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Either way, it had been his inability to juggle a depressed new wife along with his other obligations that had been the big problem, not his parents’ money.
He’d tried to stop Emily’s tears but had only seemed to make them worse. Being around her, knowing he’d caused her unhappiness, had left him feeling impotent. When he’d catch glimpses of her at the hospital, she seemed fine. Only around him did the waterworks start. So he’d stayed away more and more, focused on the things he had control over and hoped his wife would kick out of her depression.
Instead, she had started talking babies almost nonstop.
He’d full out panicked. What little time he’d had away from studies, he’d spent away from her and the longing he could see in her eyes for something he simply couldn’t give her. Not at that point in their marriage, which was something she hadn’t seemed to understand or accept. He knew people managed a lot more than what had been on his plate, but, for him, he’d already felt he was halfway doing too many things.
What if her depression had gotten worse? What if she hadn’t been able to deal with a baby and he’d had to take on that load, too? He’d have made it work, but he’d worried about the effects on Emily. Which had affected him. Affected them. They’d grown further apart. He’d wanted to make Emily happy, had tried to. Instead, she’d gone into deeper despair and refused to seek help.
He’d failed on all counts.
Here he was scrubbing up for surgery and distracted from what he was doing by memories from the past. He needed to put Emily out of his head. Far, far out of his head until he finished with Cassie’s surgery.
Which proved a little more difficult than he would have thought when he walked into the surgical suite. Despite the fact he could see only her green eyes beneath her surgical gear, he immediately recognized her. Emily was in the operating room.
What was she doing there and why?
* * *
Emily had started out in the operating room at Children’s. It had been the only job opening when she’d applied. She’d been desperate to escape working with Lucas every day and had taken the first offer that had presented itself.
Which made her recognize the irony of her volunteering to go into the operating room with him this evening. Truly, she’d come full circle.
She’d had only an hour left on her shift. The hospital had been scrambling to put together a team for the operating room, and before she’d been able to give better thought to it, she’d volunteered to work overtime and assist.
Since Jenny had remained stable, and Cassie was her only other patient, getting the okay for Emily to go into the surgical suite had been an easy process and one the hospital had appreciated her doing.
Now that she was here, watching Lucas drill a hole into the child’s skull, she wondered if she’d been too hasty.
As gruesome as some of the surgeries she’d assisted in were, that aspect didn’t bother Emily. She knew what they were doing was to Cassie’s benefit and without the procedure the child’s odds of survival were poor.
If she did survive, the longer surgery was delayed, the higher the risk of permanent brain damage.
It was watching the precision and expertise with which Luc
as worked that was getting to her. Her gaze kept wandering to him.
She performed her job duties with remembered ease, always there to hand him what he needed, to assist in any way, along with the others assisting with the procedure.
When Lucas located the tiny hemorrhage that was causing so many problems, when he got the bleed stopped, he sighed in relief. He looked up, sought her gaze, and although she couldn’t see more than his eyes, she saw so much.
The relief, the fear that had been eased. He’d cared about Cassie, cared that he took good care of her. She wasn’t a number or a case study. She was a child who’d been assigned to his care. He took that seriously.
Emily was glad.
So glad that she smiled at him. Not that he could see her beneath the mask, but maybe he knew because she’d swear he smiled back even though she couldn’t see his mouth beneath the surgical mask, either.
What was happening? She did not want to feel any kind of bond with Lucas. Not physical, not emotional, not professional, not any.
Yet, at this moment, she felt as if time had never passed and she was looking into the eyes of the man who’d stolen her heart rather than the one who’d broken it.
* * *
When her doorbell rang later that night, Emily wasn’t surprised by who was on the other side of her viewer despite the late hour.
Nor was she truly surprised by the fact she opened the door to let him in.
“I know it’s almost midnight, but...” he said, stepping inside, looking tired and a bit forlorn, as if he wasn’t sure he should be there, but that he hadn’t been able to stay away.
