With Love from the Inside (3 page)

She'd just finished lighting the last candle when Thomas walked through the side door leading in from their garage. His phone plastered to his ear, he was still giving the nurses orders: “Up her pain meds to what we discussed. Call me if her temperature is over 100.5.” He blew Sophie a kiss as soon as he saw her.

Eight-forty-five in the evening seemed to be his usual time of arrival rather than the exception these days. Sophie didn't complain; when Thomas was home he made her feel like she was the only person who mattered in his busy world.

Pad Thai, spring rolls, and steamed vegetables were arranged on coordinating black-and-red-and-yellow-flowered platters, while the take-out containers lurked in the trash can by the garage. She knew he didn't actually think she cooked all this herself, but she loved to give him that impression.

“Hey, baby.” He kissed her on the cheek, then tossed his keys and cell phone onto the ivory granite countertop. “I'm starving.”

“Hi, handsome. Save any lives today?”

“I improve lives—not save them.” He grinned. It was a standing rhetoric the two had had since they'd started dating a few months after Thomas began his plastic surgery fellowship.

She knew Thomas loved his job. And she loved the way he described his work, even jokingly comparing himself to Frank Lloyd Wright. If his
patients—or clients, as he liked to call them—wanted some additions, he could do that. If clients needed some subtractions, he could do that as well. No one was too young and no body too old to deserve a little renovation. Lately, most of his clients—and most of them were women—wanted additions on the upper floor.

Sophie didn't mind. Breast augmentation paid the bills, financed some pretty elaborate vacations, and allowed her to live in a house that had been featured on more than one regional magazine cover. She could overlook the fact that Thomas had touched more breasts than Hugh Hefner had.

“How was your meeting?” he asked, while he opened a package of soy sauce. “Talk anybody into helping you with the fund-raiser?”

“I did. I have most of the key committee chairs lined up. I still want to give Mindy something to do.” She picked up her spring roll from her plate and peeled back the overly fried top layer. “Did you know she and Stephen were having problems?”

Thomas leaned back in his chair and tossed the empty packet of soy sauce in the trash. “I think I heard Eva say something about it when she was dropping off samples at the office the other day.”

“Eva's working again?” She didn't know what to be more shocked about—Stephen and Mindy or Eva's access to Thomas.

“A couple days a week. The drug company gave her a salary she couldn't refuse. She's taking samples around to a few offices in the area.”

Great
, Sophie thought.
Not only do we have to live in the same neighborhood with Malibu Barbie, but Thomas gets to see her at the office, too.

“Can you hand me a napkin?” he asked, interrupting her jealous thoughts. “I missed you today.” His wide smile reinforced his words.

Most parts of her believed him. The other jagged misfit pieces still felt unworthy and lost, frantically trying to find their way back to where they fit and felt protected. To her once-unbroken place, her existence before her mom killed William and shattered Sophie's life.

Thomas's pager went off before dinner was finished.

“It's the hospital.” He pushed his plate back and looked at the numbers on his pager. “Have a kid not doing so well.”

“The little girl with the scars?”

“You saw the paper?” Thomas paused the twirling of his noodles around the fork.

“I saw Eva.” Sophie leaned over and wiped some sauce off the corner of Thomas's mouth. “I knew my husband had a soft spot for children hidden somewhere inside there.”

He hated treating kids, and Sophie knew it. Not that he didn't like children—they were just more challenging and he didn't like to make them cry. Most of their problems were a result of birth defects, accidents, or because of an incompetent ER doc who couldn't sew. The parents were usually overprotective and hovering, making Thomas's job even harder. The child would inevitably squirm, shift on the exam table, and eventually cry before Thomas would have to ask his nurse to hold the kid down.

“I'll call the hospital from the car. Come with me and you can see Mindy. I think she's on tonight.”

“I'd love to,” Sophie said as she stuffed down the rest of her spring roll. “May be the only way I can spend time with my popular husband.”

—

T
HOMAS RAN AHEAD OF
S
OPHIE DOWN THE LONG,
deserted hospital corridor. The phone call from the car hadn't gone well. Sophie had listened over the speakerphone as Anna, the nurse on two west, said, “Your six-year-old postsurgical graft patient in room two-sixteen, she's not doing so well, pulse is rapid and irregular, temperature 104.9. Her mother called the nurses' station because she seemed confused.”

“Okay,” Thomas replied, then paused. Sophie could tell by his silence he was trying to find the reason why the girl had gone south after a routine surgery. Before he could come up with any good explanation, the
nurse shouted in the phone, “Dr. Logan, better get here quick; oxygen levels are dropping. She doesn't look good.”

Sophie followed him as he rushed toward the girl's room, giving orders to the nurse on his cell phone. His six-foot-three-inch build exuded confidence and commanded respect. Even in a crisis, Thomas remained composed and certain.

Sophie paid attention to the way other women looked at him. The way they followed his instructions without hesitation or doubt. She noticed details like the way his graphite eyes tapered when he concentrated but became almost round when he had something important to say. His steady hands had propelled him to the top during his plastics fellowship, and then to a position at one of the top hospitals in the Southeast. He was as talented as he was good-looking.

Still, Sophie knew things Thomas would never know. Disgusting, never-discussed things, like the wrenching smell of feces and the shape it takes when rubbed on a dingy prison wall. Images a child should be protected from—those were the images that formed the backdrop of Sophie's last memories of her mom.

Thomas's Ivy League education had prepared him for many things, but Sophie's real life had taught her lessons you couldn't pay to learn. His childhood had consisted of playdates and lacrosse games, while her Saturdays in high school had been spent taking the bus back and forth to visit her mother. She was never sure whether she visited because of obligation or loneliness, but every Saturday, while other teenage girls were trying on prom dresses or squeezing into bikinis at the mall, she boarded the bus, robotically paid her fare, and stayed with her mom as long as prison visiting hours would allow—until one Saturday she didn't anymore.

Marrying Thomas had given her a fresh start, a clean slate. One that could be written on with the words of a life she was supposed to have, deserved to have. No one, she'd decided, would ever know her shame, or the scandal that had ripped apart a little girl's fairy tale.

Sophie hadn't consciously decided to fake her way into a more privileged world. Her fate had happened to her, set in motion the day Thomas walked into the Starbucks where she was working to pay her way through grad school. Her dad's life insurance had covered college and some of her current classes, but paying for an apartment and food was another thing. Her green employee apron, stained with God knew what, had been what she was wearing when she met her future husband. He would tell her a few months later that it was crazy love at first sight. For Sophie, it was like a dream come true. His dark, wavy hair and pin-striped blue-and-white Ralph Lauren dress shirt, tucked into perfectly pressed khakis, had signaled he was out of her league. She hadn't dated much, but the guys in her life didn't come in looking like Thomas or ride out driving the kind of car he did. She couldn't believe it when he asked her out two weeks and seven lattes later.

Now green aprons, taking orders, and listening to people complain about their coffee were a thing of the past. She was the wife of Dr. Thomas Logan and the daughter of no one.

—

T
HOMAS CONSULTED WITH THE NURSES ON DUTY
while Sophie searched the hallway for Mindy. “Hey,” she said, when Mindy finally appeared from behind a pile of charts on the unit secretary's desk. “You have a second to talk?”

“I will as soon as I'm finished drawing my meds.” Mindy looked out of order and her flat-ironed hair seemed even more worn. Chunks had started to rebel and wave in the wrong direction around her rounded face. “I know someone who has time for you,” Mindy said, as she pulled a rubber band off of her wrist and corralled her red hair (paprika red, as Mindy described it: “My stupid hair looks like a garnishment on a damn deviled egg”). She tied it off in a French knot, then pointed to the room located directly in front of the nurses' station. “He's been asking for you.”

Max's face lit up when Sophie walked into his room.
Sesame Street
was just ending on TV. She reached for the remote, which was sitting on the table next to his bed, and turned it off before public television forced Max to watch some French chef make chocolate soufflé with a twist of rum.

Max, who had just turned three, still needed the rails of the bed up when he was unsupervised. Sophie lowered one and sat on the edge of the mattress beside her favorite hospital resident. “Hey, little man. How are you doing today?”

Max placed his index finger over his throat to cover the surgically created hole from a tracheostomy and with a raspy voice said, “Puzwle.”

“Puzwle,” Sophie teased. “What's that?”

Max, now sitting up and bouncing on his bent knees, pointed across the room to the circus puzzle he and Sophie had been working on for the past few weeks.

“Puzwle,” Max said, giggling. “Over there.”

“Oh, you mean
puzzle
,” she said, gently poking Max in the tummy. “I'll get it for you.”

She scooted Max back to the center of the bed, then retrieved the puzzle from the table under the windows. “Think we will ever finish this thing?”

Max held up both of his arms and wiggled every finger, making it impossible for Sophie not to pick him up and set him on her lap as they searched for the missing piece that would finish the white unicorn on the carousel.

She found the corner piece before Max did and slid it to the edge of the table, away from the distractions of the other pieces. Her plan worked. Max squealed in delight as he picked up the piece and said, “Horsie done.”

Mindy, who was Max's nurse for the day, walked in just in time to witness his victory. “Good job, Max. You're such a smart little boy. Who's your helper?” She winked at Sophie. Max ignored her, intent on finding the piece that would complete the elephant's ear.

“Any news on finding this guy a foster family?” Sophie whispered, while Mindy prepared his medications. Max's premature birth had left him with underdeveloped lungs, which was why he had the tracheostomy. His mother, Sophie had heard, couldn't handle the responsibilities of caring for an infant with such severe special needs.

“Not yet, not with all his care. Going to take a special family for this one,” Mindy said, then converted the first dose of medication into a bunny rabbit hopping toward Max's unwilling mouth. He'd been placed in a few homes, as far as Sophie knew, but nothing permanent. His need for constant suctioning and breathing treatments had worn the last family out. And his health didn't appear to be getting any better. Lately, he seemed to be in the hospital more than out.

Sophie had met Max quite by accident. His occupational therapist had been giving him a ride through the hospital gift shop in an oversize plastic green wagon and Sophie, who was volunteering in the unit, caught a glimpse of his big, gap-toothed smile when they went wheeling by. His messy blond hospital hair and large brown eyes captivated her heart, and her growing relationship with him eventually set in motion her idea to start her fund for needy children on the pediatric ward.

She'd convinced Thomas to be the figurehead behind the fund-raising effort, but not before he attempted to persuade her not to get too involved with Max. “He has social workers to help him,” said Thomas. “Besides, I don't want you to get attached to him and get your heart broken.”

Her heart was already broken, and maybe, in some small way, Max could help change that. She and Max had a connection, and if she couldn't help William, couldn't she at least help Max?

“Here comes Peter Cottontail,” Mindy said in her best furry voice. As Sophie looked on, she noticed Mindy's left hand was missing her wedding ring. She started to ask her about Stephen, but before she could, a flurry of activity in the hallway interrupted their conversation. “Code red in room two-sixteen, code red in room two-sixteen,” shouted a voice over
the PA system. Mindy immediately got up to leave. “I think that's Thomas's patient. Be back as soon as I can.”

Sophie tucked Max into bed and then closed his door. She didn't want him to be startled any more than she assumed he already was. However, Max, to her surprise, didn't seem to notice the hospital hustle and bustle, but busied himself making a pretend rocket ship out of a folded lunch menu.

She dimmed the lights since it was after ten and pulled his favorite book,
The Velveteen Rabbit
, out of his top drawer. “I like wabbits, not bunnies,” he'd told her the last time she read it to him.

It was clear to her she needed Max more than he needed her right now, but at least he nodded when he saw the book and tossed the makeshift rocket to the floor.

He scoured his bed for his
Toy Story
blanket. Sophie helped in the search, undoing his sheets in three out of the four corners. The bed looked as if a tornado had blown through, causing them both to laugh when they noticed Buzz Lightyear and the gang had been hiding under the bed the entire time.