What We Find (Sullivan's Crossing, #1)(44)

“You tell her to bail out while she could?” Sully asked.

“Not exactly,” Walter said. “I did suggest they had little in common and she might want to think on it a while longer. The kid was penniless. So was Maggie for that matter. But Maggie wasn’t going to stay penniless and I highly recommended a prenup. Nothing at all wrong with a prenup when one of the couple has great potential and the other doesn’t.”

“You have a prenup, Walter?” Maggie asked.

“We did,” he said. “It was Phoebe’s idea. It became null and void after a decade of marriage. That seemed reasonable. All that aside, you managed your situation very well. Sad but predictable.”

“I wasted a perfectly good marriage on him. And then there was the time right before residency—we had a very long talk about what it was going to be like, what kind of commitment I was making, how I had to be sure my personal goals matched my professional goals, that sort of thing. I’m still not sure what that means.”

“Now’s probably as good a time as any to think about what it means.”

“Listen, Walter, did you ever have second thoughts about important stuff? Like neurosurgery? Or maybe marrying a woman with a six-year-old? Or sinking all that money into a med student?”

“I’m a human being, Maggie. I’ve had second thoughts about everything. Giving important matters serious consideration and reevaluations is vital. I even have some regrets—but not about my practice, my wife or my stepdaughter. I was lucky in those areas of my life. At least, luckier than most men. Although I have to be honest—I think I’d rather have been a pilot.”

“Seriously? I never heard you say that before! But I remember your flying lessons. Didn’t you have an airplane for a while?”

“I was part owner of a Piper, but I didn’t keep it too long. Your mother wouldn’t go up with me. Such is life—we’re all different.”

Maggie took a bite of her sandwich, feeling a little more relaxed. “And, there was one other time. High school. Remember?”

“I remember,” he said, finishing off his sandwich.

She’d got a speeding ticket. She’d had girlfriends in the car and got caught annihilating the speed limit. She was going a hundred in a fifty-five. And of course lost all driving privileges for a long time. It didn’t matter that much as she was in boarding school where they weren’t allowed to have cars. But she went home some weekends. Walter was surprisingly firm in the no-driving department and even when her friends wanted to take her out, she was grounded. Then one Saturday night he said, “Come with me, Maggie. We’re going to the hospital. You’ll be out late.”

There was an accident and it involved teenagers. Walter was called to the emergency room and Maggie followed him wearing a lab coat so she looked like she belonged. There were terrible injuries, the police were at the hospital, alcohol was involved, frantic parents came running, the waiting room was a circus. Walter was one of several doctors who then went to the operating room from ER. “Stay with me, Maggie.” She remembered thinking Walter had shown her exactly what he wanted her to see, that recklessness hurt people and it could be deadly. But imagine her shock when he told his OR tech to suit her up and scrub her in.

“What?” she had asked, horrified. “What if I faint?”

“The circulating nurse will kick you to one side so you’re not in our way. But I want you to be there.”

She stood through not one but two surgeries on teenagers and watched in fascination as Walter calmly and confidently called for instruments, asked for extra hands, ordered suction while blood dripped on his shoes, drilled holes in a skull, implanted shunts, carved and stitched, even had to resuscitate one patient on the table. He never panicked; he never raised his voice. The circulating nurse mopped his sweating brow. Both patients went to recovery, Walter and Maggie following. Maggie heard a nurse say, “By the grace of God and a hair.” She heard Walter say to one of the parents, “We were very lucky.”

Maggie had been in a silent cloud of sheer wonder. It was nearly dawn when they were driving home. “Well, Maggie?” Walter said.

In a voice that sometimes rang in her ears to this day she heard herself say to her stepfather, “I have to do that.”

He pulled the car into their garage, stopped the engine and looked across the front seat at her. “You can do anything you choose to do, Maggie. But if you want to live to do it, you will not drink and drive and you will never exceed the speed limit again. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely. So, how long does it take to become a neurosurgeon?”

He was quiet a second and then said, “Forever.”

Maggie smiled and shook her head. “Walter—high school. My speeding ticket. A watershed moment.”

“Seems so,” he agreed. “I couldn’t have planned that, of course. I admit, I wanted to scare you. But it had a much bigger impact than that.”

“You didn’t think I’d be impressed with emergency surgery?”

“At that time in your life I was betting on a career in cheerleading.”

She gave a hollow little laugh. She thought for a moment. “Would you two mind if I just... I’d like to take a short walk down by the lake before we continue this conversation. If you have the time, Walter. If you can spare me, Sully.”