Sizzling Nights with Dr. Off-Limits

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EMILY POKED HER HEAD into her patient’s room. Her heart swelled at what she saw.

Cassie Bellows awake and, although still groggy and sleeping more often than not, holding her mother’s hand.

“How’s she doing this morning?”

Cassie’s mother smiled. “She woke up several times during the night but seems a little stronger each time she wakes up.”

“That’s what the night nurse told me during report. She said Cassie was doing great.”

The girl’s mother nodded. “Dr. Cain says everything went as perfectly as it possibly could have when he removed the tumor. Now we just have to wait and see how successful the surgery really was or wasn’t.”

Dr. Cain. A man Emily hadn’t seen for three days.

Three days in which he’d just disappeared from her life.

But not life in general because he’d been at the hospital each day, had done his rounds, had transferred Jenny, who was steadily improving, to the orthopedic surgical floor for further correction of her limb injuries. He’d scheduled Cassie for surgery and performed the surgical excision of her tumor early the day before.

Cassie had done great. Emily had checked on the child before she’d gone home from her shift but had made sure to carefully avoid Lucas.

If he didn’t want to see her, she wouldn’t put herself in his path. Not intentionally.

She didn’t fool herself that she’d be able to avoid him altogether, not with them working at the same hospital. She’d toyed with updating her résumé but had nixed the idea. She loved her job at Children’s and wasn’t leaving. If her being there made him uncomfortable, he could leave. He’d said he would if that was what she wanted. Was it? No, she wanted him to have the opportunity to pursue his dreams, to do his research. Children’s provided him with that opportunity.

They were both better off without each other.

If only she could convince herself of that.

She had five years ago. She’d convinced herself that he was a horrible person who hadn’t wanted her or their baby.

That belief had been a balm for her pain and helped her move forward.

This time she knew better. She knew that her pregnancy hormones had prevented rational thought, that she’d blamed him for things that had perhaps been as much her fault as his.

Lucas was a good man, a good doctor. They’d both been immature and had made mistakes then and now.

Not that telling him about their baby was a mistake. The mistake had been not telling him immediately when she started suspecting she might be pregnant all those years ago, letting her hormones, and fear of what others thought, of what he might think, drive her thoughts to irrational limits.

But he’d already started acting so distant and somehow she’d known he wouldn’t be happy with her news even before she’d started hinting about a baby. Still, she should have told him.

“Her vitals are looking really good,” she told Mrs. Bellows, knowing the woman was waiting for a response of some type.

The woman nodded. Emily checked Cassie’s reflexes, pleased when each one responded appropriately.

“Her neuro check is right on target.”

Cassie’s eyes tracked everything Emily did as she quickly assessed her patient. That the girl’s eyes didn’t leave hers was a great sign.

By the time Emily finished her examination, Cassie had dozed back off.

Mrs. Bellows bent over the bed to kiss Cassie’s cheek. “Dr. Cain said he’d wean her off the ventilator today if she continued to hold her own.”

Dr. Cain. Dr. Cain. Dr. Cain. Maybe Emily would have to rethink the whole staying at Children’s thing. Listening to his patients and their families extol his virtues didn’t rank high on her list of things to do if she wanted to keep her sanity.

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Not that she didn’t understand Mrs. Bellows’s admiration of Lucas. Emily did. He’d saved Cassie’s life when he’d stopped the bleed and he’d given them hope that Cassie was going to be okay when he’d removed the brain tumor.