, a second home on the beach. Even with the late April rains, I loved the ocean. This wasn't so bad.

That evening, in the Wentworths' not-so-humble cottage, Carol and I were curled up together in front of an expansive stone fireplace. I thought she must have fallen asleep; she was so quiet and still. In the distance the sound of the surf pounding the beach and rain pattering on the roof could lull anyone into dream. This was good, I thought. I had everything I could want: a career and a beautiful girlfriend. I very quietly whispered the words “I love you.” Maybe I was practicing, trying it on for size.