“Thank you,” I mumbled before I lightly knocked at the door with my knuckle, mentally preparing myself. I pushed open the door, ready to meet him and his family for the first time.
And my own heart . . .
It stalled in my chest.
Before it bottomed out and spilled onto the floor.
Breath gone.
Shock racing my veins.
Eyes wide as I tried to process the scene in front of me.
Because there was this adorable kid, sitting on the exam table, legs swinging over the side, kicking the heels of his shoes against the metal drawers.
Massive grin on his face like he didn’t have a care in the world. Or like maybe he had every care, and he embraced what life had given him, anyway.
He wore these thick glasses that made him look like a cute little bug because his sight had also been affected by the congenital malformations.
But his eye involvement hadn’t been nearly as severe as the defect of his ears.
His hearing loss complete and profound.
As profound as the deformity of his heart.
His chart had told me he’d had his heart transplant when he was six months old. The last-ditch effort that had saved his life.
When he sensed my presence in the room, his attention snapped my direction, his messy red, wavy hair flopping over with the action.
Attention landing on me, he grinned even wider.
The sight of it clutched me everywhere.
I had this instant, overwhelming sense of affection.
And fear.
So much damned fear I didn’t know how to process the two.
To make sense of the two of them together.
Because there was also his mother.
She was standing in the middle of the room. Like she’d barely just made it to her feet a second before I’d opened the door.
Gasping for air and backing away.
Clutching the business card with my contact information my nurse had undoubtedly just passed to her, the same way she did with every new patient I’d taken over for Dr. Browning.
Her horrified gaze bounced between me and the card and the fucking lollipops that were still in the basket, left like a tease or a prize or maybe an outright bribe, on the counter at the back of the exam room.
“Hope,” I breathed, my hand still clutching the knob, frozen in the middle of the doorway.
God. In all my hunting for crucial information in Evan’s chart, I hadn’t even taken note of his last name.
Everything came crashing down.
The things she’d said, and everything she’d implied. The fact she had nothing left to give and no time for herself because she was giving all her time to this little man who needed her most.
She swallowed hard and blinked at me as if she were begging me for something.
Problem was, I didn’t exactly know what that was, and I thought maybe she didn’t, either.
We stood there staring.
Held.
Bound.
The air between us alive. Thick and tense and aching.
Fuck. What was I supposed to do?
Finally, she broke the connection. She dropped her gaze and sank back into the chair.
Every single thing about her movements were riddled with anxiety. It was as if she was teetering between reaching out and stopping me and heaving all her hope and trust into my taking care of her son.
Because all those amazing things I’d been thinking about her?
They were suddenly right there.
Brought into the light.
Whole.
Flickering with the goodness I saw surrounding her every time I got in her space.
Her reason.
And that reason was right there, grinning this bright smile that lit the whole room.
Clearing my throat, I moved the rest of the way through the door and snapped it shut behind me. “I’m Dr. Bryant,” I said, feeling totally off-kilter.
Hope made a little choking sound, and my attention darted that way. Trying to tell her I was sorry for putting her in this uncomfortable position. That I had been caught just as much off-guard as she was.
Fuck, I had this intense urge to tell her that her son was everything that terrified me the most. What made me question and made me fight to be the best damned doctor I could possibly be.
“Dr. Bryant,” she whispered, as if she were processing that fact.
Cautiously, I went to the little wheeled stool and dropped down onto it, sucking in a breath as I used my feet to wheel closer to Evan.
I felt the frantic movement off to the side and behind me. For a flash, I cut my eyes that way.
Hope.
Hope was signing, her hands and fingers moving in this choreographed dance. The sight of it pierced me somewhere deep.
God. It was beautiful.
She was beautiful.
And I had no fucking clue how to process the turmoil raging inside me.
Evan smiled a wide smile at her, nothing but adoration and belief, before he was looking at me, freckles speckled across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. He lifted his hand, fingertips to his temple, drawing it out to the side in a wave.
“He said hello.” A hoarse explanation from Hope.
Which I got because my own throat had grown thick. I offered an awkward wave to this adorable kid.
And Evan.
He laughed.
It was a quiet sound that scuffed from the depths of him, a laugh from his belly that shook his entire body.
He reached out, all excited like, and grabbed my wrist, pulled my hand up, and showed me how to do it right.
I repeated it.
He smiled again, touched his chin, fingertips coming out toward me like he was blowing a kiss.
“Good.” I saw the word form on his lips when he did.
GOOD.
He was telling me I did a good job.
But I knew that was the furthest from the truth.
Because everything inside me was screaming that I’d already fucked this up beyond repair. Of all the people I couldn’t get involved with, Hope owned the number one spot.
Goddamned forbidden.
Because my insides were clenching and all those fears and inadequacies were rushing back.
A smile tweaked at the edge of my mouth, and I eyed him carefully as I spoke. “I bet you are way better at it than I am, though, yeah?”
He nodded enthusiastically, green eyes glinting beneath the lights.
A mossy, earthy green.
Just like his mom’s.
His hands suddenly went wild, speaking a language I was ignorant to. Somehow, it made me feel like some kind of illiterate asshole.
Tinkling laughter filtered from Hope, the woman so in tune with her kid that it sent a tumble of affection through the center of me. She shifted forward so she could look at me, her expression so damned soft as she said, “He said there’s no way you can keep up, but he might be nice enough to let you try.”
I turned back to him, cocked my head, mouth moving with the tease. “Is that a challenge?”
Another emphatic nod, the kid’s grin so wide I could have counted his teeth.
“Oh really . . . I’m the doctor here. You don’t think I can beat you at your little game?”
He made a gesture across his body, a swipe of his hand as he pinched his fingers together, his mouth moving in time.
NO WAY.
I hefted out a breath. That was what I thought.
Evan could read lips.
Of course, he could. This sweet kid who oozed love and faith and intelligence.
A kid whose chart promised he was fragile and breakable and weak, when really his spirit was big enough to fill the entire room as he prepared to outwit me.
“Well, then, I’ll do my best to keep up. How’s that sound?”
GOOD, he signed again.
And my insides were twisting again because I had no idea how the fuck I was going to get through th
is. But I had to suck it up, act like the man I’d been trained to be. How I was going to pretend I hadn’t had his mother propped on a table a mere three days before, touching her and wishing things could be different, was beyond me. One thing at a time, though.
Because this was the reality.
I was Evan’s doctor.
His doctor.
The one responsible for his care.
And I wasn’t about to fuck that up.
Stark lights. Cold. Barren. Flat line.
I jarred against the sudden vision, blinking the cruelty away, voice rough when I said, “All right, then, Evan. Let’s check you out.”
If I wasn’t paying such close attention, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the way he flinched.
Wouldn’t have noticed the fear that went racing beneath the surface of his skin.
Or the way his mother cringed in sympathy of it. Swore, I could feel her having to physically restrain herself from reaching out and gathering him into the safety of her arms.
This amazing woman so clearly desperate to shield him from the things she didn’t have the power to protect him from.
No doubt, he was no stranger to needles and pain or being poked and prodded.
Even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, I kept my voice soft, filled with assurance. “I already checked out your records, Evan. You don’t need any shots, and you did all your heart tests for Dr. Krane last month. That means, I’m going to give you a really fast checkup. Make sure everything’s going just right. No needles. How’s that sound?”
His trusting face flushed with relief, tension draining from his body.
While mine curled with the yearning to be able to take everything from him.
Make it better.
Promise him he would never hurt again.
Wishing I could be the hero I could never be.
Another part of me wanted to tease him about monsters growing in his belly. Make him laugh the way I did Frankie Leigh and my younger patients, but the boy was eight years old. If I did that, he would probably demand a new doctor because the one he’d been assigned had lost his mind.
Sounded about right.
“I’m going to take your shirt off, okay?” I made sure to keep my mouth in view of his eyes when I asked it.
Without any reluctance, his arms flew over his head.
I chuckled, reached down, and worked it over his head. Had to beat down the urge to ruffle my fingers through his hair when I did. “There we go,” I said, setting it beside him.
From behind and to the side, I could feel the weight of his mother’s stare against the side of my face.
Could feel the weight of her burden and her fear that I was sure never went away.
The anticipated prominent scar ran from the top of his sternum to about two inches above his belly button. I ran my fingers across his breastbone, palpating the area and familiarizing myself with his scars and the way his surgical wound had healed.
I moved back to make sure he could see my mouth. “Do you ever have any pain in this area? Anytime you’re playing or trying to sleep? Anything that makes you feel funny?”
He’d had a cardiology checkup with Dr. Krane recently. His chart affirmed his transplanted heart was functioning well. But as his primary care, I would cover all the bases.
That was what the clinic was all about.
Ensuring nothing was overlooked. If one doctor missed a sign, chances were, the next would pick up on it. And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to miss it.
Evan gave an assertive shake of his head.
Clearly, he knew the importance of that answer.
“That’s good. Why don’t you lie back so I can check your belly?”
He didn’t hesitate. He shifted and laid on his back, and I stood over him, my fingertips checking his abdomen for any lumps or bumps, examining all the quadrants, watching his face for any kind of reaction. “Anything feel funny when I do that?”
He smiled when he gave another shake of his head.
And the examination continued that way. Like he was any kid who walked through my door. Which of course, I cared about every single patient I saw.
They were the reason I lived.
Why I devoted my life.
But this one . . . this one left me with a lump the size of a grapefruit in my throat and my heart battering my ribcage.
I stood over him, pretending like I didn’t want to drop to my knees and tell him I’d make it better if I could.
Pretending I didn’t want to say a million things to his mom and demand a million things of her in return.
Instead, I carried on like this was perfectly normal while tension I hoped Evan didn’t notice bounded through the tight space, ricocheting from the walls and echoing in the air.
Swore, I could taste the woman on my breath and hear her moan in my ear.
God. This was brutal.
I patted his knee when I finished. “All done.”
Rolling the stool to the counter, I set my laptop on it, cleared my throat, and tried not to really look at her when I started going over all the shit I normally did first with the parents but had been too shocked to focus on when I’d found her there.
I asked Hope about his diet and exercise and if she had any concerns while thousands of unsaid questions roiled between us.
I told her he was at the fifth percentile in height and weight, to be expected for his condition, that as long as he was eating well, it was nothing to worry about.
Right.
Nothing to worry about.
Because worry surrounded her like a dark, ominous cloud. But with a simple glance at her kid, that storm was obliterated with the force of a thousand suns.
“Thank you, Dr. Bryant,” she said, eyes downcast as if she couldn’t physically bring herself to look at me.
She stood, took Evan’s hand, and helped him down. She ran a tender hand through his hair and then signed something I didn’t understand.
He beamed up at her.
Clearly, she hung the little boy’s moon.
Watching it felt like I was being shredded in two.
I looked at him, trying to loosen my jaw. No doubt, he’d recognize if I was grinding my teeth.
“It was great to meet you, Evan. I . . .” I hesitated, suddenly feeling like a fool. Like maybe I was the brunt of a cruel, sick joke. So out of sorts, I had no clue how to decipher up from down.
Still, I didn’t want to treat him any different from anyone else, so I plucked one of the lollipops from the box and bent at the knees to offer it to him. “Here. This is for you . . . if your mom says it’s okay.”
His face lit up, and Hope choked over a tiny sob that I knew she was doing her best to hide. I paused, reluctant to turn and look her way. I’d told Hope that night that I didn’t know her all that well, but some things a person couldn’t miss. And I knew without a doubt that Hope was at her breaking point.
She’d warned me her life was complicated. I guessed I couldn’t really grasp what that really meant until right then when all those threads I could sense her hanging by started to weave together. Taking shape in my mind. The fact she was in the middle of a nasty divorce.
Dread settled over me like a sheet of ice, awareness taking hold. Suddenly, I was sure all that nasty had to do with the well-being of this kid.
Evan yanked at her arm, signed something quickly. Casting him a soft smile, she nodded, and he took the candy, grinning at it like he was in awe before he pushed past me toward the counter.
Hiking up onto his toes, he grabbed the pen and the pad with the clinic info at the top, tongue sticking out at the side in concentration as he scribbled something across the paper.
When he was finished, the beaming was directed at me, the kid getting under my skin as quickly as his mom had as he stood there with the pad of paper lifted up to me like an offering.
Unsure what to do, I glanced at Hope.
Her voice scratched. “He wants to be able to talk to you himself. Not th
rough me. He said it’s a secret.”
My throat was nothing but sheers of broken glass when I accepted the pad. My eyes moved across the messy marks scored deep on the page.
I helped my mom make those. She said a nice man came in and bought them all so we need to make more. We gave all the money to the babies with bad hearts like mine. Was it you who bought them all?
My nod felt like a confession of a crime.
He grabbed it back and scribbled some more.
You are nice. I’m glad you’re my new doctor. If you think I’m going to die, don’t tell my mom. I don’t want her to be sad.
Emotion screamed through my throat. Racing the length. Winding down to fist my heart and crush my ribs. With a shaky hand, I took the pen from him and wrote my own message below his.
I’m glad I am, too. Really glad. And you aren’t dying, Evan. Not even close. I promise I won’t let that happen.
I thought he might be more alive than anyone I’d ever met.
His grin lit up the room when he read my answer. He gave me a thumbs-up. Apparently, he thought that was simple enough for me.
When I’d never felt so complicated in all my life.
Hope gathered him by the hand. She cast me a remorseful glance, those green eyes telling a million secrets that I knew she wouldn’t allow her tongue to speak. The two of them started out the door. Evan dashed out ahead of her.
Before she could make it all the way out, I snatched her by the wrist, unable to keep it back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It came out harder than I intended.
An accusation. A demand.
I didn’t know.
She spun around, all that red hair swishing around her like a red, violent wave. It was almost terror that rippled across her gorgeous face.
It wrenched through me.
Tripping me up.
Bringing me to my knees.
“What was I supposed to tell you? I told you what you needed to know. I told you my life was complicated, and I didn’t have room for anything else.”
“You could have at least told me you had a kid.”
Disbelief pinched her eyes together. “And what then? What difference would it have made? He’s my priority. My only priority.”
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