Miracle by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

my bypass operation.”
    Sebastien clasped his hands behind his back. Standing beside her bed, he trained his gaze on a mauve flower appliquéd on her robe. “There is that risk in any kind of surgery. I can quote success statistics, but I can’t give you guarantees.”
    From the corner of his eye he noticed the cardiac counseling nurse glaring at him. She grasped the patient’s hands. “Mrs. Spencer, your prognosis is excellent. You really shouldn’t worry.”
    “B-but Dr. de Savin said—”
    “Your chances of having a successful operation are very high,” Sebastien told her. “You’ll die if you don’t have the surgery. Think of it that way.”
    Mrs. Spencer’s eyes widened. She stared at him in horror. “I don’t want to think of it that way!”
    The nurse patted her hands. “What Dr. de Savin meant—”
    “Was that you have no choice but to have a bypass,” Sebastien interjected. “That is simply all there is to it, madame, and you would serve yourself much better by calming down. I’m here to explain the clinical procedures, which are actually very reassuring. We are going to make an incision—”
    “I want a tranquilizer!” Mrs. Spencer thrust the nurse’s hands away and jerked the bedcovers violently. Huge tears carried a flood of mascara down her cheeks. “I don’t want to hear about incisions!”
    Sebastien turned impatiently toward the nurse. “Bring Mrs. Spencer five milligrams of diazepam. I’ll come back to see her in half an hour.”
    He strode out of the room. The nurse followed, her hands jammed angrily into the pockets of her blue blazer. Cardiac-counseling nurses didn’t wear uniforms so they connected with patients on a more casual, comforting level. Sebastien thought their efforts frivolous.
    “Dr. de Savin,” she called softly, her voice tight. “May I speak to you for a second, please?”
    He halted. “Yes?”
    She looked furious. “You need some sensitivity training, Doctor.”
    “I’ll leave the hand-holding to you. I have no interest in playing word games with hysterical patients.”
    “Can’t you imagine how frightened that woman is?”
    “No. Frankly, I avoid using my imagination in such morbid ways. That’s why I’m such a good surgeon. I know how to direct my energy. Now get Mrs. Spencer a pill and call me when she’s ready to listen.”
    “All right, Doctor.”
    He turned to leave but caught her obscene gesture from the corner of his eye. He knew that she hadn’t meant for him to see it, and that if he reported her, she’d be fired. But he was more amused than offended. “You’re not the first, madame.” He glanced back at her startled expression before he walked away.
    Smiling thinly, he went upstairs to the Cardiac CriticalCare Unit and entered a row of glass cubicles. An eight-year-old boy had been brought in the day before suffering complications from open-heart surgery to correct a congenital defect. Electrodes were taped to his pale skin. Tubes carried various medications directly into the veins in the boy’s spindly arms. The clear tube that drained the child’s catheter dangled from one side of the bed. Around him various machines beeped and gurgled and clicked.
    Sebastien got the child’s chart and went into his cubicle. He glanced at the boy without saying hello then began reading. Working with children was very difficult. He had a troublesome soft spot for anyone who was young and defenseless, because he remembered his own forced maturity. Annette and Jacques, so many years younger than he, had nicknamed him
le général
. He had disobeyed their father at every turn and caused many family uproars by spending his summers with their mother’s rough-hewn people, working the sardine boats along the Brittany coast.
    When he finished with the chart he bent over the boy’s thin body and carefully put his stethoscope against the frail chest, where a thick strip of gauze covered the long incision left by surgery. The defect, a hole between