Free Orchard Valley Grooms by Debbie Macomber Page B

streaking her face. “You can’t do the surgery now! His chances of survival are practically nil. We both know that.”
    “He doesn’t have any chance if we don’t.” Although he was speaking to Norah, it was Valerie’s gaze he held, Valerie’s eyes he looked into—as if to say he’d do anything to have spared her this.

Five
    C olby had been with her father in the operating room for almost six hours, but to Valerie, it felt like six years.
    While she waited, she recalled the happy times with her father and, especially as she entered adolescence, the not-so-happy ones. Her will had often clashed with his, and they’d engaged in one verbal battle after another. Valerie had found her father stubborn, high-handed and irrational.
    Her mother had repeatedly told Valerie the reason she didn’t get along with her father was that the two of them were so much alike. At the time Valerie had considered her mother’s remark an insult. Furthermore, it made no sense. If they were alike, then they should be friends instead of adversaries.
    It wasn’t until her mother became ill that Valerie grew close to her father. In their love and concern for Grace, they’d set aside their differences; not a cross word had passed between them since.
    Valerie couldn’t say which of them had changed, but she figured they’d both made progress. All she knew was that she loved her father with a fierceness that left her terrified whenever she thought about losing him.
    The passage of time lost all meaning as she paced, back and forth, across the waiting room floor. It wasn’t the waiting room she was so familiar with, since Surgery was on the hospital’s ground level; a small brick patio, bordered with a waist-high hedge, opened off glass doors. Every now and then, Valerie or Norah would wander outside to breathe in the cool air, to savor the peace and tranquility of the night. There’d been no other patients in surgery that evening, no other families waiting for news.
    Somehow word got out about her father’s crisis. Pastor Wallen from the Community Church stopped by and prayed with Valerie and Norah. Charles Tomaselli was there for an hour, as well. Various friends, including Al Russell from the pharmacy, came, too.
    At midnight, an exhausted Norah had curled up on the sofa and fallen into a troubled sleep. Valerie envied her sister’s ability to rest, but found no such respite from her own fears.
    Pacing and sucking on hard candy to relieve her nerves were the only methods she had of dealing with the terrible tension. She stared out the window at the bright moonlit night, then turned suddenly when she heard a soft footfall behind her. Colby stood there, still wearing his surgical greens.
    Valerie’s eyes flew to his, but she could read nothing.
    “He made it.”
    She nearly slumped to the floor with relief. Tears welled up, but she blinked them back. “Thank God,” she whispered, raising both hands to her mouth.
    “I nearly lost him once,” Colby said hoarsely, shaking his head. How exhausted he looked, Valerie noted. “I didn’t think there was anything more we could do. It seemed like a miracle when his heart restarted. In some ways, it was. Only so much of what happens on the operating table is in my hands.”
    “I’m sure it was a miracle,” Valerie whispered, hardly able to speak. She walked to the sofa on unsteady legs and bent to wake Norah. Her sister woke instantly—her training as a nurse, no doubt—and Valerie told her, “Dad made it through the operation.”
    “The danger’s not over yet,” Colby cautioned. “Not by a long shot. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I can’t. If he survives the night—”
    “But he survived the surgery,” Norah said, her voice raised with hope. “I didn’t think that was possible. Surely that was his biggest hurdle?”
    “Yes,” Colby agreed, “but his condition is critical.”
    “I know,” Norah answered, but a faint light began to glow in her eyes. From the