“Do you need a ride or not?” His voice was rough, and harsher than he normally used with her.
She waved him away. “I see several other people that I know here—as you know, I invited several of my groups. And if I can’t find a ride, then I’m fully capable of calling my driver. The question is, are you safe to drive?”
Standing, he pressed a kiss to the top of his mother’s head. Then he did something that he’d rarely ever done in his life. He lied to his mother.
“I’m fine. Text me when you’re home safe, please.”
But he wasn’t fine. Not even close.
Keeping to the edge of the room, he skirted around the crowd of people surrounding Rhiann. This was her night, and he didn’t want his presence to spoil any of her fanfare. He stood by the door for a moment and watched as people fawned over her, over Levi.
The line of people coming in had finally tapered off. But the room was full of people who’d come just to show their support for Levi. And for Levi’s mama and her contribution to their community.
Why hadn’t she been the dedicated paramedic this crowd knew her to be when his wife and daughter had been dying?
His hand was on the door to exit when the paramedic captain stepped up to the podium.
“Since it seems like we’re winding down here, I thought maybe you all would like to know how much we’ve raised tonight for little Levi.”
The crowd shouted their agreement and the captain held up a hand, waiting for them to quiet.
“We’ve raised over ten grand for them tonight so far!”
Tears poured down Rhiann’s face and Patrick shoved the door open and stepped out into the crisp night air, unable to stand seeing her tears. The cold seeped into his burning lungs and he fought back the urge to cry, to punch the brick station wall.
The drive home passed in a blur. He couldn’t remember getting on or off the interstate, or taking the turns that had brought him home. All he could think about was the relief on Rhiann’s face when the total had been announced.
He poured himself a drink and paced around his living room, trying to reconcile the Rhiann he remembered from the past with the Rhiann he blamed for letting his family die. Those stories tonight said she hadn’t changed—that she was a consummate heroine who would have done all in her power to save a beloved friend, because she had done no less for hundreds of strangers.
Hating Rhiann for Mallory and Everly’s deaths had been the easy part of losing them. He’d placed the culpability squarely on his best friend’s petite shoulders, blinded by the rage of his grief.
The ER doc on call had told him that Rhiann and her partner had not gotten Mallory to the hospital in time to save them and he’d refused to hear any details beyond that—hadn’t allowed Rhiann even to speak to him about that day, assuming her words would be filled with excuses and apologies.
Blaming her for the loss that had broken his heart into thousands of painful pieces meant he didn’t have to blame himself for not being there for them.
The hours on the clock passed from late to early as he paced. Thoughts and emotions coursed through his veins. His heart still ached with the memory of Mallory and his sweet Everly. But when he blinked their faces were replaced in his mind with visions of Rhiann and Levi. And suddenly he needed to know exactly what had happened that day.
His office door slammed back against the wall as he shoved it open. Where had he put that file?
He dug through the desk before looking over to the bookcase. The file from the day Mallory and Everly had died still sat unopened in its manila envelope, where he’d placed it the day he’d moved into this house. He’d taken it from the house he’d shared with Mallory, but had never had the courage to open it and read the medical reports.
When your heart was already shattered, why pick up a fresh shard and stab it through the pieces that remained?
His fingers slid along the back flap of the envelope and broke the seal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Patrick
THE TINY DROPS of blood that welled up as the paper sliced into his hand felt appropriate—right—given the pain that lay within this envelope. He deserved to bleed, to ache, as he read about the final moments of Mallory and Everly’s lives.
Heart pounding, Patrick pulled the stack of paper out of the envelope and sank down into his desk chair.
A pale pink sticky note rested on the top, with a single sentence written in blue ink in Rhiann’s familiar scrawl.
If you need to talk it out, call me.
Patrick took a fortifying breath and pulled the sticky note off. The top cluster of papers was Rhiann’s incident report about the call. A form designed to keep emotions out of the mix, it needed facts, not opinions. But a few circular spots on the page where the ink had smeared looked like tear stains.
He swallowed hard at this evidence of Rhiann’s emotions still lingering on the pages. Skimming over the boxes listing dates and times, he moved quickly to the second page, where Rhiann’s messy handwriting gave details on his wife’s last moments of life.
We were called to the scene of a collapsed pregnant woman with heavy bleeding at Opry Mills mall. Per Dispatch, the caller stated the woman said she felt light-headed and started swaying, then fell to the floor, with bleeding only noticed after she fell. The caller didn’t specify the bleeding was vaginal.
As we arrived on scene I recognized the woman as Mallory Scott, whom I knew to be twenty-four weeks pregnant with her first child. Mallory was in and out of consciousness and only vaguely aware of her surroundings.
She struggled to remember my name, despite our long friendship. Cradling her stomach with her hands, she complained it felt like someone was tearing her uterus out. Beyond her description of the pain, she exhibited multiple signs of severe placental abruption and hypovolemia, for which our care directives recommend swift transport to Emergency Obstetrics at MMH.
We got her on the gurney and into the back of the rig. I put in a large-bore IV line and hung a bag of saline and started her on continuous high-flow oxygen while my partner radioed MMH to have OB and PICU on standby for our arrival. I also asked that they page Mallory’s husband, Dr. Patrick Scott.
Monitors confirmed active labor contractions with almost no break in spacing. Uterus was tender and rigid upon exam. Visual vaginal inspection showed substantial bleeding. Fetal heartrate undetectable in the field even with multiple attempts.
I raised Mallory’s feet and covered her with warming blankets for transport in an attempt to minimize shock.
A major accident on I-65 forced us to backtrack and take an alternative route that added ten minutes to our trip in.
Five minutes out from the hospital, Mallory coded. After lowering her to level I began CPR and continued compressions until we pulled in to MMH.
Hospital staff took over from there.
Notes: BP was one-seventy over one-ten—extremely high. Heart-rate tachycardic in the one-twenties upon pickup.
Patrick shoved the file across the desk, holding a hand over his mouth as he fought back a wave of nausea. Some of the pages flew off the edge and fluttered to the floor.
Three years ago, he hadn’t wanted any details. Once he’d heard that doctor say the sentence “The paramedics didn’t get here fast enough”, he’d refused to listen to another word. He had taken the file, along with the day’s medical notes, but had never opened the envelope.
He’d been wallowing not just in grief but in his own guilt.
He’d been away at a medical conference for nearly a week before they’d died. He’d flown in that morning and had gone straight to the office to see patients instead of going home to his pregnant wife. If he’d gone home that morning maybe he would have noticed something. Or at least if he’d been with them he could have used his medical training to stop the bleeding and save even one of them.
He wait
ed until his stomach had calmed some before reaching for the on-call obstetrician’s notes.
Patient came in via ambulance and presented with severe placental abruption.
No heartbeat detectable for mother or fetus upon arrival.
Caesarean section performed, but neither mother nor preterm child survived.
Apparent cause of death for mother: severe uterine hemorrhage leading to hypovolemia.
Apparent cause of death for fetus: placental abruption or result of maternal demise.
Patrick’s chest shook with every ragged breath he took. A lone tear trekked down his cheek and fell with a plop, landing on the word “demise” and blurring the ink.
The chair beneath him squeaked as he leaned back away from the file. He sat there in silence, letting realizations and emotions roll through his every cell. With every word he’d read, his sorrow had grown. The only way Mallory or Everly would have had a chance at survival would have been if Mallory had collapsed at a hospital. Based on the timeline, though, even that might have been iffy.
Staggering out of his office, he wandered into his bedroom, where he sank onto the bed. For three years, he had held all his grief in, locking it behind a cold façade. He hadn’t even seen what a toll that was taking on him until Rhiann had reappeared in his life and her sweet smile had chiseled a hole in his defense.
But now that she’d cracked the ice around his heart, those buried emotions hit Patrick full-force. The grief he’d hidden behind a mask of cold professionalism, the anger held contained by his clipped tone—all of it boiled up and ravaged him.
Waves of anger had him pounding his fists into the mattress, and the grief that followed shattered his heart like glass. But his grief wasn’t for his lost wife and child, because time had already dulled that loss. No, this grief was deeper, because it had cut his best friend like a knife, wounding her, someone he’d loved for close to two decades.
All this time he had blamed Rhiann. He’d shut her out of his life and pushed her as far away as possible. But there had truly been nothing she could have done differently. She didn’t have the training or the equipment to handle a severe placental abruption in the back of a moving ambulance.
After the way he’d treated her, the blame he’d shoveled onto her unnecessarily, how had she managed to forgive him? Because she had. He’d seen how she looked at him, the hope and the longing hidden behind her lashes and the soft expression on her face when he played with Levi.
And he might have ruined that.
He grabbed the picture of Mallory off the nightstand and started talking.
“You’d be ashamed of me. But it’s been so hard without you here. I’m not even sure you’d recognize me now. Some days I look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself. I shut out one of the few people who has always been there for me. I blamed Rhiann for taking you and Everly away from me. But I finally see the truth now.”
Mallory would have kicked him in the shins for the way he’d treated Rhiann. Never once had she been jealous of the close relationship he and Rhiann had shared. She’d accepted it—no questions asked. And it was one of the reasons he had loved her so much.
Had loved...
The past tense on that thought brought tears to his eyes. But he could no longer live in the past, reminiscing over memories. He’d forgotten how to live when he’d lost his wife and child, but Rhiann had breathed new life into him and he had to move forward.
It was time for him to say goodbye and step into the hope of a future.
To fight for his future if need be.
And the first step in that plan meant he owed one woman an apology.
With one last look, he kissed Mallory’s picture and then tucked it away in the drawer. With only the slightest hesitation, he pulled his wedding ring off his finger and placed it gently on top of the photo.
“I’ll never stop loving you, Mallory, but I’m ready now to love someone else too. And I think you’d want it that way.”
Rhiann
It was three minutes before the start of her shift when Rhiann parked outside the station. It wasn’t like her to cut it this close when it came to work.
Charlie raised a brow as she ran past him to clock in. When she got back to the rig he was loading up to prepare for their day.
He gave her a worried glance and asked, “What’s wrong with you this bright, shiny morning? Don’t you see the colorful blue of the sky filled with white wisps of cloud floating by on the perfect amount of breeze?”
“Levi.”
She grabbed her go-pack and started sorting through it to make sure it was stocked up for the day.
“I don’t know if he’s getting a cold or if his heart is getting worse. But he just clung to me this morning, and it nearly broke my heart to leave him at home with the babysitter. So, forgive me, but I didn’t spend enough time looking at the sky to spout off any poetry about it.”
Dread had pulled the sun from her sky and locked it away behind a wall of maternal anxiety. And the only breeze she’d felt had iced her limbs and sent a chill of foreboding down her spine.
“Poor kiddo...”
Charlie slapped a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. He’d lightened the intensity of his touch over the years, thankfully, and no longer made her feel like a nail he was pounding into the floor with his hammer-sized fists.
“We can go check on him on our lunch break if it would make you feel better? I’ll let you out and circle around to grab some food while you go in and see him.”
“You’re the best, Charlie.”
“I know.” He made a face.
She smiled—her first real smile of the day.
“I met someone last night,” Charlie said. “I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere, but she had me so tongue-tied it’s a pure miracle I’m talking today.”
Charlie let out a slow whistle. Rhiann knew what he was doing—changing the subject to distract her from worrying about Levi. His efforts were appreciated, even if they wouldn’t likely be successful.
“One look had me thinking about futures and finding someone to grow old with.”
Charlie was a serial monogamist. He fell in love as fast as most people changed their pants, and out of love again just as fast. He flitted from woman to woman, but somehow always left them with a smile—even when he’d dumped them. Whenever he finally fell for someone for real, she’d be a lucky girl.
“About time,” Rhiann teased. “You were starting to look a little old, there all alone.”
Charlie just chuckled at her teasing. “I’ve just told you I’ve met the potential love of my life—which you laughed at me about, by the way—so when are you going to tell me about what’s going on with you and Dr. Silver Temples? Did you hook up last night?”
Rhiann gaped at him. “Why would you think that?”
“He was at the fundraiser, making moon eyes at you from the back of the room. I spent a good fifteen minutes talking to his mother. Lovely lady... I’m sure she made a nice donation.”
Her hand froze, the gauze she’d been stuffing into her go-pack dangling in mid-air as she processed his words. Patrick had been there last night? She hadn’t seen him. Or his mom.
She would have liked to have caught up with Marilyn. She hadn’t seen her in years now. Understandably, Marilyn had sided with Patrick and stayed away after their falling out. But why hadn’t they come up and greeted her? Or at least let her know they were there?
“Off in La-La Land, thinking about your dreamy doctor?” asked Charlie.
“More like Confusion County while I try to figure out why he’d come but not let me know he was there. But then again, the last time we spoke...” Rhiann trailed off.
Charlie made a noise of frustration and slammed a hand against the ambulance door. “You can’t stop now. You’re almost to the good part—I just know it!”
Sh
e laughed. Truly, though, she needed someone to confide in—someone who wouldn’t be judgmental.
“After Levi’s procedure, he drove us home and we hung out for a while.”
Charlie waggled his brows at her.
“Not like that.” She pinched his hand—a sharp, tight pinch to pull his mind out of the gutter. “Purely innocent...not so much as a kiss.” She sighed. “But then he left my place determined to call Pete and make him do his share to help with Levi. Financially, if nothing else.”
A huff escaped the older man. “Me and this doctor of yours are going to get along just fine. What have I been saying?”
“Shush.”
She didn’t want Charlie and Patrick to get it into their heads that they needed to gang up on Pete. She liked having him out of her life, and having them pull him back in was not something she had any interest in.
“So, anyway, Pete called me and cursed me out over it. And I went to find Patrick...”
Charlie leaned forward, eyes wide, eager for the next morsel of gossip she might drop for him. “And...?” He waved a hand for her to continue. “Gah—you should write for television, because you are wicked at the cliffhangers. Woman, if you don’t spill your guts right now, I might have to spill them for you!”
Her sigh was quiet, but weary with the weight of her confession. “He kissed me. Twice.”
“Ha!” Charlie jumped up and pumped his fist in the air. “I knew it!”
Rhiann shook her head. “But then he told me that he doesn’t know if he loves me or he hates me and that he’s confused.”
Charlie flopped dramatically onto the gurney with an exaggerated groan of dismay. “He’s confused? Oh, geez...”
“Exactly.” She brushed back a lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail before asking, “And do you know who else is confused?”
Charlie propped himself up on one elbow and pointed a single finger at her.
“Got it in one,” she said.
Heart Surgeon's Second Chance Page 10