Beautiful(38)

She flew to New York on the twentieth of December. A light snow was falling when they took off from Paris. She would have loved to see it decorating the city, like lace on the lampposts. She had loved seeing it as a child.

It was bitter cold when she landed in New York. She was wearing an old raccoon coat of her mother’s that she had kept, and a big matching fur hat.

She took a cab to the guest apartment they had assigned to her. It was perfect, just big enough to be comfortable. The bedroom was all done in pink chintz, the living room was a soft ivory, like their office. There were flowers to welcome her, a basket of fruit, soft drinks, champagne, wine, and a menu from the restaurant she could order meals from. She plugged in her computer and unpacked the night she arrived. She had brought mostly warm, comfortable clothes she would wear while recovering from the surgery. They had told her she would probably want to stay in for three to five days when she got home from the hospital, and both the pre-and post-op instructions were on the desk. Everything was meticulously organized.

She had an appointment with Dr. Talbot the next morning, and they did the necessary blood work. Her files had been sent from the hospital in Belgium, and both doctors had studied them carefully. They didn’t want any surprises. They had a full body X-ray done, so they knew where the shrapnel was still lodged. They weren’t going to try to remove any of it. They were only concerned with the surface, and the scars.

She met with Dr. Dennis after she saw Dr. Talbot. He gave her a warm welcome and a hug. Having a daughter the same age, he was fatherly toward her. He could see how excited she was about the surgery, and a little nervous. The only hospital she’d ever been in as a patient was the one in Brussels, and she was familiar with all their pre-op procedures. Here everything was different and unfamiliar, but it all went smoothly, and both doctors reassured her that it would be over quickly, and she’d be back in the apartment after a short stay in the hospital. They were going to keep her heavily sedated while in the hospital, and were going to keep her pain-free once back in the apartment. A nurse would check on her daily for the first few days, to watch for complications, but they didn’t anticipate any problems. She had done very well after her surgeries in Belgium. They had read all her records, which had been sent to them. Aside from the effects of the attack, she was young and in good health.

Dr. Dennis chatted with her after he finished examining her body again. He had a map of all the scars, and had marked the ones he intended to work on, after Dr. Talbot worked on her face. They had worked as a team many times before, and had been partners for a dozen years. They’d met during Dr. Talbot’s residency at Yale, and she gleaned from chatting with them that Dr. Dennis was married and had four children, and Dr. Talbot was divorced and currently single. Dr. Talbot was going to be on call on Christmas Eve and Day, so Dr. Dennis could be with his family. And Dr. Dennis was going to be on call on New Year’s Eve, which he said he didn’t care a whit about. He and his wife never went out on New Year’s. One could tell that he was a family man. Dr. Talbot had two college-age children at UCLA, and neither of them was going to be with him at Christmas. He was meeting them in January for a long weekend to go skiing in Aspen. He had a house there.

“Maybe I’ll be able to lure you to Africa with me one day,” Dick Dennis said casually while Véronique dressed.

“Why Africa?” she said, as she pulled down her sweater and put on her boots. All of her tests and exams had checked out. She was surprisingly healthy and strong given what she’d been through nine months before. It was the blessing and advantage of youth. He was sure that many of the other victims hadn’t fared as well.

“I spend three months in Angola every year,” he explained to her, “at a children’s hospital. Angola had twenty-seven years of civil war, which left them with over four million displaced people, incredible famine, and ten to fifteen million unexploded land mines. The damage to the population from those mines is heartbreaking. I got involved years ago with the HALO Trust. We’re hoping to make Angola and several other countries free of land mines in the next few years. HALO has been working toward that for more than twenty years. I spend my three months there every year, operating on the children who are the victims of those mines. Many lose limbs or are severely disfigured. We round up the local children who’ve been injured, and provide free surgery and support services. The hospital is run by a small convent of nuns, and wonderful, dedicated nurses. They have medical teams who go through the area periodically. I do surgery there as a volunteer. You come back feeling as though you made some kind of difference. A three-year-old doesn’t lose a leg, or a seven-year-old boy keeps his arm, or you try to repair what’s left so they can function and maybe a little girl isn’t disfigured. We see some awful stuff there. And the nurses and nuns are terrific.

“It’s the only way I can do what I do here. You can only inject so much Botox, without feeling that you’ve wasted your medical school degree. Phillip is better at all that than I am. The work in Angola feeds my soul. Each of my kids has come out there at least once. Some like it better than others. My oldest son just started med school at Columbia. He’s come out there with me a lot. The others aren’t so keen on it. My wife hates it, but she’s a good sport about letting me do what’s important to me. She spends three months having dinner with her girlfriends, and I think she loves it.” He laughed, and Véronique was fascinated by what he was saying. “Princess Diana was involved with HALO, and her son Prince Harry is now.”