She’d prayed more times than she could count for the Lord to completely take away her anxiety, and He hadn’t.The panic attacks still came.The nightmares still woke her gasping.
What was the point of asking for something else?
Besides, maybe it was too late to change course.There was less than a week until the Pennsylvania job started.Virgil had already hired her replacement—some doctor from Colorado with an impressive résumé.Virgil had even been generous to let her go sooner than planned so she could get settled.
And with the broken look on Noah’s face when she walked out—that devastation she’d put there—he might never talk to her again.
Maybe she just had to live with the choices she’d made.Live with the consequences.The empty apartment.The new job where no one knew her name.The nights alone.
The life without Noah.
Maybe that was her punishment.Her penance.
The price she had to pay for being broken.
Fourteen
Noah struggled not to growl at Liam, who sat in the stiff hospital chair whistling.
Whistling.
As if Noah’s world hadn’t just imploded.As if the woman he loved hadn’t walked out two days ago and taken his future with her.
It seemed that no matter what he did, he was destined to end up alone.Mary.Penelope.Now Meg.Everyone he loved either died or left.
Noah picked up the pen—a cheap ballpoint with the hospital logo—and scrawled his signature on the last of his discharge papers.The motion pulled at his stitches and made him wince.He held the papers out for the nurse.
The nurse raised her eyebrows but took the clipboard without comment.Professional smile firmly in place.
Maybe his face showed more of his attitude than he’d intended.The barely contained frustration.The grief he couldn’t hide.
He softened his features and waited as the woman offered the standard discharge instructions that Noah barely heard.Something about taking it easy, follow-up appointments, watching for signs of infection.
He nodded at the appropriate times, but his mind was elsewhere.
On Meg.
Always on Meg.
The one who should be doing his follow-up appointments.Who should be checking his stitches, monitoring his recovery, scolding him when he pushed too hard.But no, he’d get the new hire.Some doctor he’d never met from Colorado.
A sour taste filled his mouth.
The way she’d looked at him two days ago when she’d told him she was leaving still burned in his memory.The way she’d walked out of this room and apparently out of his life without looking back.
“Thanks,” he muttered when the nurse finished, already pushing himself up from the bed.His muscles protested.Everything stiff and sore.
His side screamed—a sharp reminder of everything that had happened, Ryan’s knife finding home below his ribs—but he ignored it.
Physical pain he could handle.He’d handled worse.Broken bones.Torn ligaments.The burn of climbing thousands of vertical feet.
It was the ache in his chest that was killing him.The one that had nothing to do with surgery and everything to do with loss.
The nurse left, rubber soles squeaking softly on linoleum.The door clicked shut behind her.
“Ready to bust out of this place?”Liam stood and grabbed the small bag of Noah’s belongings from next to the chair.Canvas duffel.Wrinkled clothes inside that someone had brought from his cabin.
“I can carry my own bag.”Noah’s tone was gruffer than he intended.
