17. Tessa
TESSA
I tried to focus on the charts in front of me.
Patient in bed four needed another round of IV antibiotics, scheduled for two in the afternoon.
The woman in bed seven had been asking for pain medication every two hours since my shift started, and I needed to check with Dr. Hamill about adjusting her dosage.
I wrote the notes in careful block letters, the way I always did, and tried to keep my handwriting steady.
I failed.
My hand went to my ring finger without meaning to, rubbing the bare place where the band used to be.
The skin there was still smooth, still lighter than the rest of my hand after eleven years of wearing gold.
I caught myself and pulled my fingers away, picking up the pen again like nothing had happened.
The notes blurred. I blinked and read the same line three times, then realized I had written the patient number wrong and had to cross it out and start over.
Five days. Five days since I had stood in the break room at the Halstead Street Clinic and listened to Ruth Delgado tell me about the night of the fire.
Five days since I learned that Callum had stayed at the clinic working through the night while the biggest case of the year waited for him at Bellhaven General Hospital, that he had missed it, that he had lost his post because of it.
Five days since I went to him and he gave me his apology out loud, since I let myself lean into him and feel his arms around me and believe for one moment that it could be real.
Five days since I pulled away and told him I was scared.
God, what was I even doing?
I wanted him. I wanted my husband back so badly it hurt, a physical ache that sat in my chest and would not let go.
I wanted to believe the change was real.
I wanted to stop being frightened. I wanted to go to Priya's apartment tonight and tell Sophie and Owen that we were going home, that their father was different now, that everything was going to be okay.
But what if it was not okay? What if I let myself believe him and then six months from now he was back to seventy-hour weeks and missed conferences and cases that mattered more than anything happening at home? What if I forgave him and then had to watch him stop trying?
I could not do that again. I could not watch him choose the work over me, over Sophie, over Owen, and pretend it did not matter. I had done that for eleven years and I was done.
Except I was not done, because I could not stop thinking about him.
My throat felt tight. I set the pen down and pressed my hands flat against the counter, trying to steady myself. The nurses' station was loud around me, people moving and talking and calling for supplies, but all I could hear was my own pulse pounding in my ears.
He told me he could not promise anything except what he did today. He told me every decision was mine.
I did not know what to do with that. I did not know how to make a decision when I was this scared, when I wanted him this much and was terrified it would all fall apart if I reached for it.
My hands were shaking. I looked down at them and felt ridiculous, standing here in the middle of my shift falling apart over something that happened five days ago, over a man I had been married to for eleven years and still could not figure out.
"Tessa."
I looked up fast, my heart jumping. Desmond Ware stood a few feet away, tall and broad-shouldered in his surgical scrubs with his white coat over them.
His name was embroidered on the chest in dark blue thread.
His hair had gone grayer since I'd last seen him up close, and his face was all hard lines and no softness anywhere.
His eyes were the kind that missed nothing.
I straightened and tried to look like I had not just been falling apart. "Dr. Ware."
"How are you?" he asked. His voice was low and even, the same voice he used in the operating room when he was explaining something to a resident.
"Fine," I said automatically. Too fast. "I'm fine."
He did not say anything. He just looked at me with those eyes that saw everything, and I realized how stupid the answer was. My hands were still shaking. My charts were half-finished. I probably looked like I had been crying, or was about to start.
"Busy shift," I added, which was not an answer to his question and we both knew it.
Desmond nodded once, slow, like he was giving me time to find something better to say. I did not find it. My fingers were at my ring finger before I could stop them, and I pulled my hand back and shoved it into the pocket of my scrubs.
"I wanted to talk to you," Desmond said. "About Callum."
My stomach dropped so fast I felt dizzy. "Is he all right? Did something?—"
"He's fine," Desmond said, and his voice was steady, certain. "He's not hurt. Nothing's happened to him. That's not why I'm here."
I let out a breath. My pulse was still racing, and I felt like an idiot for jumping to the worst possible conclusion, but God, the way Desmond had said it, I thought?—
"Okay," I managed. My voice sounded thin.
Desmond looked at me for a long moment, and I could not read his expression. Then he said, "He's given it up."
I blinked. "What?"
"The workaholic life," Desmond said. "The seventy-hour weeks, the conferences in cities you've never been to, the cases that run until midnight. All of it. He's cleared his schedule, canceled the trips he had planned, handed off the cases he was supposed to do next month. He's done with it."
I stared at him. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my fingertips, in the bare place on my ring finger where the band used to sit. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I tried again. "He told you that?"
"He didn't have to tell me," Desmond said.
"I work at this hospital, Tessa. I was in the room when the board gave his post to Morrison.
He wasn't there that night—he was at the clinic.
And he never came in afterwards, never argued about it, never asked for it back.
I've seen him turn down cases, big ones, the kind he used to fight for.
I've seen him handing off work he would have fought to keep.
And I've seen him leaving in the afternoon.
Callum Reid does not leave in the afternoon.
He stays until the work is finished, and then he stays longer because there's always more work to do. But he's not doing that anymore."
My hands were shaking again. I pressed them harder against the counter, trying to keep myself steady. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because it's true," Desmond said, plain and blunt, like he was stating a fact about a patient's condition or a surgical outcome. "And because you should know. He's doing it so he can spend his time with you."
Something in my chest cracked wide open. I felt it like a physical thing, like a weight I had been carrying had suddenly shifted and I did not know how to hold it anymore. My throat went tight, and I had to blink hard to keep my vision from blurring.
"He's doing it to win me back," I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded, how uncertain. "He's doing it because I left. Because I asked him for a divorce."
"No," Desmond said, and there was no hesitation in it, no doubt. "He's doing it so he can be with you whether or not you stay married."
I froze. The noise of the hospital disappeared. All I could hear was my own heartbeat, loud and frantic in my ears.
"Whether or not I?—"
"Whether or not you come back to him," Desmond said, and his voice was steady and calm, like he was telling me something I should have already known.
"He wants to be with you, Tessa. He wants to spend his afternoons and his evenings and his weekends with you.
He's not doing this on the condition that you forgive him, or that you take him back, or that you give him another chance.
He's doing it because it's what he should have been doing for the past eleven years, and he's doing it now whether you decide to stay married to him or not. "
My throat was so tight I could not breathe. I looked down at my hands, at the bare place on my ring finger, and I felt something rise up in me that I had not let myself feel since the night I left the ring on his pillow and walked out of the Reid house with Sophie and Owen.
Hope.
It terrified me.
"That's not—" I started, and then stopped because I did not know what I was trying to say. My thoughts were tangled, chaotic. "He can't just decide that. He can't just change everything and expect?—"
"He already has," Desmond said. "It's done."
I looked up at him. His face was still granite, all hard lines and no softness, but his eyes were not unkind. They were just watching me, waiting.
"He didn't send me here," Desmond said after a moment.
"He doesn't know I'm talking to you, and he didn't ask me to.
But I've known Callum Reid since he was a resident with hands that shook every time he held a scalpel, and I trained him, and I've watched him build a career most surgeons would kill for.
I've never seen him do what he's doing now.
Six weeks ago I told him that winning you back would take his attention, not his money, and I told him he'd neglected you for eleven years.
He didn't want to hear it. But he listened. That's all I came to say."
He turned to go, his white coat swinging as he moved, and I found my voice again. Barely.
"Dr. Ware."
He stopped and looked back at me.
"Thank you," I said.
He nodded once, then walked away. I watched him disappear into the crowd of people moving through the hallway, nurses and orderlies and doctors in scrubs, until I could not see him anymore.
I stood there for a long time. My hands were still flat on the counter.
My whole body was shaking. The charts were in front of me, the medication schedule still waiting, the patient notes half-finished, but I could not look at them.
I could not think about bed four or bed seven or anything except what Desmond had just told me.
Callum had given it up. The seventy-hour weeks. The conferences. The cases that used to be his whole world. He had cleared his schedule and walked out in the afternoon and handed off procedures he used to fight for. He had done all of it so he could spend his time with me.
Whether or not I came back.
That was the part I could not argue with.
That was the part I could not dismiss or explain away or tell myself was temporary.
If he was doing it to win me back, he would have told me.
He would have made sure I knew, made sure I saw every sacrifice, every change, every moment he chose me over the work.
But he had not done that. He had kept it quiet.
He had let Ruth tell me about the night of the fire instead of announcing it himself, and he had cleared his schedule without asking me to notice.
He was doing it whether I forgave him or not. He was doing it in a future where I did not return, where Sophie and Owen stayed at Priya's apartment and the divorce went through and he spent the rest of his life as the man who lost his wife because he was too blind to see what he had.
He was doing it anyway.
I touched the bare place on my finger again, slower this time, deliberate.
I had spent five days terrified that the change would not last. I had spent five days wanting him and not letting myself reach for him because I was too scared to believe it was real, too scared that six months from now I would be right back where I started, watching him choose the work over everything else and pretending it did not break me.
I had pulled away from him at the clinic because I could not bear the thought of hoping again and being wrong.
But he had not just changed for me. He had changed whether or not I was there to see it.
My chest ached, but it was not the same ache it had been five minutes ago. The weight was still there, but it had shifted, and I could breathe around it now. My hands were still shaking, but they were not shaking the same way.
I did not know what I was going to do. I did not know if I was ready to forgive him, or if I could trust him, or if the fear sitting in my stomach would ever really go away.
I did not know if I could go back to the Reid house and pick up my life like the past seven weeks had not happened.
I did not know if the change would last forever or if it would crack and fall apart the first time something went wrong.
But I knew one thing. It was the only thing that mattered, the only thing I could hold on to right now.
My husband wanted to be with me.