Turning Point(3)

    He had hated people knowing who his family was when he was growing up, and he still didn’t like it. His brother thrived on flaunting the family name and connections. They were very different men. Their parents regarded Bill as an outcast and renegade of sorts. His humble life and work mystified them. He could have had an illustrious career in medicine in New York, but he never wanted that. Caring for derelicts and patients with gunshot wounds that he saw almost daily in the trauma unit at SF General was exactly what he wanted to do. His family name meant nothing in the world he worked in, in San Francisco, and that suited him too. He had become something of a loner since the divorce. New nurses and female residents were always startled by how good-looking he was, but he paid no attention to them while on duty or off. He was all about his work and his two daughters. No one knew anything about his personal life, which was just what he wanted.

His romantic life had been sparse and sporadic since the divorce. There was the occasional superficial date, and nothing more. His one regret was that his parents barely knew his daughters. Athena had seen to that, and his parents had made no effort either. Their dislike for their ex-daughter-in-law had carried over to the children. They had tea with the girls in London, when they traveled, if they had time. But more often than not, they found making time to see the children inconvenient, or Athena made it difficult. Planning with her was never easy. She was as vague and unreliable as she had always been, so Pip and Alex had no real attachment to their American grandparents, only to their father, whom they saw too little of but enjoyed when they did. He called them several times a week, and tried to stay abreast of what they were doing. It wasn’t easy maintaining a fully engaged relationship with children six thousand miles away. As girls from good families did in England, Pip would be going to boarding school in two years. She could hardly wait. Time and distance were not on Bill’s side, and he did all he could to compensate for that. Whenever possible with his busy schedule, he flew to London for a long weekend to visit them. Although nowadays they were often occupied with their friends and finding the right time for them was getting harder every year.



* * *



—

    Things got busier in the ER as the day wore on. Bill sent a heart attack to coronary ICU, an old man from the Tenderloin brought in by paramedics. He sent a homeless recent amputee, a drug addict with a fierce wound infection, to the surgical ward to be evaluated by the attending surgeon, and he moved a child suspected of meningitis to the pediatric ICU for a spinal tap. He called in a neurosurgeon for a woman in a coma from a brain injury she had sustained in a car accident. It was all in a day’s work. He went from one exam room to the next, and stopped to chat with an elderly woman who had fallen down the stairs and was more shaken up than injured. Miraculously, she hadn’t broken a hip, and he was warm and reassuring with her. The hospital had a fantastic elder care unit, the best in the city, and he referred patients there regularly. He had a kind, easy bedside manner that appeared casual to the patients, but wasn’t, as he evaluated them carefully, looking for symptoms of hidden problems in addition to the obvious ones they had. The nurses all admired and respected him. He treated every patient with the utmost care and attention, no matter who they were. Unlike a lot of doctors, he didn’t show off or have a big ego. He was a genuinely nice guy.

    “Wowza…who’s the handsome prince on duty today?” a relief nurse filling in on the holiday asked one of the regular nurses as Bill left an exam room and moved on to the next one. He had dark hair and warm chocolate-brown eyes, and looked athletic in the hospital scrubs he wore. His smile, as he talked to the ninety-year-old woman who had fallen, lit up the room. The relief nurse had been observing him closely, and commented afterward that he was a hunk.

“He’s the head of trauma. He always works on holidays,” the regular ER nurse told her. “Don’t get too excited. I’ve worked here for ten years, and I’ve never heard of him dating anyone at work. He’s a serious guy.”

“Married?” the relief nurse quizzed her. He was too attractive to dismiss lightly.

“Divorced, I think. He must be to work the hours he does. He’s just another workaholic. You have to be, around here. I think he has kids somewhere far away, Australia, New Zealand. I forget. That’s why he works holidays.”

“That means no girlfriend either,” the nurse said hopefully.

“Or a very neglected one. The guys in trauma work crazy hours. You should find a nice dermatologist, they’re never on call,” the regular nurse teased her. “I worked with him on Christmas two years ago, and New Year’s Eve. And he signs up for Thanksgiving every year.”

    “He probably just hasn’t met the right woman,” the relief nurse said. She was on a mission, which the staff nurse knew wouldn’t get her far with Bill.

“Yeah. Whatever.” They cleaned up the room and moved on to the next cubicle just as Bill was paged for another gunshot wound. It was an eighteen-year-old boy who died while Bill was examining him. The police had brought him in, and there was nothing Bill could do. He had almost bled to death by the time he arrived, shot in the stomach and chest. Bill looked grim as he walked to the nurses’ station and filled out the paperwork. It was his second gunshot fatality of the day. The boy’s family had been called but hadn’t come in yet. It was going to be a hell of a Christmas for them. He glanced up and saw the police paramedic he had seen before. The medic knew what the paperwork meant, and shook his head.