Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Grace
I opened the door to the supply room and stepped inside.
Tears streamed down my face as I sat on the floor and brought my knees up to my chest. My heart was still rapidly pounding, and I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.
The door opened, and I saw Jamieson standing there when I looked up.
He didn’t say a word. He walked over, sat down, and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into him.
“Why, Grace? Why did you do that? He could have killed you.”
“He didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.”
I pulled away from him, wiped my eyes, and stood up.
“We need to go figure out what’s going on with Justine. Are you coming?” I held out my hand to him.
“Grace, I don’t think you—”
“Are you coming?” I asked in a harsh tone.
He placed his hand in mine, and I helped him up. We went to the CT room and carefully watched the monitors as pictures of Justine’s brain loaded.
“She has a serious brain bleed,” he spoke.
“And that’s what caused the grand mal seizure?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s bad.” He picked up the phone on the desk and called the O.R. “This is Dr. Finn. I need an O.R. prepped now. I’m bringing up a patient with a serious brain bleed.”
“Let’s get her out of there and get her prepped.”
“Could it have been going on for the past couple of months?” I asked.
“It’s very likely it started off extremely slow.”
“But her last scans didn’t show a brain bleed,” I spoke.
“Sometimes, if the bleed is small enough, it won’t show up, which I believe happened here. There’s no way we could have known this would happen.”
“I want to scrub in.”
“No. What I need is for you to go home. You need to go home, Grace.”
“What I need is to be in surgery,” I spoke in an angry tone.
He stood there for a moment and stared into my eyes with a disapproving look.
“Fine. You can scrub in on one condition.”
“And what’s that?” I cocked my head.
“After Justine’s surgery, I’m driving you home. I don’t want you driving. Deal?”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes.
Jamieson and I were in the middle of stopping Justine’s brain bleed when one of my residents walked into the O.R.
“Excuse me, Dr. Harper. Dr. Sinclair wants to see you the minute you’re done with your surgery.”
“Tell her I’ll talk to her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“She told me that you’d probably say that, and she said you are to be in her office the second you get out of surgery.”
I sighed, and Jamieson glanced over at me.
“Don’t mess with Mama Bear. I’m almost finished. You can go now.”
“No. I can help you finish.”
“Dr. Harper, I’m going to put this as nicely as possible. Get out of my OR. Go talk to Renata, and then we’ll go home.”
I scrubbed out and headed to Renata’s office.
“You wanted to see me?”
“You’re damn right I do. What the hell were you thinking, Grace?” she spoke in a stern voice. “What would have happened if that man had shot you?”
“But he didn’t.”
“But he could have!” she shouted. “You are to see Dr. Parker first thing tomorrow morning. I already called and told him you’d be coming.”
“Renata—”
“No, Grace.” She pointed her finger at me. “It is not up for discussion. You know the protocol. You are not to see or treat any patients until you talk to him.”
“Fine. I’ll see him in the morning. May I leave now?”
“You better be going home. In fact, I’m sending you home.”
“I am going home.”
She walked over and hugged me.
“Don’t ever do that again. That was a foolish stunt.”
I left her office and found Jamieson holding my things outside the door.
“I went to your locker and grabbed your things. Are you ready?”
“Yeah. I’m ready. And if you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay,” he spoke.
Jamieson
As I stood in the middle of the ER and listened to Grace tell that man to shoot her, a feeling like I’d never felt before washed over me.
My first instinct was to protect her, but I couldn’t.
That man was unstable. One wrong move and he could have shot her.
Everything she said to him hit me hard. It all made sense now—every goddamn thing about her and moving back to Los Angeles now made sense.
I glanced over at her as I drove us home.
She was tired and sad but still as beautiful as ever.
After the incident, I understood why she needed to be a part of my surgery.
It was her comfort zone. A place where she could forget about everyone and everything except the patient.
I did the same thing. As surgeons, the O.R.
is our escape, safe haven, drug, and high.
A place where we can clean up the messes of other people’s lives so we can forget how fucked up ours were.
I pulled into the driveway, and Grace climbed out of the car.
I inserted my key into the lock and opened the door.
While I was disarming the alarm, Grace walked upstairs without saying much.
I was worried about her. She needed to talk about what happened, but she wanted her space.
And no matter how much I didn’t want to give it to her, I had no choice.
My phone rang, and my resident gave me an update on two of my patients.
After I was done with the call, I poured myself a scotch and took it up to the rooftop.
It was a cooler than usual night, and when I looked out onto the beach, I saw Grace sitting in the sand.
Fuck it. I went to my bedroom, grabbed a blanket, and took it down to her.
“Hey,” I softly spoke as I wrapped the blanket around her. “It’s a little chilly out here.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m going to go back inside.”
“Good idea,” she spoke as she stared at the ocean.
I began to walk away and then stopped. Clenching my fist, I tried to control my anger, but I couldn’t.
“No! It’s not a good idea. What you did was stupid! You told a man to shoot you! What the fuck, Grace? Do you know how scared I was that he would take you up on your offer? Damn it!” I ran my hands through my hair as I stared at her. “You had a gun pointed at you. You’re not okay!”