"I won’t forget." Rob Kreger waved good-bye to his colleague and watched him head on down the hall toward the elevators.


"Hey, Rob!" Danni waved in his direction. "Have you seen Garrett around?"


"No, but I think Rene is meeting your surgeon in the O.R." He watched the young woman walk toward him. "Anything special that you need Garrett for that I can’t help you out with?"


"No, just checking up on my surgeon. Making sure that there’s no trouble I need to watch out for."


The matronly visitor edged her way toward the elevator trying not to be seen by her own daughter. She needed to get this Garrett Trivoli by himself if she was ever going to set things right. ‘I couldn’t believe that he could be joking about ‘getting it’ with his friends. Has he no couth?’ Finally the doors to an elevator opened and Mother moved to get on it. ‘And that friend, outright lying to my daughter to cover for that cad.’ Her raging temper was going to get the best of her if she didn’t keep it under control. ‘Why, hearing him talk, he even sounds French-Canadian like her grandfather.’ The woman shuddered at the thought. She’d fought long and hard to have her family thought of as French and not French-Canadian.


The woman took one last glimpse of her daughter and ducked into the loaded car.


"Hey, Danni, did you see that creepy old lady?" Rob motioned with his head toward the elevator doors that were just closing.


"Not a good one, why?"


"Nothing, I guess." The Chief Resident thought to himself for a moment than looked at Danni. "You know, if I were a betting man I’d bet that woman was up to no good."


Danni thought back to the brief glimpse that she had gotten of the woman right before the doors closed. ‘Hmmm…no, it couldn’t be. What would she be doing in Pittsburgh?’ The nurse shrugged her shoulders. "The trauma’s going to be landing in two minutes. We better get back there." She grabbed the sleeve of Rob’s white lab coat and tugged at it until he followed her.



* * *

Mrs. Bossard got off the elevator and looked around. There, at the end of the corridor was a sign pointing out her way. "O.R., Hmmm…let’s see if I can’t catch up to you now." She was a woman on a mission and no one had better get in her way. That was until she turned the corner and saw the huge signs hung on the doors. "Authorized Personnel Only! Damn it!"


The staff coming out of the door could hear the mutterings and one nurse quickly came to the woman’s aid. "Is there anything that I can do to help you?"


Mother looked up at the woman with fire in her eyes, "Yes! I need to find Dr. Garrett Trivoli."


The intense look on the woman’s face gave the nurse a fright. She sure wouldn’t want this woman tracking her down. "You’re looking for the Trauma Fellows. Why I just saw both Garrett and Rene Chabot outside of the doctor’s lounge just a moment ago."


"Where?" She was no longer asking but demanding. "Which way to that lounge?"


"Down the hall and to your left." The nurse watched her with a wary eye as the woman turned around and stormed off down the hall, her hands acting like excited robots as they opened and closed around the shoulder strap of her handbag.



* * *

"Oh, there you are, I’ve been looking for you all over. I thought we were going to make the rounds together." The Flight Suited surgeon held open the door for the woman on crutches.


Garrett had finally met up with Rene when she came out of the Doctor’s Lounge outside of the O.R. She stood casually leaning on her crutches with her back against the wall as Dr. Chabot stood in front of her. "What…no greeting, you just want to get right down to business?"


He took her hand and kissed the back of it. "Oh, but you are lovely this fine day."


Garrett shook her head and chuckled. "You’ll never give up will you? What would your wife say if she saw that?"


"But how could she see it, if she is nowhere around." He wiggled his eyes and smiled broadly at her. "Wife? Do I have a wife?"


"Well, whatever you want to call her then."


"Ah, yes! The mistress of my nights," his eyes grew wide, "well, at least when I’m not on call."


"You’re never going to change, are you?"


"And why should I…eh? I’m having way too much fun." He winked at the dark-haired woman and leaned against the wall next to her with one arm. "If you would listen to me, you’d be having some fun, too!" He cast his eyes down to the placement of her heart. "Open you heart and let the love find you."


"You keep telling me that. So, any news as to when the babies are coming?"


"OH! It will be so good to have the twins here, safe and in my arms finally. I can’t wait to see them. They’re changing everyday, getting bigger and bigger now. Why just the other day, one kicked me while we were playing…what is that game? Hard to get…no, hide and seek."


Garrett opened her mouth to speak but stopped at the sound of a commotion just a little piece down the hall. "Rene, did you see what happened?" She motioned to the matronly looking woman being attended to by several Staff Physicians and nurses.


Dr. Chabot studied the scene and shrugged his shoulders. "I don’t know, maybe she got some unexpected news that she wasn’t prepared for. Come on, let’s go back to the office and I’ll give you this Flight Suit back." He dramatically motioned for her to lead the way, saying, "After you, my friend."


The two colleagues made their way past the group of people attending to the dazed woman. The Flight Suited man stopped and gathered up the belongings that had spilled from the handbag, then set it down next to the woman. "Nothing surgical looking for us to worry about. She must have a bad heart," Rene said in passing, and headed for the elevator.


Chapter 11

Garrett sat deep in thought, her foot resting on the chair across from her. Even though it was now several weeks out from her injury, the ankle gave her pain at times. The act of elevating her foot during the day was now in her subconscious rather than an afterthought. She looked at her ankle as she tested its range of motion, wincing when she'd gone too far. 'Yeah, Trivoli, that pothole got you good.' Her mind drifted slightly to the image of a petite blonde nurse. 'Just like she did.' The surgeon closed her eyes and sighed.


The end of May was fast approaching and here she was with a stack of letters in her hand, all of them with offers of jobs trying to win her skills for their very own purposes. They all seemed to enjoy boasting that they had the best and brightest of the new rising stars on their payroll. It was their plan to entice the surgeon with offers of money, stock options, cars, houses, and even computer dating arrangements to name a few. She had to laugh at that one and wondered just how much they knew about her, probably more than she knew about herself. 'What do I know about myself?'


It was a puzzle that Garrett had been working on for the past month or two. Each time that she thought she had it all figured out, something else would happen to make her reevaluate what she had deliberated. Her life seemed to be constantly up in the air, as did the people that surrounded her. Each one always looking at her as if this great enlightenment should be taking place any minute. Some even more than others, like Danni. How often had she seen that hopeful look in the blonde's eyes? The surgeon's heart went out to her friend but she wasn't quite sure what it was that woman wanted from her. She was trying hard at this friendship but perhaps there was something more, something that she just wasn’t getting.


The dark-haired woman was finding that her responses to some situations were even more up in the air than anything. She often wondered why Danni’s touch sent shock waves through her as if she’d touched a live wire. No one’s touch had ever done anything to her before. Then there was the time the petite nurse had squeezed by her in the doorway to her room and suddenly Garrett had felt a stimulation surging through her body that to this day just thinking about it still took her breath away. These were all feelings that she’d never had before.


It all made Garrett wonder if there wasn’t some plan that was being put in motion without her knowing about it. Fate had brought her here to Pittsburgh, obviously, for some reason. Now, somewhere in her hands was the fate for the rest of her life. She stared down at the handful of letters and wondered how and when the fates would interact with her again.


"Maybe I should cast my fate to the wind. What do you think, Danni?" She mused aloud unaware that the nurse was standing at the bottom of the stairs within earshot.


Danni noticed the letters in Garrett’s hand and her brow furrowed with consternation. She closed her eyes to stave off the tears. She’d looked at the return addresses on the corners of the envelopes as each one had been delivered to the house with Garrett’s name on them and committed them to memory. Most had been from the West Coast, big name facilities, but several were also from the South. Heck, she’d even received a letter from Hawaii. The nurse bit her lip at the thought of Garrett leaving, being so many miles away. The pain was almost unbearable.


‘A little over a month to go and I could lose her forever. I can’t lay my feelings out on the line now, she’s got too much think about as it is. I pushed her into this friendship. I want her to make this decision on her own. If she loves me, she’ll stay, we’ll work something out.’ Danni was still concerned for her friend’s career. How would her peers, patients and the power structure of the hospital that she’d work in treat a gay surgeon? These were all concerns of the nurse’s in regard to her friend. Danni knew how she would treat her, lovingly, tenderly, with kindness and consideration. The nurse would downright cherish the day that the spark of love ignited into the flame of passion between them, if only it would.