The Queen of Hearts(95)
I complied, taking in the warmth of him: his round cheeks and round brown eyes, the exuberant gleam of his grin. He smiled at me until I smiled back.
“There,” he said. “I wanted to see your face look happy.”
The smile felt good; I hadn’t remembered it could feel so good. Wyatt reached for me, tracing my cheekbones in his hands, gracing my nose with a kiss. “Your past is set, but your future is wide open,” he said. “Go get ’em, pumpkin.”
—
I pulled up to the Packards’ driveway, and after briefly considering parking on the street, I turned in. The driveway, intricately patterned with some kind of reddish pavers, led to a roundabout parking area where a Tesla slouched at an arrogant angle. I tried to suppress my disappointment. Some irrepressible part of me had clung to the hope that I’d see Zadie’s car waiting as I arrived.
To my surprise, Boyd Packard answered the door himself, wearing a blue golf shirt tucked into dark brown pants. “Dr. Colley,” he said. “Come in.” As best I could tell, there was no overt malice in his expression, but neither was there anything particularly encouraging. I followed him through a foyer dominated by a massive curving staircase and a chandelier the size of a cow, and then down a long hall constructed of wainscoting inlaid with antiqued mirrors. We arrived at a wood-paneled room at the back of the house, the ceiling soaring to the second story, brass-accented ladders on rails reaching to the upper shelves. A library.
“Fetch you a drink?” offered Boyd. He gestured in the direction of a bar: crystal glasses, decanters on trays, every imaginable liquor. The idea of a drink was abhorrent. I shook my head.
“Suit yourself,” said Boyd, refreshing the glass in his hand with an amber liquid from one of the decanters. “Betsy?”
I started a little; I had not seen Betsy, her legs crossed at the ankles, perched with balletic grace on the edge of a sofa. She rose and extended a hand to me. “Thank you for coming.”
I started to accept her hand but stopped, as for the first time, I saw the rest of the room. It was enormous, wrapping around a corner of the house, with a second seating area tucked into a bay of windows facing the rapidly darkening yard. I caught my breath as the person sitting near the windows rose and turned toward me. A clamorous hummingbird let loose in my chest. It wasn’t Zadie.
It was Nick.
—
I looked at him, uncomprehending, and then realized Betsy Packard’s hand hung in midair, waiting for me to shake it. I swerved my head back to her, three beats too late, and grasped her hand. “Thank you for having me,” I managed.
I drifted along behind Boyd and Betsy, stunned. What did it mean that Nick was here? I could not envision a scenario where this made sense.
We sat: Betsy and Boyd facing Nick, me alone in a straight-backed wing chair. I’d plotted my speech in a meticulous outline, but now I could remember none of it. We sat in awkward silence, no one sure how to proceed.
Boyd finally spoke. “Good of you to come, Nick.” He looked at me, and the bewilderment on my face must have spurred him to throw me a bone. He gestured to Nick. “We’re friends from the club.”
Nick cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was smooth. “Given that I’m a hepatobiliary surgeon, Boyd thought it might make sense to have me help interpret things.”
“Oh,” I said.
So that was it. He was going to hang me.
Nick leaned forward. “Let me start,” he said. “Boyd passed on the medical records so I could assess them. And I know”—he leveled his gaze on Betsy—“some of this is going to be very difficult to hear, and you may want to take a break from time to time.”
She gave him a tiny nod.
“Okay.” He paused. “As you’ve heard, your daughter likely died from a combination of two things: first, a condition known as abdominal compartment syndrome, which is an increased amount of pressure within the abdominal cavity. In her case, this was a result of the initial crush injury requiring a massive blood transfusion. She also had an unrecognized injury to one of the ducts in the pancreas, which leaked enzymes into her belly.”
No one looked at me. It was so quiet I could hear my own pulse.
Nick went on, his voice steady and reassuring, despite what he was saying. “The injury to the pancreas probably occurred during surgery, when the duct was inadvertently clamped. If she’d lived longer, it would have ultimately made her septic.”
Boyd spoke up. “Would Eleanor have lived if this duct hadn’t been cut? And if she’d not had the abdominal pressure problem?”
Now Nick looked at me.
“Yes,” I said.
The poison of the word settled over the room.
Boyd picked up the ball again. “Could she have been saved if this had been recognized earlier?”
I closed my eyes. “Yes,” I said again. “It’s very possible. Or if I had not closed her incision.”
Boyd directed his cold fury back to Nick. “Give me one reason,” he said, “that I shouldn’t sue her.”
Nick nodded, recognizing the question, but kept silent. We all watched him: the alert intelligence embedded in his handsome face, the answer to Boyd’s question whirring behind his blue eyes. He stood up.
“Boyd,” he said quietly. “I don’t believe you should sue her.”