16. Alex
CHAPTER 16
Alex
“ Y ou have to stop trying to do everything yourself, Mrs. Guthrie,” I said, hoping she understood.
“You’ve got plenty of help at home.”
Mrs. Guthrie, a woman in her late eighties, had fallen off her bed while trying to kill some mosquitoes. The accident resulted in a broken hip and an inevitable hip replacement.
“Leave the mosquitoes for your nurse to get, alright?” I added.
She didn’t look very interested in my instruction and picked up her knitting needles, resuming her clacking. On the way out, I made a note in her file so the physical therapist would be extra cautious during her rehab, and checked my cell phone.
No call yet.
Nothing from Sophie.
Nothing from Vicki.
It was either good or extremely bad, and my gut was leaning toward the latter. When Sophie had told me she wanted to talk to Vicki alone—about us, about what we had done at the seminar and the pregnancy—I had immediately thought it was a bad idea. If I was there, I could easily step in when things got heated, but deep down, I knew that was precisely the problem.
If I had to step in, I wouldn’t be defending Vicki anymore. My allegiance had shifted. I had Sophie, who was carrying my unborn twins, whom I had grown to care deeply for.
“New patient in room six,” Janet said, heading my way. She handed me a file. “A Miss McCarthy waiting for a consult. I know you’re busy, but I can’t find Sam anywhere.”
“I’ll head there now.”
Scanning the patient details, I had just walked into room six when my phone vibrated in my pocket. It felt like an explosion had gone off—my ears popped, my heart began to race, and every muscle in my body tensed up as if I was bracing for imminent disaster.
“I’ll be right with you,” I said to the patient quickly and stepped back into the hall. I snatched the phone out of my pocket, checked the screen—it was Sophie—and headed to the small waiting area, which was mostly empty.
“Sophie,” I answered. “How are you? How did it go?”
“Terrible. Like really bad.” Sophie’s voice sounded thick as if she’d been crying. “Vicki looked ready to murder me. I think she’s really hurt, Alex. She’s even gone home. I don’t think she’s ever gone home early. Not even when she’s sick. This is serious.”
“Do you want me to come to the hospital? We can talk about it,” I asked, though my obligations to this hospital, and to my patients, made that difficult. Still, I could ask Sam to cover—if only I could find him first.
“No,” Sophie replied, her voice trembling. I heard her sniff and then blow her nose. Sophie's crying brought out an ache in my chest. I wanted to end her tears, I wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to work out just fine. But I also wanted to check on Vicki. We had been together for long enough that my feelings for her hadn’t just evaporated overnight. It didn’t matter that she had lied to me, that she had ended things; I still didn’t want to see her in pain.
“No, don’t come over,” said Sophie. “It’s fine. I’m fine—”
Just then, the call was interrupted by an incoming call.
I checked the screen and blew out a breath.
It was Vicki.
A quick moment to gather my thoughts was necessary, but I knew she wouldn’t stop calling until I answered. Worst-case scenario, she’d make the drive to Santa Rosa and barge through the hospital doors.
“Hey, Soph, she will be fine. Trust me, besides we didn’t do anything wrong” I said, “Take a break now and I’ll call you back after work, alright?”
“Okay.”
I switched calls and answered. “Hi.”
“What the fuck, Alex?” Vicki’s voice rang through the speaker. “You slept with Sophie. Are you kidding me? Are you actually fucking kidding me?” She then sounded as if she was choking.
If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve assumed Vicki was choking on tears. But she never cried. Not even when her great-grandmother passed away last year. Vicki was the definition of a person who bottled up her emotions and placed them in a box she buried deep within herself, until one day that box was going to burst open. I had a feeling the news might set it off.
“And she’s fucking pregnant, did you know that?” Vicki continued. “Did you know that
Sophie is having your baby ?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. The way Vicki was screeching on the cell phone made my skin crawl. “I know that Sophie’s pregnant.”
There was a moment of silence, followed only by the sound of her breath blowing sharply out of her lungs. Vicki wasn’t just angry, she was furious, an irrational fury that wasn’t justified. We hadn’t been temporarily separated when I slept with Sophie; we were done, and there was no chance of getting back together—Vicki had made that clear.
But I wasn’t going to match her anger. I understood where it was coming from. Vicki was a complicated woman. Her frustration wasn’t just about me sleeping with Sophie, but rather stemmed from her guilt over not wanting children and hiding that secret from me. Now combined with her anger that I’d found what she couldn’t give me elsewhere, it created a storm of unresolved emotions, making it impossible for her to see the logic of it all.
“Is she going to keep the baby? Are you ? Are you going to move in with her and pretend you’re one big happy family?” She snickered, and I could almost imagine the snarl on her face, the way her fists were probably clenched so tight they left half-moons imprinted on her palms.
“You’re not being fair.”
“Fair?” she laughed out loud, her voice laced with venom. “Are you being serious right now? I’m not being fair. How about you? It’s like you did it on purpose just to get back at me.”
“You know that’s not true,” I replied a little more sharply, my patience waning. “It was an accident—”, just when I was going to confess my affection towards Sophie but then realized it was not the best time.
“Bullshit.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” I replied, catching Sam’s eye.
He was walking toward me, clipboard in hand, his lips pressed tight. He mouthed “Vicki” and pointed at the phone pressed to my ear. I nodded and he rolled his eyes in response.
When Sam walked off, I added, “All I can say is that whatever happened between Sophie and me had nothing to do with you. I have no intention or had any intention of getting back at you. And if you don’t want to believe me, then that’s your problem.”
I ended the call before Vicki could spit out a retort. I was practically buzzing from adrenaline. My hands were shaking, and in my profession, that was never a good thing.
Taking in deep breaths, one after the other, I put on my professional mask and headed to room six.
It was just after seven p.m. that evening when I parked my car in Sophie’s driveway. The sunset glow hit the sycamore tree, turning its leaves gold, and the street itself looked like it had been dipped in honey.
The front door swung open and Sophie, who was wearing gray sweatpants and a yellow T-shirt, frowned when she saw me. “Hey, are you Okay? I told you, you didn’t have to make the trip to St. Helena. I’m fine.”
"Well, I didn't listen, I never did," I replied, noticing how her gray eyes seemed almost transparent in the sunlight. "Instead, I picked up some takeout on the way here." I lifted the plastic bag to show her and then took a step back. "Unless you want me to take the veg dumplings and eat them all by myself? I'm not beyond doing that."
Sophie’s frown melted into a laugh as she stepped aside. “How did you know dumplings are my weakness?”
“A lucky guess.”
“No one’s that lucky,” she said, leading the way to the kitchen. “Either you got hold of Becks or you found me on social media.”
I laughed, placing the takeout on the counter and unpacking its contents. “Are you telling me there’s a picture of you up on the internet somewhere claiming how much you love dumplings?”
“I’m not denying it.” Sophie grinned, settling onto one of the two bar stools at the counter, and rested her elbows on the marble. “I’m also not denying that I’ve eaten nearly twenty-five dumplings in one sitting.”
We both laughed and when our laughter died down, a sudden shift in the air dampened the lightness. I could feel it like I could feel the cold, and I knew Sophie could too. Her grin faded into a grimace, and she dropped her head in her hands. "I don't know how I'm going to go back to work tomorrow, Alex." When she lifted her head, tears streaked her cheeks. "What if Vicki fires me? Well, I guess I have to leave Becks there and find another job." She slid off the stool, her shoulders rigid. "What if she doesn't, and she spends the rest of her career at Vineyard Valley hating me?"
Both of those were valid possibilities, but there was also the possibility that Vicki would get over it with time and move on—though that seemed far less likely.
After dropping the Styrofoam container on the counter, I rounded the island and extended my arms. Sophie walked into my embrace, and I wrapped her tightly in a hug, breathing in her rosy scent, savoring the heat of her body pressed against mine.
She leaned into me, melted into my arms, her body soft and shaking, wracked with sobs. Sophie turned her head until her nose nuzzled into my neck, and I didn’t care that her tears were soaking my shirt, or that her nose was cold and wet, I just wanted to take her pain away. To promise her that everything would be perfectly fine.
But a promise like that carried the risk of being broken. Instead, I held Sophie a little tighter and said, “I’m sure Vicki will calm down in a day or so.”