The Doctor's Recovery

He didn’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to be the patient. She didn’t make mistakes that could cost her her life or those of her best friends. Those pinpricks turned her stomach inside out, stealing her breath. If they’d just let her leave, then perhaps it wasn’t such a big mistake. And her life could return to normal like she wanted. Why did her old life make her hyperventilate now? She loved the life she’d built with her father.

Wyatt tilted his head and studied her. “Are you afraid to be here?”

“Of course I don’t want to be here.” Not with Wyatt close enough to touch, but so far out of her reach. But that was all wrong. She wanted discharge papers, her old life back more than she’d ever wanted Wyatt. She pressed her fist into the bed. “You do know what happens in places like this.”

“Yes, I know what happens in hospitals.” The softness in his voice slid into his gaze, tempering the cool sleet color. “We save lives.”

“Or not.” She scowled at the fragile crack in her voice and blamed Wyatt for making her weak.

Wyatt walked around to her side and lifted his arm toward her.

Everything in Mia stilled. The air in her lungs, her pulse, all of her waited and wished.

He made a midcourse correction to adjust her IV line, denying her his touch. “I’m really sorry about your dad.”

Mia buried her arm under the covers. She didn’t need his support. She’d never needed that. She’d handle her grief like she handled everything else: on her own terms. Besides, it was his fault she was there. Not entirely, she admitted, but she needed someone to blame to keep her sanity. Otherwise she might crumble beneath the ramifications of her accident. “Why are you here?”

“I work downstairs in the ER.”

“I know that.” She tugged on the blankets, refusing to look at him. “Why are you up here?”

“My mother is down the hall, recovering from a second hip replacement.”

That brought her focus to him. “I’m not your mother.”

“I’ve noticed.” The laughter in his voice melted into his smile.

And ping-ponged something warm through her like the first sip of homemade hot chocolate. She remembered that comforting feeling from their time together. But she hadn’t missed him. She’d chosen to leave and live her life. “Why are you in my room specifically? I’m not your patient.” His name wasn’t on her information board. She was thankful for that, wasn’t she?

“I can’t check up on a friend?” he asked.

“Is that what we are?”

“Unless you prefer another definition for our relationship.”

They had no relationship. Wasn’t that the point? “We haven’t spoken in twenty-six months.”

“That’s rather exact,” he said.

“Yet true,” she said.

“I promised Eddy I’d check on you.”

“Eddy was here?” Relief rushed through her. Nothing had happened to Eddy. Her friend hadn’t suffered because of her error.

“Eddy, Frank and Shane have all been here.” His eyebrows pulled together, highlighting his perplexed voice. “Your crew still follows wherever you lead.”

“They work with me because they want to,” she said. Unlike Wyatt, who’d never follow. He’d wanted to be with her, too, at one time. But only on his terms. And those were terms she would never accept. She crammed her pillow behind her head. “Well, you’ve checked up on me. Dr. Hensen told me to sleep and let my body heal. Could you dim the lights on your way out?”

“I’ll be back.” There was a hint of warning in his tone.

With any luck, she’d be asleep. Mia closed her eyes, shutting him out and severing her awareness of him as anything more than a doctor. Wyatt Reid was a doctor first and always, same as she was a filmmaker first and always.

“If you need me, the nurses know how to find me,” he added before the lights dimmed and silence rushed through the room.

Mia wanted to stuff the pillow over her face and scream. That would no doubt get her another specialist for her care team and a psychological evaluation. There had to be at least ten hospitals in San Francisco, and she’d ended up at the one where Wyatt Reid worked. Not even fate could’ve conjured that twist.

CHAPTER TWO (#u8e72148e-2fd7-5363-b9b5-51187ea265cb)

THE DOOR TO Mia’s room clicked shut, soft and quiet, despite Wyatt’s tight grip on the steel handle. Slamming the door might’ve satisfied him, but he doubted that would be enough to disrupt Mia’s determination to greet her father in the afterlife. Stubborn woman couldn’t see past her current deadline. She’d almost died. Died.

Yet she railed at him for admitting her as if the entire incident was his fault. As if he prevented her from finishing her precious film. Had she learned nothing from her father’s death? She’d brushed off his condolences about her dad like a decade-long chain-smoker given a pamphlet on how to quit.

Still he’d treat her like any other patient, the same as he’d declined to make an exception for his mother. He refused to lose his objectivity only to have them suffer for his misstep. Emotional lockdown was the only prudent course of action. Not that he had to worry with his mom. However, Mia triggered something inside him, something that rattled that lock and disturbed his composure. He simply had to regulate his neurological response to Mia with more precision and resist any urge to be more than a doctor who knew what she needed even if she didn’t. It was past time Mia slowed down, reassessed and grieved.

Of course, knowing what was best for someone didn’t guarantee the person’s agreement or cooperation. That much he learned every day with his mother. He seemed to be surrounded by difficult women. Good thing he’d never walked away from a challenge.

Wyatt slowed at the nurses’ station and met Nettie’s gaze, waiting for the charge nurse’s signal. Wyatt believed in gathering as much information as possible before any confrontation, and when it came to his mother, he’d gather information from any source willing to release it. Nettie smiled. Her thumbs-up allowed the breath he’d been holding to slip out.

His mother’s references to her final days had quadrupled since her first hip surgery eight weeks ago. It’d gotten so bad, her parting line most evenings had been: you’ll need to look for me in the morgue tomorrow if you wish to visit me. After her second hip surgery, she’d revised her morgue commentary and now suggested suitable places to scatter her ashes depending on the season she’d arbitrarily determined would be her last. Fortunately, his mother hadn’t referenced pushing up daisies in the last three days, and every signal from the charge nurse had been positive.

Wyatt knocked on his mom’s door and entered the room. His mother wore her receiving pajamas, the ones with roses and vines that she’d deemed appropriate attire for visitors. That made three days in a row. Wyatt frowned as his mother muttered. Her face was pressed close enough to her notepad screen that her nose would leave an imprint. Even with her glasses on, the strain could trigger another seizure. He’d need to talk to her primary care physician about her seizure medications after her discharge.

“Mom.” He kissed her wilted cheek and imagined she leaned in for his greeting like she’d used to when he was a clumsy kid climbing onto her lap for a good-night hug. But mother and son had stopped leaning on each other years ago. He shoved his useless childhood memories aside and nudged her notepad lower before enlarging the image on her screen with his fingers. One quick glance confirmed the photographs that absorbed all of her attention. He’d forwarded that latest set of pictures he’d taken in her greenhouse to her email account last night.

“Well, that’s much better.” Her focus remained fixed on her screen, but appreciation tinged her voice.

While his mother continued to check the vitals on her precious plants, he took an inventory of her, searching for anything the medical team might’ve missed like last time: new bruises on her arms, involuntary winces of pain, signs of infection. Anything that might signal another unexpected decline.

“The begonia needs to be repotted before the weekend.” She flipped through several more photographs. “The snapdragon seedlings need more light.” She glanced at the window, her eyebrows pulling in behind her round glasses at the fog swirling against the pane. “Bring them into the house and put them under the lights for the next few days.”

“We already put the primrose seeds under the house lights,” he reminded her. Newborns with jaundice belonged under special lights. Preemies required such meticulous care and attention, not plants. But that wasn’t an argument he intended to revisit with his mother. Her greenhouse was a sacred place; everything inside those glassed walls was her family now.

She flicked her hand back and forth as if sweeping away his words like spilled soil. “The pots aren’t too big. They can share the space.”

If only everything in life was so easy and simple. Wyatt and his mother struggled to share the same space.

“You could buy a new light.” She lifted her gaze above her oversize glasses.

No way. He wasn’t adding another UV light. Soon enough the DEA would be knocking down the door to bust him for growing illegal substances, as he had too many lights going now. Either that or the neighbors were convinced he had a deep-seated fear of the dark. The lights matched his night-shift schedule: on all night, off in the morning. With his work schedule changing to days, he’d have to change the plants’ schedule, too. His mother preferred consistency, but it was the best he could do to keep everything alive. In another time, she’d concentrated on her family with the same meticulous consideration. Now her devotion belonged to her plants and the nursery she’d built in her backyard. Not that he wanted her fawning over him as if he was one of her struggling plants. “I’ll make it work.”

She smiled and pulled up another photograph. “The orchid has taken to the new food mixture. There’s happiness in the blooms now.”

But not in his mother. He hadn’t seen real joy in his mother in over five years, long before his brother’s unexpected death. He remembered the lightness in her laughter and happiness on her face when his father would come home and dance her to her seat at the dinner table every night. He’d even witnessed the same dance, the steps slower and more cautious, when he’d returned home from college, months before cancer stole his father and dimmed his mother’s light. Still there’d been moments after the grief had settled and the memories no longer stung. Then came Trent, when love had proved to be a poor antidote to his brother’s inner turmoil and anguish and nothing had slowed his downward spiral. Then not even Wyatt could reignite any sort of happiness in his mother.

He cracked his knuckles. The pop realigned his bones and his focus. He hadn’t slammed the door to Mia’s room, but he could slam the door on memory lane and lock it.

Besides, he needed his mother to concentrate on her recovery and talk about her living situation after room 326 on the transitional care floor at Bay Water Medical. After her discharge, all of his mother’s love could return to her flowers. He only cared that she was safe when she left the hospital. That was his duty as her son. He had her love as a child, that was enough. Something scraped across his insides like a dull razor, leaving deep gouges in its wake. He rubbed his chest and discarded the phantom ache. “Your neighbor in the Craftsman brought over his cactus last night. It’s dead.”