Kitabı oku: «After One Forbidden Night...», sayfa 2

He needed to end this before it started—or went any further.

Chloe stirred, her eyes opening to unfamiliar surroundings as she took in the flood of natural light and the expanse of the room around her. She blinked and the scenery remained unchanged. She looked down, acknowledging her nudity before confirming to herself that last night had not been a dream. She was in Tate’s loft and they had made love.

Slowly she turned towards the other side of the bed—only to find disappointment at its emptiness. The feeling did not last long as her eyes caught sight of him sitting across the room in the kitchen, staring back at her. He appeared to have showered and was already fully dressed in black pants and a crisp navy blue button-down shirt with a pewter tie at the collar. An uneasy feeling came over her.

“Good morning.” She waded into conversation cautiously.

“Last night was a mistake.”

His words broke through her and her perfect dream instantaneously changed into a nightmare. He remained across the room, still making no effort to close the distance between them.

“I think it would be best if we forget it ever happened and moved on with our separate lives. Take your time this morning. I have to go to work, but the door will lock behind you.”

She didn’t have time to argue with him. She didn’t even have time to respond. She just watched dumbstruck as Tate walked out, pulling the door shut behind him and signaling the end to their conversation. How could he just walk away? Easily, she thought. He didn’t have feelings for her. A physical attraction, yes, but not the same depth of emotion she felt for him or he had felt for Kate.

She remembered him after their breakup—how angry he had been, how devastated. She was a simple night’s mistake compared to Kate, whose loss had almost destroyed him.

CHAPTER ONE

Six weeks later …

CHLOE STOOD FROM her chair and felt a familiar wave of nausea and dizziness encompass her. She steadied herself before considering moving again. If she had thought things couldn’t get worse, she had been wrong. Her relationship with Tate remained unchanged. She had made attempts to talk to him but it was clear he was avoiding her. The hope that every day she would feel better, less rejected, was long since gone and every day she felt worse.

She needed to finish with her last patient and go home. The symptoms which she had originally attributed to heartbreak had become unremitting, and it was getting harder and harder to function. Ironically, the last patient of the evening emergency shift was feeling the same. An “LOL” in distress: a “little old lady” presenting with feelings of weakness and dizziness.

These patients were always complex, taking a lot of time and attention to detail in order to rule out conditions that could cause the patient serious harm, and most commonly nothing was found. In this case Chloe had managed to work out a cause and had reduced her blood pressure medications. If only her own case was that simple.

“Are you okay?”

A voice cut through her thoughts. She turned too quickly and immediately regretted the action, feeling her heart beat overtime to maintain her balance and remain standing on her feet.

Her attending physician, Dr. Ryan Callum, was staring at her intently and Chloe was grateful that it was him. He was seven years older than her and had completed a decorated military career as a trauma specialist before starting practice at Boston General. He was very attractive, with an athletic frame, a rare combination of brown hair and blue eyes, and a collection of scars and military tattoos that completed the package and led to him being sought after by the entire nursing staff. To Chloe, he was a trusted friend and mentor.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.” He wasn’t angry, but he was making it clear he did not believe her.

“Yes, but you are a good enough friend not to push the issue.”

He reluctantly nodded his agreement and Chloe relaxed. She didn’t have the energy to pretend right now as she rubbed her aching shoulders.

“You would tell me if you needed something, right?”

She looked at her friend and a little bit of her misery and pity lifted. She might not have love, but she had amazing friends who would do anything for her. If only she knew how she could be fixed.

“Yes, I would.”

“Okay, then, go home. You look like hell.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Chloe discharged her patient and made her way to the women’s locker room, located within the emergency department. Her head throbbed, and pushing open the door took the last effort she had inside her. Between the rows of lockers was a bench and she’d stepped toward it, planning to rest, when a sharp pain in the right lower quadrant of her abdomen overtook her. The pain was so severe that she didn’t feel the impact as her body hit the floor. She tried to call for help but didn’t get the words out before curtains of black entered her vision.

Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t her. Everything was muted as she struggled to see and hear what was going on around her. She felt herself being picked up and carried by a pair of strong arms.

“Tate,” she whimpered as the pain gripped her again.

“No, Chloe, it’s Ryan.”

Disappointment filled her before she lost consciousness again.

Tate scanned the operating room slate for the night’s booked cases. The locked doors to the secure unit opened and a porter entered, carrying a sealed box from the blood bank. The unit clerk who had been assisting him shifted her attention from him. “Is that the blood for Theater Seven?”

“Yes, it’s the second four units of packed cells and two units of fresh frozen plasma matched for a Chloe Darcy—D-A-R-C-Y. Date of birth: March twentieth, 1983. Blood bank number: 4089213.”

“Perfect. You can leave it there and I’ll take it back to the room.”

Tate’s body had frozen at the sound of her name and his eyes landed on the box, confirming everything he had heard. The box was labeled just as the porter had read—for Chloe. He replayed the exchange. This was the second four units, which meant Chloe was in serious trouble.

“I’m already changed. I’ll take it in,” he told the unit clerk as he picked up the box and made his way toward Theater Seven without waiting for her response. It was ironic that for the first time in the operating room he felt fear. Never had he felt that when working, but right now he was helpless. It was a novel and terrifying feeling all at once.

He fastened a mask across his face and paused at the window in the door. There were two anesthetists at the head of the bed and the patient was surrounded, but he couldn’t tell by whom. On the operating room floor a collection of bloody sponges lay soaked through and counted off. He could see the suction canisters that were filled with over two liters of blood. Was it Chloe’s blood? It looked like a scene from a trauma case, and he couldn’t comprehend that Chloe lay in the center of it.

He walked into the room, his confusion growing as he identified members of the gynecology team as the operating surgeons. At the same time his eyes glimpsed the trademark red hair that flowed from the top of the operating table. It was definitely her.

He handed the box to the circulating nurse. “Do you need help?” He directed the question toward the team, needing to do something.

“You need to leave, Dr. Reed.”

The voice came from the gowned surgeon in the hibiscus-blue cloth scrub hat. He narrowed his focus on her and through the confusion surrounding the case was able to identify Erin Madden, chief gynecology resident. Her voice and hat identified her without her needing to look away from the operative field. He had known Erin casually for years, and more so in the past two through her friendship with Kate and Chloe, but even so he wasn’t in the mood to be told what to do. He normally encouraged resident autonomy, but not today—not when it involved Chloe.

“Dr. Thomas?” He addressed the staff surgeon whose back was to him.

“Dr. Madden is right. This is not a vascular case, Tate. We are going to have to ask you to leave.”

He looked around the room once more, noticing the discomfort of the nursing and other teams. It felt like a betrayal from the people he worked with day in and day out, but on the other hand he knew enough to know that he had become a distraction—one that Chloe couldn’t afford.

“Okay.” And he left, going as far away from her as he could handle being, which was right outside the operating theater doors.

His mind raced with possibilities? What the hell had happened to Chloe? How did a healthy young woman end up in a critical condition without warning? And why the hell was gynecology in there?

A previously unimaginable explanation filled and settled into his mind. He watched, his eyes oscillating between the anesthesia monitors tracking Chloe’s vitals and the actions of the surgical team.

“Tate.” He heard Kate’s familiar voice and felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I think she is stabilizing. They kicked me out of the room, so I can’t tell for sure. But they have stopped calling for blood and I can see the anesthesia monitors. Her heart-rate has come down and her blood pressure is back up.”

“What happened?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything. The usual patient confidentiality. I only got here about fifteen minutes ago. I was checking the operating room slate to see how many cases were lined up for tonight at the front desk when the porter from the blood bank came to drop off blood. I overheard him verifying her name and blood bank number with the unit clerk.”

“Who is in with her?”

“Gynecology.” His resentment was coming through clearly.

“Oh.”

“Is it a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know, Kate. Like I said, they won’t tell me anything.”

She stopped asking questions and he wondered if she had come up with the same diagnosis he had. Either way he was grateful for the silence. He needed to keep his entire focus on Chloe.

Twenty minutes later Kate gently pushed Tate to the side and went through the operating room door. He watched the interaction, unable to hear the exchange between her and Erin Madden, but noting that she was getting further than he had. She pushed through the doors again, returning.

“She’s okay. They won’t tell me what happened, but they opened her up, stopped whatever was bleeding, and she’s stabilized. She is going to go to the Intensive Care Unit overnight because of the large amount of blood products she received.”

“Thank you, Kate,” Tate replied, his eyes still trained on the window, not budging from his spot outside the door.

“Tate, they have asked us to leave and I think we should. She is stable and there is nothing we can do except get in the way and distract the team.”

“I’m not leaving her.”

“We’re not leaving her, Tate. We’re helping her by getting out of the way and letting them do their job. The same thing we ask other people to do for us.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him a little, to ease him away from his spot. “Tate, we need to go. You know Chloe would never want us to see her like this.”

His mind replayed all the ways he had seen Chloe and he knew she was right. Staying away from her had been the hardest thing he had ever done, but it was for her he’d done it. God knew that every time she had tried to talk to him there’d been nothing he wanted more than to take her in his arms and kiss her, to see if everything they had done together had been real and not just a memory that had reached fantastical proportions in his mind.

Who was he kidding? In truth he was terrified of the feelings she’d brought out in him and what it would cost him to have and then lose her.

He looked back at Kate, feeling nothing for her. How could he have been such a fool? He respected Kate, and intellectually she made perfect sense, but he had never been in love with her and she had never sparked the intensity of emotion that Chloe did in him. He had asked her to marry him because it had seemed like the next logical step, just like the series of steps he had taken in his training. He was tired of the single life, needed a wife, wanted a family and Kate met the criteria he was looking for. His use of logic had failed him for the first time in his life. Kate’s rejection had angered him and wounded his pride at the time. Now he was grateful for the near miss.

“Are you in love with Matt McKayne?” he asked, without emotion.

She seemed surprised by the question, whether it was at his directness or his reference to the man he knew she was in love with, he didn’t care.

“Yes. I think I always have been—even when I hated him.”

“Then you should be with him. Forget everything that has gone wrong between you and be together.”

“It’s not that simple, Tate. I can’t trust him.”

“Kate, that’s not simple,” he replied, pointing toward the door. Then he took one last look through the window and walked away—from both Chloe and Kate.

His steps were slow and purposeful as he returned to the front desk and the unit clerk he had spoken to earlier. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the response he was dreading. “Am I up next after the ruptured ectopic pregnancy?” he asked as casually as he could while his heart was racing.

He held his breath as the unit clerk double-checked the confidential surgical slate that listed patient names, procedures and diagnoses. “Yes. As soon as they are done with Dr. Darcy we will be sending for your patient, Dr. Reed.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled and he kept walking, not thinking about his destination but more of the confirmation he had hoped not to receive. Chloe was pregnant—or had been pregnant. Was he the father? Was he responsible for the pregnancy that had almost killed her?

The door to the operating room opened again and Ryan Callum walked through.

“Is she still in?” Ryan asked, with a coldness Tate had not expected emanating from him.

He wasn’t in the mood to play games. “Yes. Do you know what happened to her?”

“Yes.”

Tate waited, but no more words came from the other man and new hostility radiated from him. Ryan, who had never been confrontational, had changed from the direct, no-nonsense man he had been. The question was why? In a night with so many unanswered questions it was the last thing he needed.

“I’m asking,” Tate replied, not trying to escalate the conversation, knowing he had a thin grip on his temper.

“If Chloe wanted you to know something she would have told you.”

Told him what? That there was a reason Ryan Callum knew about her pregnancy and he didn’t? It was a thought he couldn’t stomach and he wanted it out of his mind.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the brilliant surgeon, Tate, figure it out.”

He didn’t want to have to think about any more than he already was. At the moment he would much rather be the father of her life-threatening pregnancy than think there was a possibility that Ryan was.

“So I’m to blame? Is that what you think?”

“She said your name, not mine, as I carried her near lifeless body to get help. That is what I think.”

The image flashed before his eyes, and judging from the scene in the operating theater Tate knew Ryan’s characterization was right. Before he could respond Ryan walked past him toward the bank of theaters, which was fortunate because he had no response. Did that mean he was the father? Ryan hadn’t ruled himself out, but what did it say about Chloe that she would ask for him as she lay dying?

CHAPTER TWO

EVERYTHING HURT. IT was her first thought as outside sounds began to intrude. She tried to move, to ease the ache, but nothing in her body responded. She took a breath and became immediately cognizant of pain and pressure in her mouth and throat. She tried to pull at it, but couldn’t move her hands. When she finally moved she felt the resistance of straps on her wrists.

A monitor rang out and it calmed her as a familiar sound. She felt a hand curl around hers and tried to hold it.

“Chloe, it’s Kate.”

Kate. She didn’t know where she was, but Kate was here. She heard her friend’s voice again, but couldn’t make out the words. She strained to understand, wanted to move, to breathe, but everything was so hard and met with such resistance.

She heard the alarm ring again as she struggled.

Someone with a voice she didn’t recognize entered the room and she could hear Kate directing the woman before she felt a hand calmingly stroke her forehead and hair.

She only understood a few of Kate’s words but it was enough. “Stay calm, okay? Intubated … Intensive Care Unit … tube out. Stay calm.”

She focused all her efforts on opening the heavy lids of her eyes to see Kate as her dark hair and her face slowly came into focus. She had to work twice as hard not to give in to the temptation to close them again.

There was another voice she didn’t recognize, and once again she couldn’t understand everything, so instead focused on Kate.

“Chloe, you heard that? I have to go for a few minutes while they evaluate you. No room for big dumb surgeons on these occasions. I am not going to be far, though, and will be back here as soon as they let me, okay?”

She processed the information and finally, with great effort, managed to move her head in understanding. She watched Kate’s eyes fill with relief and felt her friend squeeze her hand one last time before she left.

Over the next few minutes she was aware of the room filling with more and more people. She was also aware that if she wanted the tube out she was going to have to concentrate on everything she was being asked to do, even though it was a struggle. After what seemed like a lifetime she took her first breath on her own, and even the irritation in her throat couldn’t dampen her relief. She felt a nurse thread the oxygen nasal prongs around her face and into her nose as air gently began to blow, and she was grateful for anything that made breathing less hard.

As fast as the room had filled it began to empty, until only one person remained. With only one person to focus on it was easier, and she recognized the face, dark tortoiseshell glasses and pulled-back blonde hair of her friend Erin Madden pulling up a chair beside the bed. Through her emerging fog she could tell Erin wasn’t here as her friend. Why was gynecology involved in her care?

“Chloe, do you know where you are?”

She nodded, her mind having put together the fact that she was in the Intensive Care Unit.

“Did you know you were pregnant?” Erin asked softly.

Pregnant. No. That couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be pregnant. She had only been with one man in the past two years and Tate had worn a condom. Wouldn’t she have known if she was pregnant? She had been bleeding off and on for the past month, but her cycle was screwed up because of all the stress. She had been nauseated and dizzy, but that could be stress too. Wouldn’t she have known if she was pregnant with Tate’s baby? A warm flush passed through her as she thought about a child.

“I’m pregnant?” she managed to ask, her voice still weak.

“No, Chloe. You were pregnant. The pregnancy was ectopic, in your right fallopian tube. It ruptured. That is what led to your collapse. We did an emergency laparotomy and had to take out your right fallopian tube to stop the bleeding. You also were transfused with a lot of blood products, so we decided to keep you in the Intensive Care Unit. But you are okay now, Chloe. Your blood work is stable and there are no signs of anymore bleeding. You are going to be okay.”

“I lost the baby.” It wasn’t a question for Erin, but more a confirmation to herself of everything she had just heard.

“Yes. I’m so sorry, Chloe.”

Grief filled her. It was the final insult. It shouldn’t hurt to lose something she had never known she had, but that didn’t stop the pain. Maybe it was fitting that she felt the same way about her baby’s father. She had never had him either, but that didn’t make losing him any easier.

She looked around the room, surrounded by glass and curtains and monitors that would show everything about her. She didn’t want to be here.

“I want to go home, Erin. I need to go home.” She couldn’t be here—not in public, not where she worked, not where Tate worked. Not knowing he was so close and wanting him to be with her at this moment so very badly and knowing he wouldn’t be coming.

“Chloe, you are barely twenty-four hours post-op. You know you are in no condition to go home. You just started breathing on your own and haven’t even sat up yet.”

She tried to push herself up, to prove that she could do it, but her body betrayed her. Between the physical exertion the act required and the sense of dizziness that swept over her she barely lifted herself for a few seconds before collapsing.

“Chloe, please let me handle this. I am going to have you transferred to Obstetrics, where no one knows you and you can have some privacy.”

She knew she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t leave even if she wanted to. The obstetrics ward … Pregnant woman and babies … Could she do that? Now? On the other hand Erin was right—it was a ward where no one would know her.

“Okay,” she assented, before closing her eyes, exhausted physically and emotionally. She felt Erin pull the blankets over her. “Thank you for everything,” she managed, right before sleep overtook her.

Chloe stirred, the pain in her abdomen still sharp and making her restless. She felt a hand sweep her hair from her face. Kate. She had told her best friend to go home but apparently she hadn’t listened.

Pain coursed through her as she tried in vain to find a comfortable position and a soft moan escaped her.

A hand fell onto her arm and she instantly knew that it was not Kate beside her. The hand was heavy and large and she recognized Tate’s touch. She didn’t open her eyes. She wasn’t ready to face him. She heard her call bell go off and Tate asking for a nurse.

The exchange was brief, and within five minutes Chloe felt some of the pain dissipate from her body—but not her heart.

“I know you are not sleeping, Chloe.”

Tate’s voice broke through her thoughts. She opened her eyes to meet his. Each of them was trying to decipher the other. He looked tired, with new shadowing along his face and a redness in his eyes that served to heighten the light green irises. Despite her need for him she felt overwhelmed by his presence.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

“Because I’ve watched you sleep,” he answered, as though the statement held no intimacy.

“No, I mean how did you know I was here?” she asked, not wanting to betray any of the information she had barely had time to digest.

“I’m on nights this week and saw you in the operating room.”

She grimaced at the thought of him seeing her exposed—not one she enjoyed.

“Is the morphine not enough? Do you need something else?” he asked, misreading her cue.

“No, I’m fine.” A complete overstatement, but she felt vulnerable and not ready for this conversation.

“You scared me.”

The honesty in his face and his statement humbled her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is there a reason you didn’t tell me?” His voice had quietened.

“What do you mean?” He was searching for an answer but she didn’t understand the question.

Tate stared at her as though he could learn the answer if he just looked hard enough. She looked back at him, equally searching for an answer. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell me about the pregnancy?”

He knew. She didn’t know how, but he did. He probably had known before she did. Just one more insult in what was already an untenable situation. He was asking her if he was the father of her baby. What must he think of her if he thought there might be more than one possibility?

She blinked hard, trying to calm herself against the ugliness she felt inside. When she opened her eyes he was still staring at her, waiting.

“Does it matter, Tate?” The hurt in her voice was apparent even to her own ears.

“Yes, it matters.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“It just does, Chloe.”

“Because if you were the father then, what? You would take pity on me? Feel guilty? But if you weren’t then everything people say about me must be right and you can walk away and count your blessings for your near miss? I’m sorry, Tate, but neither of those options works for me. I think you should go.”

“We’re not done, Chloe.”

She wanted to cry and tried hard to keep in her tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Be honest with yourself, Tate. We never started. I need you to go.”

“What if I want to stay, Chloe?”

“Then you should have stayed six weeks ago. Or at least listened to me when I tried to talk to you afterward. But you wanted nothing to do with me then, and you don’t get to change your mind now. I want you to leave.” She could hear the pleading in her voice but she didn’t care. She couldn’t do this—not now, when she had already depleted every physical and emotional resource she had.

“But the baby …?” His voice was hushed but still she heard the small crack that betrayed him.

“There is no baby,” she told them both, and the words hurt as much as anything she had felt. Tate blurred before her eyes and she couldn’t read him as tears formed. She watched him get up and walk away from her and felt both relieved and wounded by his departure.

She heard the curtains close and the sliding door of her intensive care room slide shut and she closed her eyes, willing the tears to stop. She couldn’t do this—not here.

She barely had time to process the sound of the guard rail going down, or the weight on her bed, before she felt herself being picked up as strongly, and yet as gently as possible, and held tightly within a strong embrace. She felt pain tear through her abdomen, but it was nothing compared to what was going on in her heart. She shouldn’t do this—she shouldn’t feel better in Tate’s arms. But she did.

Her complete loss of control over her life overwhelmed her and she gave in to the urge she had been fighting since she woke up. For some reason she knew she didn’t have to be brave right now—she didn’t need to put on the funny, reassuring front she had for Kate. Right now she could just hurt and it didn’t matter. She had nothing to lose with Tate; she had lost everything already.

She felt his grip tighten as the sobs began to rack through her body, each movement both bringing and taking away the pain. He brought his chin down to rest on her head while his hand stroked up and down her back.

“I didn’t know about the baby,” she confessed into his already soaked scrub top.

“It’ll be okay, Chloe. You are okay,” he murmured in reassurance.

“It’s not okay. How could I not have known about my own child?”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

No, it wouldn’t have. A child between them wouldn’t have changed Tate’s mind or his feelings toward her. “I didn’t deserve a baby.”

“You didn’t deserve any of this.”

“Didn’t I?” She had done the unthinkable. She had fallen in love and slept with her best friend’s ex, who the morning after had found her lacking. The only reason Tate was here now was because he felt sorry for her, but to be honest not more sorry than she felt for herself.

He pulled her gently away from his shoulder, reaching up to cradle her face in his hands. “No, Chloe, you didn’t.”

She wished she could believe him. She had never put much stock in karma before—you couldn’t when you spent your life treating people you were sure didn’t deserve what was happening to them. But now she wasn’t sure.

She felt fresh tears forming in her eyes at the pain of her thoughts and from staring into Tate’s eyes too much. He really looked as if he cared for her. If only that was the case.

She felt his lips press against the dampness of her cheek before she was once again tucked into his arms and held tightly. She didn’t know how long they stayed like that. She didn’t even remember him leaving. But when she woke he was gone.

Post-operative day two was excruciating. Everything felt like a struggle. First thing in the morning a nurse had come to help her “dangle’, which had basically turned into a torture exercise of being forced to sit upright with her legs dangling off the bed, maintaining her balance. She’d lasted for less than five minutes and then slept for the next three hours to recover. When she woke Kate was there, propped in a bedside chair reading a heavy hardcover text that almost completely covered her. She was comforted by her friend’s presence.

“Hey,” Chloe greeted her, watching as Kate’s focus shifted and she herself was assessed by the good surgeon.

“You look better,” Kate said reassuringly.

“That’s not saying much,” she replied, still having to work to keep her eyes open.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Kate asked tentatively.

She hadn’t thought about much in the last twenty-four hours, but what she had thought about, other than Tate and the loss of their baby, was what was she going to tell Kate?

Kate—her best friend, the person she had been closest with during the past decade. She couldn’t lie, but how much of the truth was too much? Especially when the explanation for how she had gotten to this day was unexplainable even to herself.

“I had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured.” Nothing had prepared her for what she saw in Kate’s face. She wasn’t even sure she had been that surprised.

“I didn’t realize you were in a relationship,” was all Kate managed after minutes of silence.

Beyond the words she could see the hurt in her friend’s eyes. The thought that Chloe had been keeping something from her was painful for Kate.