Chapter 9 Luke
LUKE
“April showers bring May flowers, huh?”
Blinking, Luke looked up at the young intern, Doctor Jones, who was standing across the table from him. They were doing surgery on a young man who’d been in a car accident, and Luke had been so involved in clearing the field to suture that he hadn’t been paying attention to anything else.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“Nothing.” Jones flushed over her mask. “I just realized it’s April, and I was thinking about how it’s always raining, and…”
“I could use some suction here,” Luke said as gently as he could, nodding to the patient’s open abdomen. “And a little focus.”
“Right. Sorry.” Still flushing, Jones did as Luke instructed, and he threaded in the first suture, his hands as steady as always.
In truth, Luke hadn’t minded the interruption that much — it was nice to remember that there actually was weather, and changing seasons, outside the walls of the hospital. Here, in the bright artificial light, surrounded by the smell of antiseptic, it was sometimes all too easy to forget.
Luke had thrown himself into work more than ever these last few months, trying to forget about Bella.
Yet still, whenever he saw someone smile in a particular way or heard a certain kind of laugh, he turned, expecting to see her.
He still saw her face on some of his patients, on the women he passed on the street, even in the waitress at his favorite restaurant.
He thought he heard her laugh at least once a day.
A few months ago, Luke had decided enough was enough.
He’d still been thinking about Bella a lot, so it was clearly a sign that he should find her.
Around Christmas, he’d looked her up, but all he really knew about her was her first name.
Bella. There hadn’t been any surgeons at the conference named Bella — and anyway, she’d told him she wasn’t in the medical field.
She must have been just another guest at the hotel, though Luke wasn’t sure why a Portland native would have been staying there.
And it didn’t seem like she’d had a room.
He’d scoured the internet for so long that he’d started to feel like a stalker, and then he’d forced himself to stop.
Bella could have found him easily — there were only so many trauma surgeons named Luke in Portland.
If she’d wanted to talk to him, she would have reached out, but she hadn’t.
And that meant that she’d probably moved on easily from their night together, whereas Luke still thought about it, even now.
“I think we’re done here,” Luke said to Jones as he put in the final suture. “Close up, please.”
“By myself?” Jones’s eyes widened.
“I’ll supervise, but yes,” Luke agreed. “You’re ready, and it’s time.”
As he talked the young doctor through the necessary steps to close the patient, he was able to put Bella out of his mind — for a moment, at least. Once the patient was stable and in the ICU, though, his thoughts returned to her.
Luke still wondered who she was — and where she was.
Of course, he knew he was being as silly as a lovestruck TV doctor in one of those medical dramas he avoided.
He and Bella had only spent one night together, and they probably hadn’t been as perfectly matched as he remembered.
His feelings for her were probably nothing more than a sign that he should start trying to make friends and date again, but neither was a particularly appealing prospect.
“Doctor Porter!”
Luke turned towards the voice and saw another ER attending passing with a patient on a gurney.
“Doctor Li?” Luke fell into step beside her. “What are you doing here?”
“My shift started an hour ago.” Doctor Li frowned at him. “What are you doing here? You should be off now, shouldn’t you?”
“It’s fine,” Luke said quickly. He had no interest in returning to his empty house. “Can I help?”
“I’ll be with this gentleman for a while,” Li said. “If you want to go check on the residents in the ER, you can. But you know the chief would say you should go home—”
“I know. It’s fine. I’ll take a nap and have a snack in a bit.”
Luke headed back down to the ER, stinging a little at Li’s suggestion that he needed a break. He would never let tiredness compromise patient care. When he needed a break, he took one, and until then, he would keep working.
In the ER, there were no emergency cases, so he started making the rounds and checking on each patient in turn. A few were ready to be discharged, but one older woman needed stitches on a cut on her forehead.
“Let me help with that,” Luke said, stopping by her bed. “What’s your name?”
“Jennifer Hayes,” the woman replied.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hayes.” Luke pulled a stool over and grabbed a suture kit. He donned a new pair of blue latex gloves and inspected the laceration more closely. “I can get you patched up in no time.”
“Will there be a scar?” Jennifer asked.
“Maybe just a small one, but I’ll take my time and keep it as unnoticeable as possible.” Luke numbed the area and got to work. “What happened, anyway?”
“Oh, I was just getting the Easter decorations off a high shelf.” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “I wanted to surprise my husband — and I guess he’ll be getting a different kind of surprise.” She gestured to her face.
“He’ll just be glad you’re all right,” Luke said, gently beginning the first stitch. The numbing cream worked, because Jennifer didn’t flinch. She just sighed.
“Oh, of course, but we’ve been married for forty-seven years now, and we try so hard to always look our best for each other. This isn’t my best.” Jennifer glanced at Luke, moving only her blue eyes. “Are you married, Doc?”
Luke chuckled. “No, ma’am.”
“A girlfriend, then?”
Immediately, Luke thought of Bella, her long brown hair flowing over her shoulders, her eyes crinkled in laughter, her cheeks glowing. “No, ma’am.” Bella wasn’t his girlfriend. He hadn’t even seen her in almost six months. She might as well have dropped off the face of the earth.
“Well, you should, nice young man like you.”
Luke chuckled again. “I’m hardly young. I’m thirty-six.”
Jennifer waved a manicured hand. “You’re a spring chicken, dear. I’m almost seventy.”
“Well, you don’t look a day over thirty,” Luke said, winking, and she smiled.
“Don’t let life pass you by,” Jennifer continued. “The days I’ve spent with my Richard have been the best days of my life. Even now, I’m excited to see him — though he’ll certainly tease me about this.”
Luke chuckled. “That sounds great, ma’am. You’re almost done here. Just a minute.”
He turned to grab a gauze pad to put over the wound and caught sight of a woman standing in the doorway of the ER.
She had brown hair in a bun, jeans, and a white blouse, and she wore a purple apron over everything, with flour down the front.
The apron barely hid the shape of a very clearly pregnant belly.
As always, Luke blinked, wondering if she could be Bella.
But this couldn’t be Bella. Definitely not. It was just Luke’s mind playing tricks on him again. After all, Bella wasn’t pregnant. He turned back to Jennifer and gently placed the gauze pad on her forehead laceration.
“There you go.”
“Thanks, dear.”
Luke smiled at her, but something in his mind was tugging at him to turn around.
Maybe the woman he’d seen really was Bella, somehow.
She had really looked like her, though he’d only caught a glimpse, and only from a distance.
Still, his heart began to race as he turned again.
The woman was still standing there, now talking to one of the ER nurses, and Luke’s heart skipped a beat. It was Bella, pregnant, in his ER.
Bella.
Here.
Pregnant.
For a long moment, he didn’t know what to do. Luke’s whole career had prepared him to deal with the unexpected and act quickly and correctly, yet he was still completely unprepared for this.