Turning Point(6)
Stephanie dressed Ryan and Aden first, and left them with Andy when she went to shower and dress herself. She combed her long blond hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, and put on makeup, which she rarely had time to do. She put on heels and gold earrings, and smiled when she saw her husband in slacks and a blazer, and her sons in their black velvet suits.
She could feel her phone vibrating in her purse under her arm as she walked into the room, and prayed it wasn’t the hospital. She took it out and looked, and saw the familiar 911 code, and the phone number of the trauma unit. She answered it immediately, as Andy watched her face intently and listened to her side of the conversation. She gave rapid instructions to call the neurosurgeon on duty, and said she’d be there in fifteen minutes. Andy’s face fell. It was Murphy’s Law, the minute they tried to go somewhere when she was on call, the hospital pulled her in. He went to more than half their social engagements alone. He was used to it, but he didn’t like it. And he knew his mother would be upset if Stephanie didn’t show up on Christmas night. That was sacred to her, and to Andy too. He hated her working on the holidays.
“What am I supposed to tell my mother?” he asked, looking irritated, as though it was the first time it had happened and not the hundredth. Stephanie felt that he should be used to it by now, not take it personally, and be able to explain it to his mother without it being a drama.
“The truth always works, that I’m on call, and I had to go in. And please tell her I’m really sorry not to be there tonight.” She meant it sincerely but was annoyed that Andy was making an issue of it in front of the boys, and that Aden and Ryan were picking up on the tension between their parents.
“She never understands why you sign up to be on call on days like this,” he said, but he didn’t add that he didn’t either. “Why can’t the people who don’t have kids do it?”
“We all do it. It’s expected in every department. And trauma and the ER are especially busy on nights like this.” Her father was an obstetrician and her mother had never made a fuss about it. It seemed unfair to her that Andy did. She had understood it growing up. There were things her father inevitably missed when he was working, and no one complained. Why was it different for her?
She walked them to the car and strapped Ryan into his car seat, while Andy put Aden in his booster seat, for the drive to Orinda. Andy looked at her unhappily and didn’t say a word, as she stood in front of the house while he pulled out of the driveway. She waved and then walked back into the house, took off the new black velvet dress and hung it up, put on jeans, a sweater, slipped her feet into clogs, and put on her white coat with her name embroidered on it. She put the nylon rope with her badge on it over her head, grabbed her purse, walked out to her car, and drove to the hospital in Mission Bay downtown. “Merry Christmas,” she said out loud to herself. Her mind was already on her work, there was always something reassuring about it, knowing that this was what she did best. She loved her husband and children, but the hospital was where she belonged and felt most like herself.
* * *
—
Thomas Wylie stood with a cluster of women around him at the nurses’ station desk of the emergency room at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, and a burst of laughter escaped from the women like balloons rising into the air. There were at least six of them standing there as he told one of his stories about when he had trained in Chicago, lived in Ireland for a year, or volunteered in Zimbabwe. He had a million stories to tell. He’d had a colorful life and a varied career, and the stories to go with it, half of which probably weren’t true. But Tom Wylie knew how to make the nurses laugh. The rumor was that he had slept with half the female medical personnel in the hospital, which probably wasn’t true either, but easy to believe. He had movie-star good looks, and at forty-three looked ten years younger than he was. There was a boyish quality about him. He’d gone to Yale as an undergraduate, medical school at the University of Chicago, done his residency at UCLA. He’d done some modeling, in order to meet female models, and had wound up in Oakland randomly, when they needed more doctors for the trauma unit at Alta Bates and he applied and got the job. Alta Bates was the largest private medical center in the East Bay. He worked at the Summit campus in Oakland.
He liked to say that he was a nomad at heart, with no roots anywhere, and never talked about his childhood. He was an artful seducer, and admitted that he’d never had a serious long-term relationship, and didn’t want one. If a woman got too serious about him, he was known to disappear immediately. He had no desire to get married. He was charming, supposedly fabulous in bed, and couldn’t resist wooing almost every female who crossed his path. When the brief affair was over, he usually managed to stay friends with the women he’d slept with. He liked to say that they were his hobby—he collected them.
In spite of themselves, his male colleagues liked him too. He was outrageous and funny, and despite his casual style, he was an excellent doctor, and a good man to have around in a crisis. He took his medical career seriously, but nothing else. When it came to women, he was the class clown and Don Juan. He was a hard man to dislike, although some of the older, more conservative nurses disapproved of him, but most of the time he charmed them too. He was undeniably handsome and a practiced flirt.