“I want it,” she mumbled, her eyes closing, “all the time. But I’m bad at making things work with people because no one stays. For me, they don’t stay. Everyone leaves me in the end.”
Maybe we’d regret this in the morning, but she’d asked me twice and that was more than enough. Even if she was barely conscious. Even if I knew better. I didn’t want to be one of the people who didn’t stay for her.
So, I toed off my shoes and deposited my phone and hospital lanyard on her bedside table. “I’m not going anywhere, Whit.”
“’kay.” She kicked up the blankets and burrowed beneath them. “I wish I had an ice cream sandwich.”
“Then you admit it, you do like ice cream.”
She yawned so wide, I knew she’d had her tonsils out at some point. “Yep.”
“I’ll check the freezer.”
“We don’t have any,” she mumbled through another yawn. “I don’t buy them because I’ll eat them.”
“I’m sure that makes sense to you.” I skimmed my hand over her cheek. Her skin was dry, her lips chapped. Spending all day in the ultra-filtered air of the OR and surviving on the smallest amount of fluids possible so you didn’t have to break scrub protocol to use the bathroom would do that to you. “I’m going tograb some water for you,” I said, still stroking her face. “I’ll be right back.”
She grumbled out some response while I headed toward the kitchen. I did my best to stay quiet, but it wasn’t quiet enough because I turned around and found myself staring at Brie. It was like these sisters were different editions of the same book, one fair and light, the other olive-toned and dark.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“Henry.” I motioned toward the bedroom. “I’m here with Whit.”
“I figured as much. Burglars don’t usually stay long enough to pour themselves a glass of water.” She gave me an up-and-down glance. “What’s your story, Henry?”
“My…my story? I don’t really have a story. No story here.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “You have a story.”
I pointed toward Whit’s room again. “Not after the week your sister’s had, I don’t. Her story is the only one that matters tonight.”
“Interesting,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Are you all right?” I couldn’t assess much in the dark or with her drowning in a hoodie and fleece pajamas, but I had to ask. “Any fever, nausea or vomiting, changes in?—”
“Of course you’re a doctor.” She said it like a sigh. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Any inflammation or bleeding at your incision site?” I gestured to where the bag was hidden under her clothes. “Can I take a quick look?”
“Definitely not, but thank you for making it weird.” She rubbed her temples. “Should I assume you’re one of the docs who treated me in the past two weeks? That you’ve seen the inside of my intestines and know how much I pee in a day? Or are you the one who cut my clothes off me in the ER?”
“None of the above. I just know Whit would’ve asked if she wasn’t bone-tired.”
“She works too much.”
I shrugged. Maybe that was true, but I didn’t know many surgeons who had a handle on balancing work and everything else. It wasn’t in our nature. Certainly not in Whit’s. “There’s no predicting when a heart will open up.”
Somehow, that earned me another up-and-down glance. “Henry, is it? You really are an interesting one.”
I watched her stroll down the hall and close the door behind her before I returned to Whit’s room. She was out like a light, and as I lay down beside her, she curled into me, tucking her head up against my chest.
She mumbled out an order to take the patient off bypass, then another calling for internal paddles. I ran my hand over her hair, gently pulling the ties from her braids and raking my fingers through the strands as her rambles turned into quiet murmurs and sighs.
I didn’t grow up in a family that centered religion. Mason did, and I acquired enough from hanging out with his family over the years to know the ropes, but I’d never been able to wrap my hands around a reason to believe in anything beyond myself and this world.
Fast forward twenty-five-ish years from Mrs. Ballicanta’s kitchen table catechism to finally falling asleep beside Whitney, and I could see now that I was wrong. That was all it took to believe in everything beyond this world.
I knew I was pinning a lot of this belief on the shaky agreement of a woman with an extensive history of walking away from me. I was aware of that danger, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Not when I had newfound faith on my side. And, according to Mason’s mother, faith never failed.
