The corners of her mouth pulled down. “A car came around the curve too fast. It crossed the center line. I had no time to react.”
On the monitor, her heartbeat revved.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.”
She searched his face. “Why were you smiling at me? It seemed odd.”
He could understand that. After all, she was seriously injured. “I noticed your eye color. You remind me of someone I knew years ago.”
“Was it a good memory?”
Talk about awkward. He didn’t like speaking of his past. But if it kept her mind off her own injuries…
He shrugged at her. “In some ways, yes. I loved her very much. We were only kids. Younger than you. And we were stupid. We got carried away, and she got pregnant.”
Her eyes widened. “Wow. So you were a teenage dad.”
If only. He rubbed his chest, soothing an ache there. His child would be around eleven years old now. He swallowed the sudden lump blocking his throat.
“No.” Jackson shook his head. “Unfortunately, I reacted badly. She didn’t have the baby.”
An oppressive silence flooded the confined space.
“I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. He’d spent the last decade trying to come to terms with his part in it. If he’d been supportive…if he’d controlled his emotions…if he hadn’t walked away…
If, if, if.
In the end, none of that mattered. They couldn’t go back and change what had happened. And God help him, he couldn’t forgive. He couldn’t forgive her for denying their child life. And he couldn’t forgive himself for making her feel like that was her only choice.
Stop. You can think later. Now, you have a patient to deal with.
When he shot a glance at the young woman, her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slow and regular. She’d fallen asleep while he chastised himself.
A single tear trembled on her cheek.
“Thank you!” Mia held her hand out the car window to accept the bag with Gus’s medication and tossed it on the empty seat beside her. She couldn’t believe how long the drive-through line was today. She’d waited nearly twenty minutes. But the moment she’d decided to back up and leave the line so she could go into the pharmacy and wait at the counter, someone had pulled into the drive-through behind her, blocking her exit.
Today wasn’t her day.
She sighed and began the fifteen-minute drive home. She should let Anne Marie know she was on her way. She hit the Call button. When the phone went to voicemail again, her stomach wound itself into a tight knot.
What if something had happened? Gus was so stubborn that Anne Marie sometimes forgot how fragile she had become. She’d always been active. At eighty-two, she was beginning to slow down. While her memory was still strong, her heart had eroded her health. She was on a blood thinner and several other medications.
She needed a bypass surgery, but the doctors were hesitant since she’d become frail.
Mia didn’t want to think about life without Gus.
Her leg jiggled. Her foot tapped the gas. The speedometer inched up. The speed limit in town was thirty miles per hour. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four. She didn’t dare go faster than that.
Not because she might get a ticket. Mia had no problem with getting a well-deserved ticket. But she couldn’t afford to lose the time it would take.
And she also wouldn’t be responsible for risking any life, hers or a stranger’s, through carelessness.
The light turned yellow. The car ahead of her screeched to a halt.
“Oh, come on! You could have made that!”
