and breaks. He stopped when he got to Bruce Nepom. After reading the chart, Guy put the stack back and headed for the ICU.
He found the man in room C. There wasn’t much to see. Nepom was hooked up to a heart monitor, IV, respirator. Bandages covered his face and head, and his ribs had been taped.
There wasn’t much hope, but he was glad to see Rachel had been so thorough. Everything that could have been done had been done. What he didn’t see on the chart was that Nepom’s family had been contacted.
After putting the chart back, Guy returned to admitting one more.
Karen gave him the rest of the night’s paperwork, and he headed for his office and another cup of coffee.
He flipped through more notes. Damn. Rachel and Amy must have stitched, sewn, patched, splinted and put casts on nearly a hundred people since the storm started.
The name on the next report stopped him cold. Heather Corrigan. He did a quick check on her vital statistics: age eighteen, blond hair, no wedding ring. It was the Heather he knew. His stepdaughter. And she was dead.
Guy put the papers down on his desk and closed his eyes. Heather was supposed to be in Europe with his ex-wife. What was she doing here? Pregnant?
He focused his gaze with some difficulty, but as he read, the words became horrifyingly clear. Preeclampsia. Heather was healthy, strong. For God’s sake, she was only eighteen. And she’d died in his E.R. What the hell had Rachel done?
He picked up the phone with shaking fingers and dialed.
“Hi. You’ve reached Dr. Rachel Browne. Leave your number at the beep.”
“Dr. Browne, this is Guy Giroux. Pick up the phone. Right now.” He sat stiffly, a well of anger making it difficult to breathe, then slammed the receiver down when she didn’t answer. He stared blankly at his desk for a moment, then pounded his fist on it so hard his pen holder fell over.
Rising slowly, Guy put on his coat, retrieved Heather’s chart and headed for his car. He needed to talk to Dr. Browne—now.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DRIVE TO RACHEL’S did nothing to calm Guy’s mind. He wavered between the respect he had for her as a doctor and the pain and rage he felt as a parent. He simply didn’t understand how she could have been so incompetent.
His tires squealed as he came to a stop in her driveway, and once the keys were out of the ignition he was heading for her front door.
He rang the bell several times, then beat on the wood with his fists, almost hitting Rachel as the door suddenly flew open.
“What is it?”
Guy’s tirade stopped before he was even able to start it. Dr. Rachel Browne, aka the Iron Lady, well known for her strict code of ethics and her somewhat aloof manner at the hospital, stood before him in a loose robe and tiny, see-through red nightie.
“Put your eyes back in their sockets, Guy, and tell me why you’re waking me up two hours after I got off the seventeen-hour shift from hell?”
He tore his eyes away from the vision she presented and looked straight into her eyes. “What the hell happened in there last night?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Heather Corrigan. Healthy eighteen-year-old. And she’s dead, Rachel.”
Rachel blinked at him as if his words weren’t English, as if she didn’t know she’d killed a girl in his E.R. Killed—
“I’m sorry I didn’t get the full report to you, Guy, but the girl had severe preeclampsia. I did everything possible to save her.”
“Everything possible,” he said, not believing that for a minute. “Where the hell was Williams?”
Rachel folded her robe tightly around her and slowly tied the knot in front. “There was only one OB on last night, and she was in the middle of a C-section with complications.”
He knew he was scaring her, that her step backward was a precursor to slamming the door in his face, but there had to be something she’d missed. Something she could have done.
“Guy? What’s going on?”
He focused on her face, realized his vision was blurry with tears. “She’s…she was my stepdaughter.”
Rachel’s eyes closed for a long moment, and when she opened them she touched his arm. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Damn it, Rachel, she was always perfectly healthy. There’s no reason this should have happened.”
“She hadn’t seen a doctor in a long time. No prenatal care at all. By the time she came in, her blood pressure was through the roof, the baby was almost dead. Guy, it was too late.”
He swallowed, leaned against the doorframe. Blinked his eyes clear. “I don’t understand any of this. She was supposed to be in Europe with her mother.”
“Why don’t you come in. Sit down.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you did everything. I just—”
“Of course.”
“Go back to sleep. You must be tired.”
“Are you sure you ought to be driving? With all the storm damage—”
“I’m fine. Sorry to have bothered you.” He turned and walked to his car, wishing like hell he could blame her. Blame anyone except himself.
RACHEL WATCHED as Guy got into his Range Rover, worried that he’d do something crazy, get distracted. Just plain run off the road.
Heather Corrigan had been his stepdaughter. She could hardly believe it even now, but why would he lie about something so awful?
Guy pulled out of her driveway too quickly. When he jerked to a stop, she saw him wipe his face with his hand, and when he started up again, he was moving at a much saner pace. Only when he turned the corner, out of her view, did her focus shift to her street. Tousled and windblown for sure, it still had the peaceful mien that had drawn her here in the first place.
There were mostly two-story houses with manicured lawns. Bikes, ten-speed and trainers, leaned against garage doors or lay on the sidewalk, making it difficult for the mailman.
She’d been so drawn here, and yet she’d never felt truly at home. Her night shifts, her single status. She was the odd duck, the silent stranger her neighbors nodded to when they couldn’t avoid her gaze.
Exhaustion washed over her, and she wasn’t quite sure whether it was the night before or the thought of the night ahead that made her so weary. Poor Guy. She’d had no idea. Yeah, she’d heard he’d been married before, but that was about the extent of her knowledge of his personal life.
The man was a hell of an administrator and an even better trauma surgeon. She was lucky to work with him.
But he was also terribly attractive, and not just because of his good looks. He pulled at her in a way that was too scary to examine closely. So she didn’t. She avoided him by working nights most of the time. By never letting down her guard. By being a doctor first, and a woman a distant second.
She closed her door, debating whether to get a glass of orange juice, but her body led her to the bedroom and her Egyptian-cotton sheets. To sleep.
GUY DIDN’T GET BACK to his office and privacy for two hours. The longest two hours he’d ever spent.
It was just that he had to know. For certain. So he’d gone to the morgue. In that cold room, with the sterile sinks and the gleaming drawers, he’d found her. Death had changed her, stiffened her soft features, made her face a mask. But it was Heather. God, what had she done to her hair? It was short, uneven, as if cut by ragged scissors without a mirror.
He