Catherine Lanigan - Heart's Desire

The first time she’d met him in his office, she was impressed with his confidence, sincerity and assuredness. He was the kind of man people trusted with their entire life’s savings. He was the kind of executive people turned to when their world was crashing down around them. Maddie’s first impression was that this man was smart enough, savvy enough, to turn around even the worst-case scenarios.

Now, he’d sent her flowers, and he’d been especially sweet to her on the phone, making her think about things romantic.

It had been a long, long time since Maddie had had time or room in her thoughts for anything other than her passion for her career.

Romance was something she’d discarded when she was seventeen, when Nate Barzonni had asked her to marry him and then left town the next day. He’d never called or written. She’d never received an explanation. He’d simply disappeared.

For over a decade, she’d been heartbroken and very, very angry.

No, Maddie thought. Romance was something that existed only in her past.

CHAPTER TWO

NATE BARZONNI WAS early for his seven o’clock meeting with Dr. Roger Caldwell, chief surgeon and head of the new cardiology wing at Indian Lake Hospital. Nate had been sitting in his car in the foggy cold since six thirty-five, his hands wrapped around a large, double-shot latte from the drive-through window at Book Shop and Java Stop.

As he entered the hospital and took the elevator up to Dr. Caldwell’s office, Nate realized he was nervous as a cat about this interview. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he’d get the job. He knew the position was his for the taking. He was the only applicant who had any experience with the new cold beam laser surgeries that every hospital in the nation wanted. Though catheter ablation surgery, the process of “burning” away misfiring nerves inside the heart to treat arrythmia, had become as common as bypass surgery, the cold beam laser was truly cutting-edge technology. Cold beam created a clean, open channel to the heart by drilling several holes from a dying heart muscle to the left ventricle. Once the holes healed, they triggered a growth of new muscle, so oxygenated blood could flow into the heart, which hadn’t been receiving proper oxygen and nutrients. Finding the surgeons to perform the procedure was difficult. Nate was keenly aware that he could have gone to Los Angeles or San Francisco, and he’d been offered a position in Scottsdale, but most hospitals wanted him to sign a three-year contract. Indian Lake demanded only a single year. One year was more to his liking because Nate wanted to prove himself—fast. With a year under his belt as a top cardiac surgeon at the Indian Lake Hospital and working in their Ablation Department, he could go wherever he wished and he would get the kind of financial backing he would need. For years, Nate had dreamed of one day landing a department chief position at a major hospital. But last year, that all changed.

Nate had spent a year on an Indian reservation in Arizona, ostensibly to whittle his medical school loans down by half. He’d learned about the government plan that enticed newly-licensed doctors and dentists from a shipmate of his in the Navy. Within a few days of treating patients on the reservation, Nate saw a desperate need for doctors with his skill level. He’d never considered himself a humanitarian, but something happened to him during that year that changed his view of life. These people could not afford highly specialized ablation surgery. And there were very few surgeons in his field willing to sacrifice money and possibly fame to help them. Nate realized he could make a real difference in the world.

By the end of his stint at the reservation hospital, Nate had come face to face with his life’s passion.

Indian Lake was exactly the place Nate needed to be for the short term. And afterward...he’d ratchet himself up another several notches toward his dream.

* * *

“DR. BARZONNI?” A MAN’S voice asked in a clear, clipped tone.

“Yes, sir.” Nate snapped to his feet from the uncomfortable metal-and-plastic chair he’d been seated in. Nate presented his hand to the tall, slender man with an angular face. Dr. Roger Caldwell was in his late forties and looked fit, in a long-distance-runner way. He wore black slacks and a long white lab coat over a cheap maroon oxford-cloth shirt and blue-and-red-striped polyester tie. This was the third interview Nate had been on, and at every hospital, every major clinic, the administrator responsible for choosing the hospital uniforms and outlining the dress codes apparently won the job based on their obvious lack of fashion sense and color blindness. “Dr. Caldwell. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, sir.”

They began walking down a carpeted hallway.

“You can drop the ‘sir.’ We aren’t all that formal around here.” Dr. Caldwell flipped through some papers in a manila folder marked with Nate’s name. “And you haven’t been in the navy for quite some time.”

“Sorry, sir. I mean Doctor. It’s my upbringing as much as the navy.” Nate smiled.

“I know your parents quite well, so I understand completely.”

“They’re still old-world Italian, I’m afraid. In fact, they’re insisting I live at home with them once I move back to Indian Lake.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Dr. Caldwell replied, scratching his temple. “Frankly, I’d like to see a bit more of it myself.” He took a couple steps back and then waved his right arm in front of an open door. “Let’s step into my office, shall we?”

“Thank you very much, sir. Doctor.” Nate laughed good-naturedly.

For as austere and sparse as the waiting area was, Dr. Caldwell’s office was quite the opposite. Colorful Persian rugs covered the laminate floors. The furniture was modern and sleek, made of glass, chrome and wood. A butter-yellow leather sofa sat against the back wall with two massive, off-white leather Barcelona chairs flanking it. A squatty black vase of tropical flowers sat in the middle of a kidney-shaped coffee table. The room was lit by dozens of tiny halogen ceiling fixtures, and natural light flowed in from skylights and a very large window that looked out on Main Street where the morning traffic was building to a bustling crescendo. The sun skirted around and through huge snow clouds, which had come to perform their own kind of magic and alter the scene below. Slowly, a very light snow started to fall. From the fifth floor, the view was captivating, and as Nate gazed out across the commercial-building rooftops and toward the housetops of Maple Avenue and Lily Avenue, he realized he was eye level to the many church spires that dotted nearly every block of Indian Lake. From this height, it didn’t take much imagination to see the fantasy aspect of the town. As the snowflakes grew in size and number, they fell delicately on the grand shoulders of the Presbyterian church, creating white, lacy epaulettes. Nate had always loved all the churches of his hometown and how they stood for hundreds of years, never swerving, never capitulating or seeming to decay. Unlike many other cities or towns, the people of Indian Lake renovated, renewed and shored up their treasures. They put new foundations on their buildings, installed new roofs on their banks and fixed storefront windows. They adapted and perfected, modernized and improved, but they never destroyed the original structure, the soul of their buildings, which was part of the soul of the town. He’d forgotten how little things like that mattered to him.

“Nice view, isn’t it?” Dr. Caldwell asked.

“Spellbinding.”

“Interesting you say that. I thought the same thing when I moved here. I came from New Jersey. The unpretty part of New Jersey. I was a class-A nerd in a street-gang-infested world. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”