The words fell between them, heavy as stones. So far, Wendy thought, the only person who knew how she felt was her father, and he sure hadn’t looked at her the way Seth was looking at her now.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m dead serious. If Pommier can fix my leg—”
“Pommier isn’t taking on new patients, or did I read those stories wrong?”
“He says he isn’t. But I’m convinced if I can just get him to see me—”
“How are you going to manage that?”
Wendy hesitated. “I—I have an in.” Her voice quickened and she leaned forward eagerly. “Don’t you see, Seth? If he operates, if it works, I can get back in shape within a year. Two, max.”
“Wendy, come on. Those are huge if’s. Besides, even if the guy could work this miracle—”
“It’s what he does. I’ve read every word written about him. Pommier can do it.”
“I’ve read a lot about him, too. The surgery’s risky.”
“Life’s full of risks.”
Seth put down his coffee mug and ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe I just don’t get it. Why would you want to ski competitively again? You’ve been there, done that. You have the medals to prove it.”
“Not Olympic gold.”
“You still have your legs,” he said harshly. “Isn’t that as good as Olympic gold?”
They stared at each other in taut silence. Then Wendy reached for her things. “I should have known you wouldn’t see this my way. The only person who understands is my father.”
“Does he, now,” Seth said, his voice flat.
“Yes. Yes, he does. I’m going to get my chance to talk to Dr. Pommier, thanks to him.”
Seth’s mouth thinned. “Ah. So that’s your ‘in.’ Your old man. It figures.”
Her head came up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your old man will do anything to get that gold. He pushed you like crazy, ran you right into the ground. You got to Norway so worn-out that it’s a wonder you didn’t fall down as soon as you got off the plane.”
“You think the accident was his fault?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I don’t think so.” Seth hesitated a moment, then went on. “And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you something else. Your father was glad you ended things between us.”
“That’s not true!”
“He saw me as a kid with no future, getting in the way of his pursuit of an Olympic medal.”
“It wasn’t his pursuit, it was mine. And you’re dead wrong about the accident.” Wendy’s voice shook. “It was my fault. All mine.”
“Yeah, right.” Seth dug out his wallet, took out a bill and tossed it on the table. His anger was back and he knew he’d never get rid of it until he placed it where it belonged, square on the jaw of Howard Monroe. “He’s got you brainwashed.”
Wendy’s eyes flashed. “You have no right to say that.”
“I have every right. That last night, on Sawtooth Mountain, you lay in my arms and said you loved me. You said you had to get the dream of winning out of your system.” Seth got to his feet, his face white, his eyes hot. “But you were lying. You already knew you were going to break up with me, Wendy, whether you won that damned medal or not. That accident just made it easier for you. You had the perfect excuse to shove me out of your life.”
“You bastard! You...you unfeeling, self-centered son of a—”
“Hi, everybody. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
They both turned. Alison was standing beside their table, smiling nervously and twisting her knit cap in her hands.
“Look, you guys, why don’t I go outside, drive around for a while, say, fifteen minutes or so and—”
“No,” Wendy said sharply.
“Hell, no,” Seth said, even more sharply. “I was just leaving. So long, Wendy. Have a nice life.”
Wendy watched as he strode to the door, yanked it open and stepped out of the Burger Barn and, she devoutly hoped, out of her life.
CHAPTER FIVE
RODNEY POMMIER, M.D., F.A.C.S., had come to Cooper’s Corner to get away from all those initials dangling after his name.
Not that they didn’t matter to him. He’d worked hard to get them and he was proud of them. He’d just never figured being a medical doctor and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons could also turn a man into a celebrity.
A very unhappy celebrity.
Rod had wanted to be a doctor ever since he was a kid. That his path through life had been all but laid out for him in a different direction by generations of Pommiers had made reaching his goal all the sweeter. When he was growing up, it had been expected he’d go to McGill, take his degree in finance and management and, as his father put it, come on board at Pommier Investments.
Well, he’d tried.
Rod sighed as he stood on the sagging porch of the old cabin he’d just bought, and looked out at the view.
He’d absolutely tried. But after a year of struggling to give a damn about cost analysis and price earnings ratios, he’d given up, flown home one weekend and announced that he was going to become a doctor, not a financier. He’d stood in his father’s wood-paneled study, ready for the war that was sure to come. Instead, after a couple of minutes of stunned silence, he’d gotten a smile, a handshake that turned into a hug, and all the best wishes he’d never expected.
“It’s time a Pommier went out into the world and did something else with his life,” his father had said.
That was what Rod had done.
He loved medicine. Loved his work. Newsweek said he had the arrogance of all top surgeons, that he played God in the operating room. He didn’t see it that way. He was a man with a talent for looking at broken bones and torn muscles as parts of an intricate puzzle. It would have been as wrong to deny that talent as it would have been to misuse it....
Which was why he was here, skiing in the snowy Berkshires, instead of back in Manhattan seeing new patients.
Rod sighed again and leaned his elbows on the porch railing.
His discovery of the regenerative matrix technique, a TV reporter had gushed, had opened a door into a new field of orthopedic medicine. Well, yeah. Maybe so, but it was still too soon to know exactly what lay beyond that door. Not everybody would benefit from the surgery. Some might even be damaged by it. “First, do no harm,” said the Hippocratic oath. After a while, Rod had wearied of trying to explain that, especially since far too many people thought he just wasn’t interested in taking on patients who weren’t rich or famous.
The truth was, most of his patients were neither. He chose people based on how well he thought they’d respond to the new technique, not for any other reason. But after he attended a couple of functions run by New York’s upper crust and his name and face began appearing on the Sunday society pages of the Times, the world was sure it knew all it needed to know about him. Rod had only attended the damned parties because his department chairman had urged him to go.
“For the good of the hospital,” she’d said, and it had taken a while before Rod realized that what she really meant was for the charitable donations that his appearance could engender.
Before he knew it, he was a media darling. That was bad enough, but even worse were the endless calls and letters, the people who buttonholed him in restaurants and supermarkets, every last one of them wanting him to perform his miracle on them—and, damn it, he didn’t perform miracles. He was a surgeon, and the surgery was risky, delicate and sometimes dangerous, though nobody seemed to want to hear that. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came the morning the director of his hospital’s board asked him to come by for coffee.
After a few minutes of banal
conversation, the man got to the point. There was great interest in the hospital, thanks to Rod’s new procedure. NBC was interested in doing a series of interviews. They’d like to meet with Rod in his office, in his home; they’d like to put a camera into the operating room....