“Except for me, you practiced on me,” Bullard said.
She nodded, her gaze shrouded. “Yes, though it’s not like I had much choice. You were dying. Even then, under these primitive conditions, there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t kill you in the process.”
“And did you operate on anybody local?” Dave asked.
She shrugged. “Only for minor issues. Never anything major.”
“But you could if need be?”
“I could,” she said, “but I won’t.”
“Unless it’s an emergency,” Bullard said.
She glared at him. “I’m not going back to practicing like I did before,” she snapped. “Nothing you can say will make me do that.”
“No, I wouldn’t pressure you either,” he said. “There’s nothing like broken trust.”
“It doesn’t heal,” she said. “You’re always left to wonder and worry.”
“What if we could do something to exonerate you?”
“Nobody will care,” she said, staring off in the distance. “Nobody even remembers my name by now.”
“Maybe,” Bullard said, “but somebody got away with murder.”
“It wasn’t the first time,” she said quietly. “It definitely wasn’t the first time.”
Chapter 7
Leia wasn’t at all sure she could go back and face an inquiry like that again. She had been absolutely gutted to have had so many of her cohorts throw her under the bus. As the one friend had said, “A bright young light rising rapidly within their ranks wasn’t something the old establishment could handle, so they’d done what they could to squash her effectively.”
But Leia had never suspected that anyone would have actually murdered a patient on the table in order to get her out of there. She didn’t want anything to do with a world like that. Bullard spoke about exoneration, but all she saw was an extension of the pain, and it wouldn’t help anyone. Should her associate have been brought to justice? Absolutely. Would it come to that? Not likely. She didn’t have much faith in the system anymore. It was just one of those things about life that wouldn’t come together. She looked from Dave to Bullard. “I agree that he should probably be charged,” she said quietly, “but it’s not like there is any validity in whatever I say.”
“They don’t tape any of those surgeries?”
“Yes,” she said, “but somehow”—and her tone turned very dry—“the tape went missing.”
Dave’s eyes widened. “That is completely unconscionable,” he said.
“That is the industry,” she said quietly, “and, no, I didn’t know it before I headed into the field. I went in with the naive impression that I could help people.”
“You still can,” Bullard said quietly. “I need a good surgeon.” At that, Dave looked at him in surprise.
She looked at Dave and asked, “What’s his skill level in that field?”
Dave shrugged. “He’s very talented. We have a full OR at home, with some of the most incredible equipment you would ever hope to work with.”
Leia found herself intrigued in spite of herself. “My skills are too rusty,” she said immediately, backing off again.
“The only thing that’s rusty,” Bullard said, “is your confidence, and not in yourself or your skills but in the people around you.”
“With good reason.”
“Absolutely, and I’m not trying to make you feel threatened,” he said. “But you do need to return and face whatever you’ve been running from, one way or another.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I have a wonderfully peaceful life here. Why would I want to change that?”
“Maybe because it’s not what you were intended to do,” he said. “Like you said, you got into medicine to help people.” He looked at Dave. “How are things with the clinic?”
“Ugly,” he said, “we closed the doors almost immediately because we didn’t have anybody to work there.”
“What about your niece?”
“We’re trying to convince her to come back when she finishes her current commitment,” he said. “Oh, and she’s hooked up with Fallon now, by the way.”
Bullard stared at him in surprise. “Wow,” he said, with a chuckle. “You know what? I can almost see that. They were always wary around each other, weren’t they?”
“Absolutely they were,” Dave said, with a smirk. “Honestly I am thrilled because I want to keep her close.”
“Of course,” Bullard said, with a nod. “We’ve all had such grave losses that sometimes you don’t see how to come back from it.”
Leia looked at Dave, curious. “I don’t know anything about you or your life,” she said.
Dave shrugged. “Let’s just say I lost my family, and it took me a long time to recover.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine,” she said, with feeling, “but having no one left to support you must have been doubly difficult.”
Dave nodded, looking at her. “Did you have no family to help you out?”
“My father was a gifted surgeon, and he had a heart attack on the job. People said that he was the reason I was hired, his recommendation, I mean. But he passed away soon afterward.”
“Ah, and people don’t like that, do they?”
“No, they don’t,” she said. “I was also trying to do some fairly difficult surgeries with him, and people didn’t like that either.”
“So what about your mother?”
“She left my father and ended up with a second marriage and a second family, this time with children who weren’t quite so ambitious, just like she wanted. She wanted children who would turn around and have more children, so she could become a grandmother. She wasn’t interested in having a career woman in her world.”
“How did that work out for her?”
“It’s a little early to tell,” she said, “but she has four sons now, so, in that sense, she got exactly what she wanted. No more career-seeking daughters.”
“Kind of sad in a way,” Dave said. “Having ambition is not a negative. It’s all about what you do in life and the gift of what you leave behind. We’re only here for a short time, so to sit here and do nothing but procreate—not even using their gifts—seems like a waste. I guess it works for some people, but the world needs all of us and our gifts that we can offer.”
“But not everybody wants you to use your gifts,” she said quietly, “as I found out, far too late.”
“You were a double threat to the establishment,” he said. “If your father had lived, he might have been able to save you. He probably didn’t realize the extent of the competition against you.”
“No, I don’t think so. He didn’t really see humans and their failings. He only saw aortas and ventricles and cranial cavities,” she said. “He was very much into his work. The fact that I was too gave us a bond, but otherwise—without that—we probably wouldn’t have been close.”