Summer in Tuscany Read Free Page B

with ice around my heart that no man will ever be allowed to melt.

Chapter Three
    In my job, I’m sort of like the captain of the ship—everyone looks to me to lead them. Tonight, as usual, the ER phones are ringing off the hook, my pager is beeping, and the wounded, moaning and wailing, are lined up on hard gray plastic chairs and gurneys. My aim is to get them out of here, on their feet, walking, talking, living.
    It’s a stormy night and the rain is bouncing down hard as rivets. We all know what that means: more road accidents. And right now I have the sad duty of “calling it” on the first one: a young male victim of a motorcycle accident whose eyes have closed for the final time.
    My team had worked on him for almost an hour. We had given it our all, and now I just stood there, defeated, amid the discarded plastic tubes, the drips, the bloody debris of our battle for his life. I felt myself spiraling emotionally downward as I looked at him: so young, so cute with his spiked blond hair. He had everything to live for…he must have a mother…a lover…
    I told myself I was cool, I was a physician, I could handle this…then suddenly I turned and bolted down the long tiled corridor, through the automatic glass doors, out into the night. The rain bounced down, turning the roads into flowing streams. I was shivering, gasping what passed for fresh air in Manhattan, pacing to the place where the hospital lights didn’t reach, to the edge of darkness, and back again. Pacing, thinking. Telling myself not to think.
    Eventually my heart quit doing a nervous salsa and slunk back into neutral. And as if on cue, my pager beeped and I was running back inside, back to the trauma room.
    “You okay?” The charge nurse glanced anxiously at me.
    “Sure, I’m okay. I just can’t stand the sight of blood, that’s all,” I said, and we both laughed. It was a way of coping, the laughter. Except now I was the one who had to tell his family. It’s the worst job of all.
    So. I had been on duty for ten hours already. It had been a long night, and it wasn’t over yet. My pager beeped again. This time it was Livvie, who had a couple of friends sleeping over. I’m always worried knowing she’s at home without me. Right now our Filipina housekeeper was in charge. She’s not much older than Livvie, and she’s surely not the world’s greatest cleaner, but she is reliable and responsible and she laughs a lot and she keeps an eagle eye on my daughter, so what do I care about a few dust bunnies under the beds?
    I called Livvie back, flinching as my eardrums were assaulted by hip-hop at full volume with heavy bass.
    “Livvie, turn the sound down,” I yelled over the phone. “What are you girls up to?” I was anxiously eyeing a passing gurney bringing in a shooting victim, a female, screaming her lungs out, cursing, thrashing in pain…I was already running.
    “Mom, I can’t go to Nonna’s tomorrow,” Livvie yelled over the bass boom. “I have a date.”
    “What date ? You know you’re not allowed out on dates alone. Besides, we always go to Nonna’s on Sunday.”
    Livvie’s voice was one big groan as she gave me her omigodmom reply, but I held my ground, said a quick good-bye and love you, and raced after that gurney. It was just another chaotic Saturday night at Bellevue.
     
    An hour later, the ER was suddenly quiet. The stream of broken people had stopped for a minute. A glance at the wall clock told me it was already tomorrow and that the ritual Italian Sunday lunch was only hours away. Sleep-deprived or not, dates or not, we would go. We always did.
    I rested my aching back against the shabby industrial-green wall and took a sip of the boiling brown liquid we all pretended was coffee. Fatigue washed over me like a high tide, and I closed my eyes, hoping for at least a minor caffeine rush.
    “Hi there, doll, how’re y’doin’?” someone said. I knew without looking it was Patty Sullivan, my best friend and