Then she remembered running to seek the comfort of the stables yesterday and how she’d flung her arms around Frisco, wound her fingers in his mane, and cried. How lonely she’d felt. And how, after telling Riley she was going where even God couldn’t find her, she’d still raised her eyes to the sky and demanded to know, “Do you want to find me, Lord?”
Why had she done that? Why was she here now? She thought of Nick in the kitchen just hours ago, singing with that dish towel tossed over his shoulder as he made omelets. Laughing with Caro. Slipping his arms around Leigh’s waist as she did the dishes, nuzzling her neck, and whispering, “Bless you for this chance.”
She folded her hands and stared at her lap. Then cleared her throat. “If it’s not too late, maybe I should give you another chance too, Lord.”
+++
“I didn’t get your messages until a few minutes ago,” Nick said, alarmed by the flush on Sam’s cheeks and the shiny, glazed look in her eyes. Her hair was damp with sweat, lips pale. The nurses had said only that she had a fever, but it looked worse than that. He glanced at her IVs, saw a red medication label. “I’m on leave, and I was beat. I turned my phone off.” He saw her frown and quickly amended his words. “I called you—the nurses said you were sleeping and doing well.”
Sam licked her lips, drew in a breath, her eyes riveted to his. “When?”
“When . . . what?”
“When did you call?”
“I don’t know. Early evening. I’m not sure.”
She tried to lift her head and groaned with pain.
Nick stepped closer. “Sam, should I call the nurse? Do you need—”
“I need to know if you heard what I told you before I went into surgery.”
His stomach twisted. “I heard. And I know how frightened you were. So—”
“I love you,” she said, cutting him off again. “I didn’t say it because I was scared or because I’d been shot or because I was out of my head from blood loss.” She stared at him hard, the flush on her face deepening. “I said it because it’s true. I’m in love with you.”
Guilt stabbed. “Sam . . . I’m sorry. Look . . .” He dragged his hand across his mouth. “You’re Toby’s sister. I care about you and Elisa. I was wrong to let what happened between us happen. There’s no excuse. I’m to blame. Only me. I’ve told you that before and I’m telling you again. I was wrong. I’m sorry. But there’s no way—”
“She’s no good for you, Nick. She’s not like you or me. She doesn’t want the same things we do. She doesn’t want you.”
“I love her. I’ve never stopped loving her. You know that.” Nick drew in a breath. Please, Lord. Help me know what to say. “Leigh and I talked last night, Sam. We’re going to give our marriage another chance.”
“No!” Sam hauled herself onto her elbows, eyes wild. “No, no, no! You can’t do it; you can’t go back to her.”
“I am. It’s what I want and what she wants. I’ve tried to be honest with you.”
“Honest?” Sam’s lips twisted into an ugly sneer.
“I never lied,” he said, realizing it was futile and knowing he should just leave. He had no right to defend himself.
“I’m not talking about you,” she said, her voice suddenly cold, steely. “I’m talking about that holier-than-thou wife of yours. That virtuous woman in a pure white coat that you say never lies.” Her lips twisted again and she made a sound that seemed part sob, part cruel laugh. “You said that, right? that your beloved wife never lies?”
“I’m leaving. I don’t have anything more to say. You need your rest.”
“And you need to hear the truth.”
“Good-bye, Sam.” He took a step back and she grabbed his arm.
“She told me she was pregnant. Before Toby. Before . . . us.”
Nick’s stomach lurched. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it. She never told you because she didn’t want it. She was carrying your baby, and she didn’t want to have it.” She gripped his arm so hard that her nails bit into his flesh. “She’s not like us. She doesn’t want a family. She’ll never love you the way I can.”
He yanked his arm from her grasp, his pulse hammering so hard in his ears that he couldn’t hear. Shock, fury at Sam . . . fear that it could somehow be true. It couldn’t be true. Leigh would have told him if she were pregnant. She would never . . .
He turned and bolted from the room, seeing nothing as he jogged toward the stairwell. Sam was delirious, sick. And this was a vicious lie, a desperate act. Desperate people did desperate things. His law enforcement career had taught him that over and over. He yanked at the door to the stairs, the last look in Kurt Denton’s eyes flashing into his memory.
He and Leigh had promised last night that they’d be honest. That their whole future would be built on that. She was going to meet him outside the ER. He’d find her and ask. There was no way this could be true.
+++
Leigh shifted on the bench of the hospital gazebo, watching as Nick crossed the parking lot and thinking how many things had changed since they’d talked outside the hospital only a week before. The first time she’d seen him in months, the day he’d saved Finn Johnson’s life, and the day she’d met Sam Gordon. It had all led to that breath-stealing moment last night when she’d stopped thinking about divorce and started trying to believe—for the first time in her life—that the forever kind of happiness was possible. It had made her hope, against all odds, that it could really be hers. And it was what she’d asked God for, only a few minutes ago in the chapel. Please, Lord. Show me that it’s possible. . . . Give me my forever.
She raised her hand and smiled as Nick caught sight of her and broke into a jog. She’d have to tell him that she had to stay and work another hour. He’d be disappointed, but he’d wait for her. She had no doubt about that now—he’d waited almost a year, after all. . . . Her heart filled her chest. I love him, God. I do. I love him. Her smile faded at the look on his face. Serious, troubled . . .
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he reached the gazebo. Dread made her mouth go dry. “Is it Sam? Is she worse? Did she—”
“She said this crazy thing,” he said, catching his breath. “That you were . . . pregnant last year.”
Her breath stuck in her throat.
“It’s not true, is it?”
A siren wailed in the distance. She raised her hands to her mouth, thoughts staggering.
“Leigh?”
“I . . . had a miscarriage.”
His face paled and he shut his eyes for a heart-stopping moment. “When?”
“December,” she whispered. “I miscarried the first week in December.”
His jaw clenched. “I meant, when did you know? When did you know you were carrying our baby?”
Our baby. Her knees weakened and she reached for the gazebo railing. “Around the first of October.”
He groaned. “You knew you were pregnant when you asked me to move out?”
Tears filled her eyes. “I was confused. I didn’t how I felt about things. I didn’t know—”
“If you wanted to keep my baby?”
“I . . .” The implication of his question—the look in his eyes—hit her like a fist in the gut. “No. Nick, please. Don’t even think that.” She reached for his hand, and he pulled it away.
“What am I supposed to think?”
“I told you,” she said, beginning to tremble. “I was confused. We were having problems. I didn’t even know I was pregnant for a while.”
“You’re a doctor.”
“I’m human, too. Please, listen.” She took a step forward, willing him to understand. “You know how stressed we were back then. We couldn’t seem to agree about anything. My work, yours . . . counseling. By the time I suspected I was pregnant . . .” She spread her palms. “I didn’t want a baby to be the only reason we stayed together.”
“You didn’t want a baby at all. It was one of those ‘things’ we didn’t agree about, r
emember?”
“I needed time,” she struggled to explain. “I needed to trust that it would all work out. Then all of a sudden Sam was in the picture. And while I was trying to deal with that . . . the baby was gone.”
“And you still didn’t tell me.”
“I was hurting, Nick.”
He stared at her, his expression incredulous. “And I was sleeping in my car outside the house, begging you to talk with me! Do you think for one minute that didn’t hurt? that it didn’t rip my heart out when you moved away without telling me?”
The tears in his eyes made it impossible for her to speak.
“I thought,” he said, his voice hollow and raw, “that if I prayed hard enough, if I kept trying . . . if I didn’t quit, that I’d finally make it all right again. That I could make it even better between us.” He shook his head. “I tried to forget that I had to talk you into marrying me in the first place. I told myself that you were fussy about tables, that eventually we’d find the right one. And someday we’d sit there with our children . . .”
“Please, don’t—”
“I have to go. I need to think.”
“Nick, let’s go somewhere and talk.”
He raised his hands. “I can’t do this now.”
She watched, helpless, as he strode away. Then she sank onto the bench, wrapping her arms tightly around her stomach, feeling emptier than she had even last December.
Where did you go, God?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nick raced across the court, slamming the basketball against the lacquered wooden floor, pulse hammering in his neck and sweat stinging his eyes. He lurched to a stop at the free throw line and gulped for air as he raised the ball for at least the hundredth shot in the last hour, then hurled the ball toward the empty bleachers. He bit back a curse, wanting instead to shout it at the top of his lungs and hear it echo against the cement walls, despite all the times he’d forbidden that very same thing with his ragtag team of youthful players. My kids . . .
He stripped off his T-shirt, swiping at the sweat on his face and neck as he walked to the bleachers and sat. The hour’s workout had done nothing to ease the soul-sick feelings he’d been battling since he left the hospital. He could slam that ball against the floor of every gym in San Francisco—every hospital wall, pastry shop, all down the twisting red bricks of Lombard Street—and it wouldn’t obliterate the sound of Leigh’s voice in his head: “Around the first of October.” While he’d been reading Scripture, making counseling appointments, and trying to find some truth that would save their marriage, she’d been withholding the one thing she knew he wanted most in the world. She’d sent him away knowing she was carrying his child.
He tried to push away the memory of Sam’s face, the look in her eyes, when she’d spat those words at him. “She never told you because . . . she didn’t want to have it.” No matter what she’d implied, Leigh would never have terminated the pregnancy. He knew how she felt about that. But would she have packed up and moved away without telling him he was going to be a father? Was she really capable of cheating him of that joy?
Leigh had railed against him for betraying her, had been furious and unforgiving to the point of threatening a restraining order, while she was cheating him out of his rights as a father. If only he’d known, things could have been so different. Maybe with the hope of a child, Toby’s death wouldn’t have rocked him so hard. And then nothing would have happened with Sam, and . . . He swallowed against the bitter taste of bile. Everything would have been different if Leigh had trusted him, believed in their marriage enough to be honest about the baby.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but it did nothing to stop the memory of holding Leigh last night. Asking her to give him a second chance, promising her that their relationship would be based on truth. He’d told her he loved her, but she hadn’t said the same to him. Maybe she didn’t love him—not enough, anyway. He’d have to accept that. His heart gave a dull thud.
He stared up, past the top of the basketball standard . . . beyond the ceiling. He thought of little Edwin comforting him about the shooting and offering, “I’m going to ask my Jesus to look after you.”
Loneliness crowded in, worse than any time he’d said good-bye to a foster family. “Where are you, Lord? I can’t find you in this.”
He sat there for a while—long enough to determine there would be no answer to his question—then climbed the bleachers and grabbed his basketball.
He’d shot a couple dozen baskets, worked up another sweat, when his cell phone buzzed against his waist. Nick quit dribbling, stopped the ball with his foot, and frowned at the caller ID: Golden Gate Stables.
“Mr. . . . Stathos?” Male voice. Thick accent.
“Yes.”
“Senor . . . the girl . . . she ask me to call. Your horse is—”
“No,” Nick insisted, irritated. “Not my horse. Call the other number. I’m not involved anymore. Do you understand? Tell Patrice to call—”
“Mr. Nick?”
He hesitated, confused by a new voice. A child’s. “Who is this?”
“Maria. You know me. I gave you carrots.”
And you don’t talk. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to come. Frisco’s sick again. I’m scared he’ll die. Please . . .” A sob swallowed her words.
Leigh had said Patrice Owen was away, that her sister would take over. “Did someone call Leigh?” he asked gently, wondering about the courage it had taken for this little girl to break her trauma-induced silence.
“Only messages. The other lady, Glenna, said she didn’t call back.” There was plaintive braying in the background. “Please come.”
“Tell Glenna that I give permission to call the vet and that I’m on my way. I’m coming. Don’t worry.”
He punched in Leigh’s number, and when it went to voice mail, he left a brief message. Then left a similar one on Caroline’s phone. He grabbed his shirt and jogged out to the car, telling himself he couldn’t let the little girl down. He’d stick around long enough to give whatever authorizations were necessary for the horse’s treatment. He gunned the engine and headed for the shortest route to Golden Gate Stables, trying not to think of how darkly ironic it was that Patrice Owen had once called him “Frisco’s dad.”
+++
Leigh patted her face dry with a paper towel and stared in the mirror, wondering if it was becoming a habit to have emotional meltdowns in the doctors’ library bathroom. The last time she’d been here was the day she’d met Sam. And the first time she’d raced in sick and emotionally ragged was . . . when I took that pregnancy test last fall. Her heart cramped, thinking again of the look on Nick’s face out in the gazebo. She leaned on the sink and stared at herself. “Why? Why didn’t you tell him?” She watched a fresh tear slide down her face. “And why didn’t you say last night that you love him?”
He was right. About their wedding, the subject of having children, even the dining room table. She’d needed time. That’s all. Why couldn’t he understand that? Why did he have to keep pressuring her? She needed him to give her the time and space to trust that their relationship could work, that their marriage could be solid. It was irresponsible to bring a child into . . .
She grimaced and pressed her palms low against her scrub top. He’d said it out loud. “My baby.” His baby. She hadn’t just had a miscarriage; she’d lost Nick’s baby. The baby they’d conceived together. He’d had the right to know. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything at the time, but it might have made things different now. Telling him the truth could have given them that chance. And kept Sam from having the ammunition to blow it all to bits.
Leigh wadded the paper towel into a ball and hurled it into the wastebasket, anger snuffing her last vestige of tears. It had been stupid to let it slip that she’d had a miscarriage, but that awful woman had such a uncanny sense of how to push Leigh’s buttons, and . . . If I’d been honest with Nick, she couldn’t have done that. She and Nick would be
making plans for the future. When he came to the gazebo, she intended to tell him that she’d thought about a lot of things while she’d sat in the chapel. That she thought maybe the Christian marriage counseling might be a good thing after all. But now she wasn’t sure any of it was possible.
Nick had said, “I can’t do this now.” She’d never seen him quit anything in all the years she’d known him, but it sounded like he was giving up on her. On them. That he wasn’t willing to give her the time, the space, to be sure about things. And Nick wasn’t the only one who was unwilling. God was treating her the same way. She’d asked him, finally, to help her—talked with him after such a lonely dry spell—and look what had happened.
She ran a comb through her hair, took a deep breath, and headed back to the ER. The other doc had arrived to work the rest of his shift. She was finished for the day. Now all that was left was to grab her things and get out of here. Go to the stables, check on Frisco. Pull on her riding boots, saddle that chestnut mare, and ride and ride and ride. To anywhere that didn’t hurt.
“Dr. Stathos?” The ward clerk caught her as she stepped outside the ambulance bay door and was about to turn her cell phone back on. “Medical records is asking if you could sign that ER record from the other day. The man who got beaten with the high-heel shoe.”
Leigh groaned. “I knew that. They’ve asked twice. Tell them I’m sorry. I’ll run up and do it right now. Telemetry unit, right?”
“SICU bed 6. There wasn’t a bed in the ICU, so they moved him this morning.” She wrinkled her nose. “Alcohol withdrawal symptoms complicated things, I guess.”
Leigh jogged the stairs, signed the chart, and even peeked in on Freddie Barber—asleep with an open Bible on his bedside table. She’d almost escaped the intensive care unit when she heard the shout. Strong, harassing, way too familiar.
Code Triage Page 25