“Yeah, Young was on my service yesterday and I heard Boldin telling her you were going to keep Annabelle at least overnight. He seemed pretty concerned, but Young reminded him that it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Natalie managed a tiny smile at that. The two interns were proving to be a pretty good support system for each other. Sheboinking aside.
“Well, it’s a marathon that’s kicking our asses right now,” she admitted quietly, even though it was early enough in the morning that the nurses’ station and the hallways surrounding it were still pretty empty. “The chemo is making her so weak. It’s like the thing we’re giving her to fight the cancer is making her as sick as the cancer itself. I just wish there was another way.”
“She’s tough, plus she’s getting the very best care possible,” Jonah said, although his expression looked as concerned as Natalie felt. “Is Rachel still doing her counseling sessions?”
The one bright side, albeit a very small one. “She is. They seem to be helping. She’s still really worried, of course, but she’s treading water, for now.”
“How about Annabelle?”
Natalie bit her lip. “She’s, um. Fine,” she tried, but Jonah shook his head, stepping in closer.
“You want to try that again?”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Natalie wanted to say something optimistic, to find some bright spot of hope to offer up. But the truth was, the little girl’s morale was flagging, her strength along with it, and Natalie’s heart ached more for her with each passing minute.
She’d tried everything she could think of. Researched dozens of alternative therapies. Looked into at least that many clinical trials. Nothing was working to make Annabelle better.
Natalie was tired and smelly and frustrated.
And scared.
“I…” She blinked, startled to realize that tears had filled her eyes. Gently, Jonah scooped up her elbow, guiding her to a nearby vacant room and closing the door. She shuttered her eyes in vain, willing her tears to disappear—for God’s sake, she couldn’t cry. She had to find the bright side, here. She had to.
But then Jonah shut the blinds and moved in close and said, “It’s me, Nat.”
And that was all it took.
“She’s struggling so hard,” Natalie said, her voice wavering. “She’s trying, but the meds are so potent and her body won’t cooperate. I don’t know how to help her.”
Her traitorous tears breached her bottom lids, coursing over her cheeks, and her words poured out, equally unchecked. “Hoover’s doing all the right things, I’m doing all the right things. God, I’m doing everything I can possibly think of! Annabelle’s fighting as hard as she can. Rachel’s right there to support her. And still, it’s not enough. At this rate, I don’t know how much longer she’ll be able to fight. I want to hold out hope, I really do. But I’m so scared that nothing will work.”
All the exhaustion and emotion of her week ganged up on her then, and her words gave way to tears. Jonah’s arms were around her in an instant, and the pure comfort made her cry even harder. He didn’t say anything, just gave her the space to bawl it out, and she did, even though she hadn’t realized how badly she’d needed to.
Finally, once the hitch in her chest began to subside, Natalie was able to breathe. She didn’t want to let go of Jonah, and she damn sure didn’t want him to let go of her. He wasn’t making a move to do so, no awkward pat on the back or tension in his muscles that suggested his desire to withdraw—if anything, he held her tighter—so Natalie gave in and leaned on him.
“I know it’s hard to see her so sick,” Jonah murmured into Natalie’s hair. “But if anyone has this kid’s back and can find a way to help her, it’s you.”
She sniffled against his doctor’s coat. “I want to believe that, but—”
He pulled back, stunning her momentarily until his hands reached out to frame her face. “Then do. Believe it. You’re an incredible doctor, Natalie. You’re doing all that you can to help Annabelle fight her cancer.”
“That’s true,” she said slowly. “I mean, the part about doing all that I can, anyway.”
One corner of Jonah’s mouth lifted in a smile that made her smile a little by default. “We’ll work on your ego later. In the meantime, let’s tackle the first obstacle in our path. We need to get Annabelle’s spirits up so she feels stronger. I spent all day in the ED yesterday, and I don’t want to risk inadvertently carrying something nasty into her room, but I can FaceTime with her once she wakes up.”
“She would like that,” Natalie admitted. They hadn’t allowed anyone into her room who wasn’t purely necessary for that very reason. Even then, they’d stuck to protocol with gowns and masks.
“I’ll get Connor in on it, too. Lord knows he’s goofy enough. Is Annabelle on a restricted diet?”
Natalie’s heart beat faster, a thread of hope uncurling in her chest. “No, but her nausea is pretty overwhelming, so her appetite sucks.” It had been a huge challenge just to get her to nibble a few Saltines and drink some apple juice yesterday.
Jonah nodded as if to say challenge accepted. “I’m going to see if I can grab some green Jell-O from the kitchen. Also, do we still have those ginger-flavored lollipop thingies that drug rep had with her last week? There was a box of them in the lounge.”
“The ones from the prenatal vitamin company?” Natalie laughed. “They’re for morning sickness.”
“Nausea is nausea. And, for the record, they also work like a charm on hangovers. Anyway”—he shook his head—“I’ll grab some of those, too, along with some of that kickass chicken noodle soup from the bistro on Shelton Street.”
“Okay, wait. You’re going to go to Shelton Street for soup?”
Jonah’s brows gathered over his impossibly beautiful eyes. “Don’t be silly. Of course not. They deliver. And have you had that soup? It’s fucking delicious—the best in the city. Hopefully it’ll perk Annabelle up enough to let her rest and heal a bit while we figure out the next steps. Now, for you.”
“What about me?” Natalie asked, confused.
“I mean this in the kindest way possible, Nat, but you look like shit.”
A laugh popped out of her, her first in days. “Wow. I’d hate to hear the meaner version.”
“Sorry, but if you want a best friend who will lie to you, you should probably start shopping around,” he said, his affable smile turning slightly more serious as he continued. “You can’t take care of Annabelle if you don’t take care of yourself. Do you have any surgeries scheduled this morning?”
“Well, no. Not unless there’s an emergency,” she clarified. She’d cleared her schedule to try and do more research on clinical trials, and Vasquez was on her service, taking care of whatever cases came into the ED.
“Good.” Jonah pointed to the door. “Go find an empty on-call room and get some sleep.”
“But—”
He stepped in so swiftly that Natalie didn’t have time to react until his fingers were on her lips and his body was ohhhhhh so close. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” Natalie whispered against his fingers. For a split second, his eyes darkened with that unnamed emotion she’d struggled to identify.
But then he lifted his fingers from her mouth. “Good. Then you know I mean it when I say I’ve got this. I’ll have Parker cover me in the ED and Danika can take my surgeries. If a major trauma comes in and I have to go, I’ll have a nurse page you. If something changes with Annabelle’s condition, I’ll page you myself. I know you have her back, Natalie. Now do me a favor, please, and let me have yours.”
Natalie’s pulse raced, her breath growing tight as she waited for the argument she knew she should want to launch to pop out of her mouth.
Only instead, she nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Jonah said, his smile moving all the way through her as if it belonged there. “What are friends for?”
“NO WAY. YOU BEAT ME AGAIN?”
Jonah sat back
in the chair beside Annabelle’s bed, looking at the six Uno cards still left in his hand, then glancing pointedly at the one she’d just placed face-up on the pile between them.
She nodded sagely, her face pale but her smile firmly in place. “Yep.”
“I told you she’s a shark,” Rachel said from her spot in the recliner on the other side of Annabelle’s bed.
“That’s the last time I play cards with you,” Jonah said, prompting Annabelle to let out a weary giggle.
“You said that when I beat you just after breakfast, too.”
He pulled an exaggerated frown, scrunching up his face until she giggled again. “Well, this time, I mean it.”
Jonah collected the cards, his muscles reminding him that he’d gotten five hours of broken sleep on a flimsy on-call mattress. The last twenty-four hours had been pretty grueling, but they’d also been worth the effort. It had taken more than a little doing, but Natalie and Hoover had been able to find just the right treatment plan to make the anti-emetics play well (fine. As well as possible) with Annabelle’s chemo meds. The ginger lollipops had ended up working wonders, too, settling her stomach enough to let her get some much-needed rest. She was still exhausted and in need of IV meds and monitoring that would keep her at Remington Mem for a little while longer, but at least now, the chemo wasn’t making her sicker than her cancer.
Provided that it worked.
Jonah smacked the thought square in the face. He’d told Natalie to believe this would work. Of course, it would take good medicine and a lot of time to go with that hope, and none of it was a guarantee. But the despair on Natalie’s face when she’d broken down and cried in his arms yesterday had gutted him. Her optimism wasn’t just a sometimes-thing. It was her defining thing. Her everything. And as jaded as he was, he couldn’t let her lose that, not even for a minute.
He might not be a long-haul guy, and there were damn good reasons he never would be. Ones he’d never told anyone. Ones Natalie could never know. But he could still be a good friend.
Even if he missed her in his bed far more than he wanted to admit.
“Okay, you two.” Rachel’s voice interrupted his thoughts—thank God—before they could linger on the image of Natalie with her head thrown back on his pillow, her face caught up in pleasure. “It’s time to rest. Anyway, Dr. Jonah has other patients. We’ve kept him long enough.”
“Ah, I don’t mind,” Jonah said. “I’m just glad I made it past the doorway today.” He’d reached the official twenty-four-hours-removed-from-the-ED mark at dinner last night. He and Natalie had switched off keeping watch over Annabelle as she’d slowly started to respond. “But your mom is right. You need to rest, kid.”
Annabelle’s nod was a testament to her fatigue. “Okay. Will you come back later, though?”
“Of course.” He held up the cards with a grin. “I want a rematch.”
Pushing to his feet, Jonah said his goodbyes and made his way through the door. He paused for a second by the window, his heart giving up an unexpected squeeze at the sight of Rachel smoothing Annabelle’s thinning hair. She tucked her in so carefully, her eyes full of nothing but pure love even in the face of all the adversity they’d both endured, and Jonah’s hand auto-piloted to the cell phone in his doctor’s coat pocket.
Just because you aren’t close doesn’t mean you can’t ever be…
His fingers paused over his father’s name and number. God, maybe it was crazy for him to call after all this time. The gaping space his mother had left when she’d torn out of their lives couldn’t possibly be bridged now. His father had never gotten over her, and all Jonah would do was serve as a reminder of what the old man had lost.
Or maybe you’ll remind him of what he still has.
Before he could stop himself, Jonah tapped the icon and raised the phone to his ear. It rang three times before going to voicemail, and shit, this had been a bad idea. But his father would see that he’d called regardless, so Jonah scraped together all of his nonchalance as he waited for the beep.
“Hey, Dad, it’s Jonah. It’s been a while, so I’m just checking in. No need to call me back or anything. Okay, bye.”
Fuck, he was an idiot, he thought, sending one last look at Rachel and Annabelle before lowering his phone. Their parent-child relationship was nothing like Jonah’s. Yeah, he and his old man had been through their own brand of hell together when Jonah’s mother had left, but that was where the similarities ended. Thinking things could change now wasn’t just stupid. It was dangerous.
It didn’t matter if the love was romantic or familial.
It never, ever lasted.
Jonah’s cell phone vibrated in his hand, startling the crap out of him. Ah, hell. He’d shuffled a lot of cases to Parker and Danika in the last twenty-four hours. Most of them hadn’t been urgent, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t turn on a dime and leave nine and a half cents change in their wake.
But then he saw the name on his caller ID, and he realized in an instant that the person on the other end was calling about something far more urgent than anything the ED could throw in his direction.
18
Natalie looked at the text on her cell phone for the fortieth time in the hour since she’d received it, right after her last surgery of the day. Although Jonah had prefaced his cryptic message with “don’t worry, nothing is wrong”, then punctuated it with “really…nothing is wrong”, he’d also asked her to come back to the apartment ASAP after her shift. They hadn’t had a private conversation since her semi-embarrassing, totally cathartic meltdown yesterday morning, and now that she’d had sleep, a shower, and several meals (that soup really was the best in Remington), she was no less uneasy about how she’d cried like an infant with his arms around her.
That was the second time she’d been vulnerable in front of him in as many weeks. Even worse?
She’d felt so good with Jonah holding her that all she wanted was for him to do it again. This time, without the tears.
Natalie shook her head. She needed to focus on right now, and the fact that Jonah was clearly up to…something. Now that she was in the elevator, headed up to the apartment, her heart fluttered with an odd cross between curiosity and—okay, fine—concern (old habits, and all).
“Don’t be silly,” she whispered to herself. She knew everything with Annabelle was status quo. Hell, she’d spent the better part of the day checking in on her and Rachel in between other cases and a few routine surgeries, and now that Annabelle was far more stable, Natalie knew she’d be in good hands with the night-shift staff, who would call her immediately if something went south. Likewise, if something had happened to one of their friends, Jonah never would’ve told her nothing was wrong. But his request for her to leave the hospital as soon as her shift was over hadn’t sounded run of the mill, either. It was hardly a “hey, let’s hang out and order a pizza.”
What the hell was he up to?
Natalie stepped off the elevator, her curiosity/concern becoming full-blown shock as she registered the sight of Jonah standing in the hallway, leaning against the doorframe to the apartment.
“Hey,” he drawled, as if none of this was bat-shit crazy. “There you are. I was starting to think you’d gotten lost.”
“First of all, I kind of live here,” she reminded him, unable to keep her wry smile in check. “Secondly, what on earth is going on?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“A what?” Natalie asked, and Jonah shook his head, pushing off the doorframe.
“A surprise. You know. Something unexpected, where if I tell you, it’s no longer a surprise?”
She laughed, because it was either that or scream. “I’m aware of what a surprise is. I’m just not sure why you called me here for one. And how long have you been standing out in this hallway, waiting?”
“About thirty seconds,” Jonah said, elaborating when her brows shot upward. “I bribed Don to text me when you left.”
“You bribed Don,” she repeated, more
and more convinced this was some sort of practical joke. “With what?”
Jonah looked at her as if she’d just asked what color the sky was. “Donuts. Anyway, now that you’re here, I won’t keep you in any more suspense. Close your eyes.”
Before she could argue (and oh, she was totally ready to argue), he gave up that million-dollar smile she’d always thought she was immune to. “You still trust me, right?”
“Yes,” Natalie heard herself say. God, it flew out so easily.
“Then close your eyes.”
Jonah took her bag, and waited for her to do as he’d asked. When her eyes were firmly shut, he took one of her hands in his, then used the other to shush the front door open. They made it only eight steps in before he stopped, and she felt him move beside her, presumably to lower her bag.
“That ought to do it,” he said. “Okay. Open ’em up.”
Natalie fluttered her eyes open, blinking once, then twice, before her mouth fell open in shock. A Christmas tree stood in the corner by Jonah’s bookshelf, blazing with hundreds of tiny white lights that illuminated the otherwise shadowy room. The fireplace—which Natalie would bet good money Jonah had probably never once used before now—was on, the orange flames dancing merrily behind the glass front, and oh God, there was even a shiny gold star on top of the tree.
“What…why did you do this?” she blurted, her face heating at her extreme lack of elegance.
But Jonah just laughed. “Because we’re celebrating.”
“Christmas is still a week and a half away,” Natalie pointed out, but he shook his head.
“What we’re celebrating is better than Christmas. Do you remember that pediatric oncologist I called a couple of weeks ago?”
Natalie’s mind spun. Caught, and wait… “The one in Tampa, whose sister you treated a while back?”
“That’s him. Dr. Kazinski. He called me this morning,” Jonah said. Natalie’s heart began to pound, her brain filling with a billion questions, but she clamped down on her lower lip so he could keep talking.
Better Than Me (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance) Page 18