with confusion.
He wished he’d never read the letter, had never been given this burden to deal with.
Never been robbed.
Because that was what it was—robbery, pure and simple. His father’s confession had robbed him of the image that, until this evening, he had carried around with him.
Yes, he knew the man was not a saint, that he was flesh and blood and human, capable of making mistakes. But he’d always assumed that those mistakes would be tied in with judgment calls about his patients. Maybe an occasional failure to diagnose a particularly elusive illness properly.
Never in his wildest dreams would he have believed that his father would be guilty of personal misconduct. He would have gone so far as to swear on a stack of Bibles that his father had never strayed, never cheated on his mother, never been anything but loyal and faithful to everyone he knew, especially to the people in his immediate family.
Instead, James Wilder had betrayed his wife and, in a way, Anna.
No—all of them, Peter thought, trying in vain to bank down the hurt he felt.
This showed him another side to his father, a far more human side than he was willing to cope with at the moment. If his father had done something like this, had hidden a secret of this magnitude, were there other secrets that James Wilder hadn’t admitted to?
Here he was, trying to preserve his father’s legacy and maybe it was all just a huge sham, illusions created by smoke and mirrors to hide the actual man.
Maybe he really didn’t know his father at all.
Who knew, maybe his father would have jumped at the opportunity to have the hospital taken over by an HMO, to have someone pocket all the expenses, pay for everything and ultimately remove the responsibility for judgment calls from his hands.
Maybe …
No. Discovering that his father had had a relationship—and a child—with another woman while married to his mother, didn’t change the things that mattered. The basic things. And it sure as hell didn’t change the man that he was, Peter thought angrily.
He hadn’t based his feelings, his position, on the fact that his father would have done it this way. That his father would have approved of the stand he was taking. Believing that had only served as reinforcement. He, Dr. Peter Wilder, believed in what he’d said to Bethany and to the board. Believed that, when it came to the hospital, the old ways were the best and that Walnut River General would be much better off not being swallowed up whole by a soulless, unemotional conglomerate, no matter what kind of promises were made.
Rising to his feet, he sighed heavily and shook his head. He felt drained and exhausted beyond words.
Peter put the envelope back on the mantelpiece, not wanting to touch it any more right now. Wishing he could wipe its existence from his mind. But he wouldn’t be able to do that, even if he threw his letter and Anna’s into the fire.
“I wish you hadn’t told me this, Dad. I wish you hadn’t passed the burden on to me,” he whispered, aching.
Everything fell into place now. It all made sense to him.
This was why his father always seemed to go out of his way for Anna, treat her differently, share more time with her than he did with the rest of them. It wasn’t because he was trying to make up for her feeling like an outsider. He was doing it because he’d felt guilty about her very existence. Guiltier still because he didn’t tell her she was his real daughter. He had let her go on thinking she’d been abandoned when just the reverse was true. She could have been put up for adoption. Instead, he’d taken her into his family rather than let her go to someone else’s—and have the secret go with her.
His first instinct was to preserve his father’s memory for the others. Because this didn’t just affect Anna, but David and Ella as well. It was a package deal. If he passed this letter on to Anna, once she read it, the others needed to know, too. They needed to know that the family dynamics had changed.
No, Peter thought as he walked up the stairs to his bedroom, that was for Anna to decide. If he told her, it would be her secret to share or keep.
He laughed shortly. Who would have ever thought that he would be aligning himself with Anna against his brother and sister?
An ironic smile curved his mouth. That wasn’t altogether right now, was it? Anna was his sister, too.
His sister. His real sister.
Well, that explained why she seemed to have his father’s eyes. Because they were his father’s eyes.
Just when he thought there were no surprises left, he mused, shaking his head sadly.
The letter was no longer on his mantelpiece.
Early this morning, he’d gotten up and decided to leave the thick envelope in his study, in the middle drawer of his desk until he decided what to do with it.
Meanwhile, he was still a doctor with patients, still the chief of staff, albeit temporarily, faced with a supreme dilemma: how to make the rest of the board of directors vote his way regarding the NHC takeover.
Because all options needed to be explored, someone from the grasping conglomerate would be coming at the end of the month to look them over. Supposedly to observe how they functioned, but in likelihood, to attempt to sway them with promises.
If he came out staunchly opposed to the NHC executive’s visit, it would seem to the board that he was afraid of the challenge or the potential changes. Afraid that Walnut River General couldn’t withstand an in-depth comparison to the way hospitals beneath NHC’s massive banner were run.
He had too much on his mind to deal with the burden of his father’s request right now.
But the discovery hung over him heavily and made him far more serious than usual. A couple of his patients remarked on it, as did Eva, his nurse. All of them attributed the change in mood to his father’s passing.
He said nothing to correct them. This was not something he wanted to discuss even if he were free to do so.
The morning went on endlessly until the last patient was finally gone at twelve-thirty. It had taken Eva less than two minutes to grab her purse and run off to lunch.
“Want me to bring you back anything?” she offered just before she slipped out.
“No, I’m fine. I brought lunch.” It was a lie, but his appetite had deserted him last night, making no reappearance this morning. Food was the last thing on his mind.
“Okay, I’ll be back soon,” she promised, exiting.
He heard the outer office door close and turned his attention back to the work he’d spread out on his desk. There were several files he wanted to review before signing off on them.
Something else he probably wouldn’t be able to do soon if NHC came in, he thought. They were pushing for paperless offices. All the files would be on computer, on some nebulous server located in the middle of the country.
And what would everyone do if there was a power spike? Or a blackout. What then? What would happen to all the information that was stored?
Give me paper any day, he thought, opening the first folder he came to.
Forcing himself to focus, he was immersed in the file—and the patient—within seconds.
Preoccupied, he didn’t hear the knock on his inner office door, and was startled a bit when Bethany walked in. He sighed inwardly. Any other time he’d have been glad to see her. Now, the last thing he needed was another frontal assault about the virtues of NHC.
He felt his temper shortening already. “I’m in the middle of something,” he told her, then looked back at what he’d been reading.
“I won’t take up much of your time,” she promised. “I just came