“Probably.” I stared at her until she passed me and strolled down the hallway.
I turned back to Jacob who was watching me with a twinkle in his eyes.
“She was standing too close.”
He didn’t respond; instead, he glanced over my head as if spying to see if anyone was around. I went to ask what he was looking for when suddenly his arm wrapped around my waist and he pulled me through the door we stood next to. The movement was so quick and unexpected, that it took me a couple of breaths to realize that he’d pulled me into one of the empty patient rooms.
His lips collapsed into mine and I hummed against his mouth, sighing at the kiss.
“I didn’t get a chance to do that this morning,” his deep voice said once he pulled back from the kiss.
“I had to come in early,” I explained why I had to leave his place before he even woke up that morning.
“Next time, wake me up,” he growled before covering my lips once more.
Unfortunately, again the kiss ended too abruptly when my cell phone buzzed. I jumped and quickly pulled it out to see yet another alert from my doctor’s office reminding me of my appointment.
“I have to go do rounds,” I stated.
Jacob’s eyes lifted and he nodded. “Same. Dinner, tonight?”
I nodded and headed out as he held the door open. It’d been a full week since the night of the fight, and while he and I had grown closer, I got the sense that there was so much more bubbling beneath the surface. Seeing his father and brother within the span of a few days couldn’t have been easy. No matter how much he tried to say that it didn’t matter to him, I knew that it bothered him. He wasn’t over whatever happened to him in those dark days of his childhood and adolescence. It was evident but he wasn’t ready to open up about it either.
“Grace, you still have to leave at one-thirty, right?” Beth questioned, interrupting my thoughts as I moved behind the nurses’ station.
I nodded. “Yeah, why? Do you need me to stay?”
“No.” Beth shook her head. “Suzanne will cover the surgery with Dr. Ross, and I think we’re all clear this afternoon. You’ll be back by three?”
“I should be.” My stomach turned as nervousness seized me. Hopefully, I would be back that afternoon after my appointment with nothing else on my mind. Lifting my head from the computer screen I’d been staring at, I found Suzanne’s eyes locked on me.
She quickly averted her gaze, but the feeling in the pit of my stomach sent off alarm bells, telling me she was trouble. I didn’t have time to give it too much thought when she stood up and made an announcement about going to prep her patient for surgery. Ignoring her, I finished inputting some information into the computer, before checking on a couple of patients and then heading out for my appointment.
****
My palms were sweaty, and I ran them up and down my thighs, using the material of the scrubs I still wore to dry them off. I glanced up at the clock on the wall to see the minute hand had only moved from one black line to the next, telling me only a minute had passed since the last time I stared at it.
Ugh!my brain shouted internally. I stood up and began pacing the waiting office. There were about five other people waiting as well, one whose face was pale as a ghost. She had no eyebrows and wore a yellow bandana around her head; she looked frail. I tried hard to avoid her, but my eyes kept going to her and the man who sat behind her. My gaze drifted lower, to spot the wedding ring on his left ring finger. Hers was bare, but upon closer examination, I could see her rings hung from a chain around her neck. Her fingers probably had become so thin they no longer fit properly.
I glanced down at my own hands, remembering how thin they had gotten while I underwent chemo. My heart squeezed as I painfully remembered back to that time. These annual checkups always brought out this fear again. But as I went to squeeze my hand into a tight fist, another masculine hand stopped mine.
Gasping, I lifted my head, and my gaze crashed into those grey eyes. An immediate calm filled my body even as my eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.
“What’re you doing here?”
“You came into work early this morning, you had a two o’clock meeting, and I spotted the reminder text message confirming your appointment with Dr. Mitchell, one of the top oncologists in the city.”
I narrowed my eyes on him and let out a small smirk. “You were spying on my messages.”
He shrugged. “You spied on my birthday. Turnabout is fair play.”
The lump in my throat prevented me from responding verbally. I was left with squeezing his hand in mine to display my gratitude that he took the time to show up even when I hadn’t asked.
“Is this for your yearly checkup, or do you suspect …” He wouldn’t or couldn’t finish the question but I knew where he was going.
“Yearly checkup.”
Releasing a breath, his shoulders relaxed a little. “You should’ve told me.” His voice deepened and gaze was intent.
