26. Jack
26
JACK
I sank into my chair with both hands on my head and my elbows firmly planted on my desk. After the reaming Nick and the board gave me, I'd be shocked if I didn't get some sort of suspension or probation out of the situation. Considering how close I came to being sued for millions of dollars, this should have been nothing, but I was angry anyway. Except, my anger toward Ashley wasn't because of how Nick chewed me out over her hiring paperwork. It was because of what I'd seen in the hallway yesterday with Sam Gooding.
I had been upset ever since I saw it and I'd had my phone off to avoid snapping at her and saying something I'd regret, but this couldn't be avoided. She and I had to have our stories straight before she got questioned by the board again.
I should have been blaming myself because I knew what I was doing when I filed her paperwork the way I did. Those were my lies because I wanted her on my team as an intern. The board would never have allowed me to fill the spot of an intern with a board-certified surgeon. Mountain View was a teaching hospital and I was supposed to be teaching. The only thing I was teaching them, however, was how to lie and get into trouble.
Still, I had nowhere to displace the anger and it had to come out. I was done. I had bared my heart to her and confessed that I loved her. It felt like that confession meant nothing when I stepped off the elevator and saw her with Gooding yet again. I was there to comfort her, albeit a few minutes late, apparently, but I was the man she was supposed to turn to. Not him.
When the door sprang open, I lowered my hands and looked up at her with a grimace on my face and tight shoulders. She stepped in and shut the door and stood there sheepishly looking at me like a scolded child.
"What's so urgent?" she asked. Then she said, "I needed to change Mrs. North's prescription. She's not responding to?—"
"Sit down," I barked, and she startled. But she listened to me, scurrying to the chairs across from my desk and sitting down. I didn't know where to begin because the pain of what I was about to do was crushing.
"Jack, say something.” Her lip quivered when she spoke, and she bit it. Then she rested a hand on her stomach as if she felt sick. Id' watched her throw up the other night because she got herself so worked up and emotional. I hated that she felt this way again, but I wouldn't allow myself to feel sympathy for her right now.
"What exactly did you tell Dr. Fisher and the board?" My anger was only barely contained to a harsh, biting tone. I felt like a boss reprimanding an employee, not a man addressing his partner about an issue. Though, if this had been Barbra, I would have unleashed and not held back at all.
"I told him the truth, Jack. You didn't say anything to me about fudging my paperwork. What was I supposed to say?" Her hands fidgeted with the hem of her lab coat and she shifted nervously in the chair. I noticed her eyes looked tired and she looked emotional. Guilt needled at my conscience, accusing me that I shouldn't be angry with her, or at least not pinning that anger on something I had done to her. But when I thought of trying to articulate what I was actually feeling about her and Sam, I choked up. Even thinking it was too painful. Flinging the accusation would only be the knife that killed any chance I had, even though I was basically throwing it in the garbage as it was.
I raked a hand through my hair, not knowing what to say next. I didn't want to fight, but I needed to fight. I needed to scream it out and for her to admit to me that she was secretly seeing Sam. I needed the axe to fall and for this anxious back and forth to be over now. I couldn't take it anymore. It was torture of the worst kind. If hell was real, I knew what my hell would be. It would be falling in love, only for the woman I adored to be caught cheating, over and over and over.
"Jack, I was here to help you. I trusted you to take care of those things when you said you would. How should I have known you lied to the board about it?" Ashley huffed and smoothed her hands down the front of her slacks. "I should be upset with you for lying about me. They called me in for questioning over that thinking I lied to you about it. I should be asking you what you told them."
She stood and crossed her arms over her chest as she spoke. I didn't like her tone. In fact, I hated it. It made my reactionary temper flare up just when I thought I was getting better control of it.
"You be angry at me?" I scoffed and scowled at her. "I trusted you to do a job and when I told you to stop snooping around, you continued to stick your nose in it and?—"
"Oh, this is rich." She threw her hands up and laughed in a snarky way as she walked toward the door, where she stopped and turned around. "You are the one who fudged the paperwork so you could hire me. You are the one who needed my help, which by the way, I never got any thanks for. You followed me into that cabin on Dad's yacht and had sex with me. Meanwhile, I am the one who volunteered to put my career on hold, bailed you out more than once, and figured out who was screwing you over."
Everything she was saying was true, but it only made me angrier that she was putting it back on me. Angry because I couldn't bring myself to accuse her of dating Sam. I knew if I did that it was really over between us and I didn't want it to be over. I didn't want to know if she was seeing him behind my back. I wanted to pretend he didn’t even exist, but the fear was consuming.
"Yes, because seducing me and then lying to Daddy was really the best option you had. You wanted every second of that, and you liked it." I was fuming, rising to lean over my desk. I had never been so angry or hurt in my life, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to run to her and hear her tell me she wasn't dating him, that we could move forward and just have a future.
"You're an ass," she said, and tears welled up in her eyes. She turned and put her hand on the doorknob, and more fear rose up inside me as it opened. I wanted her to stop. This was out of control and irrational. We needed to talk things out and not argue about them anymore. "I don't even know you, Jack. One minute, you're wanting everything about me. You can't get enough. And the next minute, you're possessive and demanding, but you refuse to commit to a relationship you 'don't have time for', and I'm supposed to be 'only yours', but you don’t want to have a family?"
"Ashley, wait," I said, but she let the door swing wide and stepped into the hallway and I snapped. All I could see was the mental image of her hugging Sam Gooding, and I blurted out, "That's it. Go run to your little boyfriend, Dr. Gooding. Maybe he'll comfort you again."
It shocked even me as the words tumbled from my lips, and Ashley hurried away, crying. I stood there with my chest heaving, staring at the open door, watching her until she was out of sight. I knew when I got angry like this that I was prone to saying things I didn't mean, things that would be hurtful to other people. I'd done it with Barbra, but never with Ashley. I thought I'd grown and changed, but I was wrong.
Running after her would never work either, trying to chase her down and explain why my angry words weren't meant to be hurtful. They were just a reflection of my fears, and I needed reassurance, but she could never give it now. She was hurting. I had hurt her. I was the monster, or more accurately, my trauma that I had never taken time to heal was the monster. It was eating me alive and pushing people away from me. Good people.
I sank back down into my chair and covered my face again. I stopped short of letting the tears flow, but they were there, asking to come out. I didn't deserve to cry or feel sorry for myself. I was exactly what Ashley said about me. An ass—chief ass, the biggest one on the planet. She deserved so much better than me. If she was cheating on me with Sam, it was probably my fault. I hadn't given her any reason to believe I was a better man than this ball of anger and frustration, and every day, she'd stuck by me and tried to help me.
But I saw her with him. I saw her touching his hand softly at lunch. I saw him putting his number into her phone. I saw them laughing like old chums and talking in private places. I saw her in his arms and when I confronted him, he didn't deny having motives of reconnecting with her. It all added up to her being interested in him and hiding that from me. Lying about it.
It was too much. The evidence was damning. My gut roiled and twisted. I wasn’t wrong. She was secretly seeing that man behind my back and I couldn't date her because it would only continue. If she felt the need to hide that from me, it wasn't innocent at all.
While I felt bad for snapping at her and I knew it made me look foolish and immature, I still knew I was right. We were done.
Things between Ashley and I were finally over and I could just mourn the relationship I thought I had, the one I wanted. And for the first time since this thing started, I could be honest with Calvin and tell him I was protecting Ashley. Except the man I was protecting her from was myself. I was withdrawing from this race and conceding victory to Sam Gooding. Calvin wouldn't like that, but at least he'd know the snake in the grass.