Jane laughed, probably because Leah’s scenario had actually taken place often enough to become a legend in the ER. “We’ll find out if you’re right in about three minutes. Marge wants us to be on the dock, ready to go.”
As the emergency department’s nurse manager, Marge Pennington was a person who believed in keeping busy every minute, so it seemed odd she would ask them to waste time waiting. Her request only seemed to substantiate Leah’s prediction of several Very Important People arriving on this transport.
“Far be it from me to argue,” she said, although it bothered her to think Marge was willing to discard her normal habits in order to impress people with money. Having married into a family with the Midas touch, Leah had always been leery of people who didn’t treat her as they would anyone else.
“According to her, the person radioing in specifically asked for you.”
Leah’s eyes widened. “Me? Why me?”
Jane shrugged. “Maybe it’s someone you know from Gabe’s trust organization.”
Leah mentally ran through her list of regularly generous contributors to the Montgomery Medical Charitable Foundation. As chairwoman of the annual fund-raising ball, which would take place in six weeks, she was acquainted with nearly all of the supporters, but none knew she worked in the Spring Valley Hospital Emergency Department.
“Impossible,” she said.
Jane shrugged. “Who knows? In any case, I’m only following Marge’s orders and if you know what’s good for you, you will, too.”
Marge wasn’t the easiest charge nurse to work for, but she was a model of efficiency and a brilliant nurse. No one, not even the hospital’s CEO, crossed her when she was in battle mode.
Leah gave the bed a final pat, pleased with their results. “Okay, then. Let’s go. I can use a few minutes of fresh air while we’re waiting.” She grinned. “Just think, we might even get to sit and rest our weary feet.”
Outside, Leah did exactly as she’d hoped to. Ignoring Jane and the two extra staff who’d joined them with wheelchairs and an extra stretcher, she sat on the concrete loading dock and dangled her legs over the edge as she breathed in the fresh air and soaked up the heat.
If only the summer sun would chase away the coldness inside her—the same coldness that had settled into every cell, the same coldness that had taken hold ever since she’d realized Gabe’s plane had gone down with her request for a divorce ringing in his ears.
She’d agonized for weeks over taking their separation to its logical conclusion before she’d contacted a lawyer, but they’d lived apart for nearly a year. After the adoption had fallen through, they’d simply shut down. It was understandable, she supposed. They’d been obsessed with the baby when she’d been pregnant, and then they’d focused exclusively on adopting a child. Their marriage had been so driven toward that end goal that their sudden failure had simply sidelined their relationship.
Consequently they’d drifted apart until the only solution had been to ask for a change of scenery. She’d wanted time and space to redefine what she wanted out of life and, more importantly, she wanted Gabe to have the same.
A year later, she’d finally faced the facts. Remaining in their legal limbo wasn’t doing either of them any favors. They both needed the freedom to pursue their dreams—she wanted companionship and Gabe wanted a family. Although she hated the idea of Gabe finding a woman who could give him what she couldn’t, it had seemed silly, selfish and almost spiteful to keep him from his heart’s desire. With the stroke of a judge’s pen, they would end their estranged state and could move on with their lives. To start over, as it were.
In the end, her altruistic decision had been wasted. Fate had stepped in and had the last laugh at their expense before he could sign the papers dissolving their marriage. Before he’d created the family he’d always wanted.
Since then, she’d told herself on a daily basis to stop beating herself over everything from procrastinating to her bad timing. After all, divorced or widowed, she was still alone.
Alone or not, though, it pained her to imagine what final thoughts had run through Gabe’s head. No doubt his last one of her had involved the unpleasant scene when she’d asked for a divorce. Some would say she was being too hard on herself. Others would say she was worrying over nothing. After all, if she wanted to completely sever their matrimonial ties, why did she care what his last thoughts of her had been?
In one corner of her heart, she’d wanted Gabe to realize their marriage needed as much attention as he gave his family’s charitable foundation, but if he’d entertained any regrets during his final moments, she’d never know. Chances were, she repeated to herself for the millionth time, he hadn’t thought of her at all …
Jane straightened, her gaze riveted in the distance. “Looks like they’re about two blocks away.” She glanced at her watch. “Right on time, too.”
Leah slowly got to her feet then brushed the seat of her scrub pants. “I wish we knew what we were getting,” she fretted.
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
A black Lexus squealed to an abrupt stop in the aisle of the parking lot. Apparently the driver didn’t care about the traffic snarl he’d created.
“Security is going to eat him alive,” Leah commented.
“Maybe you should tell him.”
The ambulance pulled in and began backing up to the dock, its warning beeps intermingling with the other city noises. “He’ll have to take his chances,” Leah said. “We have things to do and people to see.”
As the ambulance inched backwards, Leah heard someone call her name. A familiar figure, Sheldon Redfern had jumped out of the Lexus and was running toward her.
“Leah,” he panted. “Wait!”
“Sheldon, what are you doing here?” she asked, amazed to see him.
“I have to tell you—”
The ambulance braked. “Save it for later,” she ordered. “I’m busy right now.”
“This can’t wait.”
He grabbed her arm at the same time she saw Jane twisting the handle to open the back door. “Sheldon,” she protested. “I have work to do.”
“Leah,” he urged. “It’s about Gabe and the search team we sent.”
Instinctively, her heart sank. Sheldon’s eagerness to contact her only meant one thing.
“They finally located his remains,” she said dully, feeling her chest tighten and a painful knot clog her throat as her eyes dimmed with sudden tears. For all the problems they’d had, she hadn’t wanted anything so drastic and so final to happen to him. Yes, a divorce was like a death—the death of a marriage—but part of her consolation had been that they each would carry on and eventually find the happiness they couldn’t find with each other.
Unfortunately, Sheldon’s announcement had irrevocably destroyed that thin hope. Why had he felt compelled to deliver the news now, at this very moment, with patients breathing down her neck, when she wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with the finality of the situation?
“No,” Sheldon corrected in her ear.
“No?” She stared at him in surprise.
“What he’s trying to say unsuccessfully is that they found us.” Sheldon’s voice suddenly sounded closer … and deeper … and more like … Gabe’s.
And it was coming from inside the ambulance.
She focused in that direction, ignoring the paramedic to glance at the human cargo—two men and a woman. They looked tired and dirty in clothing that was tattered and torn, but broad smiles shone on their faces. An uncanny sense of familiarity struck her.
In spite of their gaunt and disreputable appearance, she knew all three. Yet her brain couldn’t reconcile what she was seeing with what she’d been told.
She homed in on the man who’d spoken. He was just as dirty as the other two and equally as disheveled. His right pants leg had been cut open at some point but in spite of being tied closed with strips of gauze, she glimpsed a white bandage circling his shin. A splint encased his left for
earm and another bandage was visible above the open neck of his torn shirt. But there was no denying that this man was Gabe.
“I tried calling you all morning,” Sheldon babbled in the background as the identities of Gabe’s colleagues—Jack Kasold and Theresa Hernandez—registered before they stepped onto the concrete. “You never answered my messages.”
The pink scraps of paper tucked in her tunic pocket suddenly weighed like the proverbial ton of bricks. She’d ignored them when she’d seen who’d phoned because she’d assumed he simply wanted to hash out more details for the foundation’s upcoming charity ball. Apparently, she’d been wrong.
“I was going to call you during my break,” she said numbly as she looked past all the people to study her husband once again.
Tape bisected his forehead, his beard was scruffy, his hair shaggy, and lines of apparent pain bracketed his full mouth, but his midnight-black eyes were so familiar.
Could it be true? Really true? Her heart skipped a beat as she feared she might be hallucinating and hoped she was not.
“Gabe?” she finally asked, aware of how thin and reedy her voice sounded.
He stepped out of the ambulance, balancing himself on one crutch. His reassuring smile was one she’d seen before—the same one that belonged to the man she’d married when their future had been bright and it had seemed as if nothing could stop them from living their dreams.
“Hi, honey. I’m home.”
CHAPTER TWO
UNCERTAIN of the reception he’d receive when he finally saw Leah again, Gabriel’s tension had escalated with each mile closer to his destination. Considering how Sheldon hadn’t been able to reach her all morning, Gabe had expected her to be surprised and shocked by his astonishing return and she didn’t disappoint him.
“Gabe?” she whispered in that soft voice he remembered so vividly. “Is it really you?”
He met her gaze and offered a rueful smile. “A little the worse for wear but, yes, it is.”
“Oh, my.” She covered her mouth with both hands. Suddenly, she turned pale and a dazed look came to her eyes.
She was going to faint. Cursing because he wasn’t in a position to catch her himself, he roared, “Sheldon!”
Fortunately, his second-in-command was beside her and grabbed her arm. At the same time the paramedic did the same. For an instant she sagged, then straightened and shrugged off the two men’s hold.
“I’m okay,” she insisted, losing a bit of her deer-caught-in-the-headlights look.
“Are you sure?” The paramedic didn’t sound convinced as he eyed her closely.
“I’m fine. Really.”
Of course she was, Gabe thought wryly. Leah thrived on her ability to handle anything and everything by herself, without help from anyone. In fact, at times he’d felt rather superfluous in their marriage, but he intended to change all that.
“Truly,” she insisted, tentatively reaching toward him.
Eager to touch her and prove just how wrong the reports of his death had been, as well as to reassure himself that he was truly home, Gabe grabbed her hand.
Her skin was soft and warm and soothingly familiar. Oh, how he’d missed her!
Before he could say a word, before he could do anything but entwine his fingers with hers, she flung herself against him and buried her face in his shoulder.
His crutch clattered to the concrete and his ribs protested, but having her in his arms where she belonged was worth the pain. When his plane had landed and Leah hadn’t been standing with Jack’s and Theresa’s elated families on the tarmac, he’d been so afraid … but this was the response he’d dreamed of and hoped for every night they’d been lost in the jungle.
The coldness of despair, the survivor’s guilt, and the soul-racking regret that he’d labored under for weeks now began to diminish until he slowly felt warm from the inside out.
His wife’s fresh, clean scent filled his nostrils and reminded him of how desperately he needed soap and water. If he’d been thinking properly, he might have asked Sheldon to detour to his corporate offices where he could have made use of the executive washroom, but he’d been too eager to see Leah to consider it. Quite frankly, though, with his stiff shoulder and the slow-healing gash on his leg, he wasn’t sure he could manage the feat on his own, anyway.
He gripped her with his good arm, feeling her slight frame shake beneath his hand. As her tears soaked his shirt, his throat tightened and his eyes burned with more emotion than he could begin to describe.
“Oh, honey. Don’t cry,” he said hoarsely, relieved by her reception and grateful the paramedics and ER staff were giving them a few minutes before they whisked him away.
“I’m not,” she sniffed, swiping at the moisture on her cheeks as she stared at him. “Oh, Gabe. I can’t believe it.”
As he gazed at her, one thought ran through his mind. She was beautiful—more beautiful than the picture he’d slipped out of his wallet and stuck in his shirt pocket shortly after they’d crashed. The photo was now dog-eared and a little dirty, but her image had given him the incentive to keep going when he’d sworn he couldn’t hobble another step.
“I can’t quite believe it, either,” he said ruefully. As far as he was concerned, this was a dream come true. A bona fide miracle.
More importantly, it was a miracle he wasn’t going to let slip through his fingers.
“What happened?” she asked.
“It’s a long story.” Rather than dwell on that fateful day and the events leading up to it, he drank in everything about her, from her acorn-colored hair and eyes that reminded him of the Grand Canyon’s various shades of brown to her retroussé nose and sensual mouth. She’d lost weight, too, if his hands hadn’t deceived him.
The paramedic stepped close to interrupt. “I don’t mean to cut short your reunion, Dr. Montgomery, but let’s get you inside before you fall.”
Whether she suddenly realized how heavily he was leaning against her or the paramedic’s statement had reminded her of his injuries, his prim and proper wife—and she still was his wife, even if they’d lived apart for the last twelve months—unwrapped herself from him and took his good arm. Although he missed her embrace, he was glad she hadn’t completely turned him loose. Granted, she’d fallen back into nurse mode, but he wanted to believe she needed the contact as much as he did to reassure herself that he was, indeed, alive and well.
Maybe not “well”, he corrected as he lowered himself into a hastily provided wheelchair, but his aches and pains now seemed inconsequential. For the past month he’d fought his fears of failure—fears that the feelings she’d once had for him were gone—but he took heart that she hadn’t rejected him. In the nightmares that had often startled him awake, he’d dreamt she’d take one look at him and walk away. Thankfully, none of those painfully vivid dreams had come true.
They still had issues to resolve but he was cautiously optimistic about success. If he played his cards right—and he intended to because he’d had a month to plan a strategy—there wouldn’t be any more talk of a divorce. Fate had given him a second chance to correct his mistakes and undo the past. He would not fail.
Leah wanted to ask a hundred questions, but Gabe’s slumped shoulders as she walked beside his wheelchair told her how exhausted he was. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him so drained, even during his residency when forty-eight-hour shifts had been the norm. There would be plenty of time to hear his story after his medical needs were addressed—starting with how he’d survived a supposedly fatal accident.
It wasn’t until he’d gingerly moved from his wheelchair to the bed with her help and that of a paramedic that she realized the awkwardness of the situation. As a nurse she belonged in the room, but as his estranged wife she certainly didn’t. Unfortunately, by the time she’d come to that conclusion, the other nurses had already disappeared into their respective patients’ rooms, leaving her no choice but to continue. Asking for a reassignment now would only draw unwante
d and unnecessary attention. As soon as word leaked of Gabe’s return, speculation would run rampant anyway.
In spite of resigning herself to her temporary fate, her awkwardness grew exponentially as Jeff Warren took that moment to walk into the room. The normally implacable blond physician stopped abruptly in his tracks, as if he hadn’t realized the identity of his patient until now. Immediately, he glanced back at Leah and she shrugged helplessly, realizing that this moment was as uncomfortable for him as it was for her. The only difference was Jeff seemed to recover more quickly from his surprise than she had.
“Gabe,” he said, reaching out to shake his hand. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks. It’s great to be home.”
“I’ll do my best to get you there,” Jeff promised. “Let’s have a look at what you’ve done to yourself, shall we?”
Leah had planned to act as usual, giving Gabe the same objective care she’d give any other patient. However, that was easier said than done. The minute he shrugged off his tattered shirt, she saw the physical evidence of what he’d endured. His bones stood out in stark relief to the scabbed-over scrapes and large, brilliantly colored patches of purple, yellow and green that dotted his skin, while other areas were rubbed raw.
“Oh, Gabe,” she breathed.
“It looks worse than it is,” he assured her.
Objectively speaking, he was probably right, but through the eyes of someone who’d once carefully and lovingly mapped every inch of his six-foot body, she wasn’t as certain. It became far too easy to imagine how he’d earned each scrape and each bruise and then marvel at how he’d endured the trauma and still returned home. His obvious weight loss made her wonder what he’d eaten, if anything, which was another facet of his ordeal she hadn’t considered until now.
Sheikh, Children's Doctor...Husband / Six-Week Marriage Miracle Page 17