be an issue between you? I mean, are you going to be able to work with him? He’s one of our finest doctors and if you can’t get along with him, we’ll have to reconsider your contract, maybe place you in another unit or something.”
“Oh, no. I’ll be fine. I’ll be nothing except professional with him. I’m certain he’ll be cordial, as well.” Work had always come first with him. His career, his work, saving lives had always come before her.
“If you’re certain.” Liz jerked the curtain back as the last gesture of room readiness. “I will trust you to let me know if that changes.”
“I will. I appreciate it.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her scrubs. She was an adult, and she would behave like one. Chase would probably just ignore her, anyway. Her brother had told her he’d been dating other women, many other women, so she was probably nothing but a blip on his radar at this point. “Now, what else do we have to do? I need to keep busy.” Keeping her hands busy kept her mind busy and prevented her thoughts from taking her down the rough road of her past and the never-ending trail of what-ifs and if-onlys.
“There’ll be plenty to keep you occupied here. This isn’t a big hospital, but it sure is a busy one. As you know, we’re right off the interstate, so we have trauma on a daily basis.” Liz led the way to the nurses’ station and Emily followed, eager to get on with her orientation. “If trauma’s not your bag now, by the end of your assignment it certainly will be.
CHASE RETURNED TO the ER, kept his pace slow, his thoughts on his work and tried to remain calm, despite the churning in his gut. But the second he saw Emily take a seat at the nurses’ station, his nerves shot into overdrive. What the hell was she doing here? In his ER? Not that it was really his ER, but it was his by default, since she’d left it to pursue a travel-nursing stint.
She’d packed up her apartment, stuffed everything in a storage unit and driven away, not caring that he’d suffered in a way she couldn’t imagine. Had she blamed him? He didn’t know because she’d never said, but he damned sure blamed himself for not protecting her and for not being what she’d needed. Whatever that was. Seeing her now brought up so many feelings he’d buried, having been unable to work through them at the time. He didn’t need this now. He didn’t need it ever.
She was the last thing he’d expected to see after coming in on the trauma chopper today. When she spoke, the tone of her voice, the soft, dewy vibrations cut him to the core, as if only yesterday she’d meant something to him. He hadn’t been expecting her and hadn’t prepared himself to see her there. Surely someone could have told him she was coming. He could have prepared, could have hardened his heart and his emotions against the first meeting, put up boundaries, not been broadsided, unprepared. He’d never imagined she’d come back here where it had all begun for them.
That was probably the biggest shock. She’d come back to where he was when there were other hospitals in the area. So why here? And why now? That was a puzzle he intended to solve and then get on with his life. There was an answer for everything, and he was going to find this one.
When she’d left for her travel assignment he hadn’t expected to ever see her again. Their breakup had been bitter, doubly so due to the assault and rape he hadn’t been able to protect her from. That was the sorest spot, which had never healed.
He blamed himself.
She’d been unprotected because of him and had nearly died as a result, sustaining permanent scars inside and out. He hadn’t known how to help her afterward, had been unable to help her, and when he’d been unable to face his own failure he’d backed away from her. He’d meant to give her some time and space, but not for all eternity. Her brother was a good friend, but Danny hadn’t mentioned she was coming back. Maybe Danny hadn’t wanted to upset him or had thought perhaps he’d moved on, and she no longer mattered to him.
He had moved on when she’d burned him back then. He’d been hurt and angry and hadn’t been able to cope with his failure and the loss of her. Guilt had nearly eaten him alive. He’d dated women left and right. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for sex and sometimes for spite. Some had been gorgeous, some had been entertaining and some for no reason at all, other than convenience.
Unfortunately, none of them had been Emily. No woman had ever measured up to what he and Emily had had before the event that had fractured their lives. Neither of them would be the same again. Obviously. The incident hadn’t just happened to her, it had nearly destroyed him, as well. It had taken him years to crawl back to where he felt human again and now, in an instant, everything had imploded.
The moment he’d heard her voice in the trauma room his soul had reacted with utter joy and then utter sorrow. Her voice and those big, expressive eyes of hers hadn’t changed and his body had reacted to her with vigor. Embarrassing in a room full of people in an emergency, but he’d never been able to control himself around her before, so why should it be different now?
He closed the door to the charting room with disgust and sat down at the computer terminal to write up his notes from the morning’s trauma. The coffee sat untouched beside him, and the words blurred together on the screen. Nothing made sense at the moment, and he pressed his fingertips to his eyes, wanting to rip out the image of her standing there with all that spiky hair, looking so different yet much the same and so very beautiful.
Why had Emily come back?
Seeing Chase right off the bat this morning had shaken her, torn up the defenses she’d worked so hard to build. She’d hidden it well, or so she thought, from the others, but now the shakes had set in. She hadn’t expected to see him first thing, first trauma of the day, but that was life.
What had she thought when she’d returned to this hospital? Had she just come here to test herself for some stupid reason? She had just thought she was going to waltz in there and never see him, never have him recognize her despite the changes to her hair, her body, her life? She snorted in self-disgust. Apparently, that was what she’d hoped, whether it had been conscious or unconscious in its creation. Reclaiming her life wasn’t going to be as easy as it sounded.
If she were being honest with herself, she wanted to see him, wanted to see if there was any spark left between them. She’d healed so many parts of her life, but this one had been the biggest wound to her heart and her soul and it had been left cracked, bleeding and raw. So she’d come home to make amends with Chase and get over him for good. One way or another, it had to be decided or she couldn’t get on with her life. She was stuck. Stuck on Chase.
Denial was a wonderful thing, which helped people cope with tragic situations. It also helped them be stupid a little too long sometimes. Like her. She’d needed it in the beginning, when things had been very bad. Over the years she’d thought she’d kicked her dependence on it, had been able to stand up on her own. She’d changed her life and had thought she’d changed who she was on the inside, too.
Chase had seen right through her little masquerade to the heart of her the second he’d leveled those surprised laser blue eyes of his on her. That had rattled her as nothing had in three years. Over that time she’d thought she’d forget about them, about him, and move on, the way she knew he’d done. She’d thought she’d been prepared to see him, to be coworkers again. But her plan had backfired the moment she’d seen him. Kapow!
The guilt and somehow the bitter relief of their breakup had hurt and rocked her world, but she’d been able to crawl out of the hole finally.
Nothing
