Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

Nick immediately understood the significance of Mollender’s possessing the medal.

“How’d it happen?” he asked.

“Roadside bomb on his second tour to Iraq,” Mollender said, his eyes misting with the memory. “He was a terrific soldier. The medal was for something he did before that day. Andy’s life is just a statistic now. Was his sacrifice worth the cost? I have to believe it was. Andy was all about sacrifice.”

Nick grabbed a pen and blank piece of paper off the desk and began to write. “Will you help us, Saul?” He passed the note across.

“You asked me that already.”

“My friend is a solider. His name is Umberto Vasquez. He was the only other survivor of that suicide bomber. I wrote his Social Security number-his hospital ID-on that piece of paper. My phone number is on it as well. Umberto was all about sacrifice, too. Until that night he was the best soldier I had ever known. My closest friend. After the explosion, he was just a mess.” Nick flashed on an early morning soon after he had taken over Helping Hands, when he had searched for Umberto, one of many times, and found him wedged against the stone support beneath a bridge, comatose from booze, filthy, unshaven, and soaked in urine. “He was a basket of nerves and booze,” he went on. “PTSD at its worst. One day not too long after that, he disappeared. Said the military wanted him back for a special assignment and just vanished. I think he may have been here in this hospital after he went missing. I need to know what happened to him, Saul. Four years ago. Was he a patient here? What was he treated for? Just think about it, is all I’m asking.”

Nick turned and opened the door to leave.

“Hey!” Mollender called, stopping Nick just before he stepped into the corridor. Turning, he saw the man holding up the piece of paper. “Your phone number here-is that a six?”

“We’re going to get them, Nick. I can feel it now.”

Jillian clenched her fist for emphasis. The fierceness of her anger, kept fairly dormant for most of the time Nick had known her, was almost palpable.

“That calligraphy was a great idea,” he said.

“Thanks. Belle taught me how to do it,” she said, her eyes dimming at the mention of her sister’s name. “But it was you. Mollender is the key, and you somehow managed to get through to him. I have been so damn frustrated since Belle died that I’ve been having trouble hanging on to my faith, and that’s never been an issue for me. Now, I’m beginning to feel hope. Whoever did this to her, and Umberto, and poor Manny-we’re going to get them.”

“Hey, easy on the optimism. Mollender didn’t promise us anything.”

“I know. But you accomplished what seemed impossible-you got through to him.”

Nick shook his head.

“He’s a sad, bitter guy. It didn’t feel all that great to see him have to connect with his pain. Much as the new-agers might disagree with me, I feel like sometimes it’s better to keep that stuff packed away.”

With a few hours before Jillian was due at work and Nick had to ready the RV for a night of servicing the mean streets of Baltimore, they had driven out to Nick’s place in separate cars. The day was warm, and Nick suggested a picnic in the yard with Second Chance, or perhaps in the lush park at the end of the street. Within a short while the idea was forgotten.

As they sat on the living room sofa sipping tea and sorting out the significance of Saul Mollender’s change of attitude, both of them were sensing a growing tension-a tension born of the feelings that had been evolving between them, the tension of opportunity and desire. The greyhound had taken to Jillian immediately and now sat beside her, his muzzle resting on her leg.

For a time, neither of them spoke. Then Jillian reached across and covered Nick’s hand with hers.

“Would it scare you to death if I asked you to take me to your bedroom?” she said.

“Maybe not to death, exactly, but it might scare me.”

“Then I won’t ask.”

“Okay, let’s do that over again. Take two. Second chance. Pretend you just asked if it would scare me to death if you asked me to take you to my room.”

“And your reply?”

“If you can pry yourself free from my pooch, I think it’s a terrific idea.”

“Me, too.”

Chance started to follow, then, perhaps thinking better of it, hopped up on the couch and rolled onto his back. Nick held Jillian’s hand and led her down the hallway to his bedroom door.

“You sure?” he asked.

She looked up at him and held his gaze with hers. “As sure as I need to be,” she said finally.

“Be it ever so humble,” he said, guiding her inside.

“I like it. I feel you in here.”

The room was spacious and airy, with bookcases covering one wall and two large windows another. Nick’s library, neatly arranged, featured huge medical tomes, historical biographies, the complete works of Poe and Shakespeare, and a large array of paperback novels, most of them adventure stories or thrillers. Interspersed throughout were framed photos of his family.

“No photos from your army days?” she asked.

“I have them, but they haven’t made it out of the box yet.”

“I understand.”

Nick sat on his mattress and watched as Jillian scanned the titles in his bookcase.

“I never was a huge reader,” she said, pulling out a copy of Two Years Before the Mast . “Not like Belle. I always want to be around people or out experiencing nature. When it gets late, I’m usually so beat that instead of picking up a book, I just conk off.”

“If you were subject to recurrent nightmares like most of us with PTSD, you might become more of a reader. Sleep is definitely not our friend.”

Jillian scanned the list of SUD scores taped on the wall beside the bed.

“You have the nightmares often?”

“I never used to before the explosion and Sarah’s death. Since then it’s like the event got branded into my brain. I have variations of the same bad dream almost every night, and so far there’s not been a damn thing I can do to keep them from happening. Last night, you were in there.”

She sat on the bed beside him, her expression playful.

“Me, in a nightmare,” she sighed like a starstruck teen. “Now that’s something a girl doesn’t hear every day. Tell me about it.”

“I don’t think so.”

She caressed his face, and again looked deeply and seriously into his eyes.

“It’s okay to tell me,” she said.

“All right, but it wasn’t pretty. It started off as a dream, a really nice one actually. But then it ended with the same truck that killed Sarah hitting you instead, cutting you in two. I’m not always the driver, but last night I was.”

If the mention of Sarah’s name or the horrific outcome of the nightmare upset Jillian, it did not register in her expression.

“Tell me about the nice part of the dream,” she said.

She leaned her body against his. He tingled at the feel of her skin pressed against his own.

“We were kissing,” he said.

“Like this?”

She held his face in both her hands. First their lips met, then parted. Their tongues explored with increasing urgency. The feel of her hands caressing the back of his neck and the gentle pull of her fingers through his hair sent shivers through him. Still kissing, she eased him onto his back and nestled in next to him.

“Yes,” Nick breathed into her ear. “We were kissing just like that.”

NICK HAD dozed off, perhaps only for a few minutes, when his cell phone startled him awake. Images of their lovemaking refused to leave. He could not believe that it had happened and could not wait for it to happen again. Reaching across Jillian, he answered the phone and set it on speaker.