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Instead, she kept beseeching eyes on Larry. “Make him leave.”
Stunned by her soft plea, Adam let go of Liz’s hand. Her limp arm fell to the table she lay on. She wanted him to leave?
“Please,” she said. Her heart monitor beeped rapidly as her pulse rate increased. “Make him go. I can’t deal with him right now. I just want him gone.”
She didn’t want him here? Just hours ago she had been in his condo, telling him she loved him. Now she didn’t want him in the same room?
Larry gave him a sympathetic look. “It would be better if you waited outside, Adam. I need to finish examining Liz so the radiology tech can finish her tests.”
He was being asked to leave. By Liz. By Larry.
She didn’t understand and he had to make her. Had to tell her that he loved her, always had, and that everything he’d done had been because he’d believed it was the right thing for her.
“Liz,” he began, but she refused to look at him, just kept her gaze trained on Larry’s face.
“Please,” she said a third time, tears in her eyes. “I don’t want him here.”
“You’re upsetting her, Adam,” Larry needlessly informed Adam. “Wait outside.”
Adam wanted to argue, but logically Liz needed medical care. His interference was only slowing down her examination and tests. Unfortunately logic was in short supply when Liz was lying injured on the table.
But he stepped out. After dropping a kiss on Liz’s good cheek and whispering something to her, Mona followed.
“You shouldn’t have barged in there,” she scolded, but gave him a reassuring pat on his arm.
“I had to see her.”
“And now that you’ve seen? Now what?” Kelly demanded from a few feet away, gripping a cup of coffee tightly in her hand, like she really wanted to throw it at him. “You had no right to interrupt Liz’s care, not after the past few weeks. You’ve hurt her so much.”
Apparently, Kelly had been waiting outside the room for Liz’s tests to finish and resented it that he’d interrupted. He shouldn’t have, but he’d had to see her. Not that he was sure he could make her, make anyone, understand the conflicting emotions running through him.
Mona watched them curiously.
He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’d never intentionally hurt Liz.”
But that wasn’t true. He had intentionally hurt her because he was saving her from a greater pain at a later time. Or so he’d thought.
The memory of how fragile she’d appeared on the radiology table flashed through his mind, and he winced. Damn it. He never wanted Liz to hurt.
“Yet you’d do this to her? Knowing…” Her hand covered her mouth but her eyes shone with grave disappointment. “I’d thought better of you.”
Kelly gave him a dirty look, downed her coffee, crumpled the cup the way she probably wanted to crumple him. She walked away, but not without tossing a dirty name over her shoulder.
He didn’t contest her assessment of his character.
He had hurt the woman he loved. Hurt her deeply.
He deserved every negative thing her friend said.
Several hours later Adam rolled his throbbing forehead against the cold concrete of the hospital wall. What was taking Kell
y and Mona so long? They’d been in the ICU room Liz had been admitted to for over an hour. Wasn’t Mona on duty in the emergency room?
All he wanted was a few minutes with Liz, but her self-appointed watchdogs didn’t want him “upsetting her”. Although he’d gotten a look while she’d been in Radiology, until he checked her himself from head to toe he wasn’t going to be satisfied.
If she would agree to see him.
What if she didn’t? What if she refused to give him the chance to say how sorry he was?
