Ben gave me a knowing look. “Miranda?”
I let the Flynn Ryder smolder I used on the girls take over my face. “Can’t let my lady think I’ve forgotten about her.”
Ben shook his head with a laugh. “Heartbreaker.”
My hands slid into the pockets of my scrubs. “What can I say?”
“Go on then.” He shooed me away before swiping at the screen of a hospital-issued tablet.
I made a detour to the doctors’ lounge and retrieved my old spruce Stradi violin. Miranda loved it when I serenaded her with bow and strings.
The elevator doors opened as I neared, and I stepped in before they slid back shut. An older woman stood in the far corner, eyeing me as I pressed the button for the third floor. Her gaze moved over my scrubs and down to the violin case in my hand. Her brows rose, curiosity nearly seeping from her pores.
I lifted the black case to cradle it across my chest. “The latest discovery in cutting edge medicine.”
Those white bushels above her eyes folded, but the elevator slowed to a stop. The doors whooshed open, and I stepped out, bracing myself for the inevitable punch to the gut standing in this spot brought each time. The bright primary colors painted on the walls in geometric shapes were supposed to be cheery, but I’d never seen them that way. They’d been touched up in the seventeen years since I first laid my eyes on them, but the effect hadn’t changed. Still mocking brightness in the face of a dark future.
I made my fingers unclench, the blood rushing back to my knuckles. Miranda didn’t need me bringing my own baggage to her life. I came to make her laugh. See her beautiful smile. Help her forget, even for a moment, not wallow in my own memories.
I passed through double doors, nodded to the nurse at the nurses’ station, and made my way to the community area.
Bright green eyes lit when they landed on me from across the room, and my heart tripped. Miranda deserved everything that was good and beautiful in this world. She made me a better man, and though I faced my own demons by coming here, she made me want to slay dragons for her.
She walked slowly across the room toward me. “You came,” she said in a breathy voice.
That practiced smolder I’d given Ben returned. “Can’t stay away from my girl.”
She rolled her eyes and sounded like Rapunzel when she scolded, “Eugene.”
I bowed at the waist. “Forgive me, your highness.”
Her hand came up to hide a giggle, and I set the violin case on a table and unlatched the sides. “Would thou likest to hear a jaunty tune from your lowly and humble servant?”
She straightened her expression and pretended to arrange billowy skirts before taking a seat. With a bored look, she motioned for me to begin.
I quickly checked the tuning of the strings, making the small adjustments necessary, then with a couple of playful jumps to my brows, I let loose a toe-tapping tune.
“The Swallowtail Jig,” an Irish fiddle song, leapt from the instrument like tiny leprechauns stomping out a Riverdance. The invisible pied pipers whirled through the room on each note, sprinkling fairy dust until the actual occupants of the space stood and tried to follow suit…or at least clap along to the beat.
Short bow strokes worked the muscles of my right shoulder while rapid finger placements of my left hand made the tendons in my wrist jump. It had been too long since I’d cradled the violin and made her sing with my touch.
I winked at Miranda, her face flushed with a rosy hue kissing her cheeks. A woman standing on the far wall caught my eye, and my gaze rose to meet hers as the melody changed to the next fiddle piece. Cupped hands covered the lower half of the woman’s face, but tears brightened her eyes. She stared at me, then down at Miranda. My heart pinched, and I stumbled over the next note.
“Why do you keep going to the third floor?”
Ben had cornered me one day when we’d first started working at the hospital. He’d caught me sneaking down here, then witnessed what being here did to me. He couldn’t understand why I’d continuously return to a place of pain.
I got his rationale. Understood why, after the sudden and devastating loss of his wife just hours after giving birth to their precious daughter, he refused to go anywhere near labor and delivery.
But Ben’s black past and mine were different. He had the hope of a bright future and had found it in Molly. The darkness that had enveloped me here had farther reaching fingers—a span of a lifetime. And while the shadow of death had simply passed over L and D, it had come to reside at pediatric oncology. Hovering over innocents like Miranda. Six years old and battling neuroblastoma. Children her age should be playing tag around a playground, laughing and carefree. Not living around chemotherapy appointments and having favorite nurses instead of best friends.
I lifted the violin’s bow for a moment of silence, then set it on the strings for the first strains of Miranda’s favorite song: “I See the Light,” fromTangled. I closed my eyes, imagining the darkness of this place being lit by thousands of lanterns. But a Disney princess couldn’t vanquish this kind of void. Only a King could do that.
On the last note, I lowered the bow and violin to my sides, and with my eyes still closed, let my voice fill the silence.
“I lift my eyes up to the mountaintops
But where does my help comes from?
