The Surgeon

Twenty-seven

Rizzoli was sitting up in her hospital bed, glowering at the TV. Bandages encased her hands so thoroughly they looked like boxing gloves. A large bald spot had been shaved on the side of her head, where the doctors had stitched up a scalp laceration. She fussed with the TV remote, and at first she did not notice Moore standing in the doorway. Then he knocked. When she turned and looked at him he saw, just for an instant, a glimmer of vulnerability. Then her usual defenses sprang back into place and she was the old Rizzoli, her gaze wary as he walked into the room and took the chair by her bed.

On the TV whined the annoying background theme of a soap opera.

“Can you turn off that crap?” she blurted in frustration and gestured to the remote control with one bandaged paw. “I can’t press the buttons. They expect me to use my goddamn nose or something.”

He took the remote and pressed the Off button.

“Thank you,” she huffed. And winced from the pain of three broken ribs.

With the TV off, a long silence stretched between them. Through the open doorway, they heard a doctor’s name paged and the rattle of the meal cart wheeling down the hall.

“They taking good care of you out here?” he asked.

“It’s okay, for a hick hospital. Probably better than being in the city.”

While both Catherine and Hoyt had been airlifted to Pilgrim Medical Center in Boston due to their more serious injuries, Rizzoli had been brought by ambulance to this small regional hospital. Despite its distance from the city, just about every detective in the Boston Homicide Unit had already made the pilgrimage here to visit Rizzoli.

And they’d all brought flowers. Moore’s bouquet of roses was almost lost among the many arrangements displayed on the tray tables and the nightstand, even on the floor.

“Wow,” he said. “You’ve picked up a lot of admirers.”

“Yeah. Can you believe it? Even Crowe sent flowers. Those lilies over there. I think he’s trying to tell me something. Doesn’t it look like a funeral arrangement? See those nice orchids here? Frost brought those in. Hell, I should’ve sent him flowers for saving my ass.”

It was Frost who’d called the state police for assistance. When Rizzoli failed to answer his pages, he’d contacted Dean Hobbs at the FoodMart to track down her whereabouts and learned she’d driven out to the Sturdee Farm to talk to a black-haired woman.

Rizzoli continued her inventory of the flower arrangements. “That huge vase with those tropical things came from Elena Ortiz’s family. The carnations are from Marquette, the cheapskate. And Sleeper’s wife brought in that hibiscus plant.”

Moore shook his head in amazement. “You remember all that?”

“Yeah, well, nobody ever sends me flowers. So I’m committing this moment to memory.”

Again he caught a glimpse of vulnerability shining through her brave mask. And he saw something else that he had never noticed before, a luminosity in her dark eyes. She was bruised, bandaged, and sporting an ugly bald patch on her head. But once you overlooked the flaws of her face, the square jaw, the boxy forehead, you saw that Jane Rizzoli had beautiful eyes.

“I just spoke to Frost. He’s over at Pilgrim,” said Moore. “He says Warren Hoyt is going to recover.”

She said nothing.

“They removed the breathing tube from Hoyt’s throat this morning. He’s still got another tube in his chest, because of a collapsed lung. But he’s breathing on his own.”

“Is he awake?”

“Yes.”

“Talking?”

“Not to us. To his attorney.”

“God, if I’d had the chance to finish off that son of a bitch—”

“You wouldn’t have done it.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I think you’re too good a cop to make that mistake again.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “You’ll never know.”

And neither will you. We never know until the beast of opportunity is staring us in the face.

“I just thought you should know that,” he said, and rose to leave.

“Hey, Moore.”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t say anything about Cordell.”

He had, in fact, purposely avoided bringing up the subject of Catherine. She was the main source of conflict between Rizzoli and him, the unhealed wound that had crippled their partnership.

“I hear she’s doing okay,” said Rizzoli.

“She came through surgery fine.”

“Did he — did Hoyt—”

“No. He never completed the excision. You arrived before he could do it.”

She leaned back, looking relieved.

“I’m going to Pilgrim to see her now,” he said.

“And what happens next?”

“Next, we get you back to work so you can start answering your own damn phone.”

“No, I mean, what happens between you and Cordell?”

He paused, and his gaze shifted to the window, where sunlight spilled over the vase of lilies, turning the petals aglow. “I don’t know.”

“Marquette still giving you grief about it?”

“He warned me not to get involved. And he’s right. I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t help myself. It makes me wonder if…”

“You’re not Saint Thomas after all?”

He gave a sad laugh and nodded.

“There’s nothing as boring as perfection, Moore.”

He sighed. “There are choices to make. Hard ones.”

“The important choices are always tough.”

He mulled it over for a moment. “Maybe it’s not my choice at all,” he said, “but hers.”

As he walked to the door, Rizzoli called out: “When you see Cordell, tell her something for me, willya?”

“What shall I say?”

“Next time, aim higher.”

I don’t know what happens next.

He drove east toward Boston with his window open, and the air blowing in felt cooler than it had in weeks. A Canadian front had rolled in during the night, and on this crisp morning the city smelled clean, almost pure. He thought of Mary, his own sweet Mary, and of all the ties that would forever bind him to her. Twenty years of marriage, with all its countless memories. The whispers late at night, the private jokes, the history. Yes, the history. A marriage is made up of such little things as burned suppers and midnight swims, yet it’s those little things that bind two lives into one. They had been young together, and together they had grown into middle age. No woman but Mary could own his past.

It was his future that lay unclaimed.

I don’t know what will happen next. But I do know what would make me happy. And I think I could make her happy as well. At this time in our lives, could we ask for any greater blessing?

With each mile he drove, he shed another layer of uncertainty. When at last he stepped out of his car at Pilgrim Hospital, he could walk with the sure step of a man who knows he has made the right decision.

He rode the elevator to the fifth floor, checked in at the nursing station, and walked down the long hall to Room 523. He knocked softly and stepped inside.

Peter Falco was sitting at Catherine’s bedside.

This room, like Rizzoli’s, smelled of flowers. The morning light flooded Catherine’s window, bathing the bed and its occupant in a golden glow. She was asleep. An IV bottle hung over her bed, and the saline glistened like liquid diamonds as it dripped into the line.

Moore stood across from Falco, and for a long time the two men did not speak.

Falco leaned over to kiss Catherine’s forehead. Then he stood up, and his gaze met Moore’s. “Take care of her.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll hold you to it,” Falco said, and walked out of the room.

Moore took his place in the chair at Catherine’s side and reached for her hand. Reverently he pressed it to his lips. Said again, softly: “I will.”

Thomas Moore was a man who kept his promises; he would keep this one as well.