The tiny break in Mike’s voice almost undid Layla and she could see a tiny muscle jumping in Alex’s jaw. She forced herself to sound bright.
‘You know what’s going to happen next week?’ she asked Tommy. ‘What you’ve got to look forward to when you come back to the ward?’
‘No.’ Tommy was frowning deeply, as though trying to figure out how to respond to the charged atmosphere around him. ‘What?’
‘It’s going to be Halloween. There’ll be lots of decorations and some of the doctors and nurses put on silly costumes and have a parade. And there’ll be all sorts of yummy treats for everybody to eat.’
‘What sort of treats?’
‘Candy,’ Layla said confidently. ‘And ice cream and … and … spiders.’
Tommy’s jaw dropped. Then he giggled.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Alex said, moving towards the door. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Tommy.’
Layla watched him leave.
And she had the horrible feeling that she was watching him walk away from her.
Which was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
They were in a better place than they’d ever been.
And she was going to do whatever it took to keep them there.
CHAPTER TEN
THERE WAS COMFORT to be found in a case that required going the extra mile.
It was a lesson Alex Rodriguez had learned long ago and he slipped into that totally focussed mode with practised ease.
By seven that night his office looked like a bombsite. Open textbooks and journals lay scattered over his desk and parts of the floor with relevant passages marked by bright sticky notes. Illuminated wall screens had MRI scan images on display. A white board was covered with intricate diagrams and bulletpoint plans.
He was standing in front of the white board, tapping the end of the marker against his teeth, when Layla ventured into his office.
‘Thought you might like a coffee,’ she said. ‘And some food.’
Alex turned slowly, wondering if her presence was about to pop this comforting bubble of concentration. To his relief, the skin of the bubble appeared to be thick enough to cope. Layla was on the outside. It was like seeing her from a different perspective. Through the eyes of a surgeon and not a lover?
Whatever. He could work with that.
‘Great idea.’ He nodded. ‘I can only stop for a minute or two, though. I think I’m on a roll with planning this surgery.’
Layla was trying to find a space to put down the carry tray that held two Styrofoam cups. She gave up and offered the tray to Alex who took one. Then she handed him a bag. ‘It’s nothing flashy, I’m sorry. I got one of the chefs in the cafeteria to make some filled rolls with the roast beef they had on the menu.’
‘Smells good to me.’ Alex unwrapped the roll and took a huge bite, letting his gaze travel back to the white board as he chewed.
Layla followed his line of vision and then turned to take in the illuminated screens. ‘This looks like absolutely meticulous planning. Want to talk me through it?’
Alex shook his head. ‘Later, maybe. There’s one bit I haven’t quite worked through yet. A bit of distraction might be helpful. Unleash my subconscious or something.’ He smiled at Layla. This was working. The bubble was being protected as a private space. ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to since I saw you visiting Tommy.’
Layla swallowed the mouthful of her own roll. She was leaning her bottom, carefully, against the edge of his desk. Alex stayed standing, too wired to sit down.
‘Long meeting,’ Layla told him, ‘with the dieticians and kitchen management. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff they’ve got planned for Halloween. We had to make sure that nutritional guidelines were still being adhered to and that special diets could be catered for. It meant going through every item pretty much and deciding who could and couldn’t get the treats.’
‘Are there going to be spiders, like you promised Tommy?’
Layla nodded happily. ‘Yep. Made out of chocolate-covered marshmallows with liquorice legs and eyes. There’s gingerbread cookies, too, iced to have skeletons on them. And witch’s hat cookies. Upside-down cupcakes with a pretzel handle that look like brooms. Ghosts made out of strawberries dipped in white icing. I got shown pictures of what they’ve done in past years. It’s unbelievable what a big deal Halloween is around here.’
‘It’s a kids’ hospital. It’s a big thing if they’re missing out on Halloween. Wait till you see what they do for Christmas.’
‘It’s certainly creating a lot of excitement. Good for some kids, I guess, but Matthew was crying because he’s going to go home before it happens.’
Alex nodded. Matthew was due for discharge tomorrow if everybody was happy with his progress. His speech was still slightly slurred but it was improving every day.
‘I saw Felix on the ward, too. Ramona was practically chasing him down the corridor. He can crawl amazingly fast.’
‘He’s overdue for discharge. Nina wanted him kept as long as possible to give Ramona time to sort out her domestic stuff.’
‘She said that her boyfriend was in jail, waiting for the court appearance. She’s planning to take the kids back to Mexico as soon as the case is over. Her mother’s arriving tomorrow.’
Alex nodded but he’d finished eating the roll now and his thoughts were drifting back to Tommy’s case. He looked up at the screens. The lesion was in such a tricky place. Was he really confident of the planned route to expose it without doing too much collateral damage?
Layla’s voice was soft. ‘He’ll be the third.’
‘What?’
‘Good things come in threes. Special cases this time. Felix and Matthew and … Tommy will be the third.’
‘Only if I get things absolutely right. And luck’s on our side.’
‘The luck came when you agreed to take on the case. Nobody else could do this.’
Alex shook off the reassurance. He didn’t need it. Or, rather, he did but he didn’t want it to come from Layla. What if it became something he relied on, like a touchstone?
‘I’m going to head home,’ Layla told him then. ‘You’d be more than welcome to come over when you’re finished here. I don’t care how late it is.’
There was a note in her voice that threatened to burst the bubble. She was offering him more than the distraction of great sex here. She was offering solace. More reassurance. The comfort of being close to someone who understood the kind of pressure he was facing. Of being cared for.
‘Not tonight.’ Alex knew he sounded curt. Knew he was pushing Layla away.
Repeating history because this was exactly what he’d done in the run-up to Jamie’s surgery.
And Layla hadn’t liked it. She’d wanted more attention and there’d been a showdown. Would that happen again? Would this finish, once and for all, the night before Tommy’s surgery, maybe?
Alex could feel an odd prickle on the back of his neck. He had to rub at it.
But Layla seemed completely calm. She came up to him. Stood on tiptoe and planted a gentle kiss on his lips.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry, Alex. I’m not going to throw some kind of hissy fit because you don’t have any time or energy for me right now. It’s different this time.’
The skin of his bubble was being seriously dented now. Alex pushed back, trying to restore its shape. He turned physically so that he was facing the screens and the white board. Facing his work.
‘I’m not caught between a life I don’t want to go back to and a future that has been taken out of reach,’ Layla continued quietly. ‘I think the future I want exists and that’s enough for me at the moment. I’m not in any rush to get there.’
Alex had to turn back. To try and decipher exactly what Layla was saying.
Did she see him as part of that future she wanted?
‘I know it’s too soon.’ Layla started gathering up the rubbish from their impromptu meal. Her movements looked jerky. Nervous, even
. ‘There’s no pressure here, Alex. Not from me, anyway.’ She looked up and caught his gaze. ‘Let’s just get through this week. You do whatever you need to do. I’m here if you need me but I understand completely if you don’t.’
Her smile was so sweet. So genuine.
‘I believe in you, Alex.’
She believed in them. He could see it in her eyes. Could feel the pull of it between their bodies.
He wanted so badly to submit to that pull. To burst his protective bubble himself and get so close it would feel as if they were part of the same person. Like it did when they made love. A person with the strength to get through anything. Not just to get through but to succeed. Together, they had a power that was nothing like anything he’d ever been conscious of as an individual.
But what if that connection got broken? Again?
He’d lose a lot of what he had already. The strength and power that had been painfully accumulated again piece by piece since the last time his trust in someone had been shattered.
His trust in Layla, no less.
He couldn’t risk it again.
Not now. Especially not now. Who was it who said history never repeated itself? Alex had no faith in that sentiment. It only didn’t repeat itself if people could stop themselves being stupid enough to step back into the same set of circumstances.
He couldn’t find the words to communicate any of his thoughts to Layla. Even if he could have found the words, he wouldn’t have used them because that would mean they’d talk about it and Layla would have more of those sweet, seductive words of reassurance.
And he might not be able to keep up the fight. The urge to trust those words.
To trust Layla. To imagine a future like none he had ever envisaged for himself. One that involved so much trust. Loving someone with all his heart and soul.
A family, even.
The internal struggle was fierce. He wanted it but the forces automatically there to fight back were still winning. As they always had, with the one exception of letting Layla too close back then.
So Alex didn’t say anything. He nodded to show that he’d heard what Layla had said but then he simply turned back to his work. He could hear Layla behind him, quietly collecting the rest of the rubbish and letting herself out of his office.
For a moment it felt heartbreakingly lonely being by himself.
But the bubble was still intact, thank goodness, and Alex drew it more closely around himself.
The gallery was closed for Tommy Jenner’s surgery.
Layla hadn’t expected anything else.
It was Cade who came to find her, late in the day, to tell her that it had gone well. Even better than Alex had hoped for.
‘He thinks he got it all, with a safety margin. And that any damage from the surgery will be minimal. Another course of chemo should mop up any other cancer cells that might be floating around due to the surgery.’
‘Oh….’ Layla felt absurdly close to tears. ‘I’m so happy to hear that.’ The wave of relief made her feel almost euphoric. If history really had repeated herself and the operation had been a disaster, it would have been the end of the road for her and Alex. No question about that. But now? There was hope. More than hope. Confidence almost. ‘Where’s Alex now?’
‘In ICU. I expect he’ll be there for a while yet. He won’t want to leave Tommy until he’s confident he’s completely stable.’
Layla nodded. She could visit, though, if things were going so well. It was too big an ask to stay away for much longer. She hadn’t seen Alex since she’d taken him that food in his office the other night. When he’d pushed her away and she’d said she understood.
She did. But the surgery was over now. It had gone well.
That would have changed things, surely.
It certainly seemed to have, on first glance, when Layla made her way to the intensive care unit an hour or two later. There was a quiet satisfaction to Alex’s body language as he stood there, scanning the information various monitors were producing. When he looked up to acknowledge Layla, she could see a gleam of relief in his eyes.
Mike was there. Looking absolutely shattered but peaceful, sitting very still beside his son. Tommy was in an induced coma and still on a ventilator. He would be kept like that for a day or two at least, to allow his doctors to control the potentially damaging pressure that any swelling of the brain tissues could produce. His head was heavily bandaged and he was surrounded by an impressive bank of high-tech monitors that could reveal what his blood pressure was beat by beat. And what the pressures were inside his small skull. Whether his kidneys were functioning normally and exactly what percentage of oxygen he was taking in.
Life support.
The bridge between winning and losing the kind of battle that Alex, and Layla, and all the other staff here at Angel’s had dedicated their lives to fighting.
Layla didn’t stay long. She didn’t say anything directly to Alex either, but as she left, she touched his arm. And when he looked at her she hoped she was conveying that she was with him every step of the way. That there might still be a way to go but even getting this far was a triumph that Alex should be very proud of.
He had done it.
Against some very heavy odds, Tommy had made it through the most complex surgery Alex had ever attempted.
Well … ever since Jamie’s surgery, anyway.
And so far so good. By the time Alex finally left the ICU just before midnight, with strict instructions to the staff to call him if the slightest thing changed overnight, everything was looking as good as he could have possibly hoped for.
There was more than professional satisfaction to be found right now. Something almost like euphoria was trickling through Alex’s veins as he strode through the lobby and out into the night. He had no intention of going home. He’d find something to eat and then use an on-call room to grab a few hours’ sleep before he went back to check on Tommy again.
He needed to get out for a little while, though. To walk off this excess of energy. To come to terms with what had to have been the hardest day of his working life. Nobody could know just how hard it had been to pick up that scalpel and begin a surgery that had, at best, a fifty per cent chance of his patient being alive by the end of it.
Not that other surgeons didn’t face that kind of difficult surgery but they hadn’t been through what he’d been through in the wake of the Kirkpatrick case. The public disgrace of being accused of malpractice. Of being a failure. Of knowing that his career—the most important thing in his life—was hanging in the balance and could be totally destroyed.
Nobody could understand how big this was for him. Knowing that he’d done it. More than succeeded, because he’d exorcised a ghost that had threatened to haunt him for the rest of his life.
No. That wasn’t quite true.
There was one person who could understand.
The person who knew him better than anyone else alive. The person who believed in him. Who was intimately acquainted with his demons and still believed in him.
Alex raised his hand and flagged down a cab, which wasn’t hard at this time of night. He didn’t give the driver his own address, however. He asked to be taken to Layla’s apartment.
Would she be there? Would she understand that there was only one way that Alex could release the huge feelings that were choking him? That some of those feelings inextricably linked to the Kirkpatrick case were also about her and if he’d dealt with one of those ghosts today, he had to see what it meant in relation to the other one because … because it was so big. It felt like the picture of his future was changing. Getting brighter. But he couldn’t separate those ghosts so it was also confusing.
And he felt wired. Would she understand that he felt proud and excited and incredibly nervous all at the same time?
He couldn’t explain why, despite the huge success of today, he felt more vulnerable than he ever had, even as a child.
Would she understand that he just needed to be w
ith her?
Layla hadn’t expected to see Alex tonight, of all nights.
She had thought he wouldn’t be able to tear himself away from the intensive care unit and the watch over Tommy. That if he needed a rest he would go no further than a nearby on-call room where he could put his head down for an hour or two.
But here he was. On her doorstep. Still wearing his scrubs, as though he hadn’t had the head room to give what he was wearing a single thought. Looking …
Like she’d never seen him ever look.
As if every defence he’d ever perfected had been stripped away. He looked like … Alex. Pure Alex. As if his soul had seeped into his skin and filled his eyes.
Layla felt her heart split wide open.
And the crack was big enough to gather Alex in and wrap her heart around him.
So she didn’t say anything at all in greeting. She merely opened her arms as well as her heart.
And Alex stepped right inside.
Layla’s bed was rumpled because she’d got out of it to answer the tap on her door. She was wearing nothing more than silk boxer shorts and a camisole top and the scraps of clothing seemed to evaporate as easily as Alex’s loose theatre gear.
The sex was as different as the way Alex had looked.
Fierce and urgent but so tender it broke her heart all over again.
There was no conversation between them at all but how many times had Alex said her name?
With the groan of desire as his lips covered hers. The almost reverent whisper as his hands stroked her clothing away. The cry of need as he entered her. The echo of something she couldn’t define at the moment of ultimate satisfaction. And a whisper again, as they lay, still joined, waiting for their breathing to slow and their heart rates to get somewhere close to normal again.
A whisper that could have been the start of being able to talk but the intimate sound was drowned by the strident notes of Alex’s pager.
He ripped himself away from Layla and was out of the bed in the same fluid motion.
‘Rodriguez.’ The greeting was almost a bark. He listened for only a few seconds. ‘I’m on my way.’
NYC Angels: An Explosive Reunion Page 13