Chapter 15 #2
She started to respond, then hauled in her words, realizing that she was, once again, begging someone to choose her.
She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to do that again.
This wasn’t about him leaving; it wasn’t even about how long he’d be away.
This was about him putting her, if not first, then on an equal footing with his work.
This was about him taking five minutes, ten, fifteen, to hug her, to reassure her, to tell her that they’d work it out, that he cared enough about her to give her those reassurances.
But he hadn’t. So he obviously didn’t. Maybe she was simply a summer fling.
Then his phone rang, and he snatched it up, his thumb sliding across his phone to answer it. He turned his back, and Wren wanted to beat her fists against it.
Why couldn’t he stop, just for a moment, and give her the focused attention he was giving to the device in his hand?
* * *
“Dane, you there?” Dane gripped the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Jack, his boss, was habitually calmer than him, but the stress he heard in those three words told him the scope of the disaster.
“How bad is it?”
“It’s apocalyptic,” Jack replied, already weary. There it was. Shit. “Are you on your way?”
Dane glanced at Wren, still standing next to his bed, looking lost and so very alone.
He wanted to take the time to hold her, to reassure her, but he didn’t have any.
Before he got notification of the earthquake, he’d already been irritated about Alex and the fact that Wren hadn’t told him she’d moved on and/or that they were together.
He hadn’t wanted to admit to feeling aggravated, jealous, and a little insecure, so he’d let it slide.
It itched then, it was still itching now.
And how could he be thinking about him, her, them, when there was a massive catastrophe across the world? He needed to get his priorities straight.
He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” He didn’t want to ask the next question, but knew it would give him a better idea of what he was running into. “Do we have a death estimate yet?”
“Fifteen, twenty, thirty?” Thousand. Fuck. Quetta in 1935 had a death count of between thirty and sixty; Jack was throwing around big numbers, which meant it was beyond dire.
“Roger that.” What else could he say? “I’ll call you when I am fifteen minutes out.”
“Be safe,” Jack said.
Dane disconnected and rested his phone against his forehead.
Earlier, Wren had asked him when he’d be back, but he hadn’t answered because he couldn’t.
Because every time he made a promise like that, the situation proved him a liar.
With a huge death toll came a higher injury count, and he knew he’d be in Kashmir for a long time…
“Can you please just stop, for a few minutes—five or ten—and talk to me?” Wren demanded.
“I don’t have time, Wren!” He heard the strain in his own voice and hated it. Hated that the situation—the urgency, the pull—always ripped him away from the people he loved. But staying wasn’t an option. It had never been.
“I need to talk to you before you go.”
Something inside him recoiled. Not now, and not when people were dying. Not when he needed every ounce of focus.
“Again, I don’t have time, Wren. Listen, we’re fine, you’re fine.
You’re safe. There are tens of thousands of people in Kashmir who are having a fucking awful day.
” The second the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
But he couldn’t pull them back. Judging by the look on her face, his words had hit her like a slap.
He’d made her sound petty and childish when she was neither.
“I know that,” she said, her voice cracking.
She dropped her head and stared at his trainers.
“I know how important your work is, and I also know you are a very talented trauma surgeon, you wouldn’t be working with the premier global-response team if you weren’t.
I’m not asking you not to go, but I’m just trying to work out whether there is space for me in your life. ”
“There is.” But even as he said it, doubt twisted his insides into knots.
He didn’t know how much space he could give her, because, honestly, if he was made to choose, he would always go.
Because going was the way he proved to his father, to himself, to the world, that he served too. That what he did mattered.
“It doesn’t feel like it. The way you are acting makes me feel like I’ll always come a distant second to your work.”
She was making him feel the way he did when he told the General that he’d decided to work in disaster zones over being an Army Field Surgeon.
The pushback, the disappointment, the displeasure in her eyes.
The pressure in his chest built, sharp and suffocating.
He couldn’t breathe. Neither could he think.
So he did what he did when he was a child and lashed out.
“Can you stop being so damn selfish for just a minute?”
Her face went white, and Wren placed her hand on her sternum, and he knew his words had been a powerful verbal punch. Her mouth dropped open, as if unable to believe the words had left his mouth. To be fair, he couldn’t believe it himself.
You are such a dick, Trafford.
“I’m being selfish?”
He wanted to back down, retreat, but habit had him pushing forward. Experience had taught him that if he showed the tiniest crack of vulnerability, he might fall apart.
“Yes. How did a massive earthquake in one of the poorest countries become about you? How can you want a relationship status update right now?” Her face changed. Not anger—worse. Hurt. “You’re not the victim here, Wren.”
“God, I can’t believe I am doing this, I promised myself that I wouldn’t, but…
shit. Look, I’m asking you to choose me, too,” she said, and the part of him that wasn’t furious with her, with himself, admired the way she lifted her chin, and how she was holding on to her pride.
“Not necessarily now, but at some point.”
He felt the ground rock and sway. Didn’t he make a choice every time he flew into a disaster zone?
He chose the people having the worst day of their lives.
He chose the kid trapped beneath a slab of concrete.
The mother bleeding out. Communities that risked having their population devastated if surgical teams didn’t land fast enough.
How could he choose her, choose his own happiness, above what they needed? Because he wanted to choose her, more than he wanted to keep breathing, he lashed out again. Because he had to create distance between them, a space that couldn’t be easily breached.
He. Had. To. Go.
“We’ve only been together a short time, Wren, and you are already making demands and expecting things from me I’m not ready to give. It reminds me of how my father tried to control me, and I don’t like it. Neither will it work.”
It was another verbal punch, and this landed as hard as the one before. So hard in fact, that Wren gripped the edge of the bedside table. “Dane, come on…”
He didn’t back down. Couldn’t. “This is exactly what the General does. He exerts pressure and lays on the guilt. It’s emotional manipulation, Wren. I don’t accept it from him, and I sure as hell won’t accept it from you.”
Her breath caught. “That’s not what I was trying to do. I am not your father,” she said, her voice shaking. “And may I point out that you were demanding answers from me about Alex not fifteen minutes ago.”
That was a fair point, but not one he could consider now.
Then Wren spoke again. “Forget trying to score points off each other, I’m not going waste time on that now.
The point I’m trying to make is that I am someone who thinks that, maybe, I love you enough to want a life with you.
And I’d like to have a quick chat about how we go forward. ”
Love? Please!
The word felt like a trap. His father was supposed to love him, but his love had been the definition of toxic.
Clare promised to love him but barely managed to stay married to him for a year before starting an affair.
Love meant making promises that couldn’t be kept.
The more you loved, the more you opened yourself to obliteration when it walked out on you.
Maybe there had been a few minutes, here and there, with Wren that had made him think he could handle loving her, being loved by her. But now he realized that he was better, smarter than that. So was she.
“You obviously have no idea what love is, because it sure as hell doesn’t come with ultimatums.”
She started to respond, then pulled her words. She shook her head, her face now bone- white and her lips bloodless. “I’m not going to beg you to choose me, Dane. I promised myself I’d never do that again.”
She pushed her fingers into her forehead.
“This isn’t about you leaving, it’s not even about how long you’ll be away.
It’s about you putting me, if not first, then on an equal footing with your work.
This is about respecting me enough to take five minutes, ten, fifteen, mainly because I’ve never been in this position before, to hug me, to reassure me, to tell me that we’ll be okay.
But you couldn’t do that, so maybe all I am is a summer fling. ”
No, come on! That wasn’t fair. He was about to protest when his phone buzzed with another update. Could they not give him five fucking minutes?
“I’m not going beg you to stay, I now know you’ll always choose a crisis above me.
I get that you feel you have to … it’s who you are, and this is what you excel at.
But I can’t be with you knowing that work will always take priority over me and my feelings.
I lived that life as a child, and I won’t do it as an adult. I love you, but I love me, too.”