Chapter 33 Snow
SNOW
It’s like being underwater with how blurry my eyes are when they open and how heavy my head feels.
A strange, muffled roaring fills my ears so I close my eyes, swallow, and try again.
The second time I open my eyes, the world is a little clearer, and the muffled roaring dulls to the rhythmic beep of a heart rate monitor beside me.
Where am I?
I was in the taxi on my way home and then…
My eyes close once more.
It’s unclear how much time passes before I open them again, but the room is darker and the blurry film over my vision has melted away into nothing.
I try to ground myself by focusing on what I can feel but from the neck down, everything is numb.
I turn my head and the noise of it draws movement from the foot of my bed. I blink and Xander is there, seated at the end with his dark brows pinched together, a shadow of facial hair clinging to his jaw and a dark, pained look in his eyes.
I’ve never seen him look like that before, but the relief of his being here is so visceral that the heart rate monitor betrays the flutter of my heart.
“Xander,” I croak.
My throat burns. Just as I close my eyes to cough, something rests against my lower lip, and when I open them, Xander’s over me with a cup of water in one hand and a straw in the other.
“Drink,” he says quietly. “Slowly.”
I obey. Pursing my lips, I take one slow sip, and then another. The cool water is heaven against my raw throat and within a few short gulps, I’ve chased away the dryness.
“Xander.” My voice comes out smoother. “What… what happened?”
Xander sets the water cup back down on the table with his back to me, his form rigid and tense.
“Xander?”
Slowly, he turns to face me. “Noelle, you were in a car accident. A driver at the top of the hill ran a red light and sent a collision all the way down to the bottom. Your driver is in recovery. Your car flipped over and you were badly injured, requiring surgery for internal bleeding. Fred operated on you and everything went smoothly, so you’re going to be okay. ”
I’m still stuck on Noelle.
He’s never called me that before. It’s so cold and clinical. Is it because I’m a patient right now?
“I think I remember the crash,” I murmur. “I remember these blinding lights and… all these awful sounds.” My eyes close briefly. “Oh, God, it was terrifying.”
“The police will be around at some point to take your statement,” he says. “Once you’re feeling up to it.”
I reach out to him. In this moment, I don’t give a shit about our jobs or reputation or anything. I need comfort and I need him, consequences be damned.
Although Xander does take a step closer, he doesn’t take my outstretched hand and it quickly becomes too tiring to hold it up. “Why can’t I feel anything?”
“Fred made several small incisions along your abdomen and below your ribs in order to operate. He’s got you on some pretty strong painkillers to combat that, so you won’t feel anything for an hour or two.”
So I wouldn’t even be able to feel his hand in mine.
That doesn’t stop me from craving the warmth of his touch, the familiarity of those fingers weaving with mine and the comfort it would bring.
I’m about to reach for him again when he speaks.
“When did you find out you were pregnant?”
His question cuts through me like a blade of ice and my heart lurches painfully in my chest, once again broadcast on the monitor beside me.
“I’m not?” The lie slips out of me with practiced ease and not a lot of thought.
“Please don’t lie to me, Noelle,” Xander replies tightly. “You’ve just been in an accident. Fred had to get OBGYN down to ensure your baby was unharmed in the crash. It’s fine, by the way. And I saw it on your medical records.”
My sluggish thoughts scramble over themselves as the bubble of Xander and me fades with each use of my name.
“Snow,” I croak. “Call me Snow.”
“When?” he repeats. “When did you know?”
My lips part but no sound escapes while my heart begins to race in my chest.
He can’t know.
This isn’t how he’s supposed to find out. “Why were you looking at my records?”
Is that the best thing I can say?
“I was your primary care physician, remember?” Xander reminds me, and his voice trembles faintly. “Why won’t you answer me?”
“Because I’m not— wait, was? Are you not anymore?”
Xander’s dark eyes lock on mine. “I couldn’t operate on you, Noelle. I couldn’t do it. I tried but when I found out about the baby, I was utterly incapable of doing my job. So please tell me the truth.”
“I am telling—”
“Don’t lie to me, Noelle. And don’t tell me you had no idea because it was in your records. You knew. You knew and you didn’t tell me.” His voice rises slightly and he takes a half step back.
“No, Xander. It–It’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me.”
My head presses back hard into the pillow as weak tears slowly fill my eyes. “I found… I found out when I got the all clear after the needle. The nurse called me to let me know.”
“Since then?” His voice lowers. “So it’s not mine?”
I shake my head, then brace my hands on the bed and haul myself into a sitting position. “Xander, please, it’s not what you think.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he replies, unable to look me in the eye.
His hand lifts and he massages his jaw, briefly covering his mouth as if he’s stopping himself from saying something he shouldn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Such a weighted question.
In this moment, all my justifications and arguments with myself seem worthless.
Xander’s standing in front of me waiting for the truth, and each word I tell him will surely push him further and further away.
“I was scared,” I admit, wetting my dry lips with a swipe of my tongue.
“I was realizing I liked you and then Caleb died, and then being stuck with that needle was terrifying. It was like I was staring down into this gigantic abyss waiting to learn if I was going to die or if my life was going to be changed forever, and when I got the results I was so happy that I came to find you immediately, don’t you remember? And then…”
I catch my breath with a soft gasp.
“Then I was so ready to keep this new, fun thing with you until I found out I was pregnant, and when she told me, I knew it was Caleb’s. From beyond the grave, he was still trying to influence my life. I was in shock.”
“You could have told me.”
“I wasn’t thinking! I’d never thought about kids before, had no idea what or where to start, and I tried to talk to some friends but…” I shake my head, still fighting the tears. “I felt like I had no one so I was just… I was just going to ignore it.”
“Ignore it?” Xander finally looks at me. “Noelle, you can’t ignore a baby.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say desperately. “I panicked, okay? I just wanted to forget about it all until after Christmas.”
“Was it really just sex?” he asks suddenly. “When I told you I wanted to be with you, to have fun and care for you, was I walking right into your honey trap?”
I gape at him and a small pulse of anger rises. “I wasn’t trying to trap you with a baby. How could you think that?”
“What else am I supposed to think when I find out you’ve been lying to me? You sure as hell didn’t trust me enough to tell me about the baby, so were you going to wait until I was at a point of no return and then drop it on me?”
“No!”
“Did you not trust me? Was nothing I did good enough to prove that you could trust me? I was there for you when your friends abandoned you in the hospital. I was there when you confronted that maniac loan shark. I was there for you, offered my home for you, risked my career for you because I cared about you. Was none of that good enough for you?”
The tears come, flooding my eyes and leaking slowly down my cheeks. “I did trust you,” I say, my words wobbling. “You did so many kind things for me and you never asked for anything in turn.”
“Did you not believe me when I said I cared about you?”
“No—”
“Then what was it, Noelle?” His voice lifts once more and for a moment, there’s pain flashing across his face like an open wound.
“Either you were taking me for a fool or you didn’t trust me or—” He catches himself.
“Did you think I would be a bad father? Incapable of being understanding to you? Unwilling to help?”
“No, Xander, please! Don’t say things like that!”
“It’s pretty obvious to me what this is and I was foolish to think anything different. A relationship can’t be built if there’s no trust.”
“Xander, I was scared—”
“Of what? Me?” He looks at me with those intense, dark eyes, clutching at his hip with one strong hand. “Because that’s what it looks like. Either too scared to trust me or you think so poorly of me that it was worth overlooking for sex but not for the truth.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight! I felt so alone and when you told me about Claire, I didn’t want to be another burden to you.”
“That was your take away from my trusting you about my late wife? That she was a burden?”
“I didn’t mean it like that! Fuck, I’m sorry, okay? I was scared of losing you, Xander.”
“I was scared of losing you when you confronted that loan shark but I still showed up for you, Noelle. But you? Whatever this is, whatever you think about me is clearly much lower than how I think about you!”
He’s so visibly angry and hurt that all I want to do is take him in my arms and soothe him. But I can’t.
This is my fault.
Letting my fears get the better of me is hardly an excuse in the wake of the harsh truth. “Xander…”
“I only really stopped by to tell you that you’ve been assigned a new primary care physician.”
“What? You don’t want to see me anymore or something?”
Xander’s frown deepens. “I couldn’t operate on you, Noelle.
I couldn’t do it. When I found out about the baby, everything clouded.
I couldn’t understand how the trust I thought we had clearly didn’t exist in your mind.
I passed your surgery on to Fred, but it drew some concerns, and my inability to operate on you for personal reasons means the Board found out about our relationship. ”
My stomach curls and falls right out of me.
“I’m on probation pending a full investigation.”