Turn Back Time Page 5

  “No,” Wynter said quickly. “Everything’s just fine.”

  “Actually, I’m on call tonight.” Pearce walked toward the third stainless steel cart in the row. The small glass window was partially closed and steamed from the food warming inside. “But I want you to stay and get used to how the service runs. You’ll be on tomorrow night.”

  “Fine.” Wynter had no choice, and it really wasn’t an unreasonable request. She’d be expected to shoulder some of the responsibility for running the service as quickly as possible, and in order to do that, she had to be familiar with the procedures and protocols of the new institution. Even had she disagreed, it was Pearce’s call. That was the nature of the hierarchy, and she accepted that. Time to claim her place in it. She edged in front of Pearce and ordered. “Two coffees.” She glanced at Pearce. “Want anything else? It’s on me.”

  “In that case, I’ll take a street dog with chili and mustard.”

  Wynter winced. “It’s ten thirty in the morning.”

  Pearce grinned. “Then I’ll take two.”

  “You’re sick,” Wynter muttered and then relayed the order. She paid and collected the brown paper bag, turning to Pearce. “I suppose you want to eat outside?”

  “Cold?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Uh-huh, sure. You’re shivering from the thrill of it all.” Pearce laughed at Wynter’s muffled expletive. “Come on, I’ll show you my hideaway.”

  “Is this one of those secrets?” Wynter watched Pearce’s expressive eyes turn inward, wondering if she’d once again tread on forbidden territory, but then she saw the smile flicker and flare. The tiny scar did nothing to detract from the lush beauty of Pearce’s lips. In fact, the irregularity made her mouth all the more appealing, and Wynter had the sudden urge to touch the less than perfect spot with her fingertip. She tightened her grip on the paper bag, afraid of the impulse. She’d never just wanted to touch someone for no other reason than to feel their skin.

  “You never know,” Pearce replied, taking one of the coffee cups from Wynter. Her fingers brushed over the top of Wynter’s hand. “It might be.”

  Chapter Five

  Wynter groaned as Pearce grasped her elbow lightly and guided her down a narrow alley between two buildings. When Pearce pulled open a nondescript door that led into yet another stairwell, Wynter balked. “You’re just doing this to torture me, aren’t you?”

  Pearce turned innocent eyes to Wynter as she propped the fire door open against her hip. “Doing what?”

  “You know very well,” Wynter grumbled, edging past her. When her arm brushed across Pearce’s chest, she blushed. “How far up are we going this time?”

  “Third floor.”

  “Fine.” Wynter started up and did not look back until she reached the third-floor landing. “You just want to make sure I can never find this place again.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be a hideaway if everyone knew about it,” Pearce said reasonably.

  They were obviously in one of the older buildings in the complex. The vinyl tiles on the floor were scuffed and gray with age. The overhead fluorescents flickered halfheartedly, as if they might go out at any moment. Abandoned equipment lined the walls, some of a vintage well before Wynter had even contemplated medical school.

  “Where are we? This looks like where old EKG machines go to die.”

  Pearce laughed. “In a way, that’s true. It is a graveyard, of sorts, now. This entire building housed Women’s Care at one time, with Labor and Delivery on the upper floors, GYN and the outpatient clinics on the lower floors. Then, when the new buildings were built, all of the clinical services moved out. There are just a few leftover administrative offices still here and some lab space that no one uses.”

  “And we’re here…why?” Wynter felt as if she were in a museum, not a hospital. The place had an eerie feel, as if they were in a time warp and at any moment, nurses in starched white dresses and caps would appear, trailing along behind physicians as they made their rounds.

  “I told you,” Pearce said as she removed a key ring from her back pocket. She unlocked a wooden door whose varnish had started to crack and peel, reached inside with a certainty born of habit, and turned on a light. She stepped aside and gestured into the room. “After you.”

  Wynter gave Pearce a quizzical glance, but stepped inside. “Oh,” she murmured in surprise.

  The room was small, perhaps eight by ten, and appeared even smaller due to the bookshelves that lined three walls, and the large dark green leather sofa, matching chair, and wooden desk that crowded together in the center of the room. There were books and journals everywhere, crammed onto the shelves, stacked on the desk, and heaped in untidy piles on the floor around the sofa and chair. She tilted her head to read some of the titles. Annals of Surgery, Journal of OB/GYN, Archives of Surgery, and a half dozen others that she recognized. The books on the shelves were all surgical textbooks, some of them clearly decades old. She turned to Pearce. “What is this place? It looks like an old library.”

  “It used to be the residents’ lounge.”

  “But it isn’t anymore?”

  Pearce shook her head. “When they moved all the surgical patients into the pavilions around the corner, this was too far away to be practical. Now, no one but me even remembers it’s here.”

  Wynter sat on the sofa and ran her hand over the soft surface, worn smooth and thin in places from years of use. A green-shaded student’s lamp—an original, not a reproduction—sat on the desk. Once again, she felt like she’d stepped back in time. Even though this room was part of an era when she would not have been welcomed as a member of the club, she felt a kinship to those who had come before her. “This place is awesome.”

  “Yeah.” Pearce flopped into the oversized leather chair and swiveled sideways, hanging her legs over one arm and bracing her shoulders against the opposite one. She dug in the paper bag and extracted a wax paper–wrapped hot dog. The roll was orange from the chili sauce that had soaked into it. She took a bite, chewed quickly, and swallowed before lifting it in Wynter’s direction. “You sure you don’t want one?”

  “Not without premedicating with Prilosec first.” Wynter sipped her coffee and watched Pearce inhale the hot dog in three bites. Her pleasure was obvious, nearly carnal, and Wynter found herself staring at Pearce’s mouth as she licked a drop of mustard from her chin.

  “What’s the matter?” Pearce asked. “Am I drooling?”

  “No,” Wynter said quickly, coloring. To cover her embarrassment, she said, “So if this place is such a well-kept secret, how come you know about it?”

  “I used to come here when I was a kid.”

  “A kid? How old?”

  Pearce managed to shrug even lying down. “Eight or nine, maybe.”

  “With your father?”

  Pearce swung her legs around and sat up, extracting the second hot dog from the bag. She kept her head down as she unwrapped it. “Uh-huh. He used to bring me in on the weekends sometimes when he was making rounds. Then, if things got busy, he’d park me over here until he was done.”

  “Did you mind?”

  “Nah. I could always find something to read.”

  Wynter tried to imagine a young Pearce browsing through the bookshelves or falling asleep on the couch. She wondered if she’d been lonely. “Did you already want to be a doctor by then?”

  “Rifkins are always doctors.”

  “Your grandfather worked on the first heart-lung machine, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. His lab used to be in the building behind this one. I don’t remember him all that well, because he never seemed to make it to any of the family gatherings. Always at the hospital.” Pearce rose and paced in the narrow space between the sofa and the bookcases, running her fingers over the dusty spines of the now-historic tomes. She pulled one off the shelf, opened it, and leaned over Wynter’s shoulder from behind, holding the book at eye level.

  Without thinking, Wynter curved her palm bene
ath Pearce’s hand to steady her grip on the book. Pearce’s forearm rested against hers. The name William Ambrose Rifkin was scrawled across the inside of the cover in fading black ink. She took a sharp breath. “I can’t believe this book is just sitting in here.” She twisted around until she could look into Pearce’s face. “Shouldn’t it be in a medical museum or something?”

  “Like I said, I don’t think anyone remembers this room is here. And a lot of my grandfather’s papers and notes are archived at the Philadelphia College of Surgeons already. This probably isn’t worth all that much.” She closed the book, suddenly feeling foolish. She had no idea what had prompted her to bring Wynter to this room, let alone show her some old books that belonged to a man she barely remembered. Abruptly, she reshelved the volume and returned to her chair and her coffee. “I can get you a key if you want.”

  “Oh, I don’t—”

  “Never mind. The library’s a lot more comfortable.” Pearce stood, agitated and restless. “We should probably head over to the OR and make sure everything is running on time.”

  Wynter rose quickly and intercepted Pearce’s flight to the door. “What I meant was I don’t want to impose on your space. It’s obviously special to you.”

  Pearce’s eyes were opaque black disks, revealing nothing. “Sometimes this place”—she swept her arm in a wide arc, indicating the hospital complex, like a small city, and the hundreds of people who worked inside it—“can wear you down. Sometimes you just need a few minutes to regroup. This is a good place for that.”

  “I appreciate it.” Briefly, Wynter trailed her fingertips over the top of Pearce’s hand. “I just might take you up on it. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Pearce’s eyes cleared and she grinned. “Come on, I’ll show you a shortcut to the OR.”

  Wynter took a deep breath and plunged after her as Pearce bounded out the door. It occurred to her that this hospital was Pearce’s own private playground, and she was being introduced to the neighborhood by the kid who ruled it. She realized something else as well. She very much wanted to be worthy of playing on Pearce’s team.

  “Pearce,” Wynter called, “stop for a minute.”

  “What’s the matter?” Pearce said with a laugh, turning to face Wynter but continuing to walk backward down the hall. Somehow, she managed to miss running into the people coming in her direction, or perhaps they simply parted for her like the Red Sea before Moses. “Tired already?”

  “Not on your life, Rifkin,” Wynter snapped, yanking her beeper off her pants and peering at it. “What’s 5136?”

  Pearce’s expression immediately grew serious. “The ICU.” She was tempted to take the call herself, but Wynter was a senior resident and it was about time they both got a sense of what she could handle. She pointed to a wall phone next to the elevator and leaned against the wall while Wynter dialed.

  “Dr. Thompson,” Wynter said when a ward clerk answered the phone. She pulled her list from her pocket and anchored the phone between her shoulder and ear while she unfolded it. “I was paged. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Wait a minute, who…Gilbert, uh-huh…how much fluid?”

  Pearce tensed. It was all she could do not to grab the phone and ask the nurse what the problem was, but she forced herself to stand still and just listen. She needed to find out just how far Wynter could be trusted alone.

  “No,” Wynter said firmly. “Leave the bandage in place, soak it with saline, and make sure she’s had a CBC and electrolytes drawn today. We’ll be right there. Oh, and make sure she doesn’t eat or drink anything.”

  “What’s up?” Pearce asked as soon as Wynter hung up.

  “Mrs. Gilbert complained that she was leaking.”

  “Leaking. As in…?”

  “As in,” Wynter informed her as they hurried down the hall, “her gown and bed seemed to be covered with cranberry juice.”

  “Fuck.”

  “That was my thought too. She’s what, three days post gastric bypass?” Wynter took a look at her list. “Yeah. And her last hemoglobin was 12, so it’s not likely she had a big postop hematoma that no one noticed. Too soon for that to drain anyhow.”

  “I agree,” Pearce said darkly. “If she bled after surgery, her blood count would be lower, and even if that were the case and we missed it, it’s too soon for a collection of blood to drain. Did they get her out of bed today?”

  “I don’t know,” Wynter said, pushing the button for the elevator. “But apparently, the patient had a coughing episode just before she noticed the leaking.”

  “Dandy. So what are you thinking?”

  They stepped into the elevator and moved to the rear, where Wynter said in a voice too low for the other passengers to hear, “I’m thinking that Mrs. Gilbert has a dehiscence. Aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “Is she yours?” Wynter asked as they maneuvered their way through the crush of people and into yet another hallway. It was a touchy question, and she half expected Pearce to lose her temper. No one liked to have a complication, especially a surgeon. And a technical complication, one that might have been avoided had the surgeon performed the procedure differently, was the hardest thing for a surgeon to accept or, sometimes, even to admit to. She had a feeling that Pearce did not like to have complications.

  “No. Dzubrow…one of the other fourth-years…did it with the chief.” There was no satisfaction in her voice. The double doors to the ICU were closed, so she swiped her ID through the card lock and punched in the code. “3442,” she said for Wynter’s benefit.

  “Got it.”

  The doors swung open and they entered the controlled chaos of the surgical intensive care unit. Twelve beds were lined up along the far wall, separated only by curtains and the minimum amount of room to allow a nurse to move in between them. Tables at the foot of each bed were covered with charts and graphs and lab reports. Flexible plastic tubes connected ventilators to many of the motionless patients in the beds. The lights were too bright, the beeping and clatter of machines too loud, and the atmosphere far too impersonal for the severity of the illnesses housed within.

  It looked exactly like every other SICU that Wynter had ever been in. “Which one is she?”

  “Bed five.”

  When they reached the bedside, Pearce leaned over the bed rail and smiled at the anxious woman in the bed. “Hi, Mrs. Gilbert. What’s going on?”

  “I think I sprang a leak, dear.”

  “This is Dr. Thompson. She’s going to check you out.” Pearce eased away from the bed and signaled Wynter to move closer. “See what you think.”

  Wynter pulled on latex gloves and lifted the sheet. “Mrs. Gilbert, I’m going to remove your dressings so I can get a look at the incision. Are you having any pain?”

  “It’s sore. No worse than this morning, though.”

  “Did this happen while you were coughing?” Wynter lifted one corner of the sterile gauze that covered the midabdominal incision as she talked. A little conversation often helped to distract the patient during the examination.

  “Right after that, I think. They told me coughing was good for my lungs. Do you think I shouldn’t have done it?”

  “No, I think it’s important to keep your lungs clear after surgery. You did fine.” Wynter had a good idea of what she would find, and she wasn’t surprised to see a glistening pink loop of bowel protruding through the central portion of Mrs. Gilbert’s abdominal incision. She gently replaced the bandage.

  “Dr. Rifkin and I are going to talk for a minute, and then we’ll be right back,” she said and turned away. She met Pearce’s gaze. “Did you see it?”

  “Yep. Looks like we’re going to have to do a little repair job. I’ll call the chief. You get her ready to go.”

  “Okay.” Wynter turned back to explain to Mrs. Gilbert that her incision had partially opened and that they would need to go back to the operating room to reclose it. She didn’t tell her any more, because it wouldn’t change the procedure to
be done and would only frighten her. Although it looked gruesome, it wasn’t a serious situation as long as they took care of it before infection set in or the bowel was injured. By the time she had the consent signed, Pearce was finishing on the phone. “Are we all set?”

  “Well, the chief is in the middle of the aneurysm, and after that he’s got a colon resection waiting.”

  “She shouldn’t sit around here for a few hours,” Wynter said quietly.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Wynter waited, catching the glint in Pearce’s eyes. “And…?”

  “Looks like it’s you and me, Doc.”

  Doc. No one else had ever called her that with quite the same mixture of teasing and respect. Wynter smiled. “Well then, let’s go do it.”

  Chapter Six

  “What have you got?” Ambrose Rifkin asked as he backed through the swinging door of the operating room, his gloved hands held at chest level. He’d shed his gown and used gloves after the last case, but kept his freshly gloved hands uncontaminated before he scrubbed again. It allowed him to cut down his time between cases.

  Pearce waited several feet away from the operating table, already gowned and gloved, while Wynter prepped the patient’s abdomen with Betadine, taking care to avoid the surface of the exposed loop of bowel with the caustic solution. “Mrs. Gilbert, a sixty-three-year-old female, three days post gastric bypass. She dehisced her wound about forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Any precipitating event?”

  “Probably coughing.”

  “Huh.” He walked to within three feet of the table, took one quick glance at the patient’s abdomen, and then swept an eye over the monitors at the head of the table. He nodded to the anesthesiologist. “Everything okay, Jerry?”