Chapter 9 #2
His hand tightened around hers one last time, his thumb brushing across her knuckles in a gesture that felt both like a promise and a plea. Then he let go, and she stepped back to make room for the orderly to unlock the gurney’s wheels.
“I’ll be right here when you wake up.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
He nodded, his eyes locked on her, then they wheeled him away. She watched his tall figure go through the double doors marked OR Three, the surgical cap making him seem like a stranger, her heart tightening with fear.
From the left bay, she heard Susan’s voice, soft but clear. “Jewel? Could you come say goodbye?”
She moved to Susan’s side just as another nurse arrived. The older woman’s face was serene, almost glowing, as if she had crossed an invisible threshold into peace. She reached for her hand, her grip unexpectedly firm.
“Please take care of my boys. All of them.”
“I will. But you’ll be fine. You’ll both be fine.”
Susan smiled with a knowing look, suggesting she sensed the doubt behind the conviction. “We’ll see what the good Lord has planned. But whatever happens, I want you to know how thankful I am that you came into our lives. You’ve been such a blessing.”
And then they wheeled Susan away through the double doors marked OR Four. Adjacent rooms. So close, yet so impossibly far apart.
Jewel was now alone in the pre-op area, surrounded by empty bays and the antiseptic smell that seemed to coat the back of her throat. The IV stand Susan had been connected to stood abandoned next to her, with a few drops of saline glistening on the floor beneath it.
She stood there for a long moment, wrapping her arms around herself and trying to remember how to breathe. Then she started walking, her legs moving automatically, heading toward what she hoped was the waiting room.
When she found it, she looked around, suddenly unsure.
The area was designed for comfort but only achieved a clinical approximation.
Mauve chairs with wooden armrests lined the walls, their cushions worn smooth by countless anxious family members.
A television mounted in the corner played the morning news on mute, with the closed captioning scrolling past unread.
Someone had placed artificial plants in the corners—silk ferns that would never need water, never grow, and never die.
She was alone.
The waiting felt heavier without anyone else in the room. More isolating.
She claimed a spot by the window, pulled out her laptop, and tried to work, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate. The computer sat open on her lap, its cursor blinking accusingly on a blank document.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but her mind kept drifting back to Cole on that gurney, his eyes wide with fear, his hands clutching hers like she was the only solid thing in a world that had turned liquid and uncertain.
And to Susan’s peaceful smile, that terrible acceptance that almost looked like surrender.
Two to three hours for the donor surgery. Three to four for the recipient.
She glanced at the industrial clock on the wall. They had been there for thirty-seven minutes. It felt like days.
An elderly couple entered and sat across from her. They held hands, neither speaking nor focusing on anything in particular. The woman’s eyes were red-rimmed, and she clutched a tissue tightly. The man simply stared blankly, with a closed-off expression.
She looked away. The weight of their grief was too much to bear on top of her own fear.
Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her pocket to see a text from Sophie.
How’s it going? Any updates?
She stared at the message, her thumb hovering over the keyboard.
How was she supposed to reply? “The man I’m falling for and his mother are currently being cut open in adjacent operating rooms, and I’m sitting here pretending to work while trying not to imagine all the ways this could go wrong”? Heck no.
Instead, she typed, Surgery started about forty-five minutes ago. I’ll keep you updated.
Sophie responded right away. Hang in there. They’re both strong. They’ll make it.
She wanted to believe that. She needed to believe it. But the one percent chance of serious complications the doctor had mentioned kept echoing in her mind, growing louder with each passing minute.
She set the phone aside and tried to focus on the laptop again. The file she had pulled up was about Trevor Montgomery. She still believed he was her best lead to Vivian’s whereabouts, but the man was elusive, roaming quickly from town to town, like her mind jumping from thought to thought.
Now it drifted to yesterday. To Ashley.
That strange coffee shop meeting that had ended so abruptly, with Ashley practically running out the door. Her pale face. Her shaking hands. Her obvious panic.
“When did you see it? What day?”
The question had been sharp and urgent, like the answer mattered more than anything. Then she bolted, leaving her sitting alone with more confusion than she’d walked in with.
She’d replayed that conversation a dozen times, trying to understand it.
Ashley had been Vivian’s best friend. She expected she would know about the bracelet, maybe even its location, and whether Vivian had been wearing it the day she disappeared.
But she hadn’t expected such a dramatic reaction when she mentioned that she thought she’d seen it on someone else.
The possibilities started lining up in her mind like suspects in a lineup.
There was no doubt that Ashley knew more about the bracelet than she was saying. Something she hadn’t told anyone. Maybe Vivian had given it to her before she disappeared. Maybe Ashley had taken it for safekeeping. Maybe it held sentimental value beyond what a casual observer would recognize.
It was possible that the bracelet wasn’t Vivian’s at all, or Vivian had lied to everyone about where she’d gotten it. Maybe it had been a gift from Trevor. Maybe there was some history behind it. But none of that explained why it suddenly appeared in Cole’s office.
And then there was the very real possibility that Ashley was lying about Vivian, the bracelet, and everything else. Maybe she knew exactly where that bracelet had been because she’d been the one to put it in Cole’s office. That thought made her stomach clench.
But why? And why now? What would Ashley gain by planting evidence in Cole’s office? Finding his missing wife’s bracelet there wasn’t exactly incriminating on its own.
Unless she wasn’t working alone.
The memory of Ashley standing outside that coffee shop, laughing with Robert, rose to the forefront of her mind, and she recalled how she had taken his business card with that warm, genuine smile, as if they were friends—like they had a history together.
She’d tried to convince herself that Ashley must’ve been playing spy, doing exactly what she’d offered to do weeks ago and gathering information, but what if she was wrong? What if Ashley and Robert weren’t enemies at all?
What if they were working together?
A woman’s voice at the reception desk briefly drew her attention.
Someone was asking about a patient, and the receptionist’s calm, practiced response followed.
The sounds of the hospital—beeping monitors from somewhere in the distance, the soft squeak of shoes on linoleum, the hum of overhead fluorescent lights—all blended into a soundtrack of anxiety.
She looked back at her laptop, at the blinking cursor that appeared to mock her struggle to concentrate.
The truth was, she didn’t know what to do about Ashley. Confronting her felt too early without more evidence. But ignoring the situation seemed risky, like turning her back on a threat she couldn’t quite see but could definitely feel.
She needed more information. She had to figure out the connection between Ashley and Robert, if there even was one, beyond that single interaction she’d witnessed. She needed to find out for sure why the bracelet had provoked such a violent reaction.
But right now, in this waiting room with the surgical clock ticking down and Cole’s and Susan’s lives hanging in the balance, all of that felt impossibly distant. Secondary. Like problems from another life entirely.
Her phone buzzed again. This time it was from Ashley.