While I Couldn't Breathe, He Was With Her novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Surgeon

The surgeon kept his office on the ninth floor of a glass building in Bellevue, and I had eaten dinner with him four times.

He had been at our engagement party.

He had toasted us.

I walked in at six, when his waiting room was empty, and I did not stop at the desk.

Calvin came in behind me in his cleanest flannel shirt, with his hat in his hand.

The surgeon looked up from his monitor and smiled at me with the warm, practiced face of a man who sold hope for a living.

"Kirsten. I heard about the show. I'm so sorry, truly. If there's anything..."

"There is," I said. "This is Calvin Ostrow."

The smile stayed on his face for about a second.

Then he looked at Calvin, at the beard and the weathered hands and the green eyes, and the color left his skin.

"Ostrow," he said.

"Polly's brother," I said. "The patient you were operating on the morning Joan died."

The surgeon stood up and went to the window, and he stood there with his back to us.

"I've never had surgery," Calvin said. "I've never had a heart murmur. I had a cold in March."

"Sit down, both of you," the surgeon said. His voice had lost its warmth.

Neither of us sat.

"Nolan called me one morning, early," he said, still facing the glass. "He said Polly's brother was very ill and the family wanted it kept private. He asked me to tell anyone who called that I had him on the table."

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