leave Janey’s side for the reminder of her shift, but she was gone.
He texted her, checking the hallway as he waited for an answer, but after several minutes the message was still tagged as unread. Clare always read and answered her messages.
He frowned. Something was definitely up.
Assuming she’d gone back to the nurses’ station, he headed that way. “Have you seen Nurse Connelly?” he asked Rebecca, the nursing assistant sitting there.
“She walked by a second ago.” She looked up at him through a veil of what he was sure were fake lashes. “So, I was thinking we could get together again this weekend.”
Oh, no, that was not a good idea. He liked Rebecca, but she was a party girl and these days he could barely stay awake past eleven thirty. His father used to tell him, You’re only as old as you feel. After a night of partying with Rebecca and her friends, he felt about eighty. She was fun and sexy, but the inevitable hangover wasn’t worth it. He could no longer stay out till 3:00 a.m. then make it to work by seven and still function. He was pushing forty. His party days were over.
He checked his phone but still no text.
“Did you see where Nurse Connelly went?” he asked Rebecca, ignoring her suggestion completely, which she didn’t seem to like very much.
“Sorry, no,” she said tartly.
He doubted he would be getting any more help from her. Ironically, this very situation was probably why Clare didn’t date people from work. A lesson he clearly hadn’t learned yet.
So, where the hell had she disappeared to? Did she go back down to the cafeteria? Had she slipped past Rebecca and gone to the elevator? No, he thought with a shake of his head. Knowing Clare, she wouldn’t want anyone to see her lose her cool, so where would she go for guaranteed privacy? At the end of this hall there was a family waiting room—the last place she would go—and the door to the stairs...
Of course! That had to be it. He’d taken a breather or two in the stairwell himself. Or used it to sneak a kiss with a pretty young nurse. She had to be there.
He found Clare sitting on a step halfway between the fourth and fifth floor, arms roped around her legs, head on her knees so her face was hidden.
“Here to harass me in my moment of weakness?” she asked without looking up.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Because that’s the kind of day I’ve been having.” She lifted her head, sniffling and wiping tears from her cheeks with the heel of her palms.
Tears?
Clare was crying?
Just when he thought she couldn’t be more interesting, or perplexing, she threw him a curveball.
“And I know how your shoes sound,” she added. “From hearing you walk up and down the halls.”
He would be flattered that she paid attention, but she paid attention to everything on the ward.
“Are you all right?” He offered her one of the tissues he kept in his lab coat pocket. He dealt with parents of sick children on a daily basis. Tissues were a part of the uniform.
She took it and wiped her nose. “I’m okay. Just really embarrassed. I don’t know what happened in there.”
“You choked,” he said, knowing Clare would want an honest answer. “It happens to the best of us.”
She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Not to me it doesn’t.”
If she had been standing, and was a foot taller, he was sure she would be looking down her nose at him. “At the risk of sounding like a tool, all evidence is to the contrary, cupcake.”
Outraged, she opened her mouth, probably to say something mean, or respond to the cupcake remark, then something inside her seemed to give. Her face went slack and her body sort of sank in on itself. She dropped her head to her knees again, groaning, “You’re right.”
He was? She really must have been out of sorts because she never thought he was right about anything.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“You know those days when you feel like you could take on the world? When everything goes exactly the way you want it to?”
“Sure.”
She looked up at him with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. “This is not one of those days.”
He cringed. “That bad, huh?”
She dropped her head back down to her knees. “Choking on the job is just the icing on the cake.”
Clearly. “So you really never choked?”
She shook her head, making her messy bun flop from side to side, and said, “Not even in nursing school.”
He took a chance and sat down beside her. She didn’t snarl or hiss, or unsheathe her talons, so that was good. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Shoot me and put me out of my misery.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself,” he told her. He had heard of surgeons who choked during surgery and never got their confidence back, but this was different. This wasn’t a matter of confidence, this was pure human emotion.
“What if it happens again, when she needs me?” Clare said, looking up at him. She had the prettiest eyes, and she smelled amazing. It would barely take anything to lean in and kiss her. Her lips looked plump and delicious. It might even be worth the concussion afterward, when Clare clocked him.
“If there hadn’t been fifteen other people in the room to compensate, if it had been just you and me, or even just you, I have no doubt that you would have performed admirably,” he said.
“It’s getting more difficult to be objective with her,” Clare said, looking genuinely distraught. “When they called the code I thought for sure that this was it, that this time she wouldn’t snap back. It made me sick inside, like she was my own flesh and blood.”
“Your compassion is what makes you such a good nurse.”
“Yeah, I’m awesome,” she said. “I was so limp with fear I barely made it out of the elevator. I was sweating and my heart was pounding and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and all the way down the hall it was like I was walking through quicksand.”
It sounded like a panic attack, but to suggest it would probably only make her feel worse. “These are special circumstances.”
“How do you figure?”
“Until they find Janey’s mother, or get her into foster care, you and I are the only ‘parents’ she has. She may be a ward of the state, but it’s up to us to see that she gets the best care. That’s a huge responsibility.”
“You’re right,” she said, sounding cautiously optimistic. “Maybe that’s why I have this deep need to protect
