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The wind picks up.
I pull my stocking cap down further over my ears and lift my knees until I’m hugging them to my torso for extra warmth. “He’s always been good at acting like nothing’s really happened.”
“He didn’t address anything?”
“Nope,” I say, drawing out the word and popping theP. I huff out a mirthless laugh. “One night, out of the blue, he just calls. He doesn’t say a word about replacing me. He doesn’t mention his affair or his family. It’s like it all never happened.”
I glance over to see Zane watching me. He has the rim of the cup pressed against his lower lip while he stares off in the distance.
“He’s done that for as long as I can remember. He grabbed my ass in the clinic and had me wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing that same evening. Things happened between us, but then they were never spoken of again. It was a total mindfuck.”
“He knew what he was doing,” Zane surmises.
“I don’t think he’s that self-aware,” I counter.
Zane’s eyes dart to mine. “Oh, he is. He knew exactly what he was doing the entire time. Just because he never spoke of it directly with you doesn’t mean anything.”
“You think?”
“Trust me …” he sighs. “I know.”
Things ruminate for a minute or two as my mind spins in circles. “It’s funny though. That last call … it just solidified everything for me. Anything I’d thought I felt toward him in the past was just … gone. It was freeing in a way.”
“Good,” Zane says defiantly. “Because, otherwise, I might be tempted to get in the car and drive to the city to pay a house call to the ol’ doc.” He glances over at me when another gust of wind causes me to shiver. “Are you ready to go?”
I nod, and we both stand. I stumble as he bumps me with his shoulder playfully. He slides an arm around my waist and pulls me into him as we walk. I’m disappointed when he drops his hold as we approach the parking lot. I stop to face him just as we reach my SUV.
“Thanks for today,” I say, suddenly feeling shy.
“Anytime. I had fun.”
“So did I.”
We pause while looking at each other. I suddenly want him to kiss me again so badly that it hurts. But he doesn’t. He maintains the distance between us instead. It’s the space that I asked for. Then, he starts to back farther away, like he doesn’t trust himself to be too close.
“I’ll see you soon?” he asks.
I nod. “See you soon.”
And for the first time in a while, hope starts to blossom once again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WILLOW
“Your EKG looks normal,” I relay to the patient sitting on the cot across from me. I push a strand of stray hair that escaped my ponytail off my cheek. “But you really need to go to the emergency room so it can be confirmed with blood work.”
“You just said the EKG was normal,” the patient protests.
I watch as his anxiety rises. The wrinkles in his forehead deepen, along with the frown lines at the sides of his mouth.
My gut tells me he suffers from anxiety, and that’s the cause of his current symptoms. But I go on to explain how I can’t fully rule out a cardiac event just by an EKG alone, which is why people experiencing chest pain should go to the ER rather than urgent care. We don’t have the capability of performing the full workup to completely rule it out at our clinic. He argues with me for a while, insisting he doesn’t need to go to the hospital. I counter his argument with one of my own, reminding him that his symptoms were bad enough to bring him here. He leaves in a huff a few minutes later.
“Well, that was fun,” I say to Jane, my words dripping with sarcasm. “Is it a full moon today?”
“If it’s not, I’m going to call in the next time it is. Today’s been nuts,” she agrees, hurrying off to triage another patient.
Anyone in health care will tell you, the superstition of full moons making emergency medicine even crazier is true. Something about it brings out the worst side of some people.
