by Fiona Lowe
At that moment he came close to hating her. “If you had any idea what it’s like to lose the person closest to you in the world, you wouldn’t be calling me a coward. Charlie was a doctor, too, Millie. He knew all the risks just like you and me.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “And this is the problem. At first I thought that you being a doctor was handy in a boyfriend, because I didn’t have to explain everything to you, but it’s not good at all. I need you to let go of being a doctor and just be a regular guy. You’re treating me like a patient, not a woman. You’re focusing on all of the bad stuff instead of the good. Everything in life has an element of risk.”
“And it can all be calculated.”
She snorted. “You take greater risks with your life every time you do an extreme sport than I take with mine.” Her eyes suddenly widened, and she said softly, “Charlie was the adventurous one.”
The hairs on his arms stood up. “Charlie’s got nothing to do with this conversation.”
“I disagree. All these extreme sports you do, they’re not naturally something you’d choose to do, are they? They’re what Charlie would have talked you into, and now he’s not here, you’re doing them for him.”
Beads of sweat broke out on the hair at the base of his neck. “That’s bullshit.”
“Will, live the life you want, not Charlie’s.”
Her words scalded him, and he instantly rejected them. “If I was living Charlie’s life, I’d be working at Jilagong and married to Miranda, so I think that proves that I’m not living his life and that you’re talking through your ass.”
He wanted her to yell back so he’d feel less of a bastard, but she didn’t. Instead, her round, pretty face sagged with resignation and she picked up the smart watch.
“This isn’t a safety net, Will.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, this is you wanting to control my life from the sidelines because you’re too busy taking a rain check on your life. You’re too damn scared to dive right in and live it with me.”
Her words hit him with the jagged edges and weight of rocks. “That’s enough. You’ve made your point. I think it’s time I left.”
She faced him down, hands on her hips and all her soft curves hard and tense. “Good idea. Take this with you.” Her arm shot back like a pitcher’s.
He whipped his hands up fast, catching the watch just before it hit him hard on the head.
Chapter 21
It was Millie’s last day at the hospital, and she sat opposite Floyd Coulson, fingering the pages of her student appraisal.
“Doctor Bartlett’s given you a glowing report, Millie.”
And he had, but then Will didn’t have any difficulties with their doctor-student relationship. He excelled at being a doctor. It was setting that aside and letting himself be a regular guy and just see her as an ordinary woman rather than a diabetic that was the problem.
Floyd continued, “Based on that report, WWAMI will be happy, and we’re certainly looking forward to welcoming you back next summer for your next placement.” He leaned back in his chair. “By then we might be in the position to offer you some surgical experience if Great Falls can spare Doctor Meissner for some extra days a month.”
“Fabulous.” Millie tried to sound enthusiastic. “Any chance of some OB-GYN experience?”
He tapped his nose. “Actually, the board’s in negotiations. Bear Paw’s never been in better shape for top-quality health care providers, and you know that we’re hoping in three or four years’ time, you’ll be joining us.”
“Just a few exams to get through between now and then,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. And a life without Will.
Don’t go there. She abruptly pulled her security tag over her head and wound the blue lanyard around the tag before placing it on the desk. “So I guess that’s it for me for this year.”
He rose and escorted her to the door. “We hope you enjoyed your summer with us as much as we enjoyed having you.”
“Thanks.” She managed to get the word out against a fast-tightening throat. “It was all great experience.”
She walked away, taking in some deep breaths, and tried not to cry like she’d been doing every time she thought about the last two months. About Will. She loved him, but he wasn’t brave enough to love her. She hated him for that. Hated that he of all people had defined her by her diabetes when there was so much more to her and her life.
The part of her that had been understanding of his grief for Charlie was now furious. Damn it, she was good for Will. He needed her, but she’d done everything she could—declared her love and fought hard for him—and it hadn’t made a damn bit of difference. She wished she’d known Charlie, because she felt it in her very essence that he wouldn’t have expected Will to put his life on hold. After all, he’d pursued his own work passions separate from Will, and he’d fallen in love.
But he’d still had his twin.
She’d spent hours online reading articles about twinless twins, and their stories of feeling like half of the person they’d been before their twin died resonated but didn’t help her. Neither had reading the research that the grief an identical twin experiences at the loss of his or her twin is greater than for any other relative with the exception of losing a spouse. Will had convinced himself she was going to die early. Given his experience with Charlie, she had no power to fight that irrational belief, and they had no future while it existed.
This last week had been the longest in her life. Thankfully, she’d been scheduled to work with Josh in the clinic, which had avoided her worst nightmare of having to work with Will. She could just about hold it all together if she didn’t have to see him.
That hadn’t stopped her hearing about him, though. Josh had a boy-crush on him after they’d worked together evacuating a cowboy with full thickness burns. Cassidy had mentioned in passing that a group of them had gone mountain bike riding after work one evening. Millie hoped he’d gotten stuck in the sucking mud of the west coulee. Even Bethany had betrayed her by saying, “At first I wasn’t sure about that Doctor Bartlett, but I’m gonna miss him when he leaves. I won’t miss that awful Australian black stuff he puts on his bread, though.”
The hospital’s automatic glass doors detected her presence and opened, and she walked out into the raging west wind. She never missed the wind when she was living away from Bear Paw, or the deep winter snow, but she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about Seattle’s ever-present rain. She guessed she had three years to make up her mind. Opening her car door, she took one last look at the squat redbrick hospital building and the welcoming line of blue spruces. She blew out a breath. It was time to go.
Her phone beeped with a reminder, and she pulled it out of her bag. A tiny picture of a gold gift wrapped in a red bow appeared on the screen next to the words Will’s Birthday. Her heart cramped. She’d forgotten she’d set the reminder, and with it came a surge of conflicting feelings. The excitement and thrill she’d gotten from planning the two-day event, booking the accelerated free-fall course and choosing the gorgeous bed-and-breakfast jostled in her chest along with the agony of Will’s rejection of her. She’d cancelled the accommodations last week, but there’d been no refund for the course. She’d tossed the information packet into the trash, not wanting to think about what was supposed to have been a fantastic adventure but now represented everything she’d lost.
She glanced up at the cloudless blue sky, watching a flock of starlings fly over, their wings catching the airstreams so that occasionally they didn’t need to flap. Did they feel free up there? She wanted to free herself of her last week—of her heartache, of her roller coaster of emotions that battered her and by default her blood sugar. More than anything she wanted to create a real break between her time with Will in Bear Paw and the next phase of her life in Seattle.
She suddenly knew the exact way to do it. Smiling, she clicked on a name in her contact list and made a call.
“HAPPY birthday,
Will!” the ER staff chorused.
He made himself smile widely. “When you paged me saying there’s a guy who put superglue in his eyes instead of Visine, it was really all about the cake?”
“You bet,” Helen said, lighting the candles. “But Hector Rialdo actually did put superglue in his eyes last year, and Katrina ran a PSA on what not to keep in your medicine cabinet.” She blew out the match. “Okay, everyone, sing it loud.”
And they did. And off-key.
Cassidy handed him a knife. “Make a wish, Doctor Bartlett.”
A wish? Bloody hell. He sliced the knife down into the soft, buttery yellow cake that was coated in coconut frosting and wished to get through the day. He’d chosen to work, because the idea of doing something else on his own had squirted acid into his gut and left him feeling exceptionally lonely.
Last year you were alone and you went dirt bike riding.
The thought sounded suspiciously like Charlie, and he tried to shrug it away. It stuck like a burr.
You should have gone skydiving, bro. It would have been awesome.
Skydiving made him think of Millie, and his stomach clenched. He missed her badly, but better to let her go now while he could still cope with being without her than get in too deep.
“I can see why you did your fellowship in emergency medicine, Will,” Josh said with a laugh. “You’re no surgeon with that knife.”
He stared down at the section of cake, surprised to see how badly he’d mangled it, and handed the knife back to Helen. “Perhaps you could do the honors?”
While Helen fussed around the cake, slicing and serving it onto paper plates for everyone, Will concentrated on small talk with the staff.
“The team-building bike ride the other night was fun, wasn’t it?” he said to Marissa.
She shuddered, and her thickly mascaraed eyelashes blinked at him. “You can’t be serious? It took me three showers to get all the mud off of me and I ruined a perfectly good T-shirt. Next time we have to do team building, we should go bowling.”
Millie would have just laughed at the mud and pulled out a packet of wipes from her tote bag.
“That sounds like a plan,” he said, shoveling cake fast into his mouth so he could finish it and leave.
“Doctor Bartlett.” The new ER receptionist tossed her long blond hair. “I’m training for a half marathon. We should go for a run sometime.”
“Great idea, Brianna, but I’m sorry, I’ll have to take a rain check, because I’m finishing up in Bear Paw really soon.”
Cassidy stuck her head into the room. “Will, we’ve got a woman with a nasty laceration on her arm. Lacey Converse. She’s in curtain two, and her husband Mark’s with her.”
Thank you. “On my way.” He dropped his plate into the trash and turned to the small crowd. “Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone.”
“Drinks tonight at Leroy’s?” Josh asked, walking out the door with him.
“Sounds good.”
Josh kept walking straight toward the clinic, and Will turned left, picking up the tablet computer. On his way to the cubicle he read Lacey’s notes and her baseline vitals. She was sitting propped up on the gurney with her left arm elevated. Her husband sat next to her with one little girl on his knee and the other hanging off his arm.
“G’day, I’m Will Bartlett, doctor on duty. I hear you’ve been arguing with a chef’s knife.” He snapped on gloves and lifted the pressure dressing. Blood oozed from a deep cut that ran down the length of her middle finger and into the fleshy part of her palm.
She gave a wry smile. “And it won. We’re vacationing at Saint Mary Lake, and I was filleting the trout Mark caught this morning.”
“Mummy said a bad word,” one of the little girls announced, her voice full of awe.
“I bet she did,” Will replied, trying to keep a straight face.
“Madison’s our manners’ police,” Mark said with an indulgent shake of his head.
“Daddy, I’m thirsty,” the other child whined.
Will examined Lacey’s hand, immobilizing all her other fingers, and asked her to bend the injured one. She couldn’t shift it. “I think you’ve done some damage to your tendon.”
“Can you fix it?” she asked anxiously.
“I can suture up the cut and give you a tetanus shot and some antibiotics, but I’m going to refer you to a hand surgeon who will repair the tendon at a later date. Are you allergic to anything? Any health issues?”
“Not allergic to anything that I know of,” Lacey said, “but I am a type one diabetic.”
He automatically glanced at the girls, who looked to be about six and four. “Any health complications because of your diabetes? Heart? Kidneys? Circulation?”
“Only red and itchy skin from the damn adhesive on my sensor.”
Millie used Tough Pads. “I might have a tip on how to handle that, but first I’ll get the nurse to check your blood sugar.”
“No need,” Lacey said firmly. “I can do it. Madison, honey, pass me my purse.”
“It might be a bit hard one-handed,” Will said as one of the little girls pulled out a familiar black zippered wallet.
Lacey laughed. “Nothing gets in the way of me testing my blood sugar, Doctor. I’ve already done it once since I arrived and it was one hundred ten.”
“Daddy, I’m thirsty,” the little girl whined again.
“Shh, Ellie,” her father said. “I’ll get you something soon.” He glanced at Will. “I’m not real good with blood, so when Lacey cut her hand, we rushed straight here and left their snack packs at the camp.”
You’re married to a diabetic and you’re not good with blood? The thought stunned him. “There’s a vending machine in the hall. If you come with me, I can point it out to you on my way to the supply room.”
Mark threw him a grateful smile. “Come on, girls.”
“I want to stay with Mommy.”
“Me too.”
Mark sighed. “Only if you sit on the chair and don’t move. Do that and I’ll bring you both back something to eat and drink, okay?”
The girls murmured their acquiescence.
As he and Mark walked away, Will said, “They keep you busy.”
“Yeah,” he said with a resigned laugh. “We had them close together so they’d entertain each other, or that was the theory, anyway.”
“Two pregnancies in two years must have been challenging for your wife and her diabetes.”
Mark shrugged. “I leave all that stuff up to her and her doctors. My job’s to argue with our HMO.”
How can you sleep at night? Will couldn’t believe Mark’s casual attitude. “I guess that’s one way of doing it.”
Mark paused in front of the vending machine. “Yeah, well, the doctors are the experts, and Lacey’s been diabetic since she was five, so she knows way more about it than me. No point worrying about what you can’t control, right?”
Wrong. So wrong. There’s every reason to worry.
Only Mark was feeding coins into the vending machine and not looking for an answer.
“HEY, Doc,” the cowboys chorused, raising their beers in greeting as Will walked into Leroy’s at the end of a long and lonely birthday.
“G’day, fellas.”
“Millie’s not here, Doc . . .” Dane called out.
An uncomfortable feeling settled under Will’s ribs. He was both relieved and disappointed that Millie wasn’t here, but he wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t seen her since she’d asked him to leave the guesthouse a week ago, and he knew that was deliberate on her part.
“. . . And you know what that means, right, Doc? You’re safe to play pool.” Dane high-fived Troy.
“Guess I’ll whip you later, then, mate,” Will said, glancing around for Josh and Katrina and hoping they’d arrived first. He really didn’t feel like bantering at the bar with the guys tonight.
He couldn’t spot the Stantons, but Ethan stood up and gave him a wave as if he’d been watching out for him. Picki
ng up a pitcher of beer and some glasses, he made his way over. “On your own tonight?”
“I am,” Ethan said with a grin. “Millie stole my girlfriend.”
Memories of when he’d first arrived in Bear Paw and his stupid misunderstanding about Millie and Tara came rushing back to embarrass him. “I think we’re both absolutely certain now that neither of them is gay.”
“Amen to that,” Ethan said, raising his glass. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” Will clinked his glass against Ethan’s. “Hang on, how do you know it’s my birthday?”
“I could say because Josh just texted to say he’s running late and could I keep an eye out for you.”
Something about the librarian’s tone made him say, “Or?”
“Or . . .” He set his beer down neatly on the coaster. “I know it’s your birthday because Millie’s taken Tara skydiving.”
“Jesus.” He slammed his beer down, froth spilling out over his hand. “And you let her go?”
“Dude, Tara carries a gun. I’m not about to tell her she can’t do something.”
He had a crazy urge to grab Ethan’s trendy shirtfront and pull him across the table. “I’m not talking about Tara.”
“I know that.”
For some reason his body itched under Ethan’s direct gaze. “You’ve known Millie longer than me, so you know she shouldn’t be skydiving.”
“I know she’s a grown woman who’s more than capable of making her own decisions,” he said reasonably.
“And you’ve seen her make some pretty stupid ones.” He gripped his beer so hard his hand cramped. “She told me how you called 911.”
“It was a long time ago now, Will.”
“Yeah, well she’s still diabetic. That hasn’t changed, and the adrenaline involved in skydiving drops blood sugar faster than . . .” His brain sought an analogy and failed him. “Pretty bloody fast. You want her to black out at fifteen thousand feet?”
Ethan’s shoulders straightened at Will’s aggressive tone. “Of course not, and more importantly, neither does Millie. She’s not stupid, Will. She loves her life too much to take dumb risks. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”
