“Mind if I check in?” I asked.

“Be my guest,” said the nurse.

I went to the OR, the thrill of getting the behind-the-scenes pass still with me. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t just burst in, no matter what they showed on Grey’s Anatomy. There was, however, a window and an intercom. I couldn’t see Audrey—she was surrounded by three surgeons, the anesthesiologist, two OR nurses and a PA.

I pushed the button. “Hi, Dr. Einstein, it’s Nora Stuart, Audrey’s referring physician. Just wanted to see how she was doing.”

“She’s doing beautifully,” he said. “Vitals strong and steady, and a beautiful siting of the tumor.” Doctorspeak for I won’t have to muck around in her brain all that much. It was fantastic news.

“I’ll tell her parents. Thank you so much.” I said a quick prayer that the rest of the surgery would go smoothly, then went back down the hall.

There in the waiting room sat Sullivan, arms folded over his chest, scowling at the floor, clenched tight as a fist.

He was alone.

“Hey,” I said. He didn’t look up.

I went over and sat next to him. “Hey,” I repeated.

He jumped. “Is she okay?” he asked.

“She’s great,” I said. “I just checked in with the surgeon. It’s going really well.”

He swallowed, nodded, then ran a hand across his eyes. “I thought you were about to say...something else. What are you doing here?”

“Ferry was canceled last night. I stayed with a friend.” He gave a nod. “Sully, I know it sucks to have a kid in the OR, but this is not a complicated surgery.” It wasn’t a cakewalk, either, but it had a very high success rate.

“Say that when it’s your kid.”

I smiled. “I can’t even imagine.” I looked around the waiting room. There was an elderly woman with her middle-aged daughter and a woman sleeping on the couch, her mouth slack. “Where’s Amy?”

Sullivan shook his head a fraction. “She had to go back home. Rocco’s got a cold.” He looked at his hands, and his jaw grew tight.

“I see.”

“Hospitals freak her out, anyway. She wasn’t doing much good here, so she took the ferry this morning.”

“Why do hospitals freak her out?” I asked.

“Because I was in one for so long,” he said.

Oh, God. Of course.

But still. Her daughter was in the OR under general anesthesia with a metal cannula scraping a tumor off a gland in her brain. And Sully was by himself.

I touched his arm again. “I’ll stay with you, if you want.”

He looked at me with those dark, lovely eyes, which grew wet again. He gave the Yankee nod and looked back at the floor.

What the heck. I slid my hand into his and gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back, his hand big and rough and calloused.

He didn’t let go.

20

I stayed with Sullivan the entire three hours of the operation, and when Dr. Einstein came in to say she was in Recovery and things had gone “perfectly,” Sully turned and gave me a long hug.

“Can I see her?” he asked, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. All this weepiness over his daughter...it was damn hard to resist. The doctor said absolutely, though she’d be groggy.

“I’ll check back with you in a few hours,” I said. “Give her my love.”

“Thank you,” Sullivan said. He started to say something else, then changed his mind and left the waiting room.

“Nice catch, by the way,” Dr. Einstein said to me, holding the door for Sully. “A lot of doctors might’ve missed the diagnosis.” He winked and then guided Sullivan down the hall.

Einstein told me I was smart. Maybe I’d get a tattoo of those words.

I checked my phone—three texts. One from Rosie urging me to stay over again, another from Bobby with a picture of Boomer on our—his—bed and the last one from Poe. is today audrey’s surgery? tell her i said good luck & see her when she gets home.

Good girl, Poe. I texted her back, said Audrey was doing well and asked if she’d come for dinner tomorrow night.

She wrote back immediately. okay. thx.

Underneath her bad attitude was a good kid waiting to come out, I was sure of it.

Then again, I’d thought the same thing about Lily, hadn’t I?

No. Maybe it was my cynical age back then, but I never did believe there was a better version of my sister. It died when our father left us.

The next ferry wasn’t till six this evening. I called my office, told them I was in town and asked if they needed me. “Want to take two colonoscopies?” Angela asked. “Waterman had an emergency, and you’d save my ass. And the patients’!” She laughed merrily.

So I went down the street to our offices and chatted with the other docs and nurses and Angela, who ran the practice, and did the colonoscopies, which aren’t as horrible as you might think, especially because of the first-rate drugs we used. Snipped a couple of polyps, sent them to Pathology, did paperwork.

Around three, my phone rang. It was Sullivan.

“Audrey’s kicking me out for a couple hours,” he said. “I don’t know why, since I’m father of the year here.” I heard a voice in the background. “She wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Hi,” said Audrey, her voice sounding like she had a bad cold.

“Hi, Audrey!”

“God, Dad, the volume on this phone is killer! A little warning next time? Hi, Nora.”

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“Kind of gross, but super happy this is over with. Do you know when I’ll start...you know? Improving?” I knew what she meant. When she’d start losing weight, maybe getting a little taller, losing the extra hair and purple marks. After all, I’d been an overweight teenager, too.

“Well, your endocrinologist can tell you better than I can, but in a couple of months, I think you’ll start to see and feel a difference.”

“I can’t wait.”

I smiled. “I hear you.”

“So the nurse needs to help me in the shower, and my dad won’t leave. He’s like the world’s most irritating dog.” She said this last part very clearly, obviously wanting her father to hear.

“I’m at my office right down the street. Want me to drag him out for a little while?”

“Oh, my God, yes! That would be fantastic. Dad, Nora’s coming to take you for a walk. Wanna go for a walk, boy? A walk?”

“You can stop that now,” he said in the background. I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Tell him I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

“I’m all set. Thanks, Nora. You’re the best!”

* * *

The weather had cleared, the sun was shining, the rain now out to sea. “We can just go around the block,” Sully said after I’d led him outside. He glanced up at the hospital as if he could see into Audrey’s room.

“I told her I’d keep you out for two hours,” I said. “Don’t make me lie to a child.” I took his arm and dragged him down the block. It wasn’t easy. He was like a truculent four-year-old, going all stiff on me.

“Two hours is way, way too long.”

“Sully, she’s fifteen. She wants to pee and poop without her father in the next room, listening. She wants to take a shower and get into her own pajamas and text her friends. She’ll be fine.”