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Top TV anchorwoman Melanie Adams had given up on love after a failed marriage and an unhappy affair. With her two twin teenage children and her television news career , she had no room in her life for a man. Then she met famous heart surgeon Peter Hallam, a widower with three children of his own. Suddenly Melanie was experiencing feelings she thought were forever gone. But two families (one in New York and one in Los Angeles), two exciting careers, and two strong-willed people were challenges that were not easily resolved or handled. And Melanie faced a painful choice between her glamorous life in the public eye, her private life, and the new family she took on. Changes lead each of them to new places, new problems, new people, and the new life they begin.
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About the Author:
Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 560 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Sisters, H.R.H., Coming Out, The House, Toxic Bachelors, Miracle, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death.
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Chapter One
"Dr. Hallam...Dr. Peter Hallam...Dr. Hallam...Cardiac Intensive, Dr. Hallam..." The voice droned on mechanically as Peter Hallam sped through the lobby of Center City Hospital, never stopping to answer the page since the team already knew he was on his way. He furrowed his brow as he pressed six, his mind already totally engaged with the data he had been given twenty minutes before on the phone. They had waited weeks for this donor, and it was almost too late. Almost. His mind raced as the elevator doors ground open, and he walked quickly to the nurses' station marked Cardiac Intensive Care.
"Have they sent Sally Block upstairs yet?" A nurse looked up, seeming to snap to attention as her eyes met his. Something inside her always leapt a little when she saw him. There was something infinitely impressive about the man, tall, slender, gray- haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken. He had the looks of the doctors one read about in women's novels. There was something so basically kind and gentle about him, and yet something powerful as well. The aura of a highly trained racehorse always straining at the reins, aching to go faster, farther...to do more...to fight time...to conquer odds beyond hope...to steal back just one life...one man...one woman...one child...one more. And often he won. Often. But not always. And that irked him. More than that, it pained him. It was the cause for the lines beside his eyes, the sorrow one saw deep within him. It wasn't enough that he wrought miracles almost daily. He wanted more than that, better odds, he wanted to save them all, and there was no way he could.
"Yes, Doctor." The nurse nodded quickly. "She just went up."
"Was she ready?" That was the other thing about him and the nurse marveled at the question. She knew instantly what he meant by "ready"; not the I.V. in the patient's arm, or the mild sedative administered before she left her room to be wheeled to surgery. He was questioning what she was thinking, feeling, who had spoken to her, who went with her. He wanted each of them to know what they were facing, how hard the team would work, how much they cared, how desperately they would all try to save each life. He wanted each patient to be ready to enter the battle with him. "If they don't believe they have a fighting chance when they go in there, we've lost them right from the beginning," the nurse had heard him tell his students, and he meant it. He fought with every fiber of his being, and it cost him, but it was worth it. The results he'd gotten in the past five years were amazing, with few exceptions. Exceptions which mattered deeply to Peter Hallam. Everything did. He was remarkable and intense and brilliant...and so goddamn handsome, the nurse reminded herself with a smile as he hurried past her to a small elevator in the corridor behind her. It sped up one floor and deposited him outside the operating rooms where he and his team performed bypasses and transplants and occasionally more ordinary cardiac surgery, but not often. Most of the time, Peter Hallam and his team did the big stuff, as they would tonight.
Sally Block was a twenty-two- year-old girl who had lived most of her adult life as an invalid, crippled by rheumatic fever as a child, and she had suffered through multiple valve replacements and a decade of medication. He and his associates had agreed weeks before when she'd been admitted to Center City that a transplant was the only answer for her. But thus far, there had been no donor. Until tonight, at two thirty in the morning, when a group of juvenile delinquents had engaged in their own private drag races in the San Fernando Valley; three of them had died on impact, and after a series of businesslike phone calls from the splendidly run organization for the location and placement of donors, Peter Hallam knew he had a good one. He had had calls out to every hospital in Southern California for a donor for Sally, and now they had one–if Sally could just survive the surgery, and her body didn't sabotage them by rejecting the new heart they gave her.
He peeled off his street clothes without ceremony, donned the limp green cotton surgery pajamas, scrubbed intensely, and was gowned and masked by surgical assistants. Three other doctors and two residents did likewise as did a fleet of nurses. But Peter Hallam seemed not even to see them, as he walked into the operating room. His eyes immediately sought Sally, lying silent and still on the operating-room table, her own eyes seemingly mesmerized by the bright lights above her. Even lying there in the sterile garb with her long blond hair tucked into a green cotton cap she looked pretty. She was not only a beautiful young woman but a decent human being as well. She wanted desperately to be an artist...to go to college...to go to a prom...to be kissed...to have babies.... She recognized him even with the cap and mask and she smiled sleepily through a haze of medication.
"Hi." She looked frail, her eyes enormous in the fragile face, like a broken china doll, waiting for him to repair her.
"Hello, Sally. How're you feeling?"
"Funny." Her eyes fluttered for a moment and she smiled at the familiar eyes. She had come to know him in the last few weeks, better than she had known anyone in years. He had opened doors of hope to her, of tenderness, and of caring, and the loneliness and isolation she had felt for years had finally seemed less acute to her.
"We're going to be pretty busy for the next few hours. All you have to do is lie there and snooze." He watched her and glanced at the monitors nearby before looking back at her again. "Scared?"
"Sort of." But he knew she was well prepared. He had spent weeks explaining the surgery to her, the intricate process, and the dangers and medications afterward. She knew what to expect now, and their big moment had come. It was almost like giving birth. And he would be giving birth to her, almost as though she would spring from his very soul, from his fingertips as they fought to save her.
The anesthetist moved closer to her head and searched Peter Hallam's eyes. He nodded slowly and then smiled at Sally again. "See you in a little while." Except it wouldn't be a little while. It would be more like five or six hours before she was conscious again, and then only barely, as they watched her in the recovery room, before moving her to intensive care.
"Will you be there when I wake up?" A frown of fear creased her brows and he was quick to nod.
"I sure will. I'll be right there with you when you wake up. Just like I'm here with you now." He nodded to the anesthetist then, and her eyes fluttered closed briefly from the sedative they had administered before. The sodium pentothal was administered through the intravenous tube already implanted in her arm; a moment later, Sally Block was asleep, and within minutes, the delicate surgery began.
For the next four hours, Peter Hallam worked relentlessly to hook up the new heart, and there was a wondrous look of victory on his face, as it began to pump. For just a fraction of a second, his eyes met those of the nurse standing across from him, and beneath the mask he smiled. "There she goes." But they had only won the first round, he knew only too well. It remained to be seen if Sally's body would accept or reject the new heart. And as with all transplant patients, the odds weren't great. But they were better than they would have been if she hadn't had the surgery at all. In her case, as with the other people he operated on, it was her only hope.
At nine fifteen that morning, Sally Block was wheeled into the recovery room, and Peter Hallam took his first break since four thirty A.M. It would be a while before the anesthetic wore off, and he had time for a cup of coffee, and a few moments of his own thoughts. Transplants like Sally's drained everything from him.
"That was spectacular, Doctor." A young resident stood next to him, still in awe, as Peter poured himself a cup of black coffee and turned to the young man.
"Thank you." Peter smiled, thinking how much the young resident looked like his own son. It would have pleased him no end if Mark had had ambitions in medicine, but Mark already had other plans, business school, or law. He wanted to be part of a broader world than this, and he had seen over the years how much his father had given of himself and what it had cost him emotionally each time one of his transplant patients died. That wasn't for him. Peter narrowed his eyes as he took a sip of the inky brew, thinking that maybe it was just as well. And then he turned to the young resident again.
"Is this the first transplant you've seen?"
"The second. You performed the other one too." And performed somehow seemed the appropriate word. Both transplants had been the most theatrical kind of surgery the young man had witnessed. There was more tension and drama in the operating room than he had ever experienced in his life, and watching Peter Hallam operate was like watching Nijinsky dance. He was the best there was. "How do you think this one will do?"
"It's too soon to tell. Hopefully, she'll do fine." And he prayed that what he said was true, as he covered his operating-room garb with another sterile gown and headed toward the recovery room. He left his coffee outside, and went to sit quietly in one of the chairs near where Sally lay. A recovery-room nurse and a battery of monitors were watching Sally's every breath, and so far all was well. The trouble, if it arose, was likely to come later than this, unless of course everything went wrong from the beginning. And that had happened before too. But not this time...not this time...please God...not now...not to her...she's so young...not that he ...
"Dr. Hallam...Dr. Peter Hallam...Dr. Hallam...Cardiac Intensive, Dr. Hallam..." The voice droned on mechanically as Peter Hallam sped through the lobby of Center City Hospital, never stopping to answer the page since the team already knew he was on his way. He furrowed his brow as he pressed six, his mind already totally engaged with the data he had been given twenty minutes before on the phone. They had waited weeks for this donor, and it was almost too late. Almost. His mind raced as the elevator doors ground open, and he walked quickly to the nurses' station marked Cardiac Intensive Care.
"Have they sent Sally Block upstairs yet?" A nurse looked up, seeming to snap to attention as her eyes met his. Something inside her always leapt a little when she saw him. There was something infinitely impressive about the man, tall, slender, gray- haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken. He had the looks of the doctors one read about in women's novels. There was something so basically kind and gentle about him, and yet something powerful as well. The aura of a highly trained racehorse always straining at the reins, aching to go faster, farther...to do more...to fight time...to conquer odds beyond hope...to steal back just one life...one man...one woman...one child...one more. And often he won. Often. But not always. And that irked him. More than that, it pained him. It was the cause for the lines beside his eyes, the sorrow one saw deep within him. It wasn't enough that he wrought miracles almost daily. He wanted more than that, better odds, he wanted to save them all, and there was no way he could.
"Yes, Doctor." The nurse nodded quickly. "She just went up."
"Was she ready?" That was the other thing about him and the nurse marveled at the question. She knew instantly what he meant by "ready"; not the I.V. in the patient's arm, or the mild sedative administered before she left her room to be wheeled to surgery. He was questioning what she was thinking, feeling, who had spoken to her, who went with her. He wanted each of them to know what they were facing, how hard the team would work, how much they cared, how desperately they would all try to save each life. He wanted each patient to be ready to enter the battle with him. "If they don't believe they have a fighting chance when they go in there, we've lost them right from the beginning," the nurse had heard him tell his students, and he meant it. He fought with every fiber of his being, and it cost him, but it was worth it. The results he'd gotten in the past five years were amazing, with few exceptions. Exceptions which mattered deeply to Peter Hallam. Everything did. He was remarkable and intense and brilliant...and so goddamn handsome, the nurse reminded herself with a smile as he hurried past her to a small elevator in the corridor behind her. It sped up one floor and deposited him outside the operating rooms where he and his team performed bypasses and transplants and occasionally more ordinary cardiac surgery, but not often. Most of the time, Peter Hallam and his team did the big stuff, as they would tonight.
Sally Block was a twenty-two- year-old girl who had lived most of her adult life as an invalid, crippled by rheumatic fever as a child, and she had suffered through multiple valve replacements and a decade of medication. He and his associates had agreed weeks before when she'd been admitted to Center City that a transplant was the only answer for her. But thus far, there had been no donor. Until tonight, at two thirty in the morning, when a group of juvenile delinquents had engaged in their own private drag races in the San Fernando Valley; three of them had died on impact, and after a series of businesslike phone calls from the splendidly run organization for the location and placement of donors, Peter Hallam knew he had a good one. He had had calls out to every hospital in Southern California for a donor for Sally, and now they had one–if Sally could just survive the surgery, and her body didn't sabotage them by rejecting the new heart they gave her.
He peeled off his street clothes without ceremony, donned the limp green cotton surgery pajamas, scrubbed intensely, and was gowned and masked by surgical assistants. Three other doctors and two residents did likewise as did a fleet of nurses. But Peter Hallam seemed not even to see them, as he walked into the operating room. His eyes immediately sought Sally, lying silent and still on the operating-room table, her own eyes seemingly mesmerized by the bright lights above her. Even lying there in the sterile garb with her long blond hair tucked into a green cotton cap she looked pretty. She was not only a beautiful young woman but a decent human being as well. She wanted desperately to be an artist...to go to college...to go to a prom...to be kissed...to have babies.... She recognized him even with the cap and mask and she smiled sleepily through a haze of medication.
"Hi." She looked frail, her eyes enormous in the fragile face, like a broken china doll, waiting for him to repair her.
"Hello, Sally. How're you feeling?"
"Funny." Her eyes fluttered for a moment and she smiled at the familiar eyes. She had come to know him in the last few weeks, better than she had known anyone in years. He had opened doors of hope to her, of tenderness, and of caring, and the loneliness and isolation she had felt for years had finally seemed less acute to her.
"We're going to be pretty busy for the next few hours. All you have to do is lie there and snooze." He watched her and glanced at the monitors nearby before looking back at her again. "Scared?"
"Sort of." But he knew she was well prepared. He had spent weeks explaining the surgery to her, the intricate process, and the dangers and medications afterward. She knew what to expect now, and their big moment had come. It was almost like giving birth. And he would be giving birth to her, almost as though she would spring from his very soul, from his fingertips as they fought to save her.
The anesthetist moved closer to her head and searched Peter Hallam's eyes. He nodded slowly and then smiled at Sally again. "See you in a little while." Except it wouldn't be a little while. It would be more like five or six hours before she was conscious again, and then only barely, as they watched her in the recovery room, before moving her to intensive care.
"Will you be there when I wake up?" A frown of fear creased her brows and he was quick to nod.
"I sure will. I'll be right there with you when you wake up. Just like I'm here with you now." He nodded to the anesthetist then, and her eyes fluttered closed briefly from the sedative they had administered before. The sodium pentothal was administered through the intravenous tube already implanted in her arm; a moment later, Sally Block was asleep, and within minutes, the delicate surgery began.
For the next four hours, Peter Hallam worked relentlessly to hook up the new heart, and there was a wondrous look of victory on his face, as it began to pump. For just a fraction of a second, his eyes met those of the nurse standing across from him, and beneath the mask he smiled. "There she goes." But they had only won the first round, he knew only too well. It remained to be seen if Sally's body would accept or reject the new heart. And as with all transplant patients, the odds weren't great. But they were better than they would have been if she hadn't had the surgery at all. In her case, as with the other people he operated on, it was her only hope.
At nine fifteen that morning, Sally Block was wheeled into the recovery room, and Peter Hallam took his first break since four thirty A.M. It would be a while before the anesthetic wore off, and he had time for a cup of coffee, and a few moments of his own thoughts. Transplants like Sally's drained everything from him.
"That was spectacular, Doctor." A young resident stood next to him, still in awe, as Peter poured himself a cup of black coffee and turned to the young man.
"Thank you." Peter smiled, thinking how much the young resident looked like his own son. It would have pleased him no end if Mark had had ambitions in medicine, but Mark already had other plans, business school, or law. He wanted to be part of a broader world than this, and he had seen over the years how much his father had given of himself and what it had cost him emotionally each time one of his transplant patients died. That wasn't for him. Peter narrowed his eyes as he took a sip of the inky brew, thinking that maybe it was just as well. And then he turned to the young resident again.
"Is this the first transplant you've seen?"
"The second. You performed the other one too." And performed somehow seemed the appropriate word. Both transplants had been the most theatrical kind of surgery the young man had witnessed. There was more tension and drama in the operating room than he had ever experienced in his life, and watching Peter Hallam operate was like watching Nijinsky dance. He was the best there was. "How do you think this one will do?"
"It's too soon to tell. Hopefully, she'll do fine." And he prayed that what he said was true, as he covered his operating-room garb with another sterile gown and headed toward the recovery room. He left his coffee outside, and went to sit quietly in one of the chairs near where Sally lay. A recovery-room nurse and a battery of monitors were watching Sally's every breath, and so far all was well. The trouble, if it arose, was likely to come later than this, unless of course everything went wrong from the beginning. And that had happened before too. But not this time...not this time...please God...not now...not to her...she's so young...not that he ...
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- PublisherDelacorte Press
- Publication date1983
- ISBN 10 0385292597
- ISBN 13 9780385292597
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages348
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