The melody in our hearts (18 page)

She sighed and followed Ryan to the kitchen, where he promised he would make his very special fettuccine recipe.

~
Twenty-nine
~

It had been a tough decision. She had studied so hard and worked so much harder to become who she was now, but the image of the man was still so bright in her mind that, when she had tried to walk into the operating room two weeks after that day, her body had frozen in place, and she hadn’t been able to even touch the door handle to get inside.

They had all been very nice to her, and she had been given a few days off when they saw the state she was in. Nobody ever even hinted that it had been her fault because they knew it hadn’t.

Doctor Gray had been in the operating room with her, he had helped her, and he had been the one to tell her to give up when she was still trying to resuscitate the man. He had told her so many times that she wasn’t responsible for what had happened, but she had never listened to him. She knew she would never be able to walk into an operating room again, no matter what people said.

Her decision to be moved to the ER and leave surgery was eventually accepted after a long discussion and many unsuccessful attempts to make her think better of it. She was just glad that she wouldn’t be forced to leave the hospital because of her decision. She got on well with the nurses and the doctors, and they were a great team and a sort of big family by now. She would have been sorry to leave them.

Nobody treated her differently after that, and nobody changed his or her opinion of her. She was still a good doctor, and she didn’t mind working in the emergency room after all.

Life wouldn’t be much different than before; she was sure that she would eventually stop seeing those images in her mind and would be just fine.

It would take some time, but she would heal.

Ryan had just arrived in San Francisco when she told him, and he wasn’t half as accommodating as her colleagues in the hospital had been.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, his tone definitely displeased. “I thought I knew you, Val. I thought you were stronger than that. It’s very selfish of you to do that.”

“Selfish?” she asked, a bit taken aback by his reaction.

“Yeah, selfish. Selfish because you’re a doctor, and when you choose a job like that, you choose to help people, to use all your knowledge and skills to save lives. And now listen to yourself, saying you’re giving up surgery because you’re scared.
Scared
. That’s ridiculous, Val. A doctor shouldn’t be scared of anything. I think maybe you chose wrong; maybe you should’ve chosen to be something else, a vet maybe, or a teacher. Something less
scary
.”

She was surprised, but also hurt by his words. He was her best friend, and he was supposed to support her, the way he had always done all through the years they’d known each other. But there he was, spitting out mean words, saying she shouldn’t have been a doctor.

Maybe she shouldn’t have decided to become a surgeon. Looking at it from a different point of view now, she could see that being a normal doctor wouldn’t have had consequences on her life. She wouldn’t have had trouble curing a patient with the flu or a broken leg.

Maybe surgery hadn’t been the smartest choice, but still, she had been a good surgeon before that day….

“Anyway, I have to go now. I have to do the sound check for the show,” he said abruptly, interrupting her thoughts. “Have fun with your new job.”

“Ryan….” she said, her voice cracking, but he hung up on her, and she slumped down on her bed, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

She was upset like she had never been before. Ryan had never treated her like that. He had never been rude or mean to her, and it hurt to have him act this way now. It hurt more because the reaction was coming from him, rather than the reaction itself. She wouldn’t have minded if anyone else, even the hospital manager, had said those words, had treated her like that. But not Ryan, not her best friend. He was supposed to understand how she was feeling, and he, more than anyone else, should know how much she suffered because of what had happened. He was supposed to understand the reason why she had been forced to give up surgery.

She threw her phone on her bed and, since she didn’t seem to be able to swallow that lump in her throat, she let herself cry, with no one there to comfort her.

~
Thirty
~

She didn’t call Ryan after that phone call, not for a few days, although she missed him terribly. The shifts at the hospital were long enough to keep her mind busy, but as soon as she was home, she longed to call him, to hear his voice, to listen to him telling her where he’d been, whom he’d met, and all the exciting information he used to share with her.

Missing him physically was tough. She had never got used to that even after all these years, but not being able to talk to him was more than she could bear.

Still, she wasn’t going to give in. She wasn’t going to call him, not after the way he had treated her on the phone. If and when he wanted to speak to her, he would call her, no doubt; but the pain kept her tossing and turning in her sleep, gave her nightmares, and left that lump in her throat all the time.

Besides, she had completely lost the purpose of her career and basically of the past ten years of her life. She had studied hard to become a surgeon and losing a patient, her first patient, had made everything crumble in the blink of an eye.

She had been working in the ER for a couple of weeks now, and she didn’t mind; besides being a surgeon, she was a doctor after all, and taking care of people was what she had studied for, so any ward would do as long as it didn’t involve an operating room.

Still, she somehow felt as if she had failed, unlike Ryan, who had reached all of his goals, who had achieved what he had studied so hard for and had gone even further, signing a contract with a record company and becoming the contemporary shining star of jazz music, the official musical heir of Frank Sinatra.

She was a coward; that was the only word she could use to define her behavior in the past few weeks. Instead of pulling herself together, she had turned her back to it all and had run away, throwing all of her hard work and efforts out the window.

Karen hadn’t quite understood her decision either: She was a surgeon too, and she knew too well how hard they had all been studying to get to where they were now. She had told Valerie she should get hold of her life again and move on because those things happened, and there was no point in crying over spilled milk.

But in spite of all the good words, Karen hadn’t succeeded, and Valerie hadn’t changed her mind, nor had she moved on. It had happened more than a month before, but she could still see his face, and she could still hear the alarm ring loudly in her ears, telling them that his heart had stopped beating. She could still feel Doctor Gray’s arms around her, trying to soothe the pain, and hear his gentle words. She could remember how cool, reassuring, and detached he had been when he had spoken to the family. He had forgotten everything a few hours later, and there she was, still thinking about that day, throwing in the sponge after the very first failure.

Ryan was still on the other side of the country. He had just left California to move to Nevada. The tickets for the Las Vegas show had been sold out within hours, so they had put up two more shows, and by then he was so worn out every night that he could barely make it to his bedroom before crashing.

He had been thinking about calling Valerie: He had wanted to tell her all about the Californian shows and now the Las Vegas one. She loved hearing about all the places he went to and all the things he saw. He always took lots of pictures with his cell phone and would then send them to her so that she could be part of it too.

But after what she had done, and without even asking for his advice like she used to do before making any important decisions, he didn’t feel like talking to her because he knew he would be mean, just like he had been when she had first told him. She could be so stubborn when she wanted –she could be such a child sometimes. No, he wasn’t going to call her, not until he had thought about what he would say.

Still, he knew the grudge wouldn’t last long. He just couldn’t hold grudges toward her because she was much too important to him. He knew he couldn’t lose her or break their friendship for something they would surely be able to talk through once he was home.

And then, after the second show in Las Vegas, he knew he wouldn’t be able to take it any longer. As soon as he walked into his hotel room at two-thirty a.m. and was finally free from his manager, fans, and reporters, he slumped down on his bed and pressed her number on the speed dial, hoping she’d be awake and wouldn’t still be mad at him.

~
Thirty-one
~

“Now tell me why I should find out from tabloids that my best friend is dating someone!” she said, in full pout mode.

They had just made up after spending too many days without talking, but she was just about to start a new fight. She had thought that, no matter how famous he was now, he still considered her his best friend, but maybe she was a just a fool, dreaming things would never change.

“I meant to tell you once I came back, believe me. It sounded weird to talk about it over the phone. But I keep forgetting that I can never go anywhere without some reporters finding me; God knows how they do it!” He sighed and rolled onto his side in his queen-size bed in a fancy hotel in Las Vegas. “Please don’t take it to heart, Val. I’ve only known her for, like, a week or so.”

She was getting ready to go to work for the early morning shift, and she didn’t really feel like having an argument with him right now, especially since he had just apologized for being mean to her the last time they had spoken on the phone, so she decided to let it go.

“Okay,” she said, still a bit hurt by his behavior, but trying to fake her tone. “I guess we have a lot of catching up to do when you come home….When are you coming home, by the way?”

“I don’t know. Next week, I think.” He stretched and yawned, looking out the window at the bright lights of the city. “Tomorrow’s the last show in Vegas, and then we’ll head back to L.A. for a couple of interviews. I should be free after that, and I’d be home on Tuesday, if nothing changes.”

“As in, if you don’t decide to get married to the model while you’re in Vegas?” she teased, and she heard him guffaw on the other end of the line.

“Please, Val, don’t be silly!” He turned serious and went on, with a grown-up tone. “Besides, I couldn’t marry anyone who hadn’t been previously approved by you, and I’d expect you to do the same, of course!” She blushed and was glad he couldn’t see her, then she chuckled nervously. “What about that guy, what’s his name, Jake?” He asked and she blushed even harder.

“What about him?” she asked, pretending she hadn’t caught the meaning of his question.

“Oh c’mon, Valerie, I know you have a crush on him….” he trailed off, and she was tempted to hang up on him.

Of course she didn’t have a crush on Jake. He was only a colleague, a paramedic who had asked her out a couple of times for a drink, but she had never accepted. Well, she hadn’t really had the chance to accept, because she had always been either working overtime or studying when she was free. But she didn’t think she would go out with him anyway.

Okay, he was handsome and funny, and all the nurses in the ER found him very attractive, but that was about it. She didn’t have time for a guy right now. She had to study and work hard to get another specialization since she was giving up on the surgical career and had to work twice as hard as everyone else, so as not to throw everything out the window again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said seriously, but knew that those words wouldn’t stop him. “Anyway, I have to go now. I’m starting my shift in about forty minutes. And you have to sleep – you must be wrecked.”

“I am, actually.” He yawned again and felt his eyelids suddenly become very heavy. “But don’t think I’ll let you get away with it like that. We’ll have to talk about it when I get home.”

“You can bet we will!” She chuckled. “I want to know all about that model.”

They both laughed, then they said goodbye and, while Ryan fell instantly asleep, Valerie put on her coat and went out, knowing everything would be better now that they had finally made up.

After Ryan came home, they talked about what had happened. Ryan finally accepted her decision to leave surgery to work as a normal doctor in the ER even if he still didn’t understand it, and soon everything was back to normal.

He told her about how he had met Jennifer, the model he was dating. Even if she didn’t feel jealous at all about his dating a girl, she didn’t like the idea of his dating a model; it somehow made her feel uncomfortable, knowing she would never feel at ease if they met because the girl was a tall, slender brunette with a beautiful front-cover face and long, thin legs. She traveled around the world, walking on the most famous catwalks, while Valerie was just a fair-haired, five-foot-five, ordinary Irish girl who couldn’t even pursue a surgical career because she had been too frightened of losing another patient.