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I sat there for over an hour as his parents went home to get freshened up and changed. I went over all my notes for the Spencer baby. His little heart seemed to be working just fine. There’d been no blips, nothing. I’d expected him to take longer to recuperate, but the little guy was a fighter. Considering I’d never actually done surgery on a baby so young, this was a dream case. I knew it wasn’t going to be long till I had to sign his discharge papers and send him home with his family. I moved on to another patient who I was keeping track of during pregnancy due to a heart defect. Just the usual.
Until Richard walked in the room with his face bright red and smoke practically coming out of his ears. I’d seen that look plenty of times before, mainly during our divorce. I could already see the nurses’ station becoming busier.
I took a deep breath and put my files on the over bed table.
“Whatever you’re about to say? Don’t.” I pulled the lapels of my white coat together. “It has nothing to do with you.”
I’d already heard the news about me and Jamie, and if I hadn’t the constant looks I’d been getting from most of the female staff would have alerted me to it. As it was, Beth had done me the kindness of letting me know what was going round the rumour mill before I was caught short by a moment like this.
“Are you out of your mind? Jamie? My fiancée’s ex?” He seethed. “It has everything to do with me. Do you have any idea what people are already saying?”
“I don’t care, Richard. But even if I did, this is neither the place nor the time to talk about it. Now, get out of my patient’s room.” I stood and stepped closer to him as I pointed at the door.
“You think he actually wants you? He doesn’t care about anybody but himself.”
“Please leave, Richard.”
“Did he make it all better for you?”
I wanted to scream that he had, that Jamie had done something that he could never have done, but the reality was that it hadn’t been Jamie. Or just him. It had been a combination of things, but mostly it had been me. And, honestly? It wasn’t better. I wasn’t better, I’d never be better about my loss. But I was so tired of it reigning over every part of me that I’d had no choice but to try and move on.
I looked up at him and straightened my spine. I was not going to allow him to use my grief and pain to trample me. He grabbed my arm as I walked around him, it wasn’t even like he was or had hurt me, but the feel of his touch…the warmth was all off. It made me prickle in all the wrong ways.
“Get your hand off me!” I snapped as I yanked my limb from his grasp. “You don’t get to ask me anything about my pain and you certainly do not get a say on who I can or cannot date. You are my ex-husband. You are not a friend, if we didn’t have a child together I would never speak to you again. I would never look at you again. You mean nothing to me. Nothing.”
“You should ask him why he was kissing Jenna in front of their daughter.” He said as I walked away from him.
I stalled momentarily, my racing heart making it difficult to catch my breath.
Jamie would never have done that. Would he? Well, it wouldn’t have been the first time he picked her over me.
I could feel my heart dropping to my stomach as my chest ached. The tears prickling behind my eyes as I powerwalked to the lifts with my head down so no one could see me.
He said he loved me.
He promised he wouldn’t hurt me.
But he’d already done it.
He lied.
God, I must’ve been some sort of fool because I never saw that coming. All his anger had been at the possibility of losing his daughter, and the fact that his wife and best-friend went behind his back not the actual divorce. Christ, they’d been separated almost two years when the divorce finally came through.
Had I read it all wrong?
I sat in my office staring blankly at the paperwork in front of me. The fluorescent light making my tearful eyes ache and the headache I could feel coming on rumble like a storm cloud in my skull. The off-white walls feeling like they were closing in on me rather than the open feeling they were meant to inspire. I tried blinking so many times so that the tears would just get on with it and fall, but I couldn’t get rid of the watery goggles.
I kept replaying every conversation we’d had the last few weeks. I kept replaying everything we’d said last night. At no point had he even hinted that he wanted to reconcile with Jenna, let alone that he’d kissed her.
I straightened and fanned my face as a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in.”
“Hey, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. It’s not like you to be holed up in he—” Jamie stopped and took me in. “What on earth? What’s wrong?”
For the first time in my life I w
anted to yell at him. I wanted to lash out and make him hurt. For the first time ever, I didn’t care whether or not he was okay, because he’d hurt me. I wasn’t okay, and it was because of him. I’d opened myself to him. I’d shown him what I hadn’t shown anyone else. All the hurt that I’d lived with, I’d bared it all to him because I wanted him to do the same with me. And for what? He’d accepted it all and made a mockery of it with his stupid lies.
