She threw her hand out to the side as if my concern over how she’d found out was not an issue. It was quite an issue, but she had other things on her mind. “I should’ve known that things were too good to be true.” Tears fell over her lashes and started streaming down her face. She took a deep breath as a sob shook through her chest. “You haven’t changed, Alex. You can’t pretend to be one way with me and then be something different when we are apart. I’ve been through that before, and I can’t do that again.”
“What?!” I half yelled, the sound echoing down the quiet hall.Her accusation was unfounded. The only way I was different when we were apart was that I missed her, thought about her, remembered the feel of her in my arms.
She sniffed, glancing over her shoulder at the long corridor of open patient rooms. Pulling herself together, like she’d just realized we were at work, she hugged herself. “I put in my two weeks’. I’m moving back to Montana.”
I should have begged her to stay. I should have told her I was on my way to figure out what happened with my patient. There were a hundred other thoughts bursting through my head, but the one that made it through the bottleneck was, “I thought this was your dream job?”
She looked away from me as the tears continued to flow “I can’t be where I’ll see you every day. You mean something to me, Alex.” Another sob, then she took a deep breath and continued. “I was falling for you, but I was trampled on before and vowed to never let it happen again. I don’t know if I can do that if I stay here, so I have to go.”
She took off running down the hall and disappeared in the stairwell. I stared after her in shock, numb with the realization that my world had fallen apart and the best fight I could put up was talking about her job.
I could have done better, but I’d been blindsided. I reached out an arm as if I could call her back and start over. An alarm went off two doors down, and a nurse darted in to take care of it. I shook myself. I had a life to save and a short amount of time to do it in. The man on the other side of that clerical error couldn’t wait for me to chase after the love of my life and set things right between us.
I had to take care of this.
I only hoped that when I was done, it wasn’t too late to chase after Emma.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alex
Itried calling Emma several times that day, but she wouldn’t answer. It seemed she had made up her mind and cut me out of her life in one fell swoop.
As I thought things over, I realized that her actions would make sense from her perspective. Eric was a real piece of work, cheating on her. If she felt for me the way she said she did, then of course she’d gotten scared. I just wished she’d given me a chance to explain.
I had talked to the department head to figure out what had happened with my chart note, but she wasn’t any help, saying, “It has your name and your electronic signature on it. Because of that, it is official. You should be the only one capable of signing your notes—unless you think your account has been hacked. Why would someone do your charting for you?”
I had to admit it didn’t make sense. But I knew that I hadn’t written that note. Thankfully, we were able to get the man scheduled for surgery to repair his heart.
Another thing bothering me was that Emma had known about the note in the first place. It was like she’d found out before I did. She wouldn’t talk to me, so I couldn’t ask her that question.There had to be a way to get this straightened out. My days were bleak and my nights worse. I needed help, and there was only one person I could turn to—Becca. The trouble was, I didn’t know if she hated my guts too.
Becca usually worked the swing shift on Thursdays, which would be the perfect time to talk to her, because it was after Emma left for the day. I tried to time myaccidentalarrival on the floor perfectly for after the shift changed and the nurses got reports. The dinner trays had been picked up by the time I entered the floor. Most visitors had left and the patients were starting to go to sleep, so the lights were turned down in their rooms and their televisions were on low.
I saw Becca’s long dark hair behind the nurses’ station, and my already worried stomach clenched. This was my last hope. If she turned me away, there would be no getting Emma back.
I leaned against the desk, needing its solid mass to hold me up. “Becca, do you have time to talk?”
She glanced up from the screen and then back to the keyboard. “I don’t know if we should be talking right now.”
“Do you have a patient that needs help?” I asked. I could defer to that reason, but not many others.
She leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes at me. “No. Lucky for you, both of my patients are currently sleeping. But that doesn’t mean that I should be talking to you.”
“Becca, please. Honestly, I don’t understand what is happening. All I know is that Monday morning I showed up to do surgery on a patient that wasn’t there. When I tried to figure out why, people started showing me notes that have my name on them that I didn’t write. Now I’ve had to reschedule my patient and sound like a complete idiot because they keep hearing different stories—yes, you will have surgery; no, you won’t; yes, you will. But the worst part is Emma won’t talk to me and thinks I’ve betrayed her when I don’t even know what is going on!”
My long night of tossing and the stress of losing Emma must have been clear, because Becca softened. “I believe you. I’ve tried to tell Emma that this doesn’t make any sense, but she’s so afraid of getting hurt again she won’t listen to me.”
“Maybe if we get proof that my note was tampered with, she’d listen to the facts?”
Becca shook her head with a sad smile. “In case you haven’t noticed, doc, Emma is more of an emotional person. She believes facts, but she goes with her gut a lot, and right now her gut is telling her to run.”
I shoved my hand through my hair. “I know, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t understand how all of this has happened, or how we even got here.” I sat on the rolling chair and put my head in my hands.
There was a pause. I felt Becca’s eyes on me, but I didn’t care that I looked lost and pathetic—I was. “You really love her, don’t you?”
I looked up, a little startled. I’d never said those words outside my head before, but I knew the answer without a second thought. “I do. But I’m really hurt too. I’ve opened up to her more than anyone else, and it hurts that she doesn’t believe me at all. She automatically thinks I am lying. Makes me feel like I was right all these years keeping everyone out.”
“You’re good for her too, you know,” Becca countered. “I hadn’t seen her that happy in a long time—that is, until Dr. Rasmussen got into her head.”
