Chapter Eight
Rose stared at Dr. Myers with growing annoyance. For the second time in a week, he’d asked her to work a double shift. Despite knowing it was a possibility, she’d hoped to get out of it.
“But I have plans tonight,” she protested. She couldn’t believe his gall. He knew her fiancé was recovering after a stint in the hospital. Why can’t he find someone else?
“I’m sorry, but Lisa’s daughter is still sick, and Rebecca is out of town.” He shrugged apologetically.
Steven wasn’t the only one who needed to hire extra help. The hospital had been hemorrhaging staff for ages, and they struggled to replace the nurses who left.
“I promise I’ll make it up to you,” Dr. Myers continued.
Rose raised an eyebrow. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“You’re being considered for head nurse,” he said, leaning against the wall. “I can put in several good words for you.”
While she appreciated the sentiment, she doubted it would help her in the long run. Dr. Myers had a lot of clout, but he wasn’t even on the hiring board. The members might listen to his recommendations, but they didn’t mean anything, especially when Rebecca and Lisa both had seniority.
Rather than say any of that aloud, she forced a smile and thanked him before returning to start her rounds… again. She texted Lanie that she wouldn’t be able to see Steven before visiting hours ended after all. Maybe it was for the best. Every time she saw him, he and Lanie were discussing some new concern at his office. Rose hated seeing his stress mounting. But she kept quiet to avoid an argument, and quite frankly, she was tired of biting her tongue.
Mr. Patrones was her first stop, and she braced herself for his glum demeanor. She supposed she should be grateful Steven wasn’t more like him. But Mr. Patrones had several years on Steven, and his health had been poor even before his heart attack.
Pasting a smile on her face, she knocked then opened the door. “Good afternoon, Mr. Patrones. How are we doing?”
“The same as I was the last time you were here.” He blinked at her. “Shouldn’t you be off duty?”
“I’m working a double,” she said, keeping her voice cheery. Glancing over his chart, she was surprised by Dr. Myers’s note at the bottom. Discharge tomorrow. “Good news! You’re getting sprung tomorrow!”
His eyebrows pulled together. “So soon?”
I thought he couldn’t wait to get out of here. “Aw, Mr. Patrones, I’m glad to hear you’re going to miss me, but you’ve made so much progress. You should celebrate.”
“With what?” he demanded, his tone acerbic. “I can’t have red meat or alcohol, and I’m not much of a cake person.”
Rose took a deep breath and released it slowly, counting down from ten. Only that man could make something wonderful like being released from the hospital seem like a chore.
“I’m sure your friends will be happy to see you.”
He stared at her, his face expressionless. “I don’t have any friends.”
Can’t imagine why.No, that was unfair. She didn’t know anything about him other than what she’d learned from his medical record and the little he told her. If his heart attack hadn’t happened in public, he wouldn’t have survived it. When she thought of him returning to the condo where he lived alone, her heart went out to him. She wondered what had happened in his life to cause him to be so utterly alone.
“Now you have a chance to make some,” she said, though she didn’t know why she was bothering to pretend to be upbeat. Mr. Patrones’s defeatist attitude drained the life from her whenever she was in the room with him.
He snorted but said nothing else. After she finished marking down his vitals on his chart, Rose attempted one last smile and hurried from the room.
She took a minute to reorganize her thoughts before moving on to the next patient. As much as she dreaded dealing with Mr. Patrones’s depressing comments, she shouldn’t judge him. After all, were it not for Steven, his family, and the few friends she’d made since moving to Cedar Haven, her life might not be that much different. Even with all of those people in her life, she struggled sometimes to open up and to let people help her. Her parents had raised her to be self-sufficient and to take care of those around her, which was why being a nurse came so naturally. But she wondered sometimes if she was too independent.
The end of her shift neared, and Rose couldn’t wait. She dragged herself through her rounds once more. Most of her patients were sleeping, which did nothing to help her pass the time.
“You should grab a quick nap,” Dr. Myers said, startling her. She spun around to find him leaning against the doorframe of Mr. Patrones’s room with a lopsided grin.
“I’ve only got an hour left.” She shrugged. “Not much point to it now.”
He stepped toward her, the grin dissolving into a frown of concern. “Yeah, but you still have to drive home. Take a nap. I can check on your remaining patients.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “How are you not dead on your feet? You’ve been here as long as me, if not longer.”
It was his turn to shrug. “I’m used to little sleep.” Turning so his back pressed against the wall, he stared at the ceiling. “Before I came here, I was an on-call with the ER in Baltimore.”
“Oof.” Several of her nursing friends had gone on to work in ERs all over the nation. The last time she saw them, they’d told horror story after horror story. She couldn’t imagine the chaos. It’d been hard enough when Steven had come through, and she wasn’t even his nurse.
“Yeah,” he said. “Oof.”
“What made you decide to move to our little town?”
The lopsided grin returned. “Would you believe me if I said a girl?”
That got her attention. “Really?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you come here for Steven?”
“Well, yeah, but we’d been together awhile by that point.” She cocked her head. “You just don’t seem the type to go chasing after someone.”
His laugh was hollow, bitter. Rose deduced he had quite the story to tell, but she shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t her business, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the details. They weren’t friendly outside of the office like she and Rebecca were. In fact, that conversation was the longest one she could ever remember them having.
He nodded at the chart in her hands. “How many more patients do you have?”
“Just one. Why?”
“If you’re not going to take a nap, you should get some coffee in you.” When she frowned, he gave a sad smile. “Meet me downstairs when you’re done, and I’ll tell you the whole sordid tale.”
Despite her misgivings, curiosity bubbled up inside her. With a nod, she turned on her heel and headed off to check on her last patient. She didn’t know why she cared. Based on some of his cocky behavior at the hospital, she could only imagine what he had done to cause the end of his relationship. But learning that someone else had moved to their tiny town for love intrigued her.
About ten minutes later, Rose entered the cafeteria and allowed her eyes to sweep the room. Though technically the place was closed, a couple of coffee and vending machines were available. A few residents sat around a table by the door, but they paid her no mind. Finally, she spotted Dr. Myers seated at a table on the far side of the room with two coffees set before him.
“Two sugars and a splash of cream, right?” He slid her drink over.
She sank into a seat, dumbstruck by his thoughtfulness. “How’d you know?”
“I pay attention.”
Just the scent of the roasted beans was enough to rouse her, but she took a sip anyway. He was right—she needed something to stay awake. Though she lived only fifteen to twenty minutes from the hospital, she always struggled to keep her eyes open after working a double.
“So, tell me,” she said. “Who broke your heart?”
His eyes widened. “How do you know she did the breaking?”
“Lucky guess?”
He shifted, his fingers fiddling with the flap on the lid of his cup. “I’d say we broke each other.”
When he didn’t continue, she leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to. I’m trying to think of where to begin.” Wrapping his hands around the cup, he stared at the table. “Melissa and I met at Johns Hopkins. I had been accepted into their cardiology fellowship, and she was pursuing her MFA in creative writing.” He shook his head, a faint smile on his face. “We came from such different worlds—it was a wonder ours connected at all. In some ways, it felt like fate.”
Rose leaned forward, growing more interested in his tale with each word due to the similarities with her own story. She and Steven had also met in college, and though they’d both gone to the University of Maryland, their programs had almost nothing in common.
“So, how did you meet?” she asked.
He shrugged. “At a party. We had a few mutual friends. Actually, her best friend and my best friend were both 1L’s in law school at the time.” He coughed a harsh laugh before he continued. “They dated casually. Their schedules made it impossible to make it anything more. But after I saw Melissa, I knew I’d find a way to make it work. And I did.” Pausing and draining his cup, he cleared his throat then gestured to Rose. “Did you want another one?”
She blinked then shook her cup. The coffee sloshed around inside, confirming she’d barely drunk any of it. When she declined, he got himself another cup from the machine.
While she waited for him to return, she sipped the now lukewarm liquid, contemplating what he’d told her so far. What had happened between them to cause him to say they broke each other? He sounded like he still cared a great deal for her, if the wistfulness in his voice was any indication.
When he returned, he slid into his chair and grimaced. “So, Melissa and I dated throughout my fellowship and her master’s. After we’d completed our programs, we discussed where to live. At first, we got a place in Baltimore, and she got a job at a small publisher while I did a residency at Mercy Hospital.
“But she wasn’t happy, and one day, she asked if I would consider leaving the city life for something quieter.” He raised an eyebrow at Rose. “I didn’t realize how quiet she meant until she brought me down to meet her parents.”
“So she lives here?” Rose asked. Have I ever met her before? She racked her brain, but she couldn’t remember any Melissa from the people she’d met since moving to town.
He shook his head. “A few towns over, but this was the closest hospital.”
“Did her parents not like you?”
“Oh no, that wasn’t the problem. And my parents loved her.” His eyes grew sad, and he sighed. “I guess you could say I took a long time to adjust to small-town life.”
“It can be a big change,” Rose said, her heart going out to him. “I’m used to living in a city too. But I don’t know, Cedar Haven has kind of grown on me.”
“That’s the thing. I asked her to move here.” He brushed his dark hair off his forehead and gazed intently at Rose. “We had rented a little place near her parents, which was quite the hike to the hospital, especially in an emergency.”
“She didn’t want to?”
“Her father became ill, and she wanted to stay nearby so she could care for him and help her mother.”
Rose rested her chin on her hand. “What did she do? Was she still working at the publisher?”
He shook his head. “No. She had decided to pursue writing full-time, so she was working on a novel, which was the other reason I was frustrated she didn’t want to move. She had no commute, and I’d already made sacrifices in turning down a lucrative job in Baltimore to move here.”
“So, did you move?”
Hunching his shoulders, he nodded. “Briefly. We found a place not far from the hospital.” He gave another bitter laugh. “I actually still live there.”
“Then what happened? Did she go back to her parents?”
At first, he didn’t respond, and Rose wasn’t sure whether she should say something comforting. But then he took a deep breath and pushed his coffee cup away.
“As her father got worse, she spent more and more time over there. It got to the point where we barely saw each other.” His mouth pressed into a thin line. “Between caring for her dad and comforting her mom, she didn’t have much time for me.”
“Did you consider moving back closer to her parents?”
He leaned back and nodded. “But I also sat her down and had a long talk about the importance of taking care of her health. She’d become a ghost of her former self. She’d even stopped writing, devoting all her time to her father.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t make it?” His story was beginning to sound eerily familiar.
Shifting in his seat, he folded his arms on the table. “He did not. She was a wreck afterward. She moved back in with her mother and basically shut herself away.”
Rose narrowed her eyes. “And what? You broke up with her?”
He sighed. “Of course not. I tried to talk to her, to pull her out of the depressive funk she was sinking into.” Gulping down more coffee, he grimaced. “But she was angry with me for taking her away from her father in the first place, when we’d moved closer to the hospital. And then I couldn’t bear to watch her wither away as she poured everything she had into a hopeless case.” His eyes shot to Rose’s face, and he bit his lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
She gave him a weak smile. “I know.” Then she shook her head. “That’s awful.”
Leaning forward, he pushed her coffee into her hands and gave her a meaningful look. Dutifully, she raised it to her lips. The cool liquid did little to enliven her as it slid down her throat, but she hoped the caffeine would kick in soon.
“There’s a reason I’m telling you this story,” he said.
“What’s that?”
He cleared his throat. “I’d only recently joined the hospital staff when Steven’s mother took a turn for the worse.” Rose dropped her gaze, but he continued, “And I saw how you rallied around her, helping Steven’s sister and caring for her yourself. While you didn’t fade as quickly as Melissa, I could see the toll it was taking on you.”
“But Lanie did most of her care,” Rose protested. “And they hired hospice nurses, so my contribution was minimal.”
“I know.” He took a deep breath. “I also know the situation won’t be the same with Steven.”
She stilled, her heart pounding in her chest. What does he mean by that?
“You’re a caretaker, Rose. I’ve seen it here at the hospital with your patients.” When she frowned, he hurried on. “That’s a good thing. It makes you an amazing nurse. But here, it’s easy to maintain boundaries with your patients.”
“You think I can’t do the same with Steven?” she asked coolly.
“Can you?” He raised an eyebrow. “He’s your fiancé, the love of your life, I assume. And I imagine he isn’t taking too kindly to staying in the rehab facility.” She made a face, and he nodded as if she’d confirmed something. “I know his sister has been going there regularly since the school year ended, which is likely lessening your burden.” His eyes narrowed. “But I don’t expect that to last much longer.”
“So what are you saying?”
He touched her hand, his mouth turning down. “Don’t become the next Melissa.”