Diane Chamberlain - The Lies We Told

What I’d heard about him had little to do with his work. Instead, it had to do with his personality, and now I understood why his arrival had started people talking. He was charismatic, filled with a buoyant good cheer. He spoke in incomplete sentences, as though he had so much he wanted to say that he needed to leave out some of the words to save time. That truncated delivery was rare for someone with a North Carolina accent. I remembered, though, that he’d lived most recently in Boston.

“So, you moved here from Massachusetts?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. But I missed North Carolina—I grew up near Greensboro—and I wanted to do some clinical trials, so I’m here now. Glad to be back.”

I felt myself smiling as I listened to him. What was that about? He was not particularly attractive. Well, he actually was, though not in the conventional sense. He was slender, with brown hair and warm dark eyes, but his features were overpowered by the energy that bubbled out of him. I looked forward to working with him, to seeing him get that energy under control enough to do what needed to be done in the O. R.

“So what exactly did you hear about me?” I sounded flirtatious. Not like myself at all. I was usually all business in the hospital. I was thirty years old and in the last year of a grueling residency, and most of my life had been focused on learning, not on men. Not on dating. I couldn’t believe the gooey, girlish feelings I was having. The raw, splayed-open sensation low in my belly. I was not only thinking about how he’d be in the O. R. I was thinking about how he’d be in bed. I’d had exactly two lovers in my adult life and I wondered what it would be like to have him as my third.

“You’re well respected,” he said. “Very young. How old are you? Never mind. Inappropriate question. Quiet. Calm. Still waters run deep, of course. Unbearably self-confident.”

“Unbearably?”

“Well, maybe that’s not the exact word I heard. Just. you know, the kind of self-confidence people envy. It comes naturally to you.”

“I think you’re making this all up,” I said. He’d been there less than a week. Surely he hadn’t heard all this about me. Yet most of it was true. I was quiet. Calm most of the time—unless something scared me. I wasn’t afraid of the usual things. Not anything in the hospital. Not what other people thought of me. My fears were more the primitive variety. A rapist hiding in the backseat of my car. Aggressive dogs. A fire in my condo. A guy with a gun. I had nightmares sometimes, though no one I worked with would ever guess.

“I’ve heard all that and plenty more,” he said.

“Well, I’m at home here,” I said.

We rode the elevator to the operating suites. The doors opened on the third floor and Adam and I moved to opposite sides of the car to make room for one of the housekeepers and her cart.

“Hey, Charles!” Adam said, as if greeting a long-lost friend.

The woman laughed. “Doc, you crazy!” she said.

“Charles?” I was lost. I looked at the woman’s badge. Charlene, her name was. A short, middle-aged woman with streaks of gray in her black hair.

“He calls me Charles.” The woman pushed the button for the ground floor and grinned, a blush forming beneath her brown skin. She was under his spell. “Man’s crazy.”

I had worked in the hospital for several years and had seen this woman nearly every day. I’d never once read her name tag. I’d never greeted her with more than a nod. Adam Pollard had been there less than a week and was already on a teasing basis with her.

“How’s the ladies’ man doin’?” Adam asked her.

Charlene rolled her eyes. “Goin’ be the death of me, Doc,” she said.

The doors slid open. “Don’t let that happen, Charles.” He touched the woman’s shoulder as we walked out of the elevator. “Can’t do without you ’round here.”

“Do you know … did you know her before you came here?” I asked as we started walking toward the O. R.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Works her butt off. Did you ever notice? She’s everywhere at once. She’s raising her daughter’s kids, too. Daughter’s got a monkey on her back.”

“Who’s the ladies’ man?”

“Her ten-year-old grandson. She’s worried about him. Can’t remember his name, though. I’m crap with names.”

“How have you been able to learn all that in a week?”

“I talk to people,” he said with a shrug. “How else?”

After Lani Roland’s uneventful surgery, Adam caught up with me in the hallway outside the O. R.

“Dinner tonight,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He said it as if I couldn’t possibly have other plans.

“All right,” I answered, since that was true.

“Casual or fancy?”

“Casual. Definitely.”

“Mama Dip’s okay? I’ve missed that place.”

I nodded. “I’ll meet you there,” I said. “I should be able to get out by six-thirty.”

“Cool.” He gave my arm a playful punch as if I were a teenage boy. It made me laugh.

He was sitting at a table near the windows when I walked into Mama Dip’s a few hours later, and he was already joking with a waitress. He stood as I walked toward them.

“Hey, Maya.” He sounded as though we’d known each other for years. He leaned over and bussed my cheek. “Dr. Ward, this is our server tonight, KiKi. KiKi, this is an amazing surgeon, Maya Ward. She knits together teeny little bones.” He pulled out a chair for me, touching my arm as I sank into it.

KiKi smiled at us both. “What can I get you to drink, sweetie?” she asked me.

“Lemonade,” I said, unwrapping the napkin from around my silverware.

Adam chuckled to himself as KiKi walked away. “I introduce you as a surgeon, she calls you sweetie,” he said. “Gotta love the South. Does that bug you? The sweetie bit?” I loved the way his smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“Not at all,” I said. I knew plenty of professional women who bristled at the familiarity, but I’d lived in North Carolina long enough that I didn’t even notice it.

“I love it,” he said. “Boston was great, don’t get me wrong, but nobody there ever called me sweetie or darlin’ or dear. And you can’t get enough kind words. Know what I mean?”

“I do,” I said.

KiKi was back with our drinks and I popped a straw into my lemonade.

“You’re obviously not a native,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Virginia. Outside D.C.”

“How’d you end up here?”

“I followed my sister. She went to medical school at Duke and loved it, so when it was my turn, I followed her lead.”

He sat back, eyes wide. “Wow!” he said. “There’s two Dr. Wards? Where does she practice?”

“She works full-time with Doctors International Disaster Aid, so she’s here, there and everywhere.”

“DIDA!” he said.

“You know it?”

“I thought of applying to do a stint with them, but never got around to it. Maybe one of these days. It’d be so cool to do that sort of work.” He sipped his iced tea. “She’s a do-gooder? Your sis?”

“She’s …” I hadn’t thought of Rebecca that way. Gutsy was the word I usually used when describing my sister. But she was a do-gooder, and not only with DIDA. Rebecca was my hero. “Yes, she is actually,” I said. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of months, though we talk all the time when she’s someplace with cell coverage. Right now she’s working in China at an earthquake site. She’s unreachable.”

KiKi returned with my bowl of Brunswick stew and Adam’s barbecue platter.

“Anything else for y’all?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“We’re good,” Adam said, though his gaze never left my face. “So, you’re really close to your sister,” he said once KiKi’d walked back to the kitchen.