Clicking through his countless e-mails, one of them caught his attention. She fits the profile...Will you do it? Please reply.
It was from Elizabeth. With a patient file attached. Allison MacAllister. A young woman, a vet, a recent amputee. Her chronic infections from contact with the conventional prosthethesis made walking with it impossible. But with the new prototype that Robert's team was assembling...
He called her. Three months since he'd heard her voice. Not that he hadn't reached for the phone every night for a week after she'd left. But each time he remembered that he had come to DC to sever that tie, to cut it off. He was haunted by the phantom pain though. He had to remind himself that unlike a missing limb, Lizzie had never really been a part of him.
"Hello," she answered.
"Hi," he began.
"Robert," she breathed, knowing his voice just from the timbre, the tone.
"We just have to size it down. No big deal. I can have the team ready next week. We'll do the surgery in Chicago, at County even, damn it..." he spat bitter that he his project would begin at the bottom of the medical heap, "but she will have to come here for her rehab," he ended more pragmatically.
"Hmmm," Elizabeth pondered, quickly processing the information. "I don't know. Her family's here. She's quite fragile, emotionally..."
"We have what she needs," he interrupted. "Not just physical therapy and the engineering team to help with the modifications, but counseling, support, you know. All that fuzzy stuff I hate. And there's a place for her parents to stay as long as they want."
"They work here. I'm not sure," Elizabeth faltered.
"Well get sure or don't call me," Robert huffed.
"I didn't call you," she corrected mildly, trying to calm him.
"I'm sorry," he recanted, realizing that his harshness was not a result of Elizabeth's incomplete assessment of the case but rather his discomfort in speaking with her after so long. Perhaps his anger at himself for having called her at all.
"Look, Lizzie," he continued, "If we're going to work together, I'm going to have to get a grip. And us working together...I'm not sure if it's such a good idea..."
"Well get sure!" she laughed, "Because we are going to make this happen. I'll call you tomorrow after I reconfirm with Allison, but I've already sold her on you. She's ready for this. She wants to try again. And she's been through a lot..."
"They all have," Robert ended soberly.
"But she's my patient. And I have to push for her," Elizabeth affirmed.
"Maybe that's where I get it from," he mused.
"Get what?"
"My pushiness."
Elizabeth laughed but he continued, "I never really advocated for my surgical cases. Here that's all I do. I didn't know how at first, but I remembered what you were like. With the Beaumont case, with so many others..."
She didn't know how to respond. Silence.
"Well, I'll talk to you tomorrow, I guess," he ended.
"Okay," she was saying when he hung up.
After a successful surgery thanks to Robert's precision direction of his team (like a maestro conducting his orchestra, Elizabeth had thought), Elizabeth followed Allison to recovery while Robert talked to her parents. When she went to find them he was still there.
He looked a little guilty when she entered the room, like a kid caught with his hand in the candy jar. Caught in the act of caring, she thought.
Once the MacAllisters had left to meet Allison in her new room, Elizabeth turned to Robert. "Dinner?" she asked.
"Hmmmm, he responded, "I promised the team steaks at Charlie Trotter's. You could come, too," he offered.
She shrugged a little, not too impressed with the last minute invite. "I should probably spend some time with Ella tonight anyway. I've been here overtime arranging our endeavor, and I haven't seen enough of her...But if dinner ends at a reasonable hour, maybe you could stop by for coffee," she suggested.
"Decaf," he smiled in acceptance.
Tess would be diappointed in him if she were here. She had left for New York a few weeks before, her internship completed and a gallery job waiting for her there. However, she still talked to Robert often and had visited him twice in DC. The last time, over dinner, she had finally said, "I'm so glad you're here. It was too hard for you there." When he raised his eyebrows to question her, she continued, "It was too hard to start over. At work. And with life. You needed to move past her, I mean it..." she fumbled, but Robert knew who she meant. "And you have, I think," Tess smiled, recalling that brief brush in the hospital hallway with the pretty brunette who had smiled so warmly at her uncle. But how could he say no to an invitation from Elizabeth?
Later, then, he found himself in her living room, drinking decaf and feeling a litle bit guilty in a different sort of way. There had already been several silences between them, moments when he felt Elizabeth shifting toward him, waiting for him to move toward her on the couch. But he just couldn't close that gap...
Suddenly they heard from upstairs a thud and a cry and then quiet. Elizabeth jumped to her feet and he followed her up to Ella's bedroom, where they found the girl sweating and heaving in a little pile on the floor. When Robert found the light and flipped it on, he saw that Ella's nightgown was soaked in watery vomit and that her complexion was so pale she was almost green. He rushed to her and picked her up, out of her mother's arms. "Get your car keys and your phone. We're going in."
Robert ran from the house, grabbing an afghan from the couch on his way. Elizabeth opened the door to the van and strapped Ella into the seat as Robert leapt in beside her, tucking her into the blanket for warmth and then cleaning her face gently with one corner of it. As Elizabeth sped out of the driveway, he whispered reassuring words into Ella's ear, stroking her sweaty hair as he repeated, "It's going to be okay. We're going to take care of you, make you all better."
Into the ER, blood tests that the child was too weak to protest and a fast IV for rehydration. Relief to find that it was a simple although severe case of food poisoning. When they found Ella a room and wheeled her in, she was already deep asleep. Elizabeth fell into a chair and just put her head into her hands, completely spent. Robert stood awkwardly in the door frame, waiting to decide whether he should stay or go.
But when he heard her crying, he couldn't leave and knelt next to her chair, putting an arm around her waist as she drooped her head onto his shoulder. He reached up to hug her neck. "It's okay, Lizzie," he whispered repeatedly in the same reassuring tone he had used with Ella. And after a while she nodded and straightened, putting on a brave if crooked smile.
"Thank you," she began, but then started helplessly sobbing again, her hand flying up to cover her mouth.
Robert had stood up and now reached for her hand, pulled her to her feet and then into a warm, long hug. "It really is okay," he said firmly, but her crying only intensified.
Finally, she stepped back and laughed through a last sob. "You must think I've lost it," she smiled ruefully if tearfully.
"No..." he began.
She sat on the second bed in the darkened room, looked out the window and continued, "It just reminded me of the last time I brought her into the ER, and I just felt again how hard it is to protect her, and ..."
"You don't have to explain,' Robert interrupted and sat by her side.
"Stay," she asked but without much of a question in her voice.
"Uh-huh," he agreed quietly, as they moved to lie down together on the bed, propped on the pillows, her head nestled in the crook of his neck.
But in the morning he was gone.