The Lies We Told

Rebecca’s eyes flew open. “What?”

“She’s nearly sixty years old,” Louisa said. “She’s been talking for years about finding someone who’ll eventually take over the leadership of DIDA.”

“She hardly knows me,” Rebecca had said.

“Dot reads people,” Louisa said. “She knew just by looking at you that you were the one.”

Louisa had been right, of course, and while Rebecca had never come out and said, Yes, I’ll take over DIDA when you’re ready to turn over the reins, it was one of those things that was understood between them without needing to be discussed.

Although Louisa’s use of the word “seducing” had at first startled her, Rebecca knew Dorothea had never had any sexual interest in her. Dorothea labeled Rebecca a “one.” She believed sexual preference was inborn and fell on a continuum, with complete heterosexuality a “one” and complete homosexuality a “ten” and bisexuality a “five-point-five.” When she described people she’d met to Rebecca, she might say “he’s a cardiologist, practices in Seattle, a three.” A few years ago, Rebecca had been interested in a guy when she was on assignment after an earthquake wiped out a village in Guatemala. When she told Dorothea she was attracted to him, Dot had clucked her tongue. “He’s a seven,” she’d said. “Can’t you see that?”

“Oh, come on,” Rebecca had said. “He’s totally hetero.”

Dot had shrugged. “Just warning you.”

He was a seven. Maybe even an eight. He’d told

Rebecca he wasn’t married, but she soon learned that Paul, the man he shared a house with, was doing more than just paying his share of the mortgage. Dorothea had sized the guy up with one quick look. She could be spooky that way.

She had that skill as a physician, too, an ability to diagnose with a glance or the lightest of touches. Rebecca had learned so much from her. Dorothea had made her a better clinician, as well as nurturing her longing to work in disaster areas. “You need a wild streak to do this work, babe,” she’d told her during that early seduction period. “And you’ve got it. But you also need discipline.”

“I’m disciplined.” Rebecca had been insulted. “How do you think I got through medical school?”

“Different kind of discipline,” Dorothea said. “It’s a focus. No matter what’s going on around you—power out, buildings caving in, mud up to your ankles—you see only the patient. You need blinders.”

Rebecca had developed the blinders and the focus and the love of the work. She would never love that there were disasters in the world, but when she’d get a phone call in the middle of the night telling her there’d been a quake in South America and she needed to get to the airport immediately, she felt a current of electricity whip through her body.

“Brent,” Dorothea said now, “is a good man.”

Rebecca had expected Dot to give her a host of reasons why she shouldn’t even consider marrying Brent—or anyone else, for that matter. But Dorothea probably thought of Brent as the best match for her, given their shared commitment to DIDA. Their relationship was built on friendship and mutual respect. That was the best foundation for a marriage, wasn’t it?

“Well, yeah.” She sipped her wine. “He is. But I don’t see the point of marrying him.”

“It’s probably a bad idea,” Dorothea agreed. “But have you thought about what it would be like? The two of you sharing the leadership of DIDA together? Could be amazing, actually. Very fulfilling for both of you.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “You know, it irritates the hell out of me when you talk like you have one foot in the grave.” It also irritated her to think of sharing DIDA’s leadership with Brent. With anyone.

Dorothea shrugged. “Just being a realist.”

“A fatalist is more like it.”

Dorothea leaned toward her across the table. “I want you to be ready to take over the day I can’t do it any longer,” she said. “It may be twenty years from today or it may be tomorrow.”

“Well, I’m pulling for the twenty years,” Rebecca said. She added reassuringly, “You know I’m ready, willing and able, Dot. Don’t sweat it.”

“So back to you and Brent,” Dorothea said, and Rebecca realized this was not the first time Dot had considered their sharing DIDA’s helm. “You do squabble a lot.”

“Squabble?” Rebecca smiled at the word, but she had to admit that Dorothea was right. “True,” she said, “but only about the small stuff.”

“You both have the fire in your belly for disaster work, that’s for sure. He’s as wild as you are. Almost, anyway,” she said with a wry shrug. “You’re positively feral.”

Rebecca laughed. She liked the description.

“Neither of you has ever wanted kids or a house in the burbs with a white picket fence,” Dorothea continued. “You’ve got the same values.”

Right again, Rebecca thought. She’d never wanted to settle down. She didn’t care where she lived, and kids had never been part of her life plan. When she witnessed Maya and Adam’s battle to have a baby, the lengths they were willing to go to to get pregnant, she knew she was missing the maternal gene.

“You surprise me, Dot,” she said. “I didn’t think me getting married would be something you wanted.”

“I don’t particularly, but it’s your choice. Why would I care?”

“Because you like having me living upstairs from you, for starters.”

“Get real.” Dorothea took a sip from her water glass. “You’re pushing forty and—”

“Thirty-eight!”

“And you’re not my prisoner. I can’t really see you and Brent as husband and wife. As the leaders of DIDA, though, you’d make a splendid team.”

“Well, I’m not interested in getting married. And besides, I don’t—” Rebecca glanced across the room at Brent again “—I’m not sure I love him.”

“You either do or you don’t.”

“Well, isn’t there something in between? With Louisa, wasn’t there a period of time when you weren’t sure?”

They never tiptoed around the subject of Louisa, but Rebecca could still see the sadness in Dorothea’s eyes at the mention of her name. Rebecca had learned so much about grief working with Dorothea. You didn’t hide from it, but you didn’t let it rule your life either.

“I met Lou on a Monday.” Dorothea looked off into the distance. “I knew I loved her on Tuesday. But it’s not always that neat and simple.” She returned her gaze to Rebecca. “Don’t marry him unless you’re sure,” she said. “Not fair to him or to yourself. You’re an independent woman, with a capital I. That’s what makes you so perfect for DIDA. Not so perfect for marriage.”

Rebecca’s cell vibrated in her pocket and she checked the caller ID.

“Maya,” she said.

“Ah,” Dorothea said. “The princess.” She motioned toward the phone. “Go ahead. Take it.”

Rebecca leaned back in her chair and flipped the phone open. “Hey, sis,” she said.

“It’s happening again.” There were tears in her sister’s voice, and Rebecca sat up straight.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, shit. Are you sure? Where are you?”

Dorothea stopped her fork halfway to her mouth and Rebecca felt her eyes on her.

“I’m walking Chauncey and I’m … now I’m just leaning against this damn tree because I’m half a mile from home, and I … it’s like I think if I just stand here very still I can stop it somehow, but I know I can’t. It’s over, Becca.”

Rebecca stood up, mouthing to Dorothea, She’s losing her baby, and walked through the restaurant in a blur.

“Bec?”

“I’m right here. Just wanted to get out of the restaurant.” She walked into the ladies’ room, locked herself in a stall and leaned against the wall. “Where’s Adam?”

“At the hospital. I’m sure he’s still in surgery.”

Rebecca felt helpless. She was three thousand miles away. “Are you bleeding?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Maya said. “It feels like it. I’m going to call Katie Winston—one of my neighbors—to come get me. She doesn’t even know I’m pregnant. We’d only told you so far. I’m sorry I disturbed you but I just wanted to—”

“Oh, shut up, you goof.” Rebecca leaned her head against the tiled wall, eyes closed. “I’m so sorry, Maya. I thought this time it would be okay.”

“Me, too.”

It was going to be very hard for Maya to tell Adam. This would kill him. Rebecca’d had lunch with him at the hospital the week before, and he’d been unable to keep the smile off his face when he spoke—with cautious joy—about their “Pollywog.” His eyes had sparkled, and only then did Rebecca realize how long it had been since she’d seen him look so happy. As much as Maya wanted this baby, Adam wanted it even more. He’d changed in the past couple of years. He was still handsome, of course. Still sexy as hell, even though Maya never seemed to get that about him. But the energy and enthusiasm that had been his hallmark had left him bit by bit as he and Maya failed to create a family. Now Rebecca felt their hope for the future breaking apart like glass. Their relationship, though, was solid. They’d get through this the same way they’d gotten through it the last time. And the time before that.

“Do you want me to come home?” she asked, counting on Maya to say no. “I can catch a plane in the morning.”

“Absolutely not,” Maya said.

“Look, you call your neighbor and then call me right back and I’ll stay on the phone with you till she gets there, okay?”

“I’m all right now. I don’t need to—”

“Call me back, Maya. I’m going to worry if you don’t.”

“Okay.”

She hung up her phone but didn’t budge from the stall of the restroom. She knew all about life not being fair. She saw it every day with her disaster work. She’d seen it when she and Maya lost their parents. But some things felt less fair than others, and this was one of them.

3

Maya

“ADAM?” MY VOICE CAME OUT IN A WHISPER, ADAM’S NAME on my lips even before I opened my eyes.

“Right here, My,” he said. “Sitting next to your bed, holding your hand.”

I opened my eyes, squinting against the bright lights in the recovery room. “I’m sorry.” I felt crampy from the D and C as I turned my head to look at him.

“You have to stop saying that.” Adam moved his chair closer. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know. I just … what did Elaine say? Boy or girl?”

Adam hesitated. “Boy,” he said.

Another boy. Two sons lost. At least two.

“Elaine wants us to come in next week to talk,” he said. “To figure out where to go from here.”

What did that mean, where to go? Did we dare try again? Could I go through this one more time?

“Okay.” I shut my eyes.

“Don’t go back to sleep, My,” Adam said. “You know how it is. They’re going to want you up and out of here soon.”

I groaned, forcing my eyes open again. “Why do we do that to patients?” I asked. “It’s inhumane.”

“I’ll take you home and later, if you feel up to it, I’ll make you some of my special chicken soup, and I think we have a couple of movies we can watch, and I’ll surround you with lots of pillows on the sofa and—”

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Be all … Adamy.”

He laughed, though there was no mirth at all in the sound. “All ‘Adamy’? What’s that mean?”

“All chipper and cheery and energetic and … caretakery.” Was I making any sense? I desperately wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to sleep away the weeks—the months—of mourning I knew were ahead of me.

“How would you like me to be?” Adam asked.

I thought about it, though my mind floated in and out of consciousness. Adam could be no other way. His cheeriness was ingrained. It was what I usually loved most about him, what had drawn me to him in the first place.

He smoothed my hair away from my forehead, then let his fingers rest on my cheek. “Want me to be serious?” he asked.

Did I? “Yes,” I said. “I know you’re sad. Beyond sad.” I looked at him again. He’d lost his false smile. His fake cheer.

“Yes, I’m sad,” he said. “I’m as brokenhearted as you are. But I want to take care of you today. Today and tomorrow, bare minimum. Let me do that, okay? After that, you can worry about me.”

” ’Kay,” I said. What woman wouldn’t kill for my husband?

“I’m going to find out when I can spring you,” he said, getting to his feet.

I nodded and once he’d walked away, I closed my eyes again, hoping sleep would return to me quickly.

I’d first met Adam in the hospital room of one of my patients. The girl was tiny for eight, dwarfed by the mechanical bed. I could tell she hadn’t yet received her presurgical medication, because she was shivering with anxiety when I walked into her room. Sitting at her bedside, her mother held the little girl’s hand, and the anxiety was like a ribbon running from mother to daughter and back again.

I had seen them only once before, when I evaluated the girl, Lani, in my office and discussed the surgery I’d perform to lengthen her leg. Lani’d been playful and talkative then. Now, though, reality had set in.

“Good morning, Lani,” I said. “Mrs. Roland.” I sat down next to the bed. I liked doing that, taking the time to sit, to be at my patient’s level. To act as though I had all the time in the world to give them although the truth was, I had three long surgeries that day and really no time at all.

“Will the surgery be at nine, like they said?” Mrs. Roland glanced at her watch. Her hand shook a little.

“I think we’re on schedule this morning,” I said. “That’s a good thing. Waiting around is no fun at all, is it?” I smiled at Lani, who shook her head. Her eyes were riveted to my face as though she were trying to see her future there.

“Do you have any questions?” I asked her.

“Will I feel anything?” she asked.

“Not a thing.” I gave her knee a squeeze through the blanket. “That’s a promise.” I looked up as a man walked into the room.

“Hey.” He grinned at Lani, and his entrance into the room was so casual and genial that I assumed he was the girl’s father or another relative. “I’m Dr. Pollard, Lani,” he said. “I’ll be your anesthesiologist during the surgery today.”

The new guy, I registered. He’d been working at Duke for only a week, but I’d heard about him. He was in his late thirties and he wore khakis, a pale blue shirt and a confident air.

“What’s an anesthesiologist?” Lani pronounced the word perfectly.

I opened my mouth to respond, but he beat me to it. “I’ll make you comfortable during your surgery,” he said, one hand resting on the foot of her bed. With the other, he pointed toward the pole holding her saline solution. “I’ll give you medication in that IV there that will let you go into a sleep so nice and deep, it’ll feel like magic. You’ll close your eyes and count backwards from ten. The next thing you know, you’ll wake up and the surgery will be over. Then I’ll make sure you don’t have a lot of pain.”

Lani’s mother visibly relaxed. I watched it happen, her shoulders softening as she broke into a smile. “I told you, Lani,” she said. “You won’t know anything’s happening, and you won’t remember it when you wake up.”

“What if I want to remember it?” Lani asked.

“Well then,” Dr. Pollard said, “Dr. Ward and I can tell you all about it afterward. We love it when patients want to be informed about their health, don’t we?” He looked at me.

“Absolutely.” I smiled. I liked the way he made it sound as though we’d been working together for years.

“Good,” Lani said. “I can’t wait to hear about it.”

“I’ve heard great things about you,” Adam said once we’d left Lani’s room and were walking down the hall. “Glad I’ll be working with you.”

What I’d heard about him had little to do with his work. Instead, it had to do with his personality, and now I understood why his arrival had started people talking. He was charismatic, filled with a buoyant good cheer. He spoke in incomplete sentences, as though he had so much he wanted to say that he needed to leave out some of the words to save time. That truncated delivery was rare for someone with a North Carolina accent. I remembered, though, that he’d lived most recently in Boston.

“So, you moved here from Massachusetts?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. But I missed North Carolina—I grew up near Greensboro—and I wanted to do some clinical trials, so I’m here now. Glad to be back.”

I felt myself smiling as I listened to him. What was that about? He was not particularly attractive. Well, he actually was, though not in the conventional sense. He was slender, with brown hair and warm dark eyes, but his features were overpowered by the energy that bubbled out of him. I looked forward to working with him, to seeing him get that energy under control enough to do what needed to be done in the O. R.

“So what exactly did you hear about me?” I sounded flirtatious. Not like myself at all. I was usually all business in the hospital. I was thirty years old and in the last year of a grueling residency, and most of my life had been focused on learning, not on men. Not on dating. I couldn’t believe the gooey, girlish feelings I was having. The raw, splayed-open sensation low in my belly. I was not only thinking about how he’d be in the O. R. I was thinking about how he’d be in bed. I’d had exactly two lovers in my adult life and I wondered what it would be like to have him as my third.

“You’re well respected,” he said. “Very young. How old are you? Never mind. Inappropriate question. Quiet. Calm. Still waters run deep, of course. Unbearably self-confident.”

“Unbearably?”

“Well, maybe that’s not the exact word I heard. Just. you know, the kind of self-confidence people envy. It comes naturally to you.”

“I think you’re making this all up,” I said. He’d been there less than a week. Surely he hadn’t heard all this about me. Yet most of it was true. I was quiet. Calm most of the time—unless something scared me. I wasn’t afraid of the usual things. Not anything in the hospital. Not what other people thought of me. My fears were more the primitive variety. A rapist hiding in the backseat of my car. Aggressive dogs. A fire in my condo. A guy with a gun. I had nightmares sometimes, though no one I worked with would ever guess.

“I’ve heard all that and plenty more,” he said.

“Well, I’m at home here,” I said.

We rode the elevator to the operating suites. The doors opened on the third floor and Adam and I moved to opposite sides of the car to make room for one of the housekeepers and her cart.

“Hey, Charles!” Adam said, as if greeting a long-lost friend.

The woman laughed. “Doc, you crazy!” she said.

“Charles?” I was lost. I looked at the woman’s badge. Charlene, her name was. A short, middle-aged woman with streaks of gray in her black hair.

“He calls me Charles.” The woman pushed the button for the ground floor and grinned, a blush forming beneath her brown skin. She was under his spell. “Man’s crazy.”

I had worked in the hospital for several years and had seen this woman nearly every day. I’d never once read her name tag. I’d never greeted her with more than a nod. Adam Pollard had been there less than a week and was already on a teasing basis with her.

“How’s the ladies’ man doin’?” Adam asked her.

Charlene rolled her eyes. “Goin’ be the death of me, Doc,” she said.

The doors slid open. “Don’t let that happen, Charles.” He touched the woman’s shoulder as we walked out of the elevator. “Can’t do without you ’round here.”

“Do you know … did you know her before you came here?” I asked as we started walking toward the O. R.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Works her butt off. Did you ever notice? She’s everywhere at once. She’s raising her daughter’s kids, too. Daughter’s got a monkey on her back.”

“Who’s the ladies’ man?”

“Her ten-year-old grandson. She’s worried about him. Can’t remember his name, though. I’m crap with names.”

“How have you been able to learn all that in a week?”

“I talk to people,” he said with a shrug. “How else?”

After Lani Roland’s uneventful surgery, Adam caught up with me in the hallway outside the O. R.

“Dinner tonight,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He said it as if I couldn’t possibly have other plans.

“All right,” I answered, since that was true.

“Casual or fancy?”

“Casual. Definitely.”

“Mama Dip’s okay? I’ve missed that place.”

I nodded. “I’ll meet you there,” I said. “I should be able to get out by six-thirty.”

“Cool.” He gave my arm a playful punch as if I were a teenage boy. It made me laugh.

He was sitting at a table near the windows when I walked into Mama Dip’s a few hours later, and he was already joking with a waitress. He stood as I walked toward them.

“Hey, Maya.” He sounded as though we’d known each other for years. He leaned over and bussed my cheek. “Dr. Ward, this is our server tonight, KiKi. KiKi, this is an amazing surgeon, Maya Ward. She knits together teeny little bones.” He pulled out a chair for me, touching my arm as I sank into it.

KiKi smiled at us both. “What can I get you to drink, sweetie?” she asked me.

“Lemonade,” I said, unwrapping the napkin from around my silverware.

Adam chuckled to himself as KiKi walked away. “I introduce you as a surgeon, she calls you sweetie,” he said. “Gotta love the South. Does that bug you? The sweetie bit?” I loved the way his smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“Not at all,” I said. I knew plenty of professional women who bristled at the familiarity, but I’d lived in North Carolina long enough that I didn’t even notice it.

“I love it,” he said. “Boston was great, don’t get me wrong, but nobody there ever called me sweetie or darlin’ or dear. And you can’t get enough kind words. Know what I mean?”

“I do,” I said.

KiKi was back with our drinks and I popped a straw into my lemonade.

“You’re obviously not a native,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Virginia. Outside D.C.”

“How’d you end up here?”

“I followed my sister. She went to medical school at Duke and loved it, so when it was my turn, I followed her lead.”

He sat back, eyes wide. “Wow!” he said. “There’s two Dr. Wards? Where does she practice?”

“She works full-time with Doctors International Disaster Aid, so she’s here, there and everywhere.”

“DIDA!” he said.

“You know it?”

“I thought of applying to do a stint with them, but never got around to it. Maybe one of these days. It’d be so cool to do that sort of work.” He sipped his iced tea. “She’s a do-gooder? Your sis?”

“She’s …” I hadn’t thought of Rebecca that way. Gutsy was the word I usually used when describing my sister. But she was a do-gooder, and not only with DIDA. Rebecca was my hero. “Yes, she is actually,” I said. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of months, though we talk all the time when she’s someplace with cell coverage. Right now she’s working in China at an earthquake site. She’s unreachable.”

KiKi returned with my bowl of Brunswick stew and Adam’s barbecue platter.

“Anything else for y’all?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“We’re good,” Adam said, though his gaze never left my face. “So, you’re really close to your sister,” he said once KiKi’d walked back to the kitchen.

I felt like telling him everything. About my life. About Rebecca and the complicated bond we shared. Everything. I never felt that way. I kept things locked tight inside me, never wanting to show any dent in my professional demeanor. I knew how to hide my flaws.

Rebecca hated my wimpiness, and I’d learned early to erect a brave facade. I needed to work with Adam. Better that he saw me as a competent physician than a woman who could still be unnerved by the past.

“Yes,” I said simply. “We are.”

“You’re so lucky to have a sib.”

“You don’t?” I finally got around to picking up my spoon, but I was so intent on our conversation that I didn’t even consider dipping it into the stew.

He shook his head, swallowing a mouthful of barbecued pork. “No family,” he said. “Lost my parents when I was fifteen.”