Lynnette sighed and lifted her clipboard. “Normally I’d agree, but today, it just makes me look bad. Regardless of the reason.”
Amy pursed her lips. “That’s really unfair,” she muttered.
Lynnette offered her a smile before trekking back down the hall. Lunches were starting to roll out, so she adjusted as best she could to keep out of the staff’s way. It was preferable to pop in right before meals were delivered, rather than interrupt while a patient was eating, but she couldn’t always time it that perfectly.
Some twenty minutes later, she found herself striding down the hall Lance was in, and she spotted the food cart stopped justshy of his door. The man she’d seen wheeling it not ten minutes earlier was pacing the hall, phone pressed to his ear, and talking in a low, urgently clipped tone. Concern spiked through her and Lynnette adjusted course. Interrupting a phone call was generally rude, but it was also rude to leave a patient’s food in the hallway.
She raised her hand enough to get his attention as he twisted back toward the abandoned cart, one brow raised to express inquiry.
He blew out a breath. “Hold on—no, I know, just hold on a second,” he said into the phone. Then he lowered it, covered it with his palm, and moved closer.
“Is there something wrong with this patient’s food?” Lynnette asked, tilting her head to indicate the undelivered meal.
His gaze flicked to the side and his jaw trembled for a moment. “No,” he said. He swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry, but can you finish for me?”
Lynnette arched a brow. She could, of course. It was just delivering a meal and returning a cart—the latter being more inconvenient than difficult. While it wasn’t a task that typically fell under her purview, it wasn’t something she’d never done, either. “I can,” she said. “But why can’t you?”
He held up his phone. “My son, he— he’s downstairs.” His voice was strained, the words choking from him.
Downstairs … ER.Lynnette softened her expression and nodded her head. “Go. I’ll handle this. Be with your family.”
His eyes watered and he brought the phone back to his ear as he said, “Thank you, thank you!” He turned and jogged away, toward the nearest elevator, his voice changing as he resumed speaking to the caller.
Lynnette sighed, something in her chest pinching, then made herself turn away. She still remembered how emotional her mother had been when her father had come home for good.She’d barely understood then that his work was dangerous and that he left them for long stretches because of it, but she’d been glad to have him home, too. For all the silly, sometimes jealousy-driven, reasons a child wanted their parents with them. She remembered much easier—much more achingly—the pain of losing her mother. How deeply it had wounded her strong, unflappable father.
That wasn’t even the situation that man was running off to, but the look in his eyes had reminded her of something she’d seen in her father’s eyes back then nonetheless. It wasn’t a headspace she ever wanted to revisit.
She did her best to push it aside, tried to remember what it was she’d thought to ask Lance the next time they spoke, and managed to get the door open and wheel the cart inside. There was a disjointed moment as she moved forward where two very different things struck her at once.
Something was wrong with the cart.
And Lance … was laughing. Loud, full-bodied, shoulder-shaking laughter that filled the air with warmth. It was a welcoming sound. On nearly any other day, she would have smiled to hear it.
Instead, Lynnette pushed the cart awkwardly into the room, having to fight it against itself as if she were wheeling it over rocks but only on one side, and she said, “Glad to see one of us is having a good day.” No sooner were the mildly bitter words out of her mouth than the problematic wheel let out an earsplitting squeak abruptly popped right off the cart.
The entire cart tipped precariously, forcing Lynnette to prioritize rebalancing that lest the food drop, and she let out a curse.
Lance surged forward to catch the other end of it, immediately providing stabilization, but his spoken response was not quitewhat she might have expected. “Easy there, Lynn. Your bestie’s shy.”
Lynnette went still, blinking at him. “My what?” Had the man gone from not-so-subtly declaring his interest in her to deciding he was her bestie? And did he honestly expect her to believe he was shy?
No. The answer to both was no. Jenna was there. Just Jenna, no Jon, because it turned out Jon had an appointment in the city.
Lance insisted he was babysitting. Or playing bodyguard. Something of the sort, all of which was ludicrous. With the exception of the fact that the man Lynnette had met the previous day would absolutely want someone around to protect his lover if he felt she wasn’t safe, and she’d just said something about her kitchen window having had a rock thrown through it.
The world was passing Lynnette by while she was trapped in the hospital that wanted to ruin her.
Somehow, the realization felt like a slap to the face. Lynnette didn’t have the patience or emotional space for any of it, so she made as swift an exit as she could. She should have lingered. She should have taken the opportunity to chat with her friend and use Jenna’s and Lance’s socializing to maybe see a new side of him. She should have let the good energy in the room seep into her.
But she didn’t feel like she could. She felt like she might be the vacuum that sucked it from them and ruined everything. So, she grabbed the damn wheel, reminded Lance he was still supposed to act like a damn patient, and hauled the imbalanced and broken cart out of the room. It felt a bit like a metaphor that she didn’t want to think too hard about, if she were honest with herself.
The entire exchange, her own behavior, the bizarre feelings all of it had jerked up to the forefront, had her fighting down tearsas she rode the elevator down to the basement cafeteria. Once upon a time, she had loved her job. She might still love her jobin theory. The idea of it, the actual practice of it, even. But the behind-the-scenes, day-to-day reality of it? That she had come to hate. In equal measure, it seemed, to the way it hated her.
But quitting meant letting Bishop get away with his shit. It meant he won.
She had never in her life quit anything. Not a sport, not a television show, not a job, not a relationship. She’d had them dump her, each in their own way, but when she committed, she committed for the long haul. It was a sentiment that had scared off her last boyfriend, too many years ago to count. She absolutely loathed the idea of letting Gavin Bishop break her.
But the trapped feeling she was floundering in? That didn’t seem a whole lot better.
