by Gina Wilkins
He held Haley’s hand in his. She thought he was gripping tightly, though she could hardly feel his fingers around hers.
“Look at me, Haley. Look at my face.”
She blinked hazily up at him. “Just need…to sleep.”
“No. I don’t want you to go to sleep. I want you to talk to me until the paramedics get here, okay? I don’t want you to go to sleep, Haley.”
She sighed, feeling the energy draining slowly out of her. “Just going to…”
“Haley, damn it, stay awake! You’ve never given up on anything in your life, and you’re not starting now, do you hear me?” He was almost in her face now, speaking furiously.
Should he really be shouting at her when she was hurt? she thought with an aggrieved scowl.
“I’m not giving up on you, either, Haley. I am never giving up on you, do you hear me? You’re stuck with me, got that?”
“Stop yelling at me, Ron.” It was so hard to form the words, but she tried to speak with dignity.
“You want me to stop yelling? Stay with me, then.”
“When I…wake up, I’m going to…punch your arm so hard.”
He raised her hand to his lips. “Okay. You do that. Just don’t give up, you hear?”
“Never giving up on you,” she whispered, her eyelids lowering despite her effort to hold them open.
He brushed his free hand gently across her face. “I wouldn’t let you if you tried.”
She thought he said something else, but she didn’t hear the words. Only the comforting murmur of his voice as she slipped into the wet darkness.
Two days after the storm, Haley lay in a hospital bed, one leg encased in a bulky brace, other bandages scattered randomly over her body. Her mother and her aunt sat in the two visitors’ chairs while her dad and her uncle leaned against the broad windowsill. They’d been there almost since she’d emerged from the operating room after being airlifted to the hospital. As much as she appreciated their loving support, she wished they would leave for a little while.
“Why don’t you all go have some dinner?” she suggested. “I’ll be fine.”
Her mom looked immediately prepared to protest. She hadn’t wanted to let Haley out of her sight for the past two days. Even if Haley hadn’t been told the full extent of her injuries, her mother’s behavior would have let her know just how critical her condition had been by the time she’d arrived in the O.R.
“Really, Mom, I’m fine,” she said gently. “Take a break.”
The room was filled with flowers and balloons from Haley’s friends and classmates. Many of them had been by to check on her, as had several of her instructors.
She’d made Ron and Anne go to their rotations, though both of them had wanted to stay close to her. Ron, especially, had been reluctant to start his new assignment while she lay in this bed. She’d told him there was no need for them both to fall behind in their training.
That thought made a pang go through her. She bit her lip, refusing to give in to her sadness in front of her already-worried parents.
Her mother still looked inclined to refuse to leave her alone, but then the door opened and Ron ambled in. He still wore scrubs from his day on the vascular surgery rotation beneath his crumpled white coat. His hair was tousled, and his pockets were stuffed haphazardly with his tools and materials. His left wrist was wrapped in an elastic bandage, there were two stitches in his chin, and a multicolored bruise darkened his left cheek, all souvenirs of the storm. He’d paid no attention to his own injuries until he’d made sure that she and all the others in the diner were tended to.
Their eyes met and he gave her a smile that almost singed the bed sheet that covered her.
“Maybe we will have some dinner now,” her mother said, standing and motioning for the others to accompany her to the door. “We’ll see you later, sweetheart.”
She brushed a kiss across Haley’s cheek before ushering the others out of the room, giving Ron a smile over her shoulder on the way out.
Alone in the room with her, Ron leaned over the bed railing to give her a kiss. “How are you feeling?”
Ignoring the various aches and pains that would plague her for a while yet, she said, “Okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He leaned closer, his eyes locked with hers. “Haley? What’s the matter?”
“It’s stupid.”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “What’s stupid, honey?”
“I should be so grateful to even be alive. I mean, I could have bled to death from that piece of glass piercing my artery. If anyone had tried to remove it, I probably would have.”
“You were lucky.” He still got a sick look in his eyes when they talked about her injuries, and she knew he’d been fully aware of how precarious her situation had been. Had medical assistance not been already at the scene, and had a medevac helicopter not arrived very quickly thereafter, the outcome could have been very different. As it was, she’d been rushed into surgery in the nick of time.
She would recover fully. With time to heal and some physical therapy, she’d soon be back in prime condition. She should be very grateful—and she was. But still…
“You’re still fretting about missing the next rotation, aren’t you?”
She sighed wistfully. “I just hate falling behind.”
“Six weeks,” he reminded her firmly. “Just the ob-gyn block, that’s all you’ll miss, and you can make that up next year. The administration has already said they’ll work with you to make sure you graduate with the class.”
“I know, and I’m grateful to them.”
“But you can’t stand knowing that the rest of us are going to be going through rotations while you’re taking time to recuperate from your injuries, can you?”
He’d described it perfectly. “I just hate being left behind,” she muttered, looking away.
“You aren’t being left behind. You aren’t even the only one who’ll miss a rotation and have to make it up during fourth year. It’s not that uncommon, you know.”
“I know.”
“But you still hate it.”
“I still hate it.”
“You’re not giving up, are you? Because you know, you have to keep a positive attitude. You have to put your mind to getting back on your feet. You have to work hard and refuse to surrender even when the going gets tough and things look— Ouch.”
She might be flat on her back in a hospital bed, but she could still deliver a pretty satisfying punch to his arm, she thought in satisfaction. “You can stop mocking me now.”
“I’m not mocking you,” he said, rubbing his forearm. “I’m just showing off all you’ve taught me during the past two and a half years.”
She smiled faintly. “I’m glad something got through.”
His smile faded. Pulling one of the chairs close to the bed, he sat beside her, holding her hand. “This is the first chance we’ve had to be alone since the storm.”
“Yes.”
“I seem to remember we were in the middle of a discussion before all hell broke loose.”
She swallowed hard. Was he really going to continue that talk now? The one that had seemed to be leading to them saying goodbye?
Maybe he was leaving her behind in more ways than one as he moved into his next rotation without her, she thought bleakly.
He searched her face. “Wow. You really are giving up, aren’t you?”
“I—” She swallowed hard. “Aren’t you?”
His fingers tightened around hers. “No. Not this time.”
Leaning closer, he held her gaze with his while he spoke in a rush. “All this time, I’ve been afraid of holding you back. I mean, you’re so darned good at all of this. So confident and natural. I honestly believe you can do absolutely anything you set your mind to. Anything.”
She was both flattered and dismayed by his words. While she appreciated the compliments, she didn’t want to be put on a pedestal by hi
m. That was as unrealistic and distancing as quarreling. “Ron, I’m not—”
“But then I got to thinking,” he said, speaking over her as if she hadn’t said a word. “I’ve got a few things to bring to this relationship, too. I keep you grounded—a lot better than a handful of black rocks can do. I make you laugh. I make you mad sometimes, which keeps you from being too much of the sweetness-and-light type, you know? Let’s face it, Haley, that can get kind of boring without a little temper to spice it up.”
She blinked, trying to figure where he was going with this.
“So we’ve got a lot of challenges ahead,” he continued. Studying his face, she realized he wasn’t quite as blasé about his words as he sounded when he forged on. “We have to get you healed again. We have to finish our rotations. We have to ace the rest of our shelf exams. We have to start researching residency programs, and narrowing down places that have something to offer both of us. And then we have to put our minds to charming the residency committees at those places into thinking they absolutely have to have us on their teams.”
She bit her lip as she listened to him making such sweeping plans for the long-term future.
But it turned out he was looking even farther ahead. “Once we get into our programs, we’ll have two very busy internships to deal with. Won’t be easy getting our schedules coordinated. It’s going to take a lot of compromising and accommodating.”
“You’re—” She had to stop to clear her throat. “You’re making a lot of assumptions here.”
Again, the hint of nerves in his eyes, hidden behind a cocky smile. “Well, yeah, but I’m taking your advice again. I’m being confident. Thinking positive. Refusing to accept the possibility of failure.”
“And you’re suddenly so positive because…?” she whispered.
“Because I love you so much I can’t even conceive of the possibility of giving up this time,” he answered simply.
Her heart stopped, then restarted with a hard bump. “Ron—”
“I’ll be whatever you need me to be, Haley. Your friend. Your lover. Your own cheerleader. Your safe place to turn in a storm. Whatever you want—I’m here for the duration. If you’ll have me.”
Blinking rapidly, she forbade herself to cry. “I love you, too, Ron. I have for so long. But I thought you weren’t into long-term commitments.”
“I’ve been committed to you since the day I met you,” he answered in a tone that was a little hoarse now. “I just needed you to help me find the courage to admit it.”
“I seemed to have lacked that courage, myself,” she conceded, clinging to his hand. “I’ve never been so afraid to take a risk before. Maybe because the stakes had just never been this high for me. I pegged you as a heartbreaker from the beginning, Ron Gibson.”
He kissed her hand. “My heart is all yours, Haley Wright. I love you with everything I have to give. And I will never walk away from you.”
“I’m going to make sure you never want to,” she promised him, drawing him toward her for a long kiss of celebration.
Someone tapped on the door, breaking up the embrace. Anne and Liam walked into the room, Anne bearing more flowers, Liam a box of chocolates.
“Are we interrupting anything?” Anne asked, studying their faces with a knowing smile.
Ron grinned, glancing at Haley’s radiant, obviously well-kissed face with a surge of masculine pride. “We’ve just been getting a few things straight between us.”
Anne and Liam exchanged a laughing look.
“Hospital rooms seem to be a good place for that,” Liam said with a wry smile. “It wasn’t that long ago that I was the one lying in a hospital bed while Anne and I got a few things straight.”
“As much of our lives are going to be spent in hospitals from now on, I guess it’s not so surprising that we’d hold some of our most important conversations there,” Anne said with a chuckle. “Um, anything you want to share?”
“Ron and I are going to be staying together,” Haley informed them happily. “We’re going to graduate together, and look for residencies in the same place.”
“And then spend the rest of our lives being happily married doctors,” Ron added. “Haley in psychiatry, me in pediatric hem-onc, if all works out well. Which it will,” he added hastily, remembering his newfound positivity.
“You’re engaged?” Anne asked with a squeal of delight.
Realizing they hadn’t actually gotten to that part, Ron gave Haley a quick, questioning look.
“Yes,” she said, addressing the reply to both Anne and him. “We are.”
“I’m so happy for you both.” Anne hugged her friend while Liam warmly shook Ron’s hand in congratulations.
“We still have to tell our families, of course,” Haley said, “but I know they’re going to approve. My parents already like Ron very much and his family’s going to love me, eventually. If I do a triple board and specialize in pediatric psychiatry, Ron and I might actually be able to work together in some ways.”
She was off now, he thought, listening to her spinning plans with renewed enthusiasm. She’d be very busy during the few enforced weeks of her recuperation, planning a wedding and a full life afterward. Maybe he should be daunted by the lifelong commitment he’d just made, but for some reason he wasn’t. The only thing that mattered to him was that he would always have Haley in his life. On his side. Just as he would always be there for her.
He had no doubt they could make it work. Her love had given him a new confidence in himself. He would be a better doctor, and a better man, because of it. Becoming convinced for the first time in his life that he had a great deal to offer in return, he looked ahead with a newfound optimism. He had finally discovered everything he’d ever wanted in his life—and this time, he wouldn’t be walking away.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6025-6
THE DOCTOR’S UNDOING
Copyright © 2010 by Gina Wilkins
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