boy nodded and after a few minutes, Naomi reassuringly patted his hand and stepped back. After they’d reviewed Tristan’s orders, they headed down to the nurses’ station.
“Emily Brown is coming out of the O.R. in fifteen minutes,” the unit clerk informed them.
“I’ll stay until she’s settled in,” Naomi said.
Rick glanced at his watch, not surprised to see it was well after midnight. “Naomi, you can’t. You really need to go home and get some sleep. You’re on call tomorrow night, aren’t you?”
She nodded, fatigue evident on her face. “Yeah, I’m covering for Dirk. Another half-hour isn’t going to matter one way or the other. I want to see her before I go home.”
Suspecting more arguments would be useless, he gave up. He would have offered to take her call shift, but had a bad feeling he was going to be up most of the night as it was.
He helped himself to a cup of coffee and then headed down to bed fourteen, where Emily was due to be placed. The CT team had brought her out quicker than the promised fifteen minutes and he stood beside Naomi, watching as they settled Emily.
The young girl was stable, her heart was doing as well as could be expected. All they could do now was to wait and see.
“Go home, Naomi,” Rick said in a low tone. “I’ll be here with her all night.”
“I know.” She flashed a small smile and he was struck by how beautiful she truly was. His chest squeezed tight. “Promise you’ll call if you need anything.”
“I will.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat as she turned and walked away, her shoulders slumped beneath the weight of her guilt.
He stood watching her leave, wishing she didn’t have to go. He liked working with her. Scary, considering he’d revealed more of himself to Naomi than he had to anyone else over the past two years, since he’d lost his wife and two-year-old daughter.
He shook his head. Since Gabrielle and Sarah had died, he’d kept his emotions in deep freeze. He’d stayed in peds because starting over in another specialty hadn’t appealed to him, but he kept himself emotionally isolated from everyone. It had been the only way he’d been able to survive.
Emily’s sweet face reminded him painfully of his daughter’s. Innocent Sarah, far too young to die. He blocked the image the best he could as he went to work.
But somehow he couldn’t find his usual, comfortable emotional distance. His feelings were already involved.
With Emily.
And especially with Naomi.
CHAPTER THREE
NAOMI tried to sleep in the following morning, especially since she was off work until five o’clock when it would be time for her to take over her call shift.
But she woke up every hour, starting at seven in the morning, and finally gave up at ten. She dragged herself out of bed, knowing there was no way she’d manage to get any rest until she went back to the hospital to follow up on her trauma admissions from the night before.
Especially Emily. And Tristan. Had their parents survived the crash? She hoped there was someone close to them who could come and support them during this time of crisis.
After taking a quick shower, she dried her hair, appreciating the ease of her simple, chin-length bob. She didn’t use much make-up, especially when she was only going to be on call later anyway. She pulled on a pair of trim black trousers and an electric-blue blouse topped with her white lab coat. Outside, the sun was shining brightly, no sign of the heavy fog from the night before that had caused such devastation after the baseball game.
Her house wasn’t far from Children’s Memorial Hospital. For practical reasons she preferred to live close to the hospital. After Andrew had left, she’d kept the house as she’d paid most of the mortgage anyway. He hadn’t argued, happy to take the cash buyout, which hadn’t been a surprise considering how hard he’d tried to convince her they’d needed to move to a bigger and better place outside the city limits.
Reminders of her ex-husband made her frown. She’d been devastated at losing their baby, and when Andrew had moved out during one of her extended call shifts, she’d been shocked. How could he have been so cold? So callous?
When she’d tried to talk to him, he’d told her he’d been thinking of leaving her anyway, because of her erratic schedule and long hours. The discovery of her infertility had convinced him there was no hope for them. He hadn’t wanted to go through the stress and agony all over again.
As much as she’d tried to tell herself she was obviously better off without him, she had never felt so lonely.
Naomi pulled into the designated private parking garage reserved for physicians and shook off thoughts of Andrew as she strode into the hospital. She didn’t bother with the elevator but took the stairs to the third-floor pediatric intensive care unit.
Rick was standing at the main desk when she walked in and he glanced at the clock with a puzzled frown. “You’re a little early, aren’t you?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, feeling self-conscious after the way she’d gotten so emotional on him last night. “How are things going?”
“So far, good.” Rick’s gaze slid from hers and her gut clenched, knowing he was holding something back. With unspoken agreement, they walked down the hall towards the physician conference room.
“Emily? How’s Emily doing?”
Rick didn’t say anything but steered her toward the conference room, which for once was empty of residents. He turned to face her, his expression grim. “She had a rough night, Naomi. They’ve decided to place her on the heart transplant list.”
“What?” Shocked, she could only stare at him. “She needs a new heart? How? Why?”
He nodded. “They took her back to surgery this morning, because she’d continued to bleed. During the surgery they decided they didn’t have any choice but to put her on a Heartmate.”
A Heartmate was an external device that took over the work of the heart. It was often used as a bridge to a transplant. But pediatric organs were rarely available. It was possible that Emily would be forced to live much of her life on the device. If she could manage to avoid a life-threatening infection, that was.
“Poor Emily.” She had to blink back tears. “Does her family know? Tristan?”
“Her parents are patients at Trinity Medical Center, but the nurses in the ICU over there brought Emily’s mother over during the night. Emily’s father was too sick to be moved.”
The poor family. How awful to be hospitalized in different places. Especially when Emily’s life hung in the balance. “If she dies, it’s my fault.”
Rick sighed and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Naomi, don’t do this to yourself. Emily was crushed by a car. If she dies, it’s not your fault.”
Yes, it would be her fault, but there was no point in arguing. The
