Fortunate Son

Dr. Nolan drove Branwyn straight home. They talked about flowers that night. She explained to him how she thought about arranging different kinds of blossoms and leaves. He listened very closely and asked astute questions.

The next night he told her about the first time he cut into a living human body.

“I was so scared that I threw up afterward,” he admitted. “I decided that I wasn’t meant to be a surgeon.”

Branwyn grinned at that.

“What are you laughing about?” the doctor asked.

“You.”

“Because I was afraid?”

“Because you seem like you’re not afraid of anything,” she said.

“I’m scared plenty.”

“Maybe you think so,” Branwyn replied. “But people really afraid hardly ever know it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well . . . the way I see it, a man who’s afraid stays away from the things he fears. A man afraid of cutting into another to save his life would never put himself in the position to do that. He’d become an artist or anything else and then talk 1 1

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about surgery like he was some kinda expert. Fear makes men bluster. They do that so you can’t tell how they feel, and after a while, neither can they.”

The next night they were both quiet on the drive. The only words the doctor spoke were “thank you” when Branwyn got out to go to her door.

She liked it that Minas stayed in front of her apartment until she was well into the building.

M i nas N olan wor ke d nearly every day after his wife died. And almost every night he stayed late and drove Branwyn Beerman to her door. After many days had passed, he made an appointment to talk to Dr. Mason Settler about Thomas Beerman’s condition.

“There’s nothing more I can do, Minas,” Dr. Settler, head of the pediatric section of the ICU, said. “I’m surprised that the boy has lived so long. You know, his immune system is off, and I don’t like the way he’s breathing.”

“You can’t just let him die without trying something, Doctor,” Minas said.

“What?” the elder Dr. Settler asked.

“Something.”

Two we e k s late r, when Minas and Branwyn pulled up in front of her building, she hesitated before opening the car door.

“Dr. Nolan.”

“Yes, Miss Beerman?”

She took a deep breath and then said, “I have something I want to ask you.”

“What’s that?” he said in a whisper.

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F o r t u n a t e S o n

“Do you ever plan to kiss me?”

Dr. Minas Nolan had never in his life been without words.

And even then he thought he had an answer to Branwyn’s question. But when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out.

“Never mind,” Branwyn said, and she pulled the handle on the door.

Minas reached out for her arm.

“No,” he said.

“No what?”

“I . . .”

“What?”

“I never, I never thought that you wanted me to . . . and I was afraid that you’d stop coming with me if I . . .”

Branwyn turned toward the doctor and held out her arms.

He rushed into the embrace, and they both sighed. They hugged without kissing for the longest time. It seemed that with each movement of their shoulders they got closer and closer, until one of them would groan in satisfaction and chills would jump off their skin.

“Let’s go back to your place,” Branwyn said finally.

That’s when he first kissed her.

He turned the ignition and slipped the car into gear.

She touched the side of his neck with two fingers and said,

“You drive me crazy.”

Th ey neve r we nt to sleep that night. The first rays of the sun found them nestled together, thinking very close to the same thoughts.

“I’m worried about Thomas,” Minas said after a very long, satisfying silence.

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“What do you mean?” Branwyn asked, rousing from her lassitude. She had just been thinking that she had enough time to go see Thomas before she had to be at work.

“Dr. Settler doesn’t know what he’s doing for the boy. He just keeps him in that bubble, waiting for him to die.”

“No.”

“Yes. He has no positive prognosis. I think you need to try something else.”

“Like what?”

“You need to take him out of that place and hold him and love him. Maybe he’ll live.”

“Maybe?” Branwyn asked, knowing that this man cared more for her than the whole of Helmutt-Briggs Hospital and every other doctor she had ever known.

She was thinking over what he had said when loud crying erupted from somewhere outside the master bedroom. Minas jumped up, and Branwyn followed him into the room across the hall. There, in a large crib, sat a giant baby with golden hair and eyes the color of the Atlantic Ocean. He was hollering, but there was no pain or sorrow in his face, just mild anger that he’d become hungry a moment before the nanny brought his food.

The nanny was a small Asian woman (later, Branwyn would find out that Ahn was from Vietnam) who seemed too small even to lift the child tyrant — Eric. But she hefted the thirty-five-pound infant from his crib and stuffed the rubber nipple of the plastic bottle into his mouth.

“He’s so big,” Branwyn marveled. “Twice the size of Thomas. And his eyes so blue. I never seen anything like it.”