Tessa's Gift

“That’s great,” Tessa said, and he marveled at how genuine she sounded. “It looks pretty hard to assemble, though. Is your dad helping you put it together?”

Kyle’s father, Matt, laughed. “I can’t even glue together popsicle sticks, so I’m no help.”

Noah flicked his eyes up just long enough to see that the entire family seemed to be slightly more at ease as Tessa spoke to them. He continued reviewing the boy’s chart. The test results looked promising, and he felt a measure of relief. Kyle might be turning the corner before long.

“My dad once tried to put together a model airplane,” Tessa was saying. “I think he ended up using it for kindling one winter.”

There was more laughter, and something about the sound set Noah on edge.

“Kyle’s numbers are improving,” he said, interrupting the conversation. “This means the treatments are working. We’ll continue on this course.”

The mood shifted, and Noah felt the family’s momentary joy dissipate as swiftly as blowing out a match.

“For how long?” Sheila asked.

“We’ll continue the chemotherapy for a couple more months. The numbers in the next few weeks will determine how long the treatment progresses.”

“So...that’s good?” Matt asked.

“For now,” Noah said as he looked back at the iPad. “As I said, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Someone cleared their throat, but he ignored it. Then, a second time. Noah glanced up and realized it had been Tessa who made the sound. She was staring at him, her eyes conveying some sort of message he couldn’t read. He stared back at her, uncertain why she was looking at him in that way. After a few awkward moments, she turned back to Kyle and his parents.

“I’m sure what Dr. Brennan means is that this is good news. The treatments are working. That’s why we will continue doing what we’re doing, in order to help Kyle obtain full remission from the disease.”

Noah frowned. “I can’t make any promises to that end.”

Tessa’s head whipped around, and she gave him that sharp gaze once more. He noticed that Kyle’s parents were glancing back and forth between him and Tessa. He didn’t much like it.

“Does that mean I’m not going to get better?” Kyle piped up.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that you do,” Noah stated, his tone firm.

“Dr. Brennan, could I have a private word with you?” Tessa asked, her tone sweet but unyielding.

Noah made an effort not to let his irritation show. What in the world did she want now?

“Of course,” he agreed, attempting to sound reasonable. Tessa turned to the family.

“Would you excuse us for a moment?”

She stood and headed from the room as he hurried to keep pace with her clipped strides. She didn’t stop walking until they were out in the hall and several feet away from the room, well out of earshot from Kyle and his parents.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I don’t understand the question,” he said.

“Those people are facing the most horrific scenario they can imagine, the possible death of their son, and you are treating them no differently than if their child has a common cold!”

Noah blinked once, then twice, before his anger began to rise.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” she muttered in a low tone, keeping her voice down. Noah was vaguely aware that they were standing in an alcove of the hallway—not in direct sight and hearing of others but close enough for someone to observe their exchange.

“Can you remind me again, Ms. Worth, what it was you were hired to do here?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.

“Marketing. Fund-raising. Publicity. Goodwill. Not diagnosis. Not medicine. Certainly not cancer treatment. That is my job,” he reminded.

Her eyes were shining with rage, deepening them to a beautiful caramel brown. But he was angry, too, and determined not to be distracted.

“That’s not the only part of your job,” she countered. “You’re also supposed to support these people, treat them with compassion.”

“I’m compassionate,” he argued and then cringed at the defensiveness of his tone. He did not need to prove himself to this woman.

“Not from what I can see,” she fired back, and the passion of her words stirred something deep inside him. When was the last time he’d encountered such fervor? When was the last time he had ever felt such fire in himself? Not for years. Not since before Ginny had started experiencing symptoms... He shifted the watch on his wrist, righting it so the face stared up at him.

“That little boy is terrified,” she continued. “So are his parents. And you did nothing to reassure them.”

He tensed. Passion was one thing, but he would not let her presume to know his job. “I don’t make false promises,” he replied, his voice cold in contrast to the heat in hers. “Hope does more harm than the cancer itself.”

She opened her mouth, presumably to contradict him, but he forged ahead, rattled by her judgment of him and his methods.

“Do you know what hope is, Ms. Worth? It’s a disease. It leads you along, blinds you to reality and leaves you unprepared for death. When you cling to hope, it eats away at you, one minute at a time, a more silent killer than the leukemia ever will be. Because it destroys you without evidence. It misdirects, making you think there is a chance that life will one day be the same, that you can go back to normal. But there is no normal life anymore. There is no chance of that.”

Noah wasn’t sure at what point in his speech he’d stopped referring to his patients and began speaking of himself, but he kept going, a flood of angry words that he could not seem to stop. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to get angry, to rail against the forces beyond his control. But this woman and her sudden intrusion into his day had worn away at the defenses he normally kept in place.

“You can do everything right—treatments, protocols, rules—but all it takes is one mistake, a single slipup, and the disease rushes in, more ravenous than before. And where is hope when that happens? It abandons you.” He clenched his hands around the tablet he still held, trying to keep his fingers from shaking with rage. “Do not mistake compassion with false guarantees. I do not lie to my patients. They should be prepared for every scenario.”

A memory of Ginny surfaced, in the last days before the disease had taken her, her face chalky, purplish-red bruises beneath her faded green eyes. She had looked at him, almost accusingly. He had promised her she would get better, that she’d be running and playing again before she knew it.

Within the month, she was dead.

His voice was hoarse with the effort of keeping back the tears and resisting a grief so deep and sharp that it felt as if his heart had been pierced. “Hope is fine for fairy tales, but it has no place here, in these halls,” he rasped out.

And then he turned away, oblivious to the stares he sensed around them, and headed for his office, where he could close the door and remind himself that he was no longer hope’s victim. Because fate had already taken everything that mattered to him, and now, there was nothing left for it to claim.

CHAPTER THREE (#ue965e9b2-1586-55d6-970e-6dd21db4dda7)

RUFUS STRAINED ON his leash as Tessa rang the doorbell of her parents’ Findlay Roads home. Though her mom and dad had a penthouse apartment in Washington, DC, they had purchased a second home in town a couple of years ago. Her father divided his time between the Delphine, the local resort he owned, and his financial investment firm in the city.

Tessa liked having more family nearby. For years after her grandmother died, she was the only one who called Findlay Roads home. But then after her sister Harper lost her job as a restaurant critic, she’d moved in with Tessa until she got back on her feet. Now, Harper was happily married to local restaurateur Connor Callahan, and had adopted Connor’s daughter, Molly. She and Connor had recently celebrated the birth of their first child together. Little Grace was a beautiful combination of Connor’s green eyes and Harper’s blond hair, and Tessa was every bit as enamored with her as she was with her other two nieces.

Tessa’s parents still spent a lot of their time in the city, but now that they owned this house, they were making more and more trips to Findlay Roads. Only her oldest sister, Paige, and her husband and daughter still lived exclusively in DC. Tessa was hoping that might change at some point. For one thing, she was extremely close to her niece Zoe, Paige’s daughter, and she’d love the opportunity to see the six-year-old more often.

Rufus whined impatiently. “Rufus, behave,” she warned him. She probably should have left Rufus at home. But she couldn’t stand the thought of making him stay by himself after she’d spent the whole day away at work. Not to mention that after spending so many hours with Dr. Noah Brennan, she needed Rufus to lower her stress level.