She’d got a speeding ticket. She’d had girlfriends in the car and got caught annihilating the speed limit. She was going a hundred in a fifty-five. And of course lost all driving privileges for a long time. It didn’t matter that much as she was in boarding school where they weren’t allowed to have cars. But she went home some weekends. Walter was surprisingly firm in the no-driving department and even when her friends wanted to take her out, she was grounded. Then one Saturday night he said, “Come with me, Maggie. We’re going to the hospital. You’ll be out late.”
There was an accident and it involved teenagers. Walter was called to the emergency room and Maggie followed him wearing a lab coat so she looked like she belonged. There were terrible injuries, the police were at the hospital, alcohol was involved, frantic parents came running, the waiting room was a circus. Walter was one of several doctors who then went to the operating room from ER. “Stay with me, Maggie.” She remembered thinking Walter had shown her exactly what he wanted her to see, that recklessness hurt people and it could be deadly. But imagine her shock when he told his OR tech to suit her up and scrub her in.
“What?” she had asked, horrified. “What if I faint?”
“The circulating nurse will kick you to one side so you’re not in our way. But I want you to be there.”
She stood through not one but two surgeries on teenagers and watched in fascination as Walter calmly and confidently called for instruments, asked for extra hands, ordered suction while blood dripped on his shoes, drilled holes in a skull, implanted shunts, carved and stitched, even had to resuscitate one patient on the table. He never panicked; he never raised his voice. The circulating nurse mopped his sweating brow. Both patients went to recovery, Walter and Maggie following. Maggie heard a nurse say, “By the grace of God and a hair.” She heard Walter say to one of the parents, “We were very lucky.”
Maggie had been in a silent cloud of sheer wonder. It was nearly dawn when they were driving home. “Well, Maggie?” Walter said.
In a voice that sometimes rang in her ears to this day she heard herself say to her stepfather, “I have to do that.”
He pulled the car into their garage, stopped the engine and looked across the front seat at her. “You can do anything you choose to do, Maggie. But if you want to live to do it, you will not drink and drive and you will never exceed the speed limit again. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely. So, how long does it take to become a neurosurgeon?”
He was quiet a second and then said, “Forever.”
Maggie smiled and shook her head. “Walter—high school. My speeding ticket. A watershed moment.”
“Seems so,” he agreed. “I couldn’t have planned that, of course. I admit, I wanted to scare you. But it had a much bigger impact than that.”
“You didn’t think I’d be impressed with emergency surgery?”
“At that time in your life I was betting on a career in cheerleading.”
She gave a hollow little laugh. She thought for a moment. “Would you two mind if I just... I’d like to take a short walk down by the lake before we continue this conversation. If you have the time, Walter. If you can spare me, Sully.”
“We’ll just have our drinks and catch up. Go ahead,” Walter said. “I’m in no hurry to get back on the road.”
As she walked along the edge of the lake, hands in the pockets of her shorts, her sneakers getting wet and dirty, she remembered with such clarity the night in the emergency room, that night of vivid lucidity, watching Walter save lives. She followed him at three feet, listening raptly, but he only spoke to her twice. Both times he said, “All right, Maggie?” And she had replied, “All right.”
All he’d had in mind was showing her blood and fear and trauma from a car accident, but something had happened. Though a kind and gentle man, until that night she had not appreciated how strong and wise Walter was, how thoroughly competent. That night she learned a new respect for her stepfather.
Later, while in medical school, she’d scrubbed in with Walter a few times, much closer to the sterile field, watching his perfect nimble fingers work magic. That was when she learned that Walter Lancaster was a highly respected neurosurgeon. He was the one to ask for when you wanted the best. She did her fellowship in neurosurgery with him. He had since retired from his practice after a couple of small strokes, unwilling to take any chances on his health or that of his patients. He still worked now and then, taking a few days to go back to Chicago where he was licensed, where he consulted, scrubbed in with another surgeon occasionally, that sort of thing. And he continued to go to neurosurgery conferences where he was often a presenter.
It suddenly occurred to her—maybe their move to Golden wasn’t Phoebe’s idea. Maybe Walter liked the idea.
She dawdled for a half hour or so, just thinking. Then she went back to find someone had wrapped up her uneaten sandwich and Sully was showing Walter the garden. She walked over to take some credit for it—stuff was sprouting up all over.
“Pretty soon we’ll come out here to cut a few inches off the top of the lettuce for salad and it grows back in a couple of days. Tomatoes will be coming all summer. Melon vines are starting to crawl over the yard.”