Waiting for Rayne

By Carol Rizer

Dr. Lucy Burke is an anesthesiologist with a family secret that threatens her career, as well as her sanity. When strange occurrences begin wreaking havoc in her life, Lucy turns to her faith, love, and the inherent power of the sister bond as she searches for answers to some frightening questions about the past. Potentially devastating events lead her to discover surprising truths and question everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781624881848

Book preview

Epilogue

1

Friday, October 16, 2009

The day began in the usual way with the sun only a smoldering glow in the east. It would soon punch through the horizon as a hot, orange ball, warming the mid-October day to at least 80 degrees. The usual birds began to sing the rest of the world awake, and the usual quietness of the house was the first thing Lucy welcomed when she woke up that morning. That quietness had been interrupted only by the noise of the automatic coffee pot beginning its brew cycle. Devin sat up from beside her in bed and went to the kitchen.

She rolled over and looked at the ceiling, dim in the weak light of morning. Her neck was a little stiff, but other than that she felt like taking on the world. There was that one glaring thing, however—that one giant stone still weighing her down as it had all week, all month, really. Silently, she reviewed the week, hoping she had been successful in the pact she had made with herself to suffer in silence, hoping no one else was aware of her mounting gloominess. October 18 would be her mother’s birthday, the first one since her passing.

Admittedly, she hadn’t been able to get her head around the fact that as of about 10 months ago, she no longer had a mother. Knowing she herself was a mother, and even a grandmother, did not seem to improve the feeling of loss, of orphan hood, of aloneness. She was a grown woman but still a child without her mother.

Lucy realized she must have dozed off for a few minutes more, a natural snooze button, because the next time she awoke, she could hear the shower running through the partly open bathroom door and rolled over in bed. Slow curls of steam arose from the green ceramic coffee mug on her bedside table and Grumpy the dwarf’s bearded face frowned back at her. She sighed but couldn’t help smiling back at him.

Ah, well, she thought. One more day. T-minus 8 hours to the weekend. Up and at ‘em.

Today was Friday, another workday, and she knew she would soon have to be on her way to the hospital. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she gripped the warm mug with both hands. Devin always had a cup of coffee at her bedside on every workday, and she zealously inhaled the pungent rising steam of the dark roast coffee blend.

The other side of this green coffee cup read, I hate mornings! in big letters. It had been a gift from Disney World when they had gone as a family three years ago after Bethany graduated from college. Devin had playfully suggested that the phrase suited her, and she had to agree. Coffee had been her friend for years and it usually took at least a cup or two to get her going—as it had since her college days.

I’m not grumpy in the mornings! she had laughingly feigned protest when Devin gave her the mug to her.

"Not grumpy, just somewhat less than enthusiastic about waking up in the morning!’

Lucy pushed herself up out of bed, still naked from the night. She sipped the coffee, spread her toes through the high-pile carpet and walked into the steamy bathroom. Sleeping in the nude had become a surprisingly fun thing to do to celebrate their empty nest, and Devin and Lucy both admittedly enjoyed it very much.

She peeked into the travertine tile shower at her husband of 29 years. His head was covered with white shampoo bubbles running down his slick, wet body that still sported most of the golfer’s tan from the summer. Lucy stood at the shower door and sipped her coffee watching him rinse his graying hair and then reach for the soap. He glimpsed her and smiled, then grinned widely at her nakedness.

Hey, cutie! Wanna get wet?

She turned and set the coffee cup down on the sink counter and walked into the warm shower stream, hugging him from behind.

Thanks for my coffee. It’s yummy.

He patted her arms wrapping around his middle. You’re welcome. Good morning.

Devin was a more than handsome man for his 56 years. He still worked out regularly, and even though he had a decidedly significant penchant for Blue Bell ice cream and movie candy, he was only a little more generously proportioned than the BMI charts said he should be. Not fat, just well nourished in a relaxed, satisfied sort of way.

He was not only a handsome man and the father of her children, but he was the only man Lucy had ever loved. She had dated a fair amount through high school and college, but meeting Devin during her second year of residency had changed her immediately and completely. Theirs was not so much love at first sight but a slow-cooker kind of love that had grown stronger from the very beginning.

It was a relationship of longevity. That had already been proven, at least by the standards of today’s society. Lucy was more in love with him today than she was the day they married, a testament to a viable and growing relationship. Devin was a good man, and Lucy loved the fact that they remained partners in every aspect of their lives together. They’d had disagreements over the years as most married couples do, but instead of letting their differences drive them apart, they tried hard to work through them and come out of every conflict still in love, if not more so than before.

They considered themselves blessed by God, happier than most and tried never to take each other for granted. Perhaps it was a function of marrying as mature adults with careers already in place. Perhaps it was simply because of the ingrained fear from casually observing so many of their friends’ and co-workers’ relationships wax and wane and even dissolve over the years. Some several times over. So many couples they knew had not been so lucky. Divorce was so common. Lucy was proud of herself and Devin for working on their marriage.

Their marital success had been the subject of intimate conversations for years, probably another reason why they stayed so close. Lucy often thought of the early years of their marriage, the hours they used to spend in bed after making love, lying together among the tangled sheets, naked, breathless and misted with perspiration. They talked about so many things; no subject was off limits. They would lay together, their faces close, their fingers intertwined, learning about each other.

They had rekindled this happy custom of late. Since the kids had grown-up and had lives of their own, they had their house back, their intimate space and time back. It was a part of empty nesting that made this phase of their lives together all the more precious. They were in a good place now. Happy.

Good morning, Lucy gave him a squeeze and began to wet her own hair for a shampoo.

She closed her eyes and felt the warm water flowing over her body. Her mind wandered to what she thought might be this Friday’s work possibilities and then briefly mulled over her weekend to-do list. She felt the small, but familiar dark cloud entering her thoughts once again and absentmindedly shamed herself for allowing it to happen.

It was a familiar conundrum, these memories, and yet she had promised herself she would not let it affect her quite so often. It was just that the death of her mother still felt so new, like an open wound some days. It did not matter whether the moment was happy or sad; her mother’s memory was always a part of it.

She had been such a huge part of who Lucy was and the person she had become. Even after 10 months, Lucy identified the continuing anguish as something similar to the phantom pain of a lost limb. An ache and sometimes a piercing stab that never went away, in a place she could never quite pinpoint. At least she had finally stopped reaching for the phone to call her… before remembering.

Small things, daily mundane things brought her mother to mind, and Lucy oftentimes found herself rummaging through memories rather than being fully engaged in everyday realities. Perhaps it was only because the loss still felt so relatively new, still raw, still surprisingly painful even after all these months. As a doctor, a clinical specialist who had all the knowledge of what loss could do to a psyche, she found herself quite surprised at the personal toll it levied.

The death itself, however merciful at the end, had left Lucy feeling hollow, almost emotionless, her chest void of a heart. Her mother’s cancer had been sudden and savage, taking her life in only four short months. Lucy’s knowledge of medicines, especially narcotics and pain medicines, allowed her to help her mother and afford her a peaceful and quiet death.

Shortly after the funeral, her father moved to Cabo San Lucas on the Baja peninsula. His reasoning, he said, was to open a sport fishing charter business. Lucy thought about how shocked she felt. Her sister Darla and their brother Keith had mirrored her reaction to the news. So soon after the funeral, too, it had almost appeared premeditated.

But her father would only say that it was something he’d always wanted to do. Keeping his mind off things, he said. Lucy could not understand that kind of reasoning at all and remembered the sudden and unfamiliar feeling of complete and utter abandonment, like a slow suffocation.

Devin had been her salvation then, as always.

Your dad is coping with the loss in his own way, he had said. He’ll come around—just give him time.

In fact, it had been Devin who suggested she spend some time with Keith and Darla to help her deal with her mother’s death.

It will help your brother and sister, too… he told her, give you all some closure, some sibling support. Help all of you heal. You may be a doctor, Luce, but this is not one of those Physician Heal Thyself applications.

Devin could still read her needs like an open book and she appreciated that about him, mystical as it seemed at times.

She found herself wondering why she hadn’t confided in Devin more often about her sometimes melancholy feelings. She assumed the bouts of sadness still occurred because of the loss of her mother, but more often than not she suspected it might be something more. Maybe she was just experiencing some effects of menopause. Who knew? Lucy passed off this secret-keeping as not wanting to bring Devin down or ruin their evenings together, a time they both coveted so much. Whatever the case, it would surely get better soon; things always did, didn’t they?

The rest of the morning was routine. Lucy kissed Devin goodbye and backed the silver Mercedes CLK 430 convertible down their cobbled driveway and out onto the street. The car was already almost four years old, but she loved it like the day he bought it for her. The early morning was cool with a remnant of heavy moon still hanging in the autumn sky.

There were a few Halloween decorations among the neighbors’ yards. A wreath of fall leaves on one door, a clutch of pumpkins on a bale of hay in the next yard. The lots in this area were large, so the homes were not too close together. She and Devin had lived here many years, and they knew almost all of the families living nearby.

She came to the stop sign at the intersection of Triggs and Donovon, then glancing both ways pulled the car into a right turn, heading east toward downtown. The driving was second nature, the route routine and her thoughts drifted back again to her mother.

She thought of herself as a little girl growing up in the early sixties, when she and her sister would cut out pictures to hang of the Breck girl, telling Mom how much she resembled them (except that she was prettier than the shampoo model in the picture). She thought of Keith when he was very young and how much she and Darla enjoyed dressing him up in frilly girl clothes, putting VO5 in his hair to stand it on end.

Their mother had laughed so at their antics and told the stories over and over throughout her life. Lucy found herself smiling at the memory. Her mother had been the most beautiful woman she had ever seen…a wonderful role model in every way, beautiful to Lucy and her sister to the very end, even to the day she died.

SUDDENLY FINDING HERSELF TURNING into the hospital parking lot, Lucy worried that she hadn’t been concentrating on her driving very much. Even her travel coffee mug remained full. She put down the driver’s side window and waved the magnetic card over the square panel to raise the gate arm to the doctor’s parking lot.

She recognized a few of the cars already parked there and pulled into a space near the elevator entrance. It was just past 6:00 and most of the doctors working at this hour were emergency room physicians employed by the hospital, a trauma surgeon doing in-house call, perhaps a surgeon or two working on an emergency case and maybe a couple of energetic young primary physicians or internists getting their rounds started before office hours.

This was about the time Lucy got to the hospital most days. She considered herself lucky to have been able to opt out of taking night call, leaving that to the younger generation, as she had begun to refer to most of her coworkers in the anesthesia group. Covering the Main OR and Day Surgery as well as the trauma and labor and delivery services, Lucy was part of the group of three doctors and eight nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) that covered the day work, leaving the nights and on call work to the other six docs and 10 nurse anesthetists. Green Acres Memorial Hospital was a 450-bed, Level I Trauma Center located in Bradford, Texas, a community of about 100,000 people located some 80 miles from Dallas.

Bradford was still considered by some to be a bedroom community of Dallas, but Lucy almost took offense to the notion, often arguing that one only need visit Bradford to realize its regional impact. The hospital system alone was the largest in East Texas with the Green Acres Memorial hub in Bradford serving as the referral center for the 10 or so satellite hospitals in rural locations. The healthcare system included home health, rehabilitation, behavioral health, an ambulance and helicopter service, a large clinical laboratory as well as numerous clinics and primary care offices. Lucy felt fortunate to have been a part of the growth and development that the hospital had experienced since she came on board in 1989. Things had come a long way since then and so had she. She smiled.

But Friday morning was still Friday morning. And this Friday was proving to be particularly difficult to get started, for whatever reason.

As she pulled into the parking space and turned off the car’s engine, Lucy took a long drink of the still very warm Kona blend in the travel mug. Gathering her small backpack to her chest and still holding the coffee, she took a deep breath and stepped out of the car. The coolness wafted over her as she watched her breath come in slow, misty flurries that made her wish she had on a jacket.

But the walk to the hospital entrance from here was brief, and the parking lot lights still glowed persistently against the dawning day as Lucy punched the silver numbers on the keypad at the back door and levered it open. She glanced down the side of the building some 50 feet or so to the loading dock where several men were pushing two-wheeled dollies back and forth across the platform, unloading cartons and crates from the big rig parked there.

Their workday began early, too, she thought.

She exited the hallway halfway down and took the stairs to the second floor where the Surgery Department monopolized almost all the square footage. Leaving the stairwell, the Main OR doors stood closed and armed with keypad or ID badge entrance only. She turned right and walked the short hall toward the doctor’s lounge and dressing room.

Just short of the dressing room door, Lucy waved her badge over the wall panel near an unmarked door that was the back entrance to Surgery. The Control Desk area and schedule board for the main OR were just inside. Shrugging her backpack onto her shoulder, she walked over to the big white board and looked for her name.

The schedule board was like a monstrous, dry-erase spreadsheet in a constant state of freeform flux. It all depended on what cases were scheduled for the day and what emergencies had to usurp those scheduled cases as well as the cases that were added last-minute by surgeons seeing patients in their clinic or through the emergency department. Just keeping the whole thing from collapsing into chaos at any point in the day was an overwhelming task and not an assignment for the faint at heart.

The mammoth schedule was usually run by one of the anesthesiologists. Few wanted the headache associated with the politics alone, not to mention the logistical nightmare the surgery schedule in a hospital this size could become. The person who ran the schedule board each day tried, at least to some extent, to satisfy the wishes of both surgeon and anesthesia provider as to who worked well together (among other things).

The number for each operating room was listed on the far left and next to that the patient name, what procedure was being done and then the name of the surgeon. The anesthesia provider’s names were on brightly colored magnetic strips so they could be moved and placed more easily to the right of the surgeon’s name. It was typical for an anesthesia provider to stay in one operating room for the whole day, (at least that’s how optimistically the plan began each day).

Lucy usually checked the day before to know where to report for work the next day, so she already knew that she was tentatively scheduled to be in Dr. Stephen Galvan’s room for Orthopedics there in the main OR. She glanced over the schedule to see if anything had changed overnight.

There was her name in black letters across a bright yellow magnetic strip. The five cases for Dr. Galvan included two hip replacements, a knee arthroscopy and two carpal tunnel release surgeries.

Not bad, she mused silently. As fast as Stephen is, I should be done well before three o’clock.

Lucy looked forward to this afternoon when she would visit her brother in Eaton. At Devin’s suggestion several months ago, Lucy had called her brother about spending more time with him. The idea had been not only to assuage some of the grief over her mother’s death but also to get to know her brother better. Where had the years gone? Ever since medical school and the birth of her children, time seemed to rocket by at an increasingly accelerated rate. Particularly since her mother’s untimely death, it seemed all the more imperative to spend more time with loved ones.

Keith was immediately delighted with the idea. Their friendship had grown exponentially with every visit, surprising them both with the intensity of the growing affection. Lucy was happy getting to know her brother all over again, the somber, dark-eyed little boy she grew up with and left behind when she went to school. The siblings soon settled into these visits as a comfortable laissez-faire escape for both of them.

They had immediately agreed that including Darla was the next step, though a totally different nodus. Lucy loved Darla very much but realized that her own overwhelming emotion where Darla was concerned had always been one of guilt, a remnant from the past, but still an inexorable chasm between them.

There was nothing she could have done to help her, she knew. What had happened to Darla those many years ago had changed her sister in ways Lucy could never understand, but Lucy had gone on with her life.

Keith had not been the project she thought he would be, she admitted to herself, no matter how she had tried to make him such. But Darla would be more than simply a project. Her sister was more like a friend lost.

Keith and I together will be able to get her back, thought Lucy. Surely, she thought with almost no degree of optimism. Up to this point, their combined attempts to draw Darla into their slowly forming circle of sibling friendship had been met with an apathetic disinterest at best. However, Lucy continued to be hopeful and intended to talk to Keith about changing their strategy to entice