Naomi's Wish

by Rachael Herron

  “Don’t you Doc me.” She pressed her fingers to her temples in a vain attempt to dull the headache. “It’s done. Whatever it was between us is completely over. The trust is gone.”

  A frown cut a deep furrow in Rig’s brow. “Naomi. I just said I was sorry. And I think your mother’s revelation is definitely a huge betrayal, too. You want to talk about it?”

  Naomi’s laugh was hollow. “With you? No way.”

  “I’m a good listener.”

  “Yeah. You’re good at listening and then sharing my secrets.”

  He took another step forward, moving into her space. “Naomi, what’s it going to take to get you to believe that I’m truly sorry?”

  She just shook her head. Nope, she couldn’t think of a thing. “I just had to tell you that we … that whatever this was, we’re done.” She couldn’t scoot any farther back—he had to stay away. If he touched her …

  “So that’s it?” His voice was rough.

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  Rig raised his hand as if he would reach out to her, and she felt herself flinch away. He noticed, and the pain in his eyes was obvious. But then he just rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I expect you to be angry and then to accept a heartfelt apology and move forward. Like a grown-up.”

  “You’re calling me a child?”

  “If the kid’s shoe fits …”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “You?” Rig’s face matched his tone—shocked and hurt. His eyes darkened like a sudden storm over the ocean. “I can’t believe that you aren’t seeing this for what it is. I made a mistake. But that’s because I was thinking so hard of how to make your surprise special. Fixing up the center was a big deal, I knew, but helping fix an actual, emotional problem between you and your mother was even bigger. That was more important to me. And I thought it would be to you, too, even though I was wrong.”

  “See? You were keeping secrets from me, too. What if Anna had told me about what you did with the center? How would you have felt?”

  Rig sighed and jammed a fist in his hair. The way it stuck up afterward reminded Naomi of how he’d looked when she’d woken in his arms during her illness. “A surprise is different from a secret. Did you ever stop to think about that? It’s okay to keep secrets when you’re planning a surprise for someone. Your problem is that you hold emotional secrets inside about everything, locked away in the darkness. You don’t let people in. You don’t let anyone get close, and my God, that’s what this life is for. Letting people in. Living with an open heart. I thought you were letting me in, and I’m not talking sexually, although that was beyond amazing. But now you’ve shut me out again.”

  “That’s not fair—” Naomi started.

  “No, what’s not fair is letting me get close to you for a second or two, and then pushing me away like this.”

  “I have to—”

  “You don’t. That’s a lie you’re telling yourself. But when you find out you’re wrong about this, you can lock that knowledge up, too. Add it to your box of deep, dark secrets.”

  “You don’t understand.” Naomi felt a desperate longing for … what? Rig’s arms around her? No.

  Rig’s cell phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his pocket while stepping backward, away from her. “I guess there’s only one secret you don’t know about me.”

  Naomi felt herself pale. How had this become even more broken than she’d thought it was? “What?”

  His words fell heavily into the room, his voice raw with emotion. “I fell in love with you. Now lock that away, because I’ll be working on getting over it as soon as possible.”

  Something shattered in Naomi with an almost audible snap. Darkness folded in at the edges of her vision.

  Then Rig made a strangled noise in the back of his throat as he stared at his phone. He snapped it shut and ran out of the room without saying another word.

  “Rig?” Naomi followed him. What had his phone said? Something even worse than what had just happened? Was that even possible?

  He’d already exited the side door at a dead run when Bruno caught her in the hallway.

  “The ER just called,” he said. “Rig’s dad was just brought in, code three. They’re working him now.”

  “As in working?” CPR couldn’t be in progress. No, please, no.

  Bruno nodded. “You’d better go.”

  Chains couldn’t have held her. Naomi flew.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  For a friend who must be in the hospital, knit cashmere socks. They will remind her that she is loved.

  —E.C.

  The floor was buzzing—the three nurses on duty looked swamped. A motor-vehicle accident victim was in one bed, his head bandaged, blinking rapidly. An older woman clutched her stomach in another bed, crying quietly. Naomi felt an urge to go to each one, but kept moving, kept looking.

  Frank lay in the farthest bed, his eyes closed, his skin gray. The back of his hand was already bruised from the lines the nurses had prepped.

  Naomi felt her knees go weak with relief. He was alive.

  Jake and Rig stood next to their father. Milo, sitting on the metal chair next to them, looked at Frank with wide, startled eyes, a green plastic dinosaur dangling from his right hand.

  Rig barely glanced at Naomi. “How is he? What the hell happened?”

  “Shirley Bellflower happened,” hissed Jake.

  “I heard that,” said a voice from behind Naomi. Shirley stood just outside the pulled-back curtain, dressed in what looked like a black peignoir that had been stuffed into jeans. The black material puffed out at her waist, and Naomi tried not to notice that it was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I didn’t happen. Don’t forget, I’m the reason he got here at all.” But her voice belied her words—it shook, just like her hands.

  Naomi felt like she was putting together a puzzle, but half the pieces were turned over, so she couldn’t see the pattern.

  “You’re right,” snapped Jake. “You are the reason he’s here. If he’d been home where he should have been, if he hadn’t been grabbing a morning quickie at your house, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Rig stepped forward so his body was partially between them. “Jake. Just tell me.”

  Rolling his eyes, Jake said, “Dad was with Shirley, here. And they apparently wanted to have some fun with blue pills, if you get me. He went out in her kitchen, hit his head on the way down. I talked to Lucy Bancroft, who was staffing the ambulance today, and she said he coded briefly on the way in.” Jake’s voice was strangled. “They had to zap him back.”

  “He coded?” A vein beat in Rig’s neck so hard Naomi could see it pulse. “Viagra?”

  Frank’s eyes fluttered. “Don’t tell Shirley.”

  Shirley looked at Naomi and clasped her hands in front of the black lace tie at her navel. “They keep saying that. Coded. What is that?”

  Naomi said, “His heart stopped.”

  Shirley gasped.

  “But obviously,” she hurried to say, “the defibrillator worked. He’s here.”

  “Oh, God,” said Shirley, her face drawn. “I didn’t know about the Viagra. I swear. I just thought he was—”

  “Don’t say it,” warned Jake.

  Rig already had the blood pressure cuff on Frank’s IV-less arm, and kept his eyes on the screen. “So what next?”

  “They’re giving him Activase, talking about a stent. Operating in a few hours, probably.”

  “Who?” Naomi asked. It mattered here—in a town this size, they didn’t have their pick of surgeons. The ones they had regularly rotated on and off duty, and Naomi trusted some more than others.

  “Hayashi,” said Jake.

  Milo mumbled, “Hayashi hayashi hayashi,” as he pulled the leg off the dinosaur and then snapped it back on.

  “Is he good?” Rig looked at Naomi, and the emotion written in his eyes took her breath away. He loved his father.

  Goddamn. She loved him.

&nbs
p; She felt her right knee dip with the realization, and it felt like she was physically dragging herself back into answering the question. What was the question again? Oh, yeah. “Hayashi’s the best. You couldn’t have better.”

  Naomi loved Rig. She dropped her gaze to the rumpled blanket covering Frank’s legs. Was it all over her face? Could he see? Was there ever in the history of the world anyone with worse timing than hers? His father had stopped breathing earlier tonight. She’d broken up with him right before he admitted he loved her.

  Oh, God. She had to get out of here. “I’m going to—”

  Rig interrupted, saying, “Where did he get the Viagra?”

  Frank spoke again, not opening his eyes. “Mexico. Internet.”

  “Dad!” said Rig.

  “Frank!” said Shirley. “Honey, you didn’t need that. You’d be a sex pistol no matter what.”

  Jake groaned.

  An image of herself, holding condoms in the drugstore, flashed in Naomi’s mind. “Viagra and nitro don’t mix,” she said. “Worst combo ever.”

  Rig shook his head, fiddling with the blood pressure cuff. “He’s not on nitro. He suffered hypovolemia last time, so they took him off it.”

  Naomi’s thoughts stalled briefly, whirred, and restarted. “I refilled his prescription. He asked me to.”

  “Excuse me?” Only the beep of the heart monitor and the hiss of the cuff broke the silence in the small, fabric-enclosed area. Rig’s jaw worked.

  “He … said he was out, that his was expired. He didn’t want to worry you two. He was supposed to come in to see me last week, but he didn’t. We talked about it last night at dinner.”

  “Shit. He’ll need a transfusion before the surgery, then. Goddammit. He wants the nitro for the angina, but he can’t be on it. Period. And mixed with Viagra, we’re lucky he’s alive.” Rig’s face was stone, his jaw rigid. The eyes that had heated her last night were now cold as liquid nitrogen. “How could you have—I can’t believe you’d put my father in jeopardy like that.”

  “I’m—”

  Rig glanced at his father as if to determine whether he was listening or not, and then said in a thin, tight voice, “What kind of doctor are you?”

  “I’m a—” Naomi’s voice broke. She was a good doctor. She knew she was. Just because she’d made a mistake … a critical mistake that had threatened, was threatening the life of the father of the man she loved … “I didn’t mean any harm.”

  “But the phrase you’re obviously forgetting is, do no harm.” Rig’s words cut the air.

  Jake’s voice was as cold as Rig’s. “You should go.”

  Shirley grasped her forearm. “I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

  “He’s right. Go,” said Rig. The fury pulsed from his body, but she could also see, deep in the blackest part of his dark eyes, a pain she’d never before witnessed, a pain darker even than what she’d caused him earlier.

  Naomi bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted blood. The air she breathed tasted crystalline. Shards of ice filled her lungs, and she couldn’t move. What kind of a doctor was she? For Christ’s sake, she knew better.

  “Go.”

  “It was just—but he said …” She stumbled backward, the curtain rings clinking over her head.

  Jake snapped the fabric shut and she heard Rig say, “Don’t worry, Dad. We’re here.” A nurse stepped around her, chart in hand. A phone rang, unanswered.

  She’d never known that hearts could actually break. Naomi had always thought it was a poetic description for something that was most likely sentimentality mixed with stomach upset. But when he pulled the curtain closed, Naomi’s heart shattered into hundreds of fragments, the shrapnel of his words twisting through her body. No surgery, no treatment in the world would fix her. She knew it was too late for her.

  For both of them.

  And God only knew how Frank would fare.

  Naomi turned and fled.

  Chapter Fifty

  Don’t argue with a friend over which stitch is better—you are both right, and your friendship is more important than any petty knitting belief (except your belief in the three-needle bind-off—it’s always the best choice, and it might be worth fighting for).

  —E.C.

  Christ, Rig was sorry he’d told her he loved her. It was true, which made everything worse, but he wished he’d at least kept his big fat mouth shut.

  The fog still hung heavily over Main Street, darkening the interior of the office, and Rig scowled as he unlocked the front door and flipped on the lights in reception.

  He’d thought, for a moment, that Naomi could be the one. That she was his Megan. That she was what his mother had been to his father.

  But that didn’t mean he’d ever have to tell her that he’d thought it.

  Bruno wasn’t in yet, and Rig went through the motions of opening the office. Naomi wasn’t in, either—he’d beat her in all week. She’d barely been there at all, which suited him fine. They’d exchanged e-mails about the catering firm that was coming to the clinic on Saturday, and she’d said she would be in charge of setting the place up for the dance.

  Good. He’d done enough work in there for her. It was bad enough that he’d have to go to the dance at all, but since it was supposed to be a promo for the partnership as well as her damn health clinic, he needed to be there.

  The front door banged shut, and Bruno shuffled in, looking like he’d just woken up.

  Rig put on a smile that he didn’t feel. “Morning, bright eyes.”

  “Yeah, you, too. How’s your dad today?”

  “Better. He should get to go home after the weekend. I started both coffeepots.”

  “God bless.”

  Rig said, “Anna still working in the dead files?”

  “She’ll be out there for a while, I think. Lot to do.”

  Rig nodded and wondered how often his brother would make an excuse to go see her while she was working. Pretty damn often, he supposed. Anna had come with Jake a few times to see Frank, and Frank had loved it, flirting with her as well as a man could do while hooked up to two IVs, and lying on his back.

  Bruno moved to go around him toward the break room, and Rig trailed behind him. There was something he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t think of the right way to bring it up.

  He watched as Bruno filled his mug, added what looked like fifteen spoonfuls of sugar, and swirled nondairy creamer into it with a wooden stir stick from a box in the cupboard.

  Bruno took the first sip and met his eyes. “I feel like I’m squashed on a slide, and you’re waiting for me to squirm around.”

  Rig shook his head to clear it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

  Bruno shrugged. “It’s okay. A guy as good lookin’ as me …” He waved his coffee cup in the air dismissively. “Used to it.”

  Rig smiled and then said, “Do you think Naomi is a good doctor?”

  Standing straighter, Bruno said, “Why?”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded. “I do. I’ve worked with her long enough to say with authority that she is.”

  “Have you ever seen her be reckless?”

  Bruno snorted. “Her? Never. She couldn’t be reckless if she won the lottery. Thinks too much. Keeps too much in her head.”

  Rig pulled out a metal chair at the small table and folded himself into it. “Is that what it is?”

  “What happened?” Bruno towered over him.

  “She almost killed my dad by giving him something that, with his medical history, he can’t take.”

  Bruno’s eyes widened, but he just took another swallow. Deliberately, he said, “Then she didn’t know his history. Dr. Fontaine may not be all touchy-feely like you, but she’s good. She knows what she’s doing. I’ve never seen her screw up like that.”

  “She didn’t know the history because she didn’t think it was important enough to get.” Rig gripped the leg of the table and jiggled it—somewhere, a pin was loose, and the table squeaked a
s it rocked.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “That’s why you two are giving each other the silent treatment.”

  “Part of it.” Also, he’d told her he loved her, and she’d broken his fucking heart. “I’m waiting for her professional apology, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be enough.”

  Bruno frowned. He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again. Then, speaking so quickly that his words almost ran together, he said, “If it comes down to picking between you and her, you should know that I choose her. My loyalty is with Dr. Fontaine. And if she screwed up, she’s probably taking it harder than anyone else ever would. But everyone makes mistakes. You made two dosing mistakes already this week on prescriptions that I fixed when I sent them in.”

  Rig gaped. “You what? You can’t just—”

  “One was take for 100 days, I made it 10—100 days of Cipro would be pretty bad—the other was take twice a day, in the mornings, and I made it morning and night, since that drug has a twelve-hour spacing. I initialed each change, so you’d know it was me if it came up. But what you wrote was just plain wrong, and I know your scatterbrainedness has got something to do with the fight you’re having with her. But you have to remember, she’s a technically skilled doctor. She knows how to fix people who are sick.”

  “So do I.”

  Bruno shook his head. “You know how, but you spend an awful lot of time chatting with your patients, time that could be spent like she does, in research, or double-checking your work.”

  “Taking time with patients, getting to know them, is part of healing.”

  “Is having sex with your coworkers on a couch in plain view of the street part of healing, too?”

  Rig could actually feel his jaw drop.

  Making a tsssk noise through his teeth, Bruno paused in the doorway. “She’s a private person, something you might not understand. I call it a bad idea to throw curveballs at her like that. Something’s bound to break, and while Naomi’s strong, she’s also more easily hurt than she knows. She may not know her ass from her elbow when it comes to human relations, and we’ve had our own ups and downs. But she’s a great doctor, and I respect the hell out of her. And if you hurt her … Well, like I said. I choose her.” He left the room, leaving Rig no time to retort.