I wasn’t one to believe in these things as being some kind of sign of divine fate from the universe. Most of the time it was a bunch of mumbo jumbo that was fun to subscribe to in an ironic sense and not at all meant to be taken seriously.
That being said, I wasn’t at all a fan of the way my gut tightened on my fourth pass-through over the words printed on the slip, my gaze getting stuck on the ‘logical or rational’ part of it while a pair of ice-blue eyes flashed inside of my head.
I crushed it between my fingers immediately.
Thatthought was going to be stopped right in its tracks.
Absolutely in no way was I going to be fueling that particular flame with any amount of energy that was better focused elsewhere.
CHAPTER 8
Terran
By the timemy meds kicked in, TJ was on his way out the door, an astonishing amount of care behind the gentle ruffling of my hair while he bid me a good rest of my night before heading out.
I fell into a dreamless sleep soon after, the whirling sounds of the hospital a kind of comforting white noise machine that helped me drift off with relative ease, much different than the restless sleeping I’d been getting over the past few nights.
I hated how much my worrying over Monday was affecting me, how the nagging in the back of my mind was all I could focus on when I was supposed to be relaxing and letting my body do the work while I was unconscious.
There was only so much that could be done while being forced on bed rest, and none of it was anything I could control to push this timeline along in the direction I wanted it to go in.
Obviously, no one would hold it against me if, in the end, a few extra days of stay were needed to ensure I walked out of here well enough to manage on my own once I was back home again. No one but myself, at least.
My niece’s scrunched up face and her pleas for me to come home were still killing me. None of it being helped by my nightly Facetimes with my sister that were only making the guilt dig down deeper.
At least I got to see them both, though. That was a solid positive.
I woke while it was still dark outside of my room’s windows, my eyes strained from the sleep still crusting the corners, and the dim light on over by the sink, kept on for the nurses to come in and out to check on my vitals.
Dragging my finger across my lids to itch them both clean, I froze the moment a figure sitting in the guest recliner caught my attention.
I blinked a few times, the view of Dr. Montgomery slowly coming into focus.
He was hunched over in the recliner with one leg crossed over the other, his tablet balanced on his thigh while he rapidly glided his fingers across the screen with one hand. The other was tucked under his chin, elbow resting on the arm of the chair while his mask was pulled down just enough for me to get a good look at that handsome face once again.
Don’t expect romantic attachments to be strictly logical or rational.
Of all fucking times for that to come popping back into my head.
Plus, what did ‘romantic attachments’ even mean?
Relationships?
Hook-ups?
There were so many different ways to take a statement like that.
None of them settled the weird twist in my gut while I continued to take Dr. Montgomery in. Unlike the last time I’d seen him dressed in his plain clothes and carrying around hisusual snarky attitude, the quietness of the night had softened him a bit—given him a more relaxed demeanor while he lounged back in the recliner. The past few days he’d been absent from this floor’s rotation had felt dull, the time dragging much more than usual while none of the monotony had been broken up by anything outside of TJ’s visit.
Now with him here again, a small blip of excitement sparked within me.
“Is there a reason you’re in my room?”
“Taking a break,” came his immediate and clipped response. There wasn’t any bite behind the words, said in an easy manner one would rattle off a usual to-go lunch order. He didn’t bother looking up from his tablet when he spoke, nor did his fingers pause from their typing.
My gaze darted over to the monitor next to my head, 3:58am displayed prominently in the corner. “In the middle of the night?”
“Technically, this is the middle of my shift.”
