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If that happened, how would she prevent that overshadowing their child’s well-being? Just the thought of their child being made to feel inferior made her neck muscles ache and her stomach clench.
She finished her notes, left the bay and entered the next, determined to stay on task. A patient she’d triaged had discovered a large amount of blood in their urine and had been having tremendous back pain. She’d put him into the bay, and initiated protocol hematuria labs.
When Dirk stepped out of the fractured arm patient’s bay, Abby caught him and without meeting his eyes gave him the stats on the patient. “Do you want to get a renal protocol CT scan?”
“Yes. Thanks.” When she started to walk away, he grabbed her wrist, causing her to turn to look at him. “You holding up okay? You’re not overdoing it, are you?”
That did it. She’d had enough of him interfering with her work.
“No.” She pulled her arm free, hoping no one noticed. “My back hurts. My feet hurt. I’m tired. My stomach hasn’t felt right in days. But the main reason I’m not holding up is you.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Me?”
“You’re driving me crazy. You’ve got to stop treating me differently than you were before, well, you know.”
His jaw worked back and forth slowly, as if he was trying to categorize her words and having difficulty knowing where to stick them. “I’m concerned.”
“I appreciate your concern, but work isn’t the place. I’ve got a job to do and if you keep making a difference, people are going to complain.”
“People?”
“Our coworkers.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, except you, Abby.”
He was saying all the right things, but Abby didn’t want to hear them, could only hear his “let’s just be friends” speech echoing through her head. She didn’t want or need his overbearing behavior.
In his “concern,” he was exposing her to her colleagues’ curiosity. Her volunteer friends suspecting she was pregnant was one thing. Her coworkers another matter entirely. Not that they wouldn’t know soon enough.
Everyone would know soon enough.
But she wanted a few weeks of having the knowledge to herself, to completely come to terms with her future plans prior to having to answer other people’s questions.
“Well, I do care.” It wasn’t asking too much for him to give her time to work through this in privacy. “A lot of my closest friends work here. I won’t have you undermining me.”
His gaze narrowed. “No one would say anything if you needed an extra break.”
Abby’s jaw dropped. “Why wouldn’t they?”
He looked away, guiltily, not answering her.
“Dirk?”
When his eyes met hers, a bit of arrogance she hadn‘t previously witnessed shone there. “I’m a doctor, Abby. If I give a nurse permission to take an extra break because I think she needs one, no one is going to deny that right.”
Oh, no. That so wasn’t going to happen. He’d do irreparable damage to her working environment. With a baby on the way, she needed her job.
“I can’t take extra breaks just because you think I should.” She paused, acutely aware they stood in the busy emergency room. No one was near them, but when Abby glanced around, the medical assistant was watching them curiously, a “yeah right, just friends” expression on her young face. “We can’t discuss this here. Just let me do my job, okay? That’s all I ask.”
“Abby—”
“Dr. Kelley,” an assistant interrupted, looking back and forth between them. “There’s a myocardial infarction patient on his way in. The ambulance is en route and should arrive in two minutes.”
Grateful for the interruption, Abby jumped into action. “I’ll get the renal protocol CT scan entered into the computer and have everything ready for the MI arrival.”
“Abby—”
“Take care of your patients, Dr. Kelley, and leave me alone. I can take care of myself and don’t need or want your friendship after all.” With that she spun on her heel and walked away from a man capable of breaking her heart.
