Stepping-Stone for Mia novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Fourteen Stitches

In the ER Tim tells Sarah he saw Mia on her phone in the lounge while the pages went unanswered and agrees to say so on record, and Bennett arrives to suspend her.

The ER resident was a first-year I'd taught to tie knots in October.

His hands shook so badly I offered to do it myself.

"Absolutely not," Tim said from the chair by the stretcher. "You're a patient. Lie there and be a patient."

"He's going to put the deep layer in crooked."

"I'm right here," said the resident.

"I know you are, sweetheart. Go slower. Bigger bites."

Fourteen stitches.

Six deep, eight on the skin.

When he left to find a dressing, the curtain swung closed.

It was just the two of us and a monitor beeping somebody else's heart rate through the wall.

Tim still had my blood on his scrub top. A big rust-brown handprint, right over his chest.

"You should change," I said.

"Later."

"You look like a crime scene."

"I was in a crime scene. I'm dressed for the occasion."

I laughed, and it pulled at the stitches, and I swore.

He handed me a cup of ice chips without a word.

I looked at the cup.

Then I looked at him.

"You went for ice that night," I said slowly. "When we were closing. You stepped out."

He didn't look away.

In two years of sharing operating rooms with him, I'd never once seen him look away from anything.

"Barely a minute," he said. "The patient was nauseous and dry, and the lounge machine's the closest. The nurse anesthetist had the head of the table."

"What time?"

"One forty."

My heart started going hard enough that I could feel it in the cut.

"Tim."

"Your sister was in the lounge," he said. "On the couch, with her feet up. She had her phone in one hand and a cake catalog in the other. I remember the catalog because it had a six-tier thing on the cover with sugar roses."

"Did she see you?"

"She waved."

I closed my eyes.

"Her pager was on the table next to her," he said. "It went off while I was scooping the ice. She looked at it and turned it face down."

"Did you say anything?"

"I said, 'Somebody wants you.' She said, 'It's just Six, they always panic.' I had a patient open on the table. I went back."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"I've gone over it a hundred times. I should've gone down the hall myself and looked."

"You were holding an airway."

"I know what I was holding."

We sat with that.

The monitor through the wall kept beeping.

"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked. "Saturday. Sunday. Today."

"I did. Sunday morning, I went to your brother's office and told him what I saw."

"What did he say?"

Tim's mouth went flat.

"He thanked me. Then he said my contract renewal was coming up in June, and he wanted me to think about that night and remember carefully. He said memory is a funny thing after a long shift."

"He said that? Those words?"

"Those words. I wrote them on a napkin in the cafeteria afterward so I'd have them right."

He reached into the pocket of his scrub pants, pulled out a folded paper napkin, and handed it to me.

Sunday 3/15, 9:20 a.m., B.H. office.

"Remember carefully." "Memory is a funny thing after a long shift." Contract renewal June.

His handwriting was terrible.

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever read.

"Why didn't you come to me?"

"I was trying to figure out how to do it without getting fired," he said. "Then I got off the elevator and saw a man swing a knife at you. That fixed my priorities."

I folded the napkin very carefully along its old creases.

"I need you to say it on the record," I said. "To risk management, to the board, to whoever asks. It'll cost you. Bennett runs the department you work in."

"Bennett doesn't run anesthesia."

"He runs every room you work in."

Tim leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, so we were eye to eye.

"Sarah. I saw your sister ignore a page while a woman bled out. Yes. I'll say it to anyone you want. I'll say it on the news."

"Don't say it on the news."

"I'll say it on the news if you want."

"I don't want."

"Then I'll say it everywhere else."

I didn't trust my voice for a second.

I'd been the strong one for thirty years. Nobody had ever pulled up a chair and said yes to me before I'd finished asking.

"Thank you," I said finally.

"Don't thank me. I should have done it Saturday."

"Then thank you for doing it Monday."

The corner of his mouth went up.

"Your arm hurts, doesn't it?"

"It's starting to."

"Want me to get you something?"

"Something good."

"I'm an anesthesiologist. I only have good things."

He stood up, and I caught his wrist with my good hand before I could think about it.

His pulse was quick under my fingers.

"Stay a minute first," I said.

He sat back down.

He didn't pull his wrist away.

Then the curtain rattled open on its rings.

Bennett stood there in his suit and his white coat, with the hospital's risk lawyer half a step behind him holding a folder.

He looked at my hand on Tim's wrist. Then he looked at me.

"Dr. Harwood," he said, very formal, for the lawyer's benefit. "Effective immediately, you're suspended from all clinical duties pending review. Your badge has been deactivated. And the hospital will be reporting you to the Maryland Board of Physicians tonight."

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