A Matter of the Heart

“I have my patients to think of,” Nora told him.

“I can’t allow just anyone access to their information.”

She was still fighting, even after the battle was lost. A part of Rob admired her tenacity. Yet while he admired her determination to get rid of him in spite of the pressure on her, Rob couldn’t help but wonder why.

“Do you have something to hide, Dr. Blake?”

Her head snapped around and she stared at him with wide eyes. For a second, he thought he saw fear in their depths, but it was quickly replaced with anger. The elevator doors opened and she rushed off. He followed at a slower pace, but he was more intrigued than ever.

Homecoming Heroes: Saving children and finding love deep in the heart of Texas.

Mission: Motherhood —Marta Perry

July 2008

Lone Star Secret —Lenora Worth

August 2008

At His Command —Brenda Coulter

September 2008

A Matter of the Heart —Patricia Davids

October 2008

A Texas Thanksgiving —Margaret Daley

November 2008

Homefront Holiday —Jillian Hart

December 2008

PATRICIA DAVIDS

Patricia Davids continues to work as a part-time nurse in the NICU while writing full-time. She enjoys researching new stories, traveling to new locations and meeting fans along the way. She and her husband live in Wichita, Kansas, along with the newest addition to the household, a stray cat named Spooky. Pat always enjoys hearing from her readers. You can contact her by mail at P.O. Box 16714 Wichita, Kansas 67216, or visit her on the Web at www.patriciadavids.com.

A Matter of the Heart

Patricia Davids

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Patricia Davids for her contribution to the Homecoming Heroes miniseries.

May he turn our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep the commands, decrees and regulations he gave our fathers.

—1 Kings 8:58

To Lenora Worth, Marta Perry, Brenda Coulter,

Margaret Daley and Jillian Hart. Working with

y’all has been a pleasure. Thanks for all the help

you gave me.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Discussion Questions

Chapter One

“E xcuse me, where is the patient I’m operating on this morning?” Dr. Nora Blake stood impatiently at the nurses’ station in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Two nurses in brightly colored uniforms were laughing about something until they heard her voice. Then they immediately fell silent, their smiles vanishing.

Nora knew she wasn’t a favorite with the staff. She didn’t possess the people skills many of her colleagues displayed. Her insistence on attention to detail and her intolerance of mediocre work had earned her the reputation of being difficult.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care what her coworkers thought of her—she did. It hurt to see how quickly their expressions changed from cheerful to guarded, but making sure her patients received the highest quality care was far more important than being popular.

Arching one eyebrow, the slender nurse with short blond hair asked, “Do you mean Cara Dempsey?”

Nora raised her chin. Her skill was saving children with heart defects, not winning popularity contests. Professionalism was the key to getting things done right in the hospital, not sociability.

“I’m looking for the patient who came in from Blackwater General yesterday with transposition of the great arteries. Do you have the chart?” The words came out sounding sharper than she intended.

The ward nurse held out a black three-ring binder. “The patient is in room five. Dr. Kent just finished talking to the parents.”

“Thank you.” Nora nodded, relieved to hear that her partner had arrived first. Peter Kent would have explained the coming procedure to the family. It saved Nora the time and headache of trying to make laypeople understand the complex nature of the upcoming operation.

If she found any fault with Peter, who was ten years her senior and had been her partner for the past two years, it was that he was too upbeat in dealing with the families. As far as she was concerned, he often sugarcoated the truth and offered false hope. She would need to impress on the Dempsey family the risks involved, especially for an infant. Not every patient survived open-heart surgery.

Thumbing through the chart, she paid special attention to the laboratory values and medications being given to the two-day-old infant. Satisfied that everything had been done correctly, she closed the binder and moved to the computer in the corner of the desk area reserved for use by physicians. She pulled up the echocardiogram images of her patient.

She had already studied the scans extensively in her office late last night, but she wanted to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything, so she watched the movie of the child’s beating heart one more time. As always, a profound sense of wonder and awe engulfed her. The human heart was a beautiful thing.

She quickly focused on gathering the information she would need to repair the child’s flawed heart. Operating on a newborn baby was always hard for her. It brought back too many painful memories. She preferred her patients to be at least six months old, but this child wouldn’t live a week without surgery. It had to be done now.

The quality of the echocardiogram and tests were excellent, but Nora wouldn’t know what she was actually dealing with until she looked inside the patient’s chest. If there was one thing that she had learned during her years of training, it was that every heart was unique.

Leaving the desk, Nora walked to room five. Outside, she paused a moment to brace herself. Drawing a deep breath, she pasted a smile on her face, knocked once and then entered.

Inside, she saw a young couple sitting on the small couch at the back of the room with their arms around each other for support. They both had red-rimmed eyes, either from crying or from lack of sleep or both. They looked shell-shocked and barely out of their teens—far too young to be facing what lay ahead.

They both rose to their feet, and their hopeful eyes begged her for help she wasn’t sure she could give. For a split second she envied them each having someone to hold on to during the coming hours. She had been in their shoes once with no one to comfort her. The memory of those terrible days haunted her still.

On the warming bed, a baby girl with thick dark hair lay unnaturally still. A white tube taped to her mouth connected her to a ventilator. IV pumps and monitors took up most of the space around her and beeped softly. Drugs kept her from moving and fighting the very machines that were keeping her alive. Even with the ventilator breathing for her, the child’s lips were dark blue. It wasn’t a good sign.

Nora nodded at the parents. “I’m Dr. Blake and I’ll be performing your child’s surgery this morning.”

The father spoke quickly. “You can make her well, can’t you? Doctor Kent, he said you were the best.”

“As you know, your daughter was born with the blood vessels leading from the heart in the wrong places. Outcomes are usually good with this procedure, but five percent of the children who have this done don’t survive or survive with serious brain damage. You need to be aware of that.”

Cara’s mother laid a loving hand on her daughter’s small head. “God will be with you and with Cara. He will save her. God can do anything.”

Nora bit back the comment that rose to her lips. She didn’t share this young mother’s belief in a benevolent God, but she had learned that revealing her philosophy with families frequently increased their anxiety.

Instead, she said, “I’ll meet with you in the surgical waiting room when the operation is over. It will take several hours, but one of the staff will come out to give you updates during that time.”

The door to the room opened and the blond nurse looked in. “Mr. and Mrs. Dempsey, would you please step out to the desk? I have some forms for you to sign.”

As the couple followed the nurse out into the hall, Nora found herself alone with her patient. Looking down at the baby depending on her for so much, she experienced a pang of overwhelming compassion. Reaching out, she stroked the child’s hair with one hand. The tiny curls were soft as silk.

“If God can do anything, then why am I always fixing His mistakes?” Nora whispered.

She touched the small oval locket that hung on a gold chain around her neck. There was no answer to her question today. There never had been.

Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she closed her eyes and regained the composure she would need in surgery. Intense focus, not sympathy, would save this child.

After leaving the baby’s room, Nora headed to the elevators. At the fifth floor, she stepped out and walked quickly toward the operating suites. She passed the pre-op nurses’ station without pausing, barely noticing the women in green surgical garbs identical to her own standing in a group behind the tall, black granite counter.

Her mind was already intent on the delicate surgery she would be doing in the next few minutes. She rehearsed each move in detail.

Step-by-step, she visualized the course of the entire procedure, taking into account the obstacles and challenges the walnut-sized heart of this baby might present. Once the operation was under way, timing would be critical. The child couldn’t afford to have her surgeon wondering what to do next.

The hallway led her past the family waiting room outside the surgery doors. Nora didn’t bother glancing in. The parents would stay upstairs until the OR and PICU staff moved the baby to the surgery. If all went well, Nora would find Mr. and Mrs. Dempsey in about four hours and tell them their baby was still alive.

If all went well? It was a big if. There were so many things that could go wrong.

“Dr. Blake, may I have a word with you, please?”

Startled by the sound of a deep male voice behind her, Nora spun around. It took her a second to place the tall man with wavy dark brown hair who stepped out of the waiting room. When she did, she scowled.

Mr. Robert Dale, persistent reporter for the Liberty and Justice newspaper jogged toward her.

He was a man most women would notice. Dressed in jeans and a blue button-down shirt, he exuded confidence. His long stride and easy grace had her guessing that he was a runner, an activity that she enjoyed as often as her work permitted. His rugged features and deep tan made it clear that he preferred the outdoors over a treadmill. His bright blue eyes were fixed on her now with the intensity of a sprinter sighting the finish line.

She didn’t intend to become his journalistic prize.

“I’m on my way to surgery, Mr. Dale. I’m afraid I don’t have time to answer your questions.”

Not bothering to hide her annoyance, she turned back toward the OR and quickened her pace. The wide, gray metal doors were only a few yards away. He couldn’t follow her in there.

The man had been practically stalking her in his quest for information about the Ali Tabiz Willis case. The story of a five-year-old war orphan from the Middle East being flown to Texas for life-saving open-heart surgery apparently made a good human interest story. At least, Mr. Dale’s paper seemed to think it did.

Or maybe they were so interested because the boy’s grandfather was a retired U.S. Army general.

Either way, Mr. Dale had called her office enough times over the past few days that she had finally instructed her secretary to stop taking his messages. It seemed he couldn’t take a hint.

A sudden thought struck her—how had he found out that she would be here? She hadn’t known until late last night that she would be doing surgery this morning. Annoyance flared into anger at the possibility that her secretary or one of the hospital nurses had informed him of her schedule.

Determined to find out who had leaked the information, she spun around to confront him. Her abrupt change in direction caught him off guard and he plowed into her. The impact knocked her backward.

His strong hands shot out and grabbed her arms to keep her upright. “Sorry about that, Doc.”

The feel of his long fingers curled around her bare arms triggered a thrill of awareness that shocked her. She drew a deep breath to steady her nerves. It didn’t help. Instead, it flooded her senses with the masculine scent of his aftershave and a hint of caramel coffee.

She focused her gaze on a small damp stain on his pale blue shirt. He must have sloshed coffee on himself just as she walked by the waiting room. The thought that he had been lurking there expressly to waylay her brought her anger rushing back. She used it to suppress the strange and unbidden attraction she felt as she jerked away from him. “Who told you I’d be here this morning?”

His eyes sparkled with mirth and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, revealing a dimple in one cheek. For a split second, she envied his self-confidence and friendly poise.

“Now, Doc, you know a reporter never reveals his sources. Besides, you haven’t returned my calls. I wasn’t left with much choice except to track you down at work.”

She rubbed her upper arms trying to dispel the tingle his touch caused. “How often do you have to hear that I have no comment, Mr. Dale?”

“Call me Rob.”

“I prefer not to, Mr. Dale.” She turned and began walking away.

He quickly fell into step beside her. “I’d like to know why you object so strongly to being interviewed about Ali Willis’s case?”

“Medical information is privileged. I’m sure you are already aware of that.”

“I have copies of a release from the boy’s guardian as well as from the Children of the Day organization. Would you like to see them?” He pulled several folded sheets of paper from his hip pocket.

Ignoring the missives, she paused long enough to swipe her ID badge in front of a small black sensor on the wall. The OR doors swung open, revealing a flurry of activity as men and women dressed in green scrubs moved patients on gurneys and carts loaded with supplies and equipment through the wide, brightly lit halls.

She paused to glare at the man following her with a small sense of triumph. “I won’t help your paper or anyone else profit from a child’s suffering. We’re done. You aren’t allowed in here. If you don’t leave, I’ll have security remove you.”

Granting Rob Dale or any reporter an interview was the last thing she wanted to do. It was their job to pry, to uncover stories and reveal secrets. There were things in her past that were best left undisturbed.

He stepped back as the doors began to close but leaned to the side to keep eye contact with her. “If you won’t talk to me about Ali, why don’t we talk about the Children of the Day organization? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

She merely arched one eyebrow and waited until the steel panels clicked shut, eliminating him from her sight.

The man was certainly persistent…and attractive. There was no denying that fact. Not once since her husband’s death six years ago had a man affected her so strongly. Her reaction to the reporter was an aberration, but not something she couldn’t handle. Rob Dale would have to take no for an answer this time and she wouldn’t have to deal with him again.

Closing her eyes, she reached up and curled her fingers tenderly around the locket at her neck. She had more important things to think about than a man with friendly blue eyes, an engaging grin and strong hands that sent shivers down her spine when he touched her.

This is crazy. Get him out of your head. Refocus.

Forcing thoughts of the man out of her mind, she tucked the locket beneath the scooped neck of her top and proceeded into the scrub room. A long morning loomed ahead of her.

Rob admitted only temporary defeat as the doors closed between him and the intriguing doctor with shoulder-length blond hair, a cute upturned nose and intense hazel eyes. Dr. Blake might not want to speak to him, but he wasn’t about to give up so easily. His paper had sent him to do a story. It wasn’t an earth-shattering feature, but he would have to make do until a better story came his way.

He returned to the waiting room and scooped up his interrupted cup of mocha caramel latte. After taking a sip, he walked back down the hallway. Perhaps he could get what he needed for the story without using Dr. Blake.

At the nurses’ station, he paused to speak to the short, friendly brunette who had told him of Dr. Blake’s surgical schedule after only the mildest probing earlier that morning.

“You were right,” he said, leaning both elbows on the waist-high countertop and gracing her with his best smile.

She closed the chart she was writing on and stuck it in a silver wire rack. “I told you Dr. Ice Princess wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

An older nurse seated beside her looked up and said, “Traci, that’s no way to talk about Dr. Blake. She’s an excellent surgeon. Your patient has just arrived in pre-op number two. I think you’re needed there.”

Traci rolled her eyes and rose with an exaggerated sigh. “I didn’t invent the title, Emily, and you know she’s earned it.”

Rob watched her walk away, then turned his attention and his smile on the woman still seated at a long desk behind the counter. “Emily, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Rob Dale. I’m doing a story on a little boy having surgery soon named Ali Willis.”

“We aren’t allowed to give out patient information.”

“Of course, and I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I already know that Dr. Blake will be doing the surgery, and I’m interested in finding out more about her. I’ve been told she does quite a bit of charity work. That doesn’t sound like an ice princess to me.”

Emily sent a wary look his way, but he gave her his most disarming grin.

After a moment, she relaxed and said, “If she does, she doesn’t advertise the fact, but then I’ve never known her to give an interview. She’s a very private person.”

Or she has something to hide, he mused to himself. In the past he’d often found that the people who didn’t want to talk to him were the ones that deserved a closer look. The phone on the desk rang, and Emily excused herself to answer it.

Rob straightened but he didn’t move away. With half an ear, he listened in on Emily’s end of the conversation. Dr. Blake’s reluctance to talk to him had piqued his interest. The fact that she was prettier than any surgeon he’d ever met made him consider trying to interview her again, but his assignment was to do an in-depth piece on Children of the Day, a Christian charity devoted to helping innocent victims of war, not specifically on Dr. Blake. The only reason he was here was because of her work for the organization.

It was a fluff piece, but while he was in the States, he had to go where he was assigned. He glanced down at the red puckered scar on his forearm and flexed the fingers of his left hand. He was as healed as he was going to get. How many more of these feel-good stories would he have to do before he could return to the real action?

“You’re not staying home from school unless you’re running a fever, young man. Let me talk to your father.”

Rob couldn’t help but smile at Emily’s unsympathetic tone. He and his three brothers had been subjected to the same stern speech plenty of times while they were growing up. How did mothers everywhere know when their kids were faking it? However they did it, it would be a useful trait for a reporter to learn.

Rob’s cell phone began to ring. A surge of anticipation shot through him when he recognized the distinctive tone he had set for his boss and friend, Derrick Mitchell, the senior editor of Liberty and Justice .

Maybe I’m getting reassigned at last. Please, Lord, let it be the Middle East post that’s open.

Rob walked a few steps away from the desk and answered on the third ring.

“Rob, where are you on the Willis story?” Derrick’s voice crackled with impatience.

“Hello to you, too, Derrick. I’m still in Austin trying to get an interview with the boy’s surgeon, but she’s not talking.”

An orderly pushing a gurney came down the hall. Stepping aside to let the bed transporting an elderly man pass by, Rob frowned at the silence on the other end of his connection. Maybe Derrick was worried about Rob making the deadline.

Quickly, Rob said, “I don’t think she’s that important to the piece. I know you said I had until the end of October to get the story in, but I can have the rest of it on your desk in two weeks. A week if you need to rush it. Then I’ll be free to take the Middle East assignment that’s open. It’s my old stomping grounds. With the people I know in the area, I’ll be a real asset to the paper there.”

Stateside reporting was okay, but nothing was as thrilling as reporting from inside a war zone. He missed it—a lot.

“I’m sorry, Rob. I know how much you want that post, but I’m sending Dick Carter.”

Pressing a hand to his forehead in disbelief, Rob said, “You’re joking, right? Carter’s a greenhorn.”

“He’s got a nose for a story and he’s done some great work for us. You’ll want to check out his piece on the baggage handlers at Memdelholm Airfield.”

“Memdelholm was my piece.”

“Your piece about their special handling of packages to deployed servicemen was good—touching even. Carter’s piece about their drug-smuggling ring using phony names and addresses of Americans overseas is dynamite. It’s on today’s front page.”

“What? That’s crazy. I know men in charge there. Drake Manns and Benny Chase are both buddies of mine. They wouldn’t be involved in something illegal.”

“I’m afraid your friends are involved up to their necks. They were both arrested a few hours ago. My sources say they’ve pled guilty and are each trying to cut a deal.”

Thankful that there was a solid wall behind him, Rob leaned back and covered his eyes with his hand. “I can’t believe it. I served with Drake and Benny for three years. Benny saved my life. They’re great guys. They have so much respect for the men still serving.”

“Didn’t you have an inkling that things weren’t right?”

“They were reluctant to talk about their work, but I thought it was humility. Drake said they didn’t want me singing their praises. I trusted them.”

Rob couldn’t believe how much it hurt knowing someone he had served with had deceived him. How could he have been so easily mislead? That a raw newcomer like Carter had uncovered the story stung even more. “Oh, man. I really blew it, didn’t I?”

“You’re a good reporter, Dale. People open up to you. You could charm the U.S. Mint out of its gold and my grandmother out of her secret mincemeat pie recipe, but your trouble is that you prefer to see the good in people. You didn’t dig deep enough.”

“Overseas it was so black and white. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys.”

“That’s your army mentality speaking. You aren’t a soldier anymore. Your obligation is to report all sides of a story, even when it casts some of our servicemen or women in a poor light. The truth needs to be told, even when it hurts. That’s what journalism is.”