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“Only the same twinge in my thigh that keeps me from taking too many risks these days,” Eddy said.
Too bad Mia didn’t have a similar internal monitor to keep her safe.
Eddy tipped his chin toward Wyatt. “You sure you can’t treat Mia upstairs, too? I owe my life to you.”
“We got lucky that day.” And he intended to continue being lucky. Despite what he’d told Eddy, Mia was far from in the clear. Yet living was the only viable option for Mia, as well. He walked toward the double doors and looked back at Eddy. “She’ll have a skilled team taking over her care, but I’ll check on her.”
Eddy’s mop of curls bounced. “Wait till I tell Frank and Shane that you have our girl.”
“Once she’s stable, I move her out of my care.” And out of my life. Wyatt shrugged at the empty hall. Eddy had already escaped into the waiting area to find his friends.
Mia Fiore had arrived as a patient, and she’d leave as one. Their relationship was nothing more than doctor and patient. They’d set that status two years ago in Africa after one night of confessions and secrets revealed. A night that had ended with a kiss that had offered acceptance and hope and promised something more. But sunrise had clarified what the darkness had concealed. The truth: their kiss had been nothing more for Mia than an unspoken goodbye. Until tonight, he hadn’t seen or talked to Mia Fiore in several years. If he’d thought about her more than once over the last twenty-four months, he’d never confess.
Wyatt squeezed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, rushing the past into place beneath his stethoscope and medical degree.
Mia needed the doctor now. The one who saved lives with methodical care and single-minded focus. Besides, once he transferred Mia out of the ER, she’d no longer be his concern.
* * *
MIA GLARED AT the TV bolted to the wall across from her hospital bed and the exuberant talk show host with her wide smile and unfiltered laugh filling the flat screen. That same laugh had woken Mia yesterday afternoon like an abrasive alarm clock. The first night, she’d slept through cinching blood pressure cuffs, needle pricks for IV lines and seven hours in the hyperbaric chamber. She hadn’t been as fortunate last night.
Sleep had come in sporadic snippets. Mia preferred the nighttime cacophony of insect songs in the rain forest to the beeps of monitors and stat pages for doctors. The light of a full moon never startled her quite like the hall light streaming across her face when the nurses arrived to draw blood or redress her wounds.
She’d always pushed herself to the limit when she was awake to give her body no reason to avoid sleep. Now pain disrupted her dreams. But awake she forgot to breathe through the intense muscle spasms that locked her shoulder inside its socket. Awake she forgot and tried to massage her knotted thigh muscles and only drove those invisible pins and needles deeper into her bones. Her nerves misfired like arcs from live wires brushing against each other, and her body never deflected the shock.
Miscommunication surrounded her like that time Eddy and Mia flew into Grenada in the Caribbean Sea and the rest of the crew landed in Granada, Spain. They’d laughed about that mishap, sipped piña coladas on the beach and waited for the crew’s arrival. The urge to laugh failed to overtake Mia now.
An absentminded rap on her door interrupted the TV show’s relationship expert’s monologue about confidence in the workplace and beyond. Dr. Hensen pumped exactly two drops of antibacterial gel into his hands from the container on the wall by her bathroom. Six steps brought him to her bedside. He moved with precision, as if he preserved his physical energy for the cell-sized version of the doctor who typed away wildly inside his brain. She suspected Dr. Hensen was a certifiable genius who had graduated medical school at the age of sixteen. Since she’d met him yesterday, she’d wanted to know if he could legally consume alcohol.
Mia muted the volume on the TV as the relationship expert exclaimed, “Fake it until you make it, ladies.”
If only Mia had brushed and braided her hair. If she looked put together, Dr. Hensen might believe she was. She nodded, as that also improved confidence, according to her new TV advice expert. She was confident that her doctor would see his way to sign her discharge papers.
She’d risked two questions yesterday while Dr. Hensen examined her, and he’d looked as if she’d interrupted his latest theory on DNA regeneration. Today she waited for him to finish. He removed his glasses and pulled back as if adjusting the viewing lens on his microscope before inspecting the deepest part of her cut near her ankle. She had no explanation for slicing her right shin open in a ten-inch jagged arc.
He covered her leg wound and applied the same scrutiny to her arm. The memory of her dive knife flaying her wet suit and skin open from wrist to elbow came in quick spurts like ten-second sound bites scattered throughout a nighttime newscast.
Finally, Dr. Hensen peeled off his latex gloves and blinked three times as if slowing his brain.
Mia launched into the silence. “It’s been almost forty-eight hours since the accident. Today seems like a good day for stitches.” She smiled to cover her flinch and hoped the good doctor dismissed the wince in her voice. The throb from his deft prodding pulsed through her entire arm, goading her to press the pain medication pump on her IV.
He repositioned the bandage on her arm, tugging in increments until satisfied. “The paresthesia has subsided in all extremities?”
Mia paused to translate Dr. Hensen’s medical textbook speech. “After the hyperbaric chamber this morning, I moved my entire right side.” She skipped over the nerve pain and continued numbness that absorbed most of her skin, restricting a full range of movement. But she was better than yesterday. Certainly, that counted for something. “If you won’t close my cuts, then can we add more sessions in the chamber?”
Dr. Hensen patted her shoulder, the motion awkward as if he’d closed the textbook, yet she found no comfort in the fit of his bedside manner. “The body heals at its own pace, Mia. We must respect that.”
“But the chamber helped me move today.” She swallowed, pushing the panic down her throat. Her cuts needed to be stitched because normal patients suffered through sutures, then got discharged. Routine patients received discharge papers. There was nothing routine about another night in the hospital. Unease skimmed over her, leaving a sticky chill across her skin.
“You’ll continue daily sessions in the hyperbaric chamber and physical therapy. We’ll need to keep monitoring you for infection.”
“But you won’t stitch it all up?”
“Lacerations sustained in a marine environment are susceptible to uncommon pathogens. There is a serious risk for infection in extremity trauma such as yours.” Dr. Hensen added another stiff pat on her shoulder, once again stepping out of his textbook. Compassion softened his voice. “Sutures won’t get you discharged.”
Her skin absorbed that unease, kicking her pulse into overdrive. How would she convince her Bay Water Medical team she was ready to leave?
The information dry-erase board across from her bed listed today’s wound care nurse: Kellie K. Her hyperbaric physician: Dr. West. Her physical therapist: Robyn. Her team’s lead: Dr. Hensen along with a handful more support staff. The hospital employees overseeing her care outnumbered her documentary film crew by three to one. As if she was a critical patient.
If she was critical, she’d have to admit the severity of her injuries, and that meant admitting she’d made several crucial dive mistakes. Those phantom pins and needles pierced through her stomach, letting the dread and distress leak in. Her father had died from his mistakes.
But she’d promised her dad she’d honor each of his final wishes. She’d always coveted her father’s love, and that meant she’d take over the Fiore Films business, continue his life’s work and not fail him. You always lacked discipline and focus, Mia. But now you can make me proud. She didn’t have time to debate her character with her father’s ghost. She had one too many open wounds to contend with now.
“So I’m supposed to just lie here and do nothing? Then lie in the chamber and do nothing again?” She’d only ever been a visitor at the hospital. She’d never been the patient waiting on her own visitors. “And just keep on doing nothing.”
“Your body needs rest to facilitate healing. It may seem like nothing, but restoration of injured tissue is a complex process.” Dr. Hensen looked at her, his smile a small twitch. “Healing is quite an exhaustive process for the body.”
“But I have an actual job.” She clutched Dr. Hensen’s arm, holding him in place. The startled look behind his round glasses hinted at his retreat back inside his mental textbook. Mia continued, “And an important deadline to meet.”
A brisk knock and sure footsteps preceded the order from a familiar voice. “Right now, your only job is to heal.”
Dr. Hensen tugged his arm free and darted toward Wyatt Reid. Relief coated Dr. Hensen’s voice and slid into his extended handshake with Wyatt. “Nice to see that they let you out of the ER, Dr. Reid. We could certainly benefit from your skills up here.” He pushed on his glasses and glanced at Mia. “I agree with my colleague, Mia. You need to concentrate on your recovery. Don’t fight the process. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Mia nodded. This was so not how she’d envisioned her first meeting with Wyatt. She excluded their ER encounter, as her hallucinations and her reality had collided and become indecipherable throughout the night.
But there was nothing imaginary about Wyatt now from his navy scrubs to slate eyes to his hair still long enough to run her fingers through and rearrange. That was all wrong. Confusion must be a side effect of her pain meds. The only running she intended to do was out of the hospital and away from Wyatt. The blood pressure cuff squeezed her arm as if on cue to censure any thoughts about leaving.
An IV line and monitors tethered her to a hospital bed. That she couldn’t tether the giant moths that escaped her stomach and fluttered through her chest annoyed her. Why hadn’t she prepared for this better? Of course, seeing Dr. Wyatt Reid again had never been on her schedule. Neither had an extended stay in the hospital.
She held on to her smile until Dr. Hensen closed her door before glaring at Wyatt. “You didn’t have to admit me. You could’ve treated my wounds and sent me home with Eddy.”
“Should I have sent you home when you passed out in the ER? Or after the hyperbaric chamber when you passed out again?” He moved to the foot of her bed and stared at her. “And the blood loss? Was I supposed to give two CCs of blood to Eddy to pump into you that evening?”
The logic in his questions and composure in his tone grated on her. That something inside her sighed at his presence shoved her into the irrational. “I have a job.”
“So do I.” He gripped the bed frame and leaned forward, fully prepared to take her on. “I took a Hippocratic oath to save lives, including yours.”
An oath that he lived and breathed. Always. Just like she lived for her job. She tipped her chin up and held his gaze. “I cannot miss my deadline.”
“It can wait.”
“Easy for you to say,” she said. “You’re walking around, doing your job just fine like always.”
“You’ll be back doing your job soon enough.”
“Not if I miss this deadline.”
“They’ll understand.”
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.”
