“Okay. I’m putting something in your IV that should make you more comfortable. Let someone know if that isn’t enough, all right? We don’t want you lying here in pain.”
“Thanks, Steve.” When the nurse left to tend his other patients, Liam turned his head to look at the chair across the room, wondering if he would find Henry Easton still sitting there, hoping he would see Anne instead.
The chair was empty.
He was okay with that, he assured himself. Easton probably had to work. Anne had classes. He didn’t really know anyone else in the area. He didn’t need someone sitting with him every minute, anyway. He’d only had major, life-threatening surgery. If he needed anything, all he had to do was push a button and someone on the hospital staff would rush to his side. Probably.
His bout of self-pity was short-lived. Anne entered the room, carrying a lidded, disposable cup that might have held coffee. She smiled when she saw him looking at her, her gaze intently searching his face. “You’re awake.”
Why did everyone seem to feel the need to announce that to him? “Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
He kept his reply rather generic for Anne. “I’m okay.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall facing him. Two o’clock—and if he had his days straight, it was Friday afternoon. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“I skipped classes today. Haley’s taking notes for me. I’ve been sitting in here for the past few hours, since I relieved Dad. He said you’d been awake for a little while this morning.”
“Yeah. I was…surprised to see him here.”
Setting her coffee on the nightstand beside the bed, Anne stood gazing down at him, her expression hard to read. “I’m sure you were. I didn’t think you’d wake up while I was resting, but I wanted someone to be here if you did. Just to reassure you that you’d be okay.”
And she’d thought her father would be the one to offer that reassurance? Okay.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.
She shrugged, the purplish hollows beneath her eyes giving the real answer before she prevaricated, “Some. I napped in one of the recliners in the waiting room.”
So she’d sat with him all night after his surgery. He shook his head against the pillow. “You should have gone home to bed. And you shouldn’t have missed classes for me. I’m getting good care here. You should go on now and find your study group. You have to prepare for the next test. Maybe you can stop back in for a little while this evening. I’ll be fine until then.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m the one who decides what I ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ do, Liam. It’s taken me a while to get to that point, but from now on, I don’t need anyone making decisions for me. That includes my dad—and you.”
He was a bit taken aback by her irritated response. “Uh—sure. Sorry.”
Her eyebrows rose in response to his aggrieved tone. “Were you expecting me to cut you some slack because you’re lying in a hospital bed?”
“Of course not,” he lied. “I was only trying to—”
“Trying to look out for me,” she cut in to finish for him. “Just like my family has always done. ‘Don’t get involved with anyone too early, Anne.’ ‘Don’t let anyone interfere with your studies, Anne.’ ‘Don’t let yourself get distracted from your education, Anne.’ ‘Don’t miss your classes or get behind in your work or fail to do your best on a test or take your eyes from the ultimate goal of surgery, Anne.’”
She leaned over the bed, her hands clenched on the metal railing, her gaze locked with his. “Well, let me tell you, Liam?
?just as I’ve already told my dad. All that advice and helpful guidance hasn’t been working so well. Because I’ve tried to please everyone and do everything everyone told me ‘for my own good,’ I broke up with the man I loved in college. I’ve worried myself sick through medical school for fear of letting my family down. I made the mistake of secretly getting married and then going to great lengths to keep that secret. And I let myself get so wrapped up in the pressure everyone was putting on me that I didn’t even see that my own husband was getting very ill right in front of my miserable and self-absorbed eyes!”
“You couldn’t have known—”
“I should have known,” she insisted. “I was more concerned about test scores and class ranking than I was about your illness. What kind of doctor does that make me?”
“You’re going to be a great doctor. You just have to get through the training, which is so damned hard that no one could possibly blame you for being overwhelmed by it.”
She didn’t look at all convinced, but he moved on, addressing something else she had said that was bothering him. “You said you ‘made the mistake’ of secretly marrying.”
She lifted her chin a little. “Yes. That’s what I said.”
He wondered grimly how he would rate the pain he felt now. There wasn’t a scale that went high enough to describe the ache in his heart after hearing Anne declare their marriage a mistake. “Does that mean you want a divorce?”
Anne gave a long, deep sigh. “You are such an idiot, Liam McCright.”