But it didn’t come.
It made my stomach churn.
It made my heart rate climb.
I rushed over to the dumpster in the back of the hospital, my hand flattening against the cold metal side, my stomach emptying. And when I couldn’t retch anymore, I began to walk.
I didn’t know I had reached home until the walls of my bedroom showed me I was standing inside of it.
My nursing scrubs fell to the carpet.
My elastic was pulled out, my hair falling to my shoulders.
Sarah, I’m so sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
When I got into the shower, I made the decision.
I couldn’t ever go back to that unit again.
Chapter Thirty
Gavin
“Emily ...” I reached for her hands the moment she turned silent, a couch cushion separating us, a distance she insisted on after Jordan and Maya carried Ben out of my condo and took him to theirs. That was the first word I’d spoken since she told me her backstory with Sarah. A story that began when Sarah was admitted to Emily’s wing and ended when Emily no longer had the heart to return to the hospital. A story that caused her to break down and cry multiple times. “I need a second ... this is a lot.”
“This is more than a lot. There isn’t a word to even describe what this is.”
My mind was bouncing all over the place, absorbing the details she’d just given me, filling in the small holes I’d been carrying for the last seven years with her firsthand account.
When my breath finally returned, when I could somewhat put my thoughts together, I said softly, “I can’t believe you were her nurse. That it was you who wrote that note. That ... you were even there.”
Her knees were bent, and she held them to her chest. “Does that change everything?”
Every tear she’d shed tonight wrecked me a little more.
I couldn’t just see her pain—I could feel it.
“Change what, baby?” She looked as small as the pillow beside me. “Us? No. What happened at that hospital does not affect us.”
“But how can you say that? Sarah was under my care. She came in presenting symptoms. She ...”
While she recounted the past, her tone, her emotion, her choice of words all told me she was blaming herself, her last statement no exception.
“Symptoms a first-time mother would have when she was going into labor. Emily”—it was my turn to be vulnerable, so I twisted my body toward her and rested my bent leg on the couch—“I arrived at that hospital after getting the worst call of my entire life, and once I held my son, I broke the fuck down. I wept like no man should ever have to weep. But once those tears dried, I sought out answers. I needed to know why this happened to Sarah. I needed to know exactly what happened to her. I spoke to the charge nurse who had been working that shift, the OB who performed the surgery, I even spoke with the head of the goddamn hospital.” I stretched my arm over the back of the couch, my fingers close to her shoulder. “Everyone who had a role in treating Sarah did what they were supposed to. I don’t blame anyone, I especially don’t blame you.”
“I promised her, Gavin.” Her voice quivered. “I told her she was going to be okay and that her baby was going to be okay.” She held her forehead. “Do you know how much it hurts ... that I didn’t keep that promise?”
“It was a promise you couldn’t make. No one, including me, faults you for not being able to uphold it.”
Her fingers clenched into a fist. “But I gave her my word.”
“Stop blaming yourself, Emily—”
“That’s all I did. Blame myself. Hate myself.” She pulled at her T-shirt, yanking the collar down. “I couldn’t even stand the feel of myself.” She rested her forehead against her knees, and when she finally pulled her face out, she added, “I used up all my vacation time that I’d accumulated at the hospital—three or four weeks’ worth, something inthat range. And soon after that ran out, Maya wouldn’t let me stay in bed anymore. She basically had an intervention. She said I needed to get out of my head and forgive myself. That’s when she got me the job at the rehab center.”
“Why would you treat yourself that way when you knew there was nothing you could have done?”
