My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  The tone of her voice over the phone caused Matt to still immediately. “Yes.”

  “I’ve just brought Kate to the hospital, to—to the emergency room.”

  A bolt of pure fear tore into him, deep and deadly. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. His fingers clenched the phone.

  “She had a terrible asthma attack. They’ve taken her away to treat her. I’m sure she’ll be fine but I’m worried. . . . Her lips were turning blue.”

  “You’re at the ER at Redbud General?”

  “Yes. I’m about to call Peg and Velma but I felt—I felt like I should call you first.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “That’s probably not necessary—”

  “I’m on my way.” He clicked off the phone and tossed it on the kitchen countertop. His body was hot and cold at once, and he thought he might be sick. Kate is in the emergency room. Kate. Oh, God. He knew he needed to get a grip but couldn’t quite manage it.

  He rushed into the living room, pushed his feet into his Adidas, palmed his car keys, then bolted out the back door toward the garage.

  Near-death experiences took a lot out of a girl.

  Once the doctors had stabilized Kate—her breathing passages open, her chest loose—her mind had washed clean with relief and her body had turned heavy and relaxed. They’d wheeled her to an upper floor, and she’d simply let herself sink into the hospital bed and drop into sleep.

  Sometime later, a deep drum roll of thunder penetrated her dreams. Half conscious and eager for more sleep, she screwed her eyes shut tighter and tried to shift onto her side. The IV in her wrist pulled uncomfortably, so she returned to her back with a sigh.

  What exactly had happened? She went back over her memories of the day, starting with the walk, the attack, Gran’s frantic drive to the hospital, the blur of doctors, nurses, faces, medicines, and finally—blessedly—the ability to breathe freely. How bizarre that all of it had happened so quickly. The morning had started in the same normal way that all of her mornings at Chapel Bluff had started. But between then and now she’d nearly suffocated, been rushed to the ER, and was currently tucked into one of those mechanical hospital beds with the top half raised at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Rain pattered against the glass. Blearily, she cracked open her eyes and looked toward the windows—

  Matt was leaning against them. In the room’s corner, where the windows met the wall.

  Matt? Goose bumps flowed down her arms. How long had he been there? She struggled to fight past the last of the grogginess and the beginnings of embarrassment. She didn’t exactly want him seeing her like this.

  He said nothing, just stared at her with burning brown eyes. His arms were crossed and his face was grim. Something like anger radiated from him in waves.

  She wasn’t sure exactly why he’d be angry—and then it hit her. Hospitals. After everything he’d gone through with his wife, he must hate these places. He looked like a lion in the far corner of its cage, defiant but trapped all the same.

  She honestly wouldn’t have imagined he’d come here. If she’d been conscious, she would have stopped him from coming to spare him the reminders.

  He pushed off the wall and approached her. He had on jeans and a frayed gray Abercrombie sweat shirt. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Pretty good.”

  She must look atrocious. She had an oxygen tube running under her nose. Her hair and face were probably a mess. And under the flannel sheets she was dressed in nothing but one of those white and blue hospital gowns.

  Maybe she should blow off those worries, however, because for once Matt himself looked horrible. His expression was gaunt, his skin pale, and his hair stuck up in tufts.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Three o’clock.”

  “Where’s my grandmother?”

  “They’re all waiting down the hall. They were scared of waking you.”

  “Oh.”

  “I promised to go and get them as soon as you woke up.” He made a move toward the door. “Do you want me to—”

  “No. Just give me a couple of minutes first.”

  He paused, watching her intently.

  She yawned, stretched a little under the covers. Her attention panned around the small room, so similar to every other hospital room she’d ever been in. TV hanging from a big metal arm that bolted into the wall. Sink and cabinets opposite the windows and beyond that, the bathroom.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked.

  “Maybe just some water.”

  A nurse had left a cup with a straw and a pink pitcher on a tray next to the sink. He filled the cup and handed it to her. She took some long draws through the straw. Thanks to the round ice pellets, the water tasted blessedly cold.

  “What is this they’re giving you?” he asked, gesturing to the IV stand.

  She glanced at the tubing running from the bag into her wrist. “Some kind of corticosteroid.”

  “And oxygen.” His gaze moved to the line beneath her nose.

  “Right.”

  “What happened, Kate?”

  She took one more sip of water and handed the cup back to him. He placed it back on the tray.

  “I went for a walk this morning,” she said. “When I felt my asthma start to kick in, I turned around and headed home. At first I thought it was going to be fine. Manageable. But then it got worse fast, before I could get back to the house. It was pretty bad by the time I reached Gran.”

  He frowned. “Beverly said your lips were turning blue.”

  “Hmm.” She made a face. “That must have been lovely.”

  “This isn’t your first time to be hospitalized for this,” he stated. While she’d been sleeping, Gran had obviously filled him in on her history with asthma.

  “No. I’ve had some attacks like this before, but the last one was five years ago. I’ve kept it really well under control since then.”

  “Until today.”

  “Until today,” she acknowledged. He was inexplicably furious. She could read it in every rigid line of him, but mostly she could see it seething in his eyes.

  Good grief. He didn’t exactly have a warm bedside manner. “Matt,” she said gently, “I get that this probably isn’t your favorite place. Thank you for coming to check on me, but it won’t hurt my feelings if you want to go home. This is your day off. I’m sure you’d rather be at home taking it easy.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  And he didn’t. He stayed and stayed. All through the hours that the seniors kept her company. All through dinner, which he went out and brought back for her from her favorite salad place. All through two really bad reality TV shows.

  When she couldn’t hold her eyes open another second, she drifted off to sleep. Much later, when a nurse roused her in the middle of the night to check her temperature and blood pressure, Matt was still there. Back in his spot in the corner of the room by the wall and the windows. His arms crossed, his face foreboding.

  A caged lion.

  Matt drove his Lamborghini home from the hospital in the wee hours of the morning, hardly aware of the road in front of him.

  From the little he’d been able to pick up from the doctor, Kate might have been able to curb her asthma attack if she’d had her inhaler with her or if she’d avoided exercising in the cold. Simple precautions. Easy. And yet she’d ignored them and gone and gotten herself into a seriously dangerous situation. Just thinking about her alone, away from the house, and fighting for breath made him stiff with dread.

  His irrational fear for her pissed him off. But what pissed him off more was that she’d put her life at risk out of sheer carelessness.

  He wanted to kill her himself, he was so angry.

  He reached home, eased his car into his garage, and hit the button that closed the door behind him. But he didn’t move. He just sat there in the dark, holding on to the steering wheel.

  When he’d arrived at the ER, the doctors and nurs
es had restricted him and Beverly to the waiting room. The other seniors had arrived gradually. Their small group had been surrounded by sick adults, fussing kids, and worried family members. He’d sat there the whole time, waiting, with his heart thudding dully, his thoughts a chaos of panic.

  After what seemed an eternity, the doctor had come out and explained how they’d gotten Kate’s attack under control. An orderly had escorted them up to her room. By the time he’d arrived she’d already been fast asleep.

  He’d expected her to look terrible, but she’d actually looked beautiful. Her skin had been smooth and clear like white china, her hair blazing dark red. She’d reminded him of a doll tucked smoothly into its doll bed—except for the lifeless gown, the dripping IV, and the oxygen tube.

  It reminded him powerfully of Beth. There had been times during her fight against cancer when she’d looked deceptively beautiful, too, and he’d wanted to believe she wasn’t as sick as they’d said. But there had been evidence of reality those times, too. Endless doctors, nurses, hospitals, machines, medicines. Eventually she’d begun to look every bit as seriously ill as she was.

  He’d never wanted to stand by the bedside of another woman at another hospital, feeling as powerless and scared as he had the first time. But that’s exactly what he’d just spent the past sixteen hours doing.

  The fact that Kate was recovering well and would be released tomorrow didn’t ease his mind at all. People were fragile. You couldn’t count on them not to die.

  Kate had an acute case of bliss brought on by spa immersion.

  The pedicurist had just exfoliated her legs from the knees down and then wrapped them in hot towels. Kate was reclining in her chair, eyes closed, listening to the spa’s soft music. It sounded like rain and wind chimes.

  She had to admit that she felt slightly guilty for taking Morty’s spa gift certificates. He was retired and short on funds, after all. She probably should have been noble and humble and refused payment. She probably should have said something about how furthering the cause of love was reward enough.

  But then she recalled in gory detail what she’d gone through to un-dye Morty’s hair. Aw, to heck with guilt. She’d earned this.

  She sighed, relaxed all her muscle groups, and wondered what Matt was doing. After that marathon vigil he’d kept in her hospital room, she’d expected to see him again the next day. Hour after hour at the hospital had passed. Without wanting to, she’d caught herself waiting for him, looking for him every time she heard footsteps in the hallway, every time someone knocked on her door. She’d been discharged around noon, and Gran had brought her home to Chapel Bluff where Matt should have been busy working. Instead the house had greeted them with emptiness. Gran told her that Matt had been there earlier but had left to make a Home Depot run. Kate had spent the remainder of the afternoon waiting for him to return and the remainder of the evening waiting for the phone to ring. He hadn’t come back and he hadn’t called.

  As usual, she didn’t know what to make of him or what to do about him. She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful for the time at the hospital or miffed that he’d been avoiding her since. Or both. Or maybe she had the right to feel neither.

  When Matt still hadn’t returned to Chapel Bluff by ten thirty this morning, she’d decided that between her asthma attack, her hospital stay, and her frazzled emotional state over Matt’s absence, she needed a trip to the spa.

  And what a good idea that had been. Her thoughts drifted in delirious patterns. This was so relaxing. And she’d have such pretty toes when she left. There’d be plenty of time later to angst over the man with the heartbreaking brown eyes.

  After her pedicure, Kate took herself and her novel out for a long, leisurely lunch. When she finally returned to Chapel Bluff that afternoon, she immediately spotted Matt’s truck parked near the barn. The sight of it almost sent her straight into another red-alert asthma attack.

  She sat in her car for a few minutes, lecturing herself about being calm, about how she was his friend, about how she was a grown woman and could easily handle this situation.

  Gran had left a note for her on the kitchen table, saying that she and “the girls” had gone to a matinee.

  Kate paused, listening. From the second floor, where she knew Matt would be working, she could hear nothing. She made her way up the stairs.

  She’d worn her black flip-flops home from the spa. They made a faint slapping sound against her heels as she approached the bathroom. She’d chosen a glossy lollipop pink polish for her toes, which coordinated with the pale pink turtleneck she had on. Her jeans, she noticed, were still rolled up one tuck at the cuffs.

  She reached the doorway to the bathroom. Usually she found Matt working and he’d continue working while they chatted. But today he was standing immobile at his full height, as if he’d stopped what he’d been doing the moment she’d entered the house and had been waiting for her to find him. And he was staring at her like a gladiator would stare at its mortal enemy—in a way that promised her he was about to take her apart limb by limb.

  She’d had a greeting ready in her head, but it evaporated like a plume of steam. “Are you . . . mad at me?”

  “You know, Kate, I am,” he said, voice tight. “I’ve been waiting for it to go away, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

  “Why?” she asked, stunned. “What did I do?”

  “You nearly killed yourself.”

  She fumbled around mentally, trying to understand. “My asthma attack?”

  “You knew you shouldn’t exercise out in the cold like that.”

  “I . . . I checked the weather online before I left. They forecasted a high of sixty-two.”

  “You went out early for your walk. It wasn’t going to reach that for hours.”

  Her lips opened, but no words came out.

  “And where was your inhaler? You had it with you that other day when I saw you walking.”

  “I just forgot it. It’s . . . it’s one of those things I usually take with me, but not every time. I’m almost always fine without it.”

  “You obviously weren’t fine without it this time.” The bigness of him and his emotion pushed against her like a storm cloud.

  Her own irritation started to rise and grow to meet his, to push back. “Well, maybe you’re perfect and never forget things, but I admit that I did this time, okay? I’ve already paid for my mistake physically, and when the hospital bill arrives I’m sure that I’ll pay for it with my wallet, too. So maybe you can cut me some slack and spare me the lecture.”

  His chest rose and fell with his angry breath.

  “A little sympathy would be nice,” she said.

  “Sympathy?” His features twisted in disbelief. “That’s what you want from me? A little sympathy?”

  “Yes!”

  “Unfortunately, when I saw you in the hospital with a tube in your arm, my feelings went way deeper than sympathy.”

  She struggled to think past the pulse pounding in her temples. “Is this why you were angry in the hospital? You were mad at me for what I’d done? I thought it was because you were back in a hospital again after what you’d gone through with your wife. I thought it was memories.”

  “My memories didn’t exactly put me in a better mood.”

  “But mostly it was me?”

  “Mostly it was you. Mostly it still is you. It makes me crazy,” he said, making a sharp gesture with his hands, “to think that you’d be—so careless.”

  Her hands curled into fists. “What else do you want me to say, Matt? That I’m sorry? I’m sorry. How’s that? Better?” She turned on her heel and took off down the hallway.

  His footfalls pounded behind her. She sped toward the stairs, but he caught up, his hand wrapping around her upper arm. His strong fingers held her with careful pressure, staying her but not hurting her.

  She turned toward him, and they were suddenly very close. Almost chest to chest.

  “Why do you have the right to be
so angry, exactly?” she asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “Did I worry you? Is that it? If so, I am sorry for what I put you and Gran and the others through.”

  He moved forward, even nearer. “What they feel for you and what I feel for you are nothing alike.”

  She ought to step away. She was angry. Wasn’t she? She had been two seconds ago. But her anger had scattered in the face of his glorious nearness.

  They breathed together, their exhales and inhales fast. She gazed into his eyes, and he gazed back without shields. She saw vulnerability, frustration, desire.

  “Promise me you’ll be more careful with yourself,” he whispered roughly. His forehead came to rest against hers. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  The words hit her with physical force, stabbing a direct hit to her heart.

  He changed the angle of his head so that their lips were close. Closer. His hands brushed up the sides of her neck and tunneled into her hair, holding the back of her head. His mouth moved even closer, until it pressed against hers and he was kissing her.

  Kate kissed him back, straining into him, arching up onto her tiptoes. Her arms came around his neck, grabbing fistfuls of shirt against his nape.

  She adored him with that kiss, while her brain spun with the impossibility and magnitude of it, and her body reveled in the touch and feel of him.

  He made a growling noise and his thumbs moved possessively against her jaw. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her and she kissed him back, until she was forced to come up for air. She broke contact, tilting her face back. He stayed right where he was, watching her, his hands cradling her head.

  Kate breathed unevenly, looking into his eyes.

  She loved him.

  She absolutely, no-going-back-now, one hundred percent loved him. She couldn’t trust him to return her love. Wasn’t sure God intended for her to love him at all. But she couldn’t help it.

  Kate released the handfuls of his shirt she’d been gripping, smoothed the fabric, then flattened her palms on his chest. Every molecule she had screamed at her to grab him close and beg him to kiss her until she couldn’t breathe again. Instead, she forced herself to gently push him away.