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“If you don’t do something, it will be too late,” Scott said. “You should decide what you want and go for it. It’s not wrong to get attached to someone and love them, you know. You need that in your life. We all do.”
His words irritated me, but it was because he was right. Damned if I was going to admit that to him, but he was right. Scott usually was.
“I have to go,” Scott said, checking the time. “I’m going into surgery. It’s going to be a good one.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m saving a kid’s life today.” He grinned at me, and I envied him the chance to do something good that he could be proud of.
Lately, I hadn’t been able to be proud of anything.
“I’ll call you later,” Scott said and stood.
He walked away, and I sat at the table alone, feeling like an idiot. I’d had so much going for me, but I’d screwed it up. I had no idea how to make it right—I’d never been this serious about anyone. I’d either gotten rid of them because it was getting too serious, or they’d gotten rid of me because I was emotionally unavailable. It had never really hurt to lose them, it had just been disappointing in a way, but I’d always expected it all along.
This time, it was different. I’d expected I would lose her, but I hadn’t thought it would hurt this much.
I stood, leaving my untouched sandwich on the table and walked through the hospital. Before I got to the doors to find my car, I thought of something and turned back into the hospital. I made my way to the administration block. I had to talk to someone about a certain patient at the hospital who needed an operation pretty seriously, and I had the money to help.
If I couldn’t do anything else to prove to Mackenzie that I cared about her, at least I could do this.
26
MACKENZIE
“Theresheis,”Rachelsaid with a smile when I walked into the hospital room. “I was hoping I could see you before I go into the OR.”
“I heard you were getting the operation,” I said, sitting down on a chair. I studied my sister. She’d lost a lot of weight since she’d been admitted. Machines beeped, monitoring her vitals, and the oxygen mask hung on a stand ominously close by. She wasn’t wearing it right now—she had two tubes in her nose that wrapped around her head—but I was aware that at any moment, something could go wrong and she would need to be strapped into that mask again that forced air into the lungs that wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do.
“I’m so relieved,” Rachel said. “But I’m scared, too. What if something goes wrong?”
“You can’t think that way,” I said and took my sister’s hand. “It’s going to goright. That’s all there is to it.” I squeezed her hand.
Rachel smiled. “You’re always so positive.”
I returned her smile, holding up the mask. I didn’t want her to know that lately I hadn’t been nearly as positive as I was being around her right now.
“How’s work?” Rachel asked. “Did you get that contract?”
I sighed and shook my head. “No, I didn’t. Troy got it.”
“Really?” Rachel asked. “That’s fine, then it isn’t the contract you should have gotten.”
“Right,” I said. Rachel was a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, and if it didn’t happen, no matter how much we wanted it, then it wasn’t the right time. Usually, I believed in that because it was how I’d been raised. It was just tough to run everything through that filter. Like, my mom dying, for instance. How could that have been a good thing, happening for a reason? And what about Troy cheating, betraying me rather than letting us each do what we were good at and getting the contract fair and square? How did that work when humans and their greed got involved in a situation like that?
“You’ll get the right contract for you,” Rachel said.
“I hope so.” I really needed the money now that I was going to be a mother. “It would be nice to get a bit of a raise if I do. I was hoping for that this time, but it didn’t happen yet.”
“It will,” Rachel said firmly. “You just keep looking out for yourself.”
It wasn’t just going to be me. Soon, there would be another person I had to look after.
I wasn’t going to tell Rachel any of that right now—she was going into the operating room soon, and I didn’t want her to worry about anything other than pulling through. I would tell her about the baby after she came out, and I knew that she was out of the woods.
I didn’t tell her that my boss had been a complete ass after he’d found out I hadn’t gotten the contract.
I hired you to be an asset to the team, and now you’re just wasting Griffin’s money!He’d shouted that at me in his office the next morning. I’d taken the abuse because what could I have done? I’d lost the contract, and that was all there was to it.
