by Caro Carson
“They sell them at all the twenty-four-hour megacenter stores. It was no big deal. I’ll drive you back to your car after your shift.”
“Well—but—that was very nice of you. You’ll have to let me pay you back.”
He shook off her offer. “It was cheaper than a real meal at Viejo Mundo would have been.”
He’d gone to the trouble of fixing her car. For the first time in a very long time, someone had taken care of her.
She swallowed with a suddenly tight throat and finished tying the second shoe. It would do no good to start feeling sorry for herself. It was her choice to be single and to focus on her career. Her choice to live independently.
Like the independent woman she was, she turned to face him, standing squarely on her own two feet, feet that felt a million times better on cushioned, flat soles.
She looked into Braden’s eyes, the eyes of the man she’d once loved. The face of the man who had always made her life easier like this, in a million little ways. But the man who had just made sure she had comfortable Keds to work in was also the man who based his decisions on profit.
She should have been shielded from him by her job. “Did they let you walk back here without any kind of hospital ID?”
“Basically. Some of the staff remember us. I told them I needed to bring you your shoes.”
And, of course, he’d been waved right on in. He was a MacDowell. She sighed in defeat. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be the third person tonight to pick glass out of this man’s arm, poor guy. He’s from the truck accident.”
Braden matched her somber tone. “Go, then. I’ll hold these black shoes until you’re done for the day.”
“Really, if you’ll just leave the keys, I can get a ride back to the restaurant. Thanks for the battery, but I might be here for hours yet. You can leave.”
“I’m not going back to New York, Lana. Not until we talk. I’ll be waiting somewhere quiet. The chapel.”
* * *
The chapel was nothing like he remembered. It wasn’t the oasis he’d built it up to be in his memory, but consisted of only four walls, a few rows of plain pews and a nondenominational, generic altar that could work for any religion in a pinch.
He’d been sitting here for a little more than an hour, spending less time thinking about his past and more time thinking about the present-day Lana. He’d spied on her for a short time from the nurses’ station. It was good to see her working. She had a way with patients that expressed confidence without being intimidating. After opening the patient’s curtain, she’d explained that there was still one last piece of glass that didn’t want to be found. “The good news is you’ve been assigned to me now, because glass fears me.” The patient had managed a bit of a smile.
Lana had a gift. He’d always known it. It was why he’d never tried to change her mind about being a doctor, even though marrying a physician meant he’d be marrying a woman who would be away from home countless evenings and weekends and holidays.
She hadn’t shown him the same respect. After they’d completed their three-year residency, she’d been offered the honor of a fourth year as chief resident. She’d wanted him to stick around and take an extra year in a surgery or critical-care residency, just to give medicine a chance—as if eight years of college and medical school and three years of residency hadn’t been enough for him to know whether it was the right career for him yet.
Then she’d tried to get him to turn down an offer to attend the most prestigious school in the nation, telling him if all he wanted was an MBA, he could just as easily get it at one of the colleges near Austin, while she served her year as chief resident.
If that was all he wanted.
Braden had been certain that a lifetime of happiness with Lana could only happen if he wasn’t stuck day after day in the same rut his father had treaded. He’d needed to get off the track he was on. He’d needed to change gears and get his MBA.
To her, an MBA had meant less than an M.D. She’d thought getting an MBA was a step down. That he’d chosen some lame loser career compared to hers.
If she hadn’t felt that way, would he have gotten his MBA somewhere in Texas? Somewhere closer to his fiancée? Would they have gotten married as planned?
But he’d felt it, deep down, her disdain for pursuing business instead of medicine. To compensate, he’d gone to Harvard. Not even a doctor could look down her nose at a man with an MBA from Harvard. He’d been competing with his fiancée, going one better than she had.
Braden sat heavily in one of the wooden pews. A painting of sun rays breaking through clouds decorated one wall. Forgiveness was the caption on the little plaque beneath it. A day ago, he’d thought he needed to forgive and forget Lana. Now he wasn’t so sure. He might need to forgive a younger version of himself for being so vain that he’d assumed a woman would tolerate a two-year separation in order to marry a man destined for corporate success.
Vanity.
He stared at the painting. As long as he was attempting to examine himself, could he admit that vanity stemmed from insecurity? He’d had qualms about marrying someone who would always garner a certain amount of respect by virtue of her career. He’d perhaps thought that an MBA from Harvard meant they’d be marrying as equals, even if he wasn’t a physician like she was.
Instead, she’d dumped him. Coldheartedly. No explanation beyond the fact that she wasn’t pregnant anymore, so their engagement was off. He’d had no chance to ask why. The injustice of it smoldered, still. Always, a slow burn in the back of his mind.
He was still ruminating on all the ways the future that had begun in this chapel had died when Lana stopped in the doorway.
“I was afraid you’d be here,” she said. “Must we really do this? Here?”
He stood and faced her, consciously keeping his facial expression neutral. He tried for a lighter tone. “The odds of us being interrupted by a car wreck here are pretty small.”
The joke fell flat. She looked exhausted.
He shoved his fists into his pockets. “Are you okay? That was a hard situation at the accident scene.”
She waved off his concern. “I’ve been a doctor for a while now. I saw much worse in Washington.”
He noticed she didn’t ask him if he was okay after that ordeal. Why had he expected her to show concern for him? They weren’t a couple. Still, she behaved as if he had no feelings.
That’s nothing new. She behaved that way after the miscarriage, as if I had no right to want to talk about it.
He’d had feelings, though. And he’d felt real pain when she’d let every call go to voice mail. He’d resorted to paper letters, with old-fashioned postage stamps. The pain had only increased each time he opened his university mailbox and found another one of his letters returned, unopened.
“So, anyway,” she began, but then she trailed off in the face of his silence.
Lana no longer wore her white lab coat. She presented quite a picture, standing there in the doorway in her fancy black dress and her white canvas sneakers. She noticed him looking at her shoes and gestured to herself. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘dressy casual’? I’m taking it literally.”
He didn’t want to say it, but it was too ingrained from their years together. “Is it dressy or is it casual? You can’t be both.”
She only sighed and smiled a small, sad smile. “So, where did we leave off,” she said as she checked her watch, “six hours ago?”
Six hours. She looked tired. Tired and soft and wary. He stepped closer to her and pulled his hands out of his pockets before he realized his intent. She wouldn’t appreciate a hug from him, so he let his hands drop to his sides.
“I was asking when you thought our engagement went sour.”
Her chin went up. He knew, instantly, that he was going to hear the same kind of thing she’d said in the restaurant. She somehow blamed him, although he had not—he never would have—called off their engagement.
Lana said, “I don’t have to think. I
know. It went sour when I miscarried, and we were so far apart.”
“We were so far apart how? Emotionally or geographically?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m deadly serious. I missed the signs with you until it was too late. I want to know what I did wrong.”
“How can you not know? You moved to Boston, and then you got me pregnant!” She blinked at her own outburst, as surprised as he.
“I got you pregnant? That’s an accusation if I ever heard one.”
“Well, you did. You flew in that weekend. I hadn’t asked you to come.”
“It was supposed to be a surprise. I assure you, I didn’t return to get you pregnant. Did you hate the fact that you were pregnant, or did you just hate the fact that I was the father? Had you already decided I wasn’t good enough?”
She didn’t answer him, but bit her lip and looked toward the altar. He knew what she was seeing, because he’d stared at them for the past hour: bud vases. Two with pink ribbons, one with blue. Three babies had been born in the hospital recently, or at least three babies whose parents had chosen to make an offering of flowers.
He’d never had the chance to leave one of those vases, and the only woman he’d ever shared a pregnancy with was currently shrugging her shoulders and clamming up. He was sick and tired of the way she’d rejected his attempts to talk about it six years ago. Sick that she would reject him again now.
It had been his baby, too, damn it.
“I want to know. Was it all my fault you got pregnant?”
She looked back at him, expression carefully neutral, lips stiff. “I told you earlier that I don’t want to talk about it. It will always be my biggest regret.”
Being pregnant with his child was her biggest regret?
She’d been so upset when she’d first called him with the news that they were going to be parents. Oh, God, Braden, I’m pregnant. He’d wanted to hold her, soothe her, reassure her, but there was little he could do over a telephone line.
The visit where she had gotten pregnant had also been the visit that had wiped out what money he’d saved to fly to Texas. So he’d done his best over the phone to reassure his fiancée that the pregnancy was unplanned, yes, but it wasn’t a tragedy.
She hadn’t agreed.
I can’t be a mother and complete this residency. Not working as many hours as I do. Not with you in Boston. It will be impossible.
A few more weeks had passed, weeks of missed calls and short text messages: ER full. No break 2nite.
Then she’d finally found the time to call him again, weeks later. More tears. The pregnancy was over, and they were over. No, she didn’t want to try again, she didn’t want to marry him, the residency was too consuming, it was all too impossible. Then she’d killed all his further attempts at communication, not answering her phone, not reading his letters.
Until he’d walked into that conference room yesterday. Until he’d tricked her into meeting him for dinner tonight.
Now she didn’t want to talk about it, because she regretted that pregnancy. What about it, exactly? That it had happened, or that it had ended?
A dark and ugly suspicion rose in him as she avoided looking him in the eye, staring instead at the plush carpet. It had occurred to him before, but he’d always pushed it away. No matter how despairing she’d sounded on the phone, no matter how adamant she’d been that she couldn’t juggle a pregnancy and a residency, she wouldn’t have made that kind of decision.
“What’s done is done,” she murmured with her head down. “I don’t want to dwell on it.”
“‘What’s done is done’?” he repeated, feeling sick at the possibility. “What exactly did you do, Lana?”
She made a sound, a breath expelled too fast, something close to one of those heart-wrenching sobs he’d heard far away in Boston.
He could manage no more than a rough whisper. “Did you terminate that pregnancy?” He crowded into her personal space, forcing her to look at him.
The crack of her palm against his cheek rang out in the silent chapel. He closed his eyes, welcoming the pain. The relief.
“How could you?” she cried, for the second time that night.
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know how he could ask these questions of the woman he’d once trusted with his heart. He didn’t know how he could still be obsessed with her after all these years, how the mere sight of her still awakened all his senses.
He didn’t know how he’d avoided the truth for almost forty-eight hours. From the moment she’d walked into that conference room yesterday, he’d instantly known that he wouldn’t be proposing to anyone else, ever. He couldn’t deny it any longer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry,” and he opened his eyes to look at the one woman who mattered to him, who had always mattered to him, who would always matter more than any other.
She was completely undone, shaking like a leaf. The hand she’d slapped him with so forcefully was now pressed against her mouth, keeping herself silent as tears streamed down her face.
“Oh, no, Lana, no. I’m sorry, so sorry.” He crushed her to him, wanting to protect her from the hurt he’d just caused. He kissed the top of her head and murmured “don’t cry” into her hair, over and over, for long, long minutes, until he felt her rest against him, her wet cheek pressed to his shirtfront.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. He’d tell her a thousand times. “You were so unhappy about being pregnant, and then you called and told me you weren’t pregnant anymore, and you didn’t want to see me anymore. I was devastated, Lana, devastated more than you’ll ever know. You wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Please stop.”
“You didn’t want to be pregnant, but I didn’t think you would have made that choice.” He kept her tight against him, wishing he could physically protect her from the emotional hurt in their world. “I’m sorry, Lana, so damned sorry.”
“No.” She pushed against him, and he reluctantly let her go. “No, I understand why you asked. I was so shocked when I found out I was pregnant.”
Her breath hitched before more words rushed out. “I took prenatal vitamins right away, as soon as I knew. I did that much. But I—I didn’t change my life. At all. I didn’t slow down. I should have told the attending docs that I needed fewer hours or something. I didn’t eat right, I didn’t sleep very much, and then when the bleeding started...”
Braden’s heart broke to watch the torment on her face, but he waited for her to continue. He needed to know what she thought, how she thought about this.
“And then when the miscarriage started, it was too late to stop and think about what I should have been doing,” she finished in a whisper. She bowed her head and wrapped her arms around herself.
Like she’s waiting for me to do what? Pass judgment on her?
“Lana, you can’t think you’re to blame. You can’t. You—you know too much. You’re a doctor, for the love of God. You know that an early miscarriage like that can happen to anyone, for a million reasons.”
She kept her head down and only nodded.
“You know it, but you still feel like it was your fault, don’t you?”
He’d never seen Lana looking so defeated. It was all he could do not to scoop her into his arms. “We both saw women who managed to get pregnant and stay pregnant when they did everything wrong. Extreme malnutrition, chronic substance abuse. Remember the heroin addict who delivered in the E.R.? But then there were perfectly healthy women who miscarried without warning. Remember?”
She shrugged and gave her shoes another nod.
“You know it’s usually basic physiology in the first trimester,” he said. “The body is actually working correctly, clearing out tissue that wasn’t developing properly.” The medical science of it sounded awful, though. He fought not to wince at his own words.
“Yes, I know it,” she said. “But when you wished you didn’t have to deal with something as much as I wished I wasn’t pregnant.
..it was like I had wished a miscarriage upon myself. It was awful.”
He understood. The guilt must have been crushing her all these years. It was misplaced guilt, but guilt all the same. He had to touch her.
He cupped her wet face in his hands and tilted her face up so he could see her. He wiped the tears away with his thumbs. “I don’t blame you for miscarrying. I truly don’t. I wish you didn’t blame yourself.”
She gave him a halfhearted smile and started to pull away, but he held her there, making her look at him, at nothing but him. “I don’t blame you, Lana Donnoli. You shouldn’t blame you, either.”
“Oh,” she said, as she lifted her hands and rested them on top of his wrists. She really did smile then, a hopeful little smile that maybe he spoke the truth, and Braden fell in love with her all over again.
With the beautiful-est girl in the world.
But tonight, in the restaurant, he’d told her that he intended to marry someone else. Which was, unfortunately, also the truth.
* * *
Braden didn’t blame her.
It wasn’t her fault that she’d miscarried when she was only a few weeks pregnant. Scientifically, medically, Lana had always known that was the truth. Personally, she’d always wondered what if? What if she’d gotten more rest, eaten more regularly, slept more hours?
Braden was right, of course. A miscarriage in the first few weeks was incredibly common, not a sign that a woman had done anything wrong. Lana knew that, but to hear Braden say it was another thing entirely.
He didn’t blame her.
He never had. Standing here, wiping away her tears, Braden was absolving her of guilt. She felt a little lighter. A little relieved.
A little unbalanced.
“You never blamed me?”
“Never.”
She was holding his wrists as he cupped her face. And he...he was looking at her intently, until she watched him close his eyes. The expression on his face was one of pain. Pure pain.
He rested his forehead on hers. “Don’t tell me you’ve avoided me because you thought I blamed you. Lana, don’t tell me we lost six years over this.”
