Turning Point(29)
It was a concept she wanted to explore with the others. They were all warriors in a cold, lonely world, fighting for each life they saved, more than in other specialties. Wendy had been challenged by the severity of the injuries they dealt with during her residency, and loved the work, but she hadn’t understood the high price they themselves paid until later. And few of their patients made full recoveries, which was disheartening. Most were just too damaged. Even when they saved patients, quality of life afterward was an issue, especially with head injuries. It was serious business. But she still loved being pushed to the maximum of her abilities, and the successes they had. They all did, which was why they stayed in it. She couldn’t imagine doing any other kind of work, and Bill had said the same during dinner. It was a victory every time they saved a life.
Wendy wasn’t even sure she wanted children anymore. She had given up the idea a few years before, because of the Jeff situation, but maybe having them wouldn’t have been right for her anyway. She wondered if you needed a nonmedical partner to have a family and do it successfully. Bill had admitted that his ex-wife was a good mother to their daughters. And he spent less than two months with them every year, although he would have seen more of them if they’d lived in San Francisco. He seemed like a good dad to Wendy.
There was a lot to think about when she went to bed that night. Then her mind drifted to Jeff again, in Aspen with Jane, and her heart sank as it always did when she imagined them together. She had become the willing outcast in his life, the dark secret. It was a role she didn’t want to play anymore, and she was sure of that now. She hadn’t told Bill her boyfriend was married because she was ashamed of it. All she had to do now was tell Jeff. That was the hard part. And then walk away, which was going to be the hardest part of all.
Chapter Eight
Feeling very Parisian, the four Americans rode rented Vélib’ bikes to their COZ meeting on Monday morning, to start their second informative week. Wendy and Stephanie complained that they weren’t wearing helmets, and Tom and Bill brushed it off, as they watched for cars and motorbikes in the erratic traffic patterns.
“It would be embarrassing if we end up brain damaged while on our mission here,” Stephanie grumbled, pedaling as fast as the men with her long legs. Wendy had to work harder to keep up, and Bill occasionally slowed down for her to make sure she didn’t get lost on the way.
“No one on bicycles wears helmets here,” Tom reminded Stephanie. “Pretend you’re French.” The traffic was insane, particularly at that hour of the morning, but despite Stephanie’s concerns, they got to the office safely in time for the meeting, as the others filed in. Wendy had already said she would go home on the Metro at the end of the day, and Marie-Laure came over to talk to the two women to ask how the weekend was. She said two of her children had been sick and she had been stuck at home. They told her about shopping at the Galeries Lafayette and their visit to the Louvre.
“Maybe you should visit some of the smaller boutiques,” Marie-Laure suggested. “We get a lot of threats on the department stores now. I don’t feel comfortable shopping there myself.” It had occurred to Wendy, but Stephanie had insisted they’d be okay, and the bargains were great. There were sales everywhere, and they had both gotten some things they loved. Stephanie was wearing a new red V-neck sweater, which Gabriel noticed immediately when he arrived. He smiled at her, dropped his briefcase next to a chair, and walked over to her with the same intense expression that had haunted her all weekend. He kissed her on both cheeks, and just standing next to him gave her the same thrill as when he’d kissed her. Everyone in the room was aware of their mutual attraction, which Stephanie found embarrassing, but he didn’t mind at all.
Valérie was the last to come in, and smiled with a particularly wry glance at Tom, who felt weak at the sight of her.
“I had a very hard day yesterday, thanks to you,” he scolded her as she approached, and she was puzzled. “Paul and I visited every bar in St. Germain on Friday and Saturday night. I had a splitting headache all day. If you’d had dinner with me, I wouldn’t have been forced to check out every bar on the Left Bank, where I was shamelessly overserved by evil waiters.” They had progressed from red wine to tequila shots to scotch, and most of Saturday night was a blur when he woke up on Sunday.
“So that was my fault?” she asked, amused. Paul looked rough too. Neither of them had shaved before the morning meeting, but both were handsome men and could get away with it, and it was the current trend in Paris as well as the States. Bill had shaved and looked fresh and relaxed after his weekend with his children. His activities had been more wholesome than theirs.
Paul had wound up going home with some Brazilian girl from the last bar, which he barely remembered. She was an exotic dancer the bar had hired with a samba troupe for the evening. Tom had a vague recollection of dancing on the bar with a half-naked girl wearing a G-string made of feathers. He was sure they’d had fun, what he recalled of it, and had found the G-string in the pocket of his jacket when he woke up in his apartment on Sunday morning. He wasn’t sure if the girl had been there or not, but kept the G-string as a souvenir of a very entertaining evening in Paris. He had other mementos like it at home.
“It sounds like you deserve the headache you got,” Valérie commented, and the others laughed as they sat down at the conference table and got down to business, looking at the schedule for the week. Gabriel sat next to Stephanie and whispered to her occasionally as they studied statistics and descriptions of the hospitals they’d be visiting. They went over a lot of paperwork, and Valérie handed out a synopsis of their post-trauma programs, how they were run, and how quickly they were set up after the incident. The systems in place sounded very efficient, and they had a two-year follow-up program with free therapy for as long as it was needed, and it could be extended on request.