She’s Mine Now

by Parker, Weston

  Adi and I ran up to her, and she cocked her head as she looked at me through her open window. “I thought you weren’t on shift today.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Could Adi spend the afternoon with you? I need to get back in there. I’ll explain everything later.”

  She gave me a long look before she nodded and twisted around in her seat to smile at Adi. “Come on, sweetheart. I have some cover photos to go over this afternoon. I think you’re going to love them. You can help me choose one.”

  Adi smiled but shot me a wary glance. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

  “It’ll all be fine, sweetheart.” I bent over to kiss the top of her head. “I just need to finish some stuff at work.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek, but when I opened the door for her, she climbed in. “Will we see you later?”

  “Absolutely. It’s not going to be a late one.” At least, I hoped it wouldn’t be. I brought my gaze back to my sister’s after shutting Adi’s door. “I’ll bring dinner. Thanks for this.”

  “Any time.” She frowned and glanced in the direction of the ER. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “It’s fine. I just need to get back inside.” Straightening up, I waved goodbye and waited until the wheels were rolling before letting out a heavy breath.

  When I’d gotten that bad feeling up in the therapy room, I hadn’t for one second expected to find Craig lying on that gurney. Especially not in the condition he was in.

  I might not be a medically trained professional, but I wasn’t fucking stupid either. Anyone would’ve been able to tell that he was severely injured.

  The worst thing was that, for a beat that lasted longer than I was proud of, I’d been relieved. If he died, I could live again.

  But then I gave myself a mental bitch slap. As much as threatening to kill someone was fairly common, I didn’t think many people meant it seriously. If he’d died, sure, I wouldn’t have killed him, but feeling relieved that he might not walk out of the hospital felt like very much the same thing.

  Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same thing, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling an intense sense of guilt about it. Moving off to the side to take a minute to breathe, I shoved my fingers into my hair and covered my eyes with my palms.

  Adi and I had walked out shortly after the crash cart had arrived. By a stroke of pure luck, Katie had been finishing up a meeting with a photographer nearby, so she’d been able to get here within minutes of my text.

  I didn’t know what had happened after we’d left obviously, but there was every possibility he hadn’t made it. Right now, my ex-husband and the father of my child could be lying lifeless inside my workplace.

  Now there’s a lovely thought.

  What would I tell Adi if that was true? How would I explain to her what had happened? Would I ever be able to go inside again without replaying the events of this day?

  I didn’t have the answers to any of my questions. Least of which what I would do if he had made it. The court date was still looming, and so were all the worries about it.

  Would Craig try to put a spin on his near-death experience? Would he try to use it as a way to win sympathy from a judge or to mitigate his past behavior?

  The what-ifs were awful, but at least some of the answers were waiting for me just a few yards away. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready to face the truth of whichever way Chris’s attempts at saving his life had gone.

  Then there was the fact that I’d all but asked him not to save Craig’s life. It had been a spur of the moment comment that had just slipped out of my damn filterless mouth—an errant thought that should never have wormed its way past my tongue.

  Chris and I were still settling into a relationship. It was entirely possible that he would now think I was a murderous witch while he’d taken an oath to preserve human life at all costs. We might not have put a label on this thing between us, but somewhere along the line, it had gotten a lot more serious than I’d initially planned for. Losing him now would suck balls.

  But if there was one thing I’d learned, it was that the only way to the other side was to push through. Which meant it was time to buck up and start making my way to whatever was waiting for me just inside those doors.

  Tipping my head back toward the hazy sunlight of the late afternoon, I let it wash over my face while I tried to get my racing thoughts under control. Horns honked, people milled around, and in the office buildings all around me, people were going about their normal daily lives. None of them even had any clue of the moral and emotional dilemma I was having, nor would they care.

  Sad, but true.

  I filled my lungs with smoggy, thick air several times before I finally plucked up the courage to do what needed to be done. Tucking my hair behind my ears, I marched past several co-workers and couldn’t find the strength to give any of them much more than a forced smile.

  Chris stood at the nurses’ station filling out paperwork, but he looked up as soon as I started down the corridor toward him. The apprehension in his expression and the grim set of his jaw weren’t promising, but I’d made it this far.

  Either way, I was about to find out several things that would change the course of my life. We locked eyes as I walked up to him and stopped only about a foot away. The hand that wasn’t holding the pen shifted at his side like he’d wanted to reach for me, but he stuck it into the pocket of his coat instead.

  “What happened?” I asked, glancing toward the empty bay where Craig’s gurney had been earlier.

  The muscles in his throat worked and I couldn’t quite decipher the look that came into his eyes. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, a clear indication that he was having a hard time talking about it, before he swallowed and kept his statement simple.

  “I saved his life.” He signed and set the pen down on the counter, turning his body to face me fully. “He died on the table and I brought him back.”

  My gaze bounced from one of his eyes to the other, but I was still unable to make out what I saw in them. “Why?”

  “It’s my job.” He sighed softly but never broke eye contact with me. “You know who I am, how seriously I take my job, and why I got into it in the first place. I couldn’t just let him go.”

  Something that looked a lot like regret suddenly clouded his irises, and I knew he knew what I hadn’t asked him to do. I also knew he knew why I’d even thought it. Clearly, he felt bad about not doing it.

  The problem was that I didn’t know how to feel about it. Guilt or no, part of me still kind of wanted to not have to worry about a custody battle when my child would be in actual danger if he won. Maybe that made me psycho, but maybe it just made a mom. No mother wanted their child in danger, but especially not from someone who only wanted to see them to fuck with you.

  “I do know who you are, and I adore that person,” I said, keeping my voice low enough that no one passing by would be able to overhear me. “But I also know that this was a way out, and you brought him back to life.”

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “It was a way out, and I did bring him back to life. But I wouldn’t have been the person I was if I handled it any other way.”

  “I know.” I crossed my arms to hug my chest as a shiver passed through me. “I just have mixed feelings about it. This could’ve all been over. Adi would never have had to go through a lawsuit in which she’s the subject matter.”

  “True.” His chin lifted a fraction of an inch higher. “I’m not apologizing for saving him.”

  “I’m not asking you to.” Moisture started burning the backs of my eyes. “But I have to go. I need some time to process everything that happened today.”

  “Fair enough.” Slowly bringing his hands out of his pockets, he burrowed one of them between my arms to squeeze my hand while the other went to my hip. Green eyes blazing intently into mine, he took a step closer until our chests were touching. “Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

  “I will,” I p
romised, my throat closing as I tried to choke back tears. I didn’t understand why I suddenly had the overwhelming urge to cry, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer.

  With one last teary-eyed look at the man I was pretty sure I’d been falling in love with, I wrenched out of his grip and took off back toward the parking lot. I didn’t go to my car though.

  There was still about an hour before Adi’s regular dinner time, so I had plenty of time to try to make sense of what I was feeling enough to reel it in before I got to my sister’s place. Since it was still warm and nice out, I decided to take a walk in an attempt to clear my head.

  When that didn’t work, I realized I needed to talk this out with someone. The nearest seat was a bus bench, but that would have to do.

  As I made myself small in a corner, I pulled my phone out and called Luna. If there had ever been a time I needed my friend, this was it.

  “Hey, you,” she chirped into the phone when she answered. “How are you? How’re things going with the hot doctor?”

  The tears from earlier jumped back into my eyes at the sound of her voice. They burst out of me when I told her everything that had happened. Cyrus’s voice came over the line next. I had no idea if he’d been listening all the time or if she’d put me on speaker at some point during the story, but I was actually kind of happy he was there.

  “Craig is the biggest piece of shit in the world,” he declared. “I’m not surprised you thought what you did, nor do I think you have anything to feel guilty about.”

  “I agree with him,” Luna said. “That man has done nothing but make your life hell for more than a decade. You lost everything because of him and you’ve had to claw your way back despite all the debt and stuff he left you with.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah, but is that really a good enough excuse for asking Chris to let him die?”

  “You didn’t ask him that,” Cyrus said. “You thought it and it slipped out. It doesn’t even really matter because he didn’t do it.”

  “He didn’t, but now I think I might be pissed off with him about it. If I think about all the grief we could’ve been spared if he’d just not done anything…”

  I couldn’t say any of the words, but with Cyrus and Luna, I didn’t need to. They knew what I meant anyway.

  “Hey, listen to me,” Luna said. “You’re allowed to be peeved with him. We get peeved at the people closest to us even when it doesn’t make any sense. They love us, and therefore, they have to live with the brunt of our emotions.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll see it that way.” My teeth sank into my lower lip. “I also don’t know if I can see it that way. Not right now anyway.”

  “If he doesn’t see it that way, he’s not the right guy for you,” Cyrus said. “Trust me on that one. He knows what you’ve been through with Craig, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then he better fucking understand, and if he doesn’t, fuck him. Metaphorically, of course.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Excuse all those fucks and replace them with fricks.”

  “Got it.” An unexpected smile spread on my face. It was so sweet when he was trying to pacify Luna by taking back all the cuss words that so often came out of him when he wasn’t even thinking. “So you don’t think he’ll worry that I have murderous tendencies?”

  “You do have murderous tendencies.” Luna’s voice was gentler now. “But only when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of your daughter. You’re one fierce mama bear, but every child deserves a mother who’d be willing to kill for them. Maybe not literally, but you know what I mean.”

  “Especially when the father is an asshole who wouldn’t lift a finger to help,” Cyrus chimed in. “Also, she might say you shouldn’t be willing to kill for your child, but I would be. I’m ninety-nine percent sure anyway. It’s too early to tell for that other one percent.”

  “Too early?” My eyebrows shot up and my own troubles leaped into the backseat. “Does that mean—”

  “We found out this morning,” Luna said. “We’re just on the way to the doctor. It should be around six weeks. That’s what we think anyway.”

  While I squealed like a lunatic, sitting on a bus bench in the middle of the city, I realized I’d been wrong earlier. There were people who cared when your life had been irrevocably changed. All you had to do was reach out to them and hope they could help you find the silver lining.

  Luna’s pregnancy might not change my circumstances directly, but it did give me hope. New things were always happening. New relationships were formed, tested, and sometimes, if you were lucky, they survived.

  It’d happened for Cyrus and Luna. Now if I could only figure out how to get past my own mental baggage and roadblocks, maybe it could happen for me.

  Chapter 33

  CHRIS

  “Did they let you know that he made it through the surgery yesterday?” Hunter asked as we were setting up for our first patient of the day.

  I nodded. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Parasites don’t die that easily.”

  “Not unless you let them.” He gave me a meaningful look. “That was a hell of a thing you did.”

  My heart did the strange clenching thing it had done every time I thought about what it would’ve meant to April if Craig wasn’t around anymore. “I know.”

  My friend was silent for a minute while he unpacked a new tricycle I’d ordered for one of our much younger patients. We needed to work on his balance and his birthday was coming up. I’d been looking forward to the look on his face when I gave him this gift for weeks. Now that the day was finally here, I wasn’t feeling very festive.

  The way April had looked at me after I’d told her I’d saved Craig’s life did not bode well for any future between us. Ultimately though, I’d done what I had to do. I desperately wanted her and Adi in my life, but not at the cost of neither of us ever having a clear conscience again.

  He had come in as my patient, and that was how I had to treat him. No more, no less.

  “Since he’s out of surgery, you remember you have to go check in on him today?” Hunter asked.

  “I know.” I’d rather have gone in for surgery myself than to pretend to give a fuck about that asshole’s wellbeing, but I had a job to do. “I’m going to go now before our sessions start. We’re pretty much set up for now.”

  “That we are,” he agreed before cocking his head and narrowing his eyes at me. “Do you want me to come with you? Just in case you decide to unplug him or something?”

  I snorted. “Nah, I’ll be fine. I received some news earlier that will make it easier to deal with him.”

  The news I’d received had been something I’d expected, given the scent that had been coming off Craig when I’d worked on him, but it had only been confirmed this morning. The knowing look on Hunter’s face told me I didn’t even have to share the news with him. He already knew what it was.

  “Grit your teeth and bear it then.” He grinned. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  I nodded and decided to get it over with before I changed my mind. If I went now, I wouldn’t have it hanging over my head for the rest of the day.

  Craig was lying in one of the smaller rooms at the end of a corridor. It was literally the farthest away the nurses could have put him from their station, and I wasn’t surprised. April was a sweetheart around here. Being on her wrong side meant you were on everyone’s wrong side.

  They would take care of him just like I had, but no one would be doing him any favors. He looked up when I opened his door, his face bruised and swollen. Without the dark hair, he looked more like a cue ball than ever, especially since most of his features were swollen into a big blob.

  His dark eyes might be slits, but even that couldn’t hide the venom in them when he saw who had entered his room. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  I strolled in casually and lifted the chart at the foot of his bed, checking over everything I had to. “I’m required to check in on patients I�
�ve treated. I’m checking in on you just like I’m required to do.”

  What little color he had regained in his cheeks drained away again. “You’re the one who saved my life?”

  “Unfortunately.” I shrugged while signing off on the form left for me by the surgeon. “How are you feeling?”

  He grunted instead of answering my question. “Why didn’t you let me die? If I was you, I would have.”

  “You’re not me.” I finished going over the chart before letting it drop with a clatter on the table over his bed.

  “What? You’re so much better than me?” The effect of his words fell flat with how purely pitiful he looked lying all beat up, all alone in a room where no one had even opened his blinds.

  “No.” I walked over to the window and started rolling them up. Heaven forbid we got a complaint of mistreatment from the asshole. “Letting someone die is the same as killing them as far as I’m concerned.”

  “So?” He dropped his head back on the pillow and groaned. “I’m sure you’d much rather have seen me dead.”

  “You’re not worth it,” I said honestly. “It came down to knowing that I could help April at the expense of my morals or I could save a life. April didn’t need that kind of help. She’ll win at court without breaking a sweat.”

  “So you did it for her?” He scoffed. “We may have gotten divorced years ago, but I still know her. I doubt she agrees with you on that one.”

  “What we agree or disagree about is none of your concern.” I wound the beaded chain around its hook and turned to face him again.

  The early morning sunlight now streamed in, making him look even worse. I didn’t particularly enjoy seeing anybody in pain, but I didn’t have much sympathy for him either.

  “The police came by to see you last night,” I said. “Your blood alcohol level was off the charts. As soon as you’re stable, they’re coming back to take you in for drunk driving.”