Free First Sight by Danielle Steel Page A

be accurate. Her appendix had ruptured, and toxins were rushing through her system as a result.
    “Please don’t leave me,” she said, clutching his hand, and he held her delicate hand firmly in his own.
    “I won’t leave you,” he said softly, as he watched the anesthesiologist prepare to put her under. They were moving quickly, and the danger was considerable now. They needed to remove what was left of her appendix and do what they could to clean out the area. Her eyes met his as the anesthesiologist spoke to her in French, and Jean-Charles Vernier translated for her, and continued to hold her hand.
    “Will you stay even after I’m asleep?” she asked, as tears poured from her eyes.
    “If you would like me to.” His presence was calm, powerful, and reassuring. Everything about him told her she could rely on him. And in that single moment, she trusted him completely.
    “I would … want you to stay … and please call me Timmie.” He had called her Madame O’Neill again while translating and telling her what would happen. She was glad suddenly that she had called him. His was a familiar face. At least she had seen Jean-Charles Vernier before, and he had been highly recommended by her friend in New York, as an excellent physician. She knew she was in good hands, but she was terrified anyway.
    “I’m here, Timmie,” he said, with her hand in his, and his blue eyes firmly locked into hers. “Everything will be fine now. You’re safe. I won’t let anything bad happen to you. And in a minute, you’ll be asleep. I’ll see you when you wake up,” he said, smiling at her. The moment she was asleep, he was going to leave and put on surgical garb. He had every intention of staying with her for the surgery, just as he had promised. He always kept promises he made. His patients knew that he wouldn’t let them down, and Timmie sensed that now too.
    A moment later the anesthesiologist put the mask over her face. Her eyes looked into Jean-Charles’s, as he continued talking to her, and a minute later, she was asleep. He left the operating room briefly then to put on a gown and mask, and scrub up, and as he did, he couldn’t help thinking about the woman they were operating on, and all that she had given up in her life, to trade her enormous success for even one person whom she could call in an emergency, and who could be there with her, to hold her hand. Before she had drifted off to sleep, he had thought he had never seen such sad eyes in his life, or someone so scared to be alone. And as he stood next to her, holding her hand, he had the impression that he was looking at a terrified, abandoned child.
    Just as he promised her, he stood beside her and watched the surgery. It went well, and the surgeon was pleased. As the surgical team left the room, Jean-Charles Vernier followed her to the recovery room. He didn’t know her at all, and had found her difficult and unreasonable three days before, and now all he knew was that whoever she was, and whatever had come before in her life, he sensed to his very core that he could not leave her alone. Someone had to be there for her. And he was all she had. He had sensed the overwhelming solitude and loneliness in her soul.
    She saw him standing next to her when she woke up in the recovery room. She was still woozy from the drugs they had given her, but she recognized him immediately and smiled at him.
    “Thank you,” she whispered, and then closed her eyes again.
    “Sleep well, Timmie,” he said softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispered, as he carefully took his hand from hers.
    She was already sound asleep again, as he left the room, said good night to the nurses, and went out to his car. Everyone at the surgery was impressed that he was her attending physician and hadn’t left her side.
    He didn’t know why, but he felt a deep sadness for her. Something in her eyes that night had told him that much had happened to her in her life, and none of it good.