Page 32 of Broken Dream (Steel Legends #3)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Angie

Of course I’m meeting Aunt Mel at Flagstaff House, the most lavish restaurant in Boulder.

I’ve been here before, but not for a while, since most of my med school friends—if you can even call them friends—can’t afford this place and probably wouldn’t take kindly to me offering to pay.

I didn’t make any good friends during my first semester. Just kept to myself mostly, and though I was lonely every once in a while, mostly I was just alone.

My entire life was spent as one of the awesome foursome. We were inseparable in high school and in college, where we all pledged the same sorority.

Brianna is now married. Seriously married, and to a rock star, Jesse Pike.

Sage is at home working with our dad, and Gina is pursuing her master’s degree in visual arts.

It’s always been the four of us.

So it was odd being alone, beginning this new chapter of my life.

But it was also refreshing, in a terrifying, exhilarating kind of way. The four of us had always been a unit, moving as one, acting as one. Being alone gave me the chance to be something other than one of the foursome. It gave me the chance to just be me.

I walk into Flagstaff House and immediately feel out of place, even though I’m familiar with it. Med school has made me accustomed to late-night takeout and ramen noodles rather than lobster bisque and filet mignon.

The host leads me to our table where Aunt Mel is already seated, sipping on her martini and looking out over Boulder. Her silvery blond hair is pulled back in a stylish bun, and her green eyes sparkle. Dressed in a tailored blazer and slim black pants, she’s the epitome of mature beauty.

“Angie!” She rises to give me a hug. “You look gorgeous, as usual.”

I take a seat at the window and look out over the lights of Boulder framed by the deep shadows of the surrounding wilderness.

Boulder is the best of both worlds.

The city juxtaposed against the calm, undisturbed wildness just beyond. I let out a deep sigh, feeling the tension in my shoulders ease a bit. Aunt Mel gives me an understanding smile from across the table.

Our server heads over. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asks me.

I glance at Aunt Mel’s martini. It’s Uncle Joe’s favorite, which he turned Aunt Mel on to when they first met over twenty-five years ago.

I shrug dismissively. “Sure. It’s Friday, and I can always catch an Uber if I need to. A glass of Malbec, please.”

I gaze at Aunt Mel. Her eyes are troubled, as they have been since Uncle Joe’s cancer diagnosis nearly a year ago.

I don’t talk to Aunt Mel or my cousins Bradley and Brock about it unless they bring it up, but I hear from my mom and dad that the experimental treatment is going well, which is the best news ever. But Uncle Joe still has a long way to go.

It’s strange that Aunt Mel is here when her husband is ill.

I don’t want to ask.

She takes another sip of her martini. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

I smile slightly. “I think you just read my mind.”

“Uncle Joe is good.” She sighs. “I mean, as good as can be expected. He’s weak. He hasn’t been doing much. Attending the wedding a few months ago was about as much as he could take.”

She’s talking about the quadruple wedding where her son Brock, my cousin, along with my brother Dave and my cousins Brianna and Donny all got married.

“And the prognosis?” I ask.

“Still undetermined,” she says with a sigh. “We just have to wait and see.”

I nod.

I hate talking about this. Uncle Joe is Jonah Steel, the oldest of his siblings and the de facto head of our family.

Watching him go through this has us all freaked out.

But he and Aunt Melanie were adamant that we all go on with our lives. I started med school as planned, and the wedding went off without a hitch.

The waiter returns with my wine. “Can I get you another, ma’am?” he asks Aunt Mel.

Aunt Mel’s martini glass is still half full.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “I have a big meeting tomorrow.”

He nods and leaves.

“Tomorrow?” I ask. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

“Yeah. Uncle Joe insisted I come. He said it’s important that I still do my job for people who need me.”

“What job do you have here?”

She takes another sip of her martini. “I recently resigned my position on the board of the university hospital, as you may know.”

“Yeah, you resigned all of your positions that you were still holding so you could be there for Uncle Joe as he goes through treatment.”

“Yes, but the hospital board gave me a call a couple of days ago, asking that I do a psychiatric evaluation for a potential patient who’s about to undergo an experimental surgery.”

“Oh, I see. What kind of surgery?”

She frowns. “I can’t really talk about it. HIPAA and all.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course I understand.”

“All I can say is that the potential patient has a history of trauma, and the board is concerned about whether he may be able to handle the experimental surgery, especially if something were to go wrong.”

“I see. I’m sorry you had to come all the way here.”

She gives me a melancholy smile. “Joe is in a good spot. He’s between treatments and is feeling pretty good. Plus, it was a chance to see you. To take my favorite niece to dinner and find out how everything’s going.”

I laugh. “I know you call all of us your favorites.”

“True.” She chuckles. “I don’t play favorites. None of your aunts and uncles do. But I do feel particularly close to you, Angie. Neither of my children followed in my footsteps, so it’s wonderful that you are.”

I nod. “I’m convinced now more than ever that I want to go into psychiatry. Anatomy lab has me freaked.”

“Yeah, like I said, I didn’t like it much either. But it is very important.”

I bite my lip. “I made my first cut yesterday.”

“Congratulations!” She raises her martini glass. “Was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

I clink my glass against hers. “No, not really. I have a great lab partner who wants to go into surgery, so she’s really into it and helps me get into the vibe. I’m happy to let her take the lead. And, of course, the person I cut is dead.”

“Well, if you go into psychiatry, you’ll probably never have to cut a live person.”

I widen my eyes. “Probably?”

She shrugs. “I mean, never say never. But it’s good to have skills, just in case you’re in an emergency and they’re needed.”

“Have you ever been in an emergency like that?” I ask. “Where you had to cut?”

“A couple of times, actually,” she says. “One time when I was in my last year of my residency, we were short-staffed at the hospital because of an outbreak of the flu. So I had to insert a chest tube into a man who came into the emergency room.”

“And it went okay?”

Her eyes brighten. “It went perfectly. Because I had been trained to do it. Psychiatrists are still medical doctors, Angie.”

I resist an eye roll. “Aunt Mel, I know that.”

She reaches her hand across the table, squeezing mine.

“So we need to be able to handle basic medical emergencies. Another time I was on a flight. I was coming back from New York to Colorado. This was before I met Uncle Joe and got married. A woman on the flight passed out and wasn’t breathing, so I had to do an emergency crike. ”

“Crike? You mean a cricothyrotomy?” I ask, my eyes widening.

“That’s right.” Aunt Mel nods and sips her martini.

“It was just like a movie. A flight attendant came on the PA saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, is there a doctor on board?’ I looked around, seeing if someone more qualified might volunteer. No one did. So I stood, knowing I had to do the best I could. The FAA-mandated medical kit had basic airway tools, IV fluids, and a defibrillator, but no scalpels or cannulas. I had to improvise. I used a pen to make the incision and a straw to keep the airway open.”

I shudder. “That sounds terrifying.”

“It was,” she admits. “And it taught me an important lesson. You never know when your training may come into play. That’s why it’s crucial to learn as much as you can and take every experience seriously.”

I take a sip of wine before asking Aunt Melanie the obvious question.

“Did she…survive?”

Aunt Mel smiles at me, her eyes twinkling. “Yes, Angie. She did.”

I let out a sigh of relief as the waiter comes by to take our dinner orders. “We have two specials tonight,” he begins, “a filet mignon with a red wine reduction and a seared scallops dish with a mango salsa.”

Aunt Mel chooses the filet mignon, while I opt for the seared scallops. As the waiter leaves, Aunt Mel leans back in her chair, staring out the window for a moment.

“The woman on the plane… She wrote me a letter afterward. She thanked me for saving her life. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever read.”

I blink back tears. “That’s incredible, Aunt Mel.”

“Sometimes it’s not just about prescribing medications or listening to patients. Sometimes being a psychiatrist is literally about saving someone’s life.”

I look down at my bread plate. Her words resonate deeply and reaffirm my decision to go into psychiatry. The path may not be an easy one, but it holds meaning. It holds purpose.

“You never told me those stories before.”

“You never asked,” she says. “We’ve talked about the therapy portion of psychiatry mostly, and about how pharmaceuticals can help those who struggle with mental illness, but we’ve never really touched on the medical emergency aspect. But it’s there, and it can be vital.”

The waiter returns with our salads—mine a house salad with balsamic vinaigrette and Aunt Mel’s a Caesar—and I pick up my fork.

“Did you ever doubt your decision to go into psychiatry?” I ask.

She takes a moment before answering, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Of course,” she admits. “No path worth pursuing is without its bumps and moments of uncertainty. And some of the stories are heartbreaking, especially in my specialty of childhood trauma.”

“I can imagine.”

And indeed I can. Aunt Mel was doctor to one of my uncles and two of my cousins, who had all been through horrific childhood abuse.

“But each time I doubted myself,” she continues, “I would remember why I chose this specialty in the first place—to help those in need. That would always bring me back. I remember every single patient I’ve helped, Angie.”

I widen my eyes. “Every single one?”

“Yes. As a psychiatrist, I get the privilege of spending more than just a few minutes with my patients. A surgeon will meet a patient once, study his scans, do the surgery and a follow-up, and then it’s over in most cases.

But as psychiatrists, we have the opportunity to go on a journey with our patients.

We witness their lowest points, their times of triumph, their tears and their smiles. That’s what makes it rewarding.”

“And that’s what makes it hard too, I suppose,” I say.

She nods, taking another sip of her martini. “There is no reward without risk. Psychiatry is not a field for those who want an easy way out. You’ll see things that will break your heart. You’ll have patients that, despite your best efforts, do not get better.”

“Did you ever feel… I mean…did it ever get too heavy? The emotional burden?”

Aunt Mel sighs. “There were days when I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Seeing so much pain and suffering. Feeling like I had failed when a patient didn’t improve. It can be very heavy.”

I bite on my lip.

“But it’s not all darkness,” she adds quickly. “There are moments of light too. When you see a patient who was once on the edge of giving up standing tall and smiling again. When you witness the strength of the human spirit in its rawest form. Those are the moments that make it all worth it.”

“I always wondered,” I begin, playing with the stem of my wineglass. “How do you separate your work from your personal life? How do you manage to switch it off at the end of the day?”

She chuckles lightly. “Oh, Angie, if only there was a switch! The truth is that you don’t really switch off.

Especially not in the beginning. The stories of your patients—their pain and their struggles—tend to follow you home.

They sneak into your dreams, cloud your thoughts. But it’s part of the process.”

I raise an eyebrow. “The process?”

She nods. “The process of understanding that you’re not just a witness to your patients’ lives but an active participant. You can effect change, but you can’t control everything. Some things are beyond our reach.”

“So how do you handle that? How do you deal with knowing that there are things you just can’t fix?”

Aunt Mel pauses, swirling the tiny bit of liquid left in her martini glass.

“You learn to accept it,” she says finally.

“Acceptance is a big part of being a psychiatrist. Accepting that not every story has a happy ending, accepting that some wounds run deeper than others and might take longer to heal, accepting that sometimes all you can do is be there for someone, even when it feels like you’re not doing enough.

” She finishes her drink and gazes out the window a moment.

“In a way, it’s like learning to dance in the rain.

You can’t stop the storm, so you learn to move with it, to find your rhythm amid the chaos. ”

Find your rhythm among the chaos.

The words settle inside me.

And for some reason, they remind me of Jason.