the waiting area at busy times, you ran the risk of being confronted by angry people who didn’t like the fact that they had to wait while more urgent cases were prioritised. If Helena was right, this was going to be a very busy day. Which made sense, because they were the closest hospital to where the parade was happening and the participants and spectators would number in the tens of thousands.
Had Charles taken the boys to see the parade?
Was that why he hadn’t had the time to answer her text message yet?
Grace’s hand touched the phone that was clipped to the waistband of her scrub trousers but she resisted the urge to bring the screen to life and check that she hadn’t missed a message.
She wasn’t some love-crazed teenager who was holding her breath to hear from a boy.
She’d never been that girl. Had never dated a boy that had had that much of an impact on her. She’d been confident in her life choices and her focus on her study and the career she wanted more than anything.
But she’d turned into that girl, hadn’t she? After that first night with Charles Davenport. The waiting for that message or call. The excitement that had morphed into anxiety and then crushing disappointment and heartbreak.
And humiliation...
Grace dropped her hand. They were a long way from being teenagers now. Charles was a busy man. Quite apart from his job, he was a hands-on father with two small boys. History was not about to repeat itself. Charles understood how badly he had treated her by ignoring her last time. He had apologised for it, even. There was no way he would do that again.
And she was stronger. He’d told her that. He’d made her believe it was true.
Walking past the cast room, Grace could see an elderly woman having a broken wrist plastered. There were people in the minor surgery area, too, with another elderly patient who looked like he was having a skin flap replaced. And then she was walking past the small rooms, their doors open and the interiors empty, but that couldn’t stop a memory of the first time she had walked past one of them. When she’d seen those two small faces peering out and she had met Cameron and Max.
It couldn’t stop the tight squeeze on her heart as she remembered falling in love with Max when he’d smiled at her and thanked her for fixing his truck and then cuddled up against her. He was more cuddly than his brother but she loved Cameron just as much now.
And their father?
Oh... Grace paused for a moment to grab a cup of water from the cooler before she pushed through the double doors into the coal face of the ER.
It hadn’t been love at first sight with Charles.
But it had been love at first night.
That was why she’d been so nervous about working with him again. He’d surprised her by calling her that night about the dog-sitting possibility by revealing that he’d been thinking about her.
And he’d made her laugh. Made her drop her guard a little?
She’d realised soon after that that the connection was still there. The way he’d looked at her that day at the park—as if he really wanted to hear her story.
As if he really cared.
Oh, and that kiss. In that wreck of a kitchen still redolent with the smells of grilled cheese and freshly baked cookies. Even now, Grace could remember the fear that had stepped in when he’d been about to touch her breast. As though the lumpy scars beneath her clothing had suddenly been flashing like neon signs.
Crumpling the empty polystyrene cup, she dropped it into the bin beside the cooler, catching her bottom lip between her teeth as if she wanted to hide a smile.
They hadn’t mattered last night, those scars. She’d barely been aware of them herself...
She was back in the department now and she could see a new patient being wheeled into Resus.
So many patients came and went from that intensive diagnostic and treatment area but some were so much more memorable than others.
Like the first patient she had ever dealt with here. That badly injured cyclist who’d been a casualty of the power cut when the traffic lights had gone out. And the frozen baby that she and Charles had miraculously brought back to life. Yep... Grace would never forget that one.
That time with just the two of them when it had seemed as if time had been somehow rewound and that there was nothing standing between herself and Charles. No social differences that had put them on separate planets all those years ago. No past history of partners who had been loved and lost. No barriers apart from the defensive walls they had both constructed and maybe that had been the moment when Grace had believed there might be a way through those barriers.
She’d been right. And Helena had been right in noticing that there was something different about her today.
The only thing that could have made her even happier would be to feel the vibration against her waistband that would advertise an incoming text message.
But it didn’t happen. Case after case took her attention during the next few hours. An asthmatic child who had forgotten his inhaler in the excitement of heading to watch the parade and suffered an attack that meant an urgent trip to the nearest ER. A man who’d had his foot stepped on by a horse. A woman who’d been caught up in the crowd when the first pains of her miscarriage had struck.
Case after case and the time flew by and Grace focused on each and every case as if it was the only thing that mattered. To stop herself checking her phone? It was well past lunchtime when she finally took a break in a deserted staffroom and sat down with a cup of coffee and could no longer ignore the weight and shape of her phone. No way to avoid glancing at it. At a blank screen that had no new messages or missed calls flagged.
Anxiety crept in as she stared at that blank screen. Was Charles sick or injured or had something happened to one of the twins? She could forgive this silence if that was the case but it would have to be something major like that because to treat her like this again when he knew how it would make her feel was...well, it was unforgiveable. All he’d had to do was send a simple message. A stupid smiley face would have been enough. Surely he would understand that every minute of continuing silence would feel like hours? That hours would actually start to feel like days?
But if something major like that had happened, she would have heard about it. Like she’d heard about Miranda being caught up in that tunnel collapse. A thread of anger took over from anxiety. How could she have allowed herself to get into a position where everything she had worked so hard for was under threat? She had come to New York to start a new life. To move on from so much loss. The loss of her marriage. The loss of the family she’d dreamed of having. The loss of feeling desirable, even.
Charles had given her a glimpse of a future that could have filled all those empty places in her soul.
This silence felt like a warning shot that it was no more than an illusion.
That the extraordinary happiness she had brought to work with her was no more than a puff of breath on an icy morning. The kind she had been making as she’d walked to Manhattan Mercy this morning in a haze of happiness after last night.
Last night?
It was beginning to feel
