Second Opinions: A Lizzy and Dr. Darcy Story (Meryton Medical Romances Book 2)

by Ruby Cruz

  “What about Charlie? Is he excited for the baby?”

  She beamed at me, the happiness practically dripping off her. “He’s over the moon. He’s always wanted a large family with lots of kids running around, total and complete chaos, probably because he had such a closeted childhood.” Ever since Charlie gave up an opportunity for a prestigious internship so he could be with Jane, his father Charles Bingley, Sr. had disowned his only son. And even though Jane would never speak poorly about Caroline, I knew she didn’t care for her, especially after the difficulties she’d presented me with Darcy.

  “What about Chloe?”

  “She’d been asking for a little brother or sister for months. We weren’t exactly planning on starting so soon after getting married but I think it’s good. There won’t be as much of an age difference between Chloe and the baby.”

  Jane described her bouts of morning sickness, how supportive Charlie was being, how excited they both were. I listened, totally ecstatic that she and her husband were so happy. I was thrilled for them both - they totally deserved every bit of joy sent their way.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Going through the Motions

  After we left my mother’s house to drive home, Darcy was unusually quiet, as previously noticed by Jane.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked him, his face illuminated only by the headlights of passing cars and streetlamps. Over the past year, I’d gotten remarkably proficient at reading his moods, but the past few weeks had severely challenged that ability. Then again, the events of the past month hadn’t exactly been typical of our relationship.

  “I’m going to miss waking up next to you in the morning,” he explained with a sigh, but I could tell he was holding back.

  “You’ll be back next weekend. Or I could come to you. I’m not scheduled to work.”

  “With you back in school, I don’t want to place the burden on you.”

  “It’s not a burden,” I assured him, somewhat offended. “Our relationship isn’t a burden.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just realize this is something we must work at together if we’re going to succeed.”

  “I know and we will. Succeed, that is. This is a temporary situation. Other couples have gone through much worse and survived without having company jets at their disposal.”

  He reached over and placed a hand on my knee. “How’s your ankle feeling?”

  “Still sore, but it’s held up.” I downplayed the injury, not wanting him to worry about me. I still had to wrap it when I worked my shifts, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “Don’t push yourself too hard or you may reinjure it.”

  “You sound like my doctor,” I teased.

  “You should listen to him. He’s a very smart man.”

  “I’ve heard he could be quite stubborn as well.”

  “As can his girlfriend.”

  “Correction: fiancée.” I paused before venturing the question that had been bothering me all evening. “When do you want to announce our engagement with our families? It’s killing me not to be able to tell my mom or Jane, and it has been a couple of weeks since your grandfather’s funeral.”

  “I promise you, we’ll announce it soon enough, hopefully after the merger goes through and Aunt Catherine’s grief isn’t quite so fresh.”

  I nodded.

  “I promise I’ll let you know when the time is appropriate.”

  I suspected his aunt would never think a marriage between her nephew and me would be appropriate, but didn’t voice the concern.

  He gave my knee a gentle squeeze and placed both hands back on the steering wheel.

  Silence fell between us. Usually that wouldn’t have bothered me, because Darcy was the type to communicate quite a bit with little actual verbal speech, but the silence between us felt different and strained. Eventually, I asked him, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I never said I was okay. But I’ve always been able to cope well with adversity.”

  My heart constricted. His parents’ death a few years ago, Ana’s ill-advised relationship with George Wickham, giving up his life’s work to preserve his grandfather’s legacy, even temporarily - yes, I would agree he’d had his share of adversity. I just hoped he would be able to cope with this latest blow.

  “I will be fine,” he assured me as if reading my mind.

  When we arrived back at the house, Mrs. Pratchett insisted on preparing some tea with brandy for Darcy and me. I nodded - it had been days since I’d taken any of the narcotics Nina had prescribed for me and, besides, I did feel the need for something soothing.

  As Mrs. Pratchett scurried away, I settled onto the couch in the family room. The night was cool and I snuggled under a throw blanket while Darcy checked his messages on his phone. “I’m going to finish packing. Will you be okay down here?”

  “Of course. I’m just going to watch some TV and maybe study a little.”

  I didn’t really want to watch anything, but I flipped channels until Mrs. Pratchett returned with my tea. “I know Dr. Darcy declined, but I brought a second in case he changed his mind.” She set the tray on the coffee table and handed me one of the mugs. I could already smell the brandy in the blackberry tea and knew she’d had a generous hand when pouring the liquor.

  “Just let me know if you need anything else, dear,” she said before leaving the room.

  I nodded. I doubted she would be able to provide what I really wanted.

  ~

  Darcy’s leaving was bittersweet. I was sleepy from the brandy, so when the car service picked him up, I was barely awake. He carried me up to the bedroom and laid me on the bed. He kissed my forehead, then my cheek, then finally my lips, lingering just long enough that I wanted to pull him back into bed with me and never let him go.

  He was the first to pull away, but there was obvious regret in his expression. “I’m sorry. The car is waiting.”

  I nodded and pulled myself to a sitting position so I could give him a final kiss. “I love you. Call me when you get in.”

  “Of course. I love you.”

  When he left the room, I climbed out of bed to look out the window and saw the waiting car parked in the driveway. In a moment, the front door slammed and Darcy strode outside with suitcase in hand.

  He handed his suitcase to the driver and, as if feeling my eyes on him, turned towards the window and gave a brief wave before climbing into the car. I watched the car until it drove out of sight, an empty feeling pervading me.

  Determined not to cry again, I moved around the room and retrieved my planner before changing for bed. I needed to focus more on my classes. I’d been too distracted the previous couple of weeks to do much with the assigned reading and papers I had to write, so I made a study schedule for myself. I needed to get organized and buckle down in order to survive the semester. I wasn’t really in the mood to study but could at least go through the motions.

  ~

  The first day after Darcy left for the week was always the worst as I struggled to concentrate on studying and school work while waiting for any indication that Darcy had arrived in San Francisco safely.

  We’d never been one of those couples to send dozens of texts a day or call each other at random times. And when we were both working, we were too busy actually doing our work to do more than talk about the patients we were caring for, so there weren’t any illicit trysts in the break room or the elevator.

  Not that Darcy would’ve ever done anything so indiscrete. He believed in keeping our personal and professional lives completely separate, so much so that when people at work found out we were dating, they would look at me incredulously. Darcy still had the reputation within the nursing staff of being arrogant and mean, a reputation he’d been trying to slowly rectify but hadn’t quite abandoned.

  Still, those moments when I could catch a glimpse of his profile in the hallway, the heated glances he would direct towards me - it
wasn’t until now I realized how much I’d looked forward to those tiny stolen moments.

  At work, I kept expecting Darcy to appear at the nurses’ station, or to see his handwriting on a patient chart. I kicked myself for not warning my friends about Darcy’s departure earlier because I spent much of my precious downtime during my shifts fielding questions on my boyfriend’s absence.

  Why did Dr. Darcy really leave? Did you two break up? Is he taking over the DeBourgh Group? Is he taking a job at a bigger hospital?

  The questions came from doctors and nurses alike, and I answered as concisely and vaguely as I could - not because the topic was none of their business, but because thoughts of Darcy brought fresh pain.

  I missed him. Even before he agreed to work for his aunt, any time spent together had been precious. His on call hours, late nights and early morning covering patients or catching up on charting, my schoolwork and clinicals and twelve hour shifts, all amounted to time we couldn’t spend together. Moving into Darcy’s house had given me the excuse to at least share a bed with him, even if all we did half the time was sleep.

  There was a certain comfort to waking up next to him, to knowing he was there, if only for a few minutes before he started another marathon day. Nina understood what many of his colleagues did not. While being a doctor afforded some amount of financial security and prestige, it didn’t come without its caveats. The long hours, the accountability for other people’s lives, the abject responsibility - many a strong person could not survive. With his family background, Darcy could have done anything with his life and instead had chosen to serve others.

  A part of me felt incomplete without him near me. And the longer he spent away, silent, the more I fretted he’d changed his mind about being with me.

  The first time I tried to work without wrapping my ankle, it throbbed painfully after spending almost all day walking on it. I’d downed enough ibuprofen during the shift to put me at high risk for a gastric bleed, but my ankle was still swollen enough to strain painfully against the elastic of the sports sock I wore.

  While the pain distracted me from missing Darcy, it also distracted me from the finer details of my job.

  “What is up with you?” Kate asked as I once again charted on the wrong patient and had to amend my documentation. “You’ve still got vacation brain.”

  “I’d hardly call going to a funeral a vacation, even if it was in the Hamptons.”

  “Point taken, but that’s the third time you’ve documented that assessment. They’re going to start auditing your charting if you keep this up.”

  “I know,” I grumbled and tried not to be resentful as she watched over my shoulder.

  “Hey.” She laid a hand on my arm, which forced me to look up at her. “Wanna talk about it?”

  I swallowed. I’d been on the receiving end of many of her tearful monologues during her divorce - the last thing I wanted to do was start a “woe is me” speech. Not that I thought she’d be a poor listener, but I didn’t want to indulge in any more self-pity than I already had. “I’m fine,” I lied. “Will should be back again this weekend. I don’t know why I’m so worked up over it.”

  “Lizzy, you need to give me a little credit. You’re miserable. Everybody can see that.”

  I turned away from her and willed my tears to retreat back into my head, but an errant drop snaked down my cheek. I wiped it away and knew Kate had caught the gesture.

  When I didn’t say anything, she positioned herself in front of me. “It’s okay to miss him. This is a huge change for the both of you. You just moved in together not even six months ago and now you’re in some weird relationship limbo.”

  I wanted to correct her, because I doubted being engaged counted as “relationship limbo,” but I refrained because she was right in some twisted way. We were in limbo because I wouldn’t feel like our engagement was real until we started announcing it to our friends and family. Even though the words had been said, I felt that nothing would be official unless there were witnesses, like a pseudo marriage, otherwise we could break up and no one would be the wiser.

  Except I would be heartbroken.

  Why was I even thinking this way? Did I really doubt our relationship that much after being apart for only a few weeks? This was ridiculous.

  Kate was giving me a strange, tentative look, the type you give to someone on the verge of a psychotic break, which is probably close to what I was doing.

  “Are you okay?” she asked me finally.

  “Sorry.”

  Her look softened and her eyes flickered to the clock before returning to me. “You want to go out tonight? Lydia’s working a double, but Andy has the kids until morning. We could get a drink.”

  I considered her offer. Maybe that’s what I needed. A distraction and a bit of normalcy - work and going out with my friends instead of cooping myself up and trying to study in a house where every inch of the place was a reminder of whom I was missing.

  “Okay,” I finally agreed. “One drink. I have to be back at work tomorrow.”

  She smiled at me. I had to admit she was much happier now that she and her ex weren’t spitting fireballs at each other every time they were within a ten mile radius of each other. Not that they were getting back together, but the shared custody thing was finally working out better for the both of them.

  ~

  We met at our old standby, Riley’s. Being a weeknight, the pub wasn’t as packed as it usually was on weekends, but I recognized a few nurses from our hospital as well as a couple of resident physicians.

  We found an empty booth and had just ordered our drinks when my phone buzzed. My heart flipped when I saw the readout. “Darcy.”

  “Answer it,” Kate urged. “I don’t mind.”

  I connected the call, moved out of the booth, and towards the door where it was quieter. “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  I stepped outside, the cool evening air offering respite against the stale smells of beer and food. “How are things?” Why were we being so weird? I felt like a teenager talking to her boyfriend on the phone for the first time. “Your aunt must be keeping you busy.”

  “I just got out of a dinner meeting.”

  “With whom?”

  “We are working with various investors interested in developing the new stroke device.” I knew he had to be vague to avoid insider trading allegations, but it still rankled me. It’s not like I or anyone I knew would be buying up DeBourgh stock.

  “Did you eat?”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. He always forgot to feed himself while working, and I doubted a dinner meeting included much actual eating. “I had a turkey club.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t want you wasting away.”

  “And what about you? Were you able to get a lunch at work?”

  He had a point there. Sometimes my shift got so busy, the most I would eat all day was a piece of candy or a cookie from a grateful patient. Heck, sometimes I didn’t even get a chance to pee. “Today wasn’t too bad,” I assured him, though I didn’t remember eating an actual lunch, just a granola bar stashed in my pocket before the shift.

  “That wasn’t an answer to my question.”

  I sighed. “No, I didn’t eat an actual lunch. But I’m out with Kate now at Riley’s.”

  “I hope you’ve ordered more than hard cider. Which doesn’t count as dinner.”

  “It’s made from apples,” I countered. At the silence, I added, “I’ll order some food also.”

  “Good. How is your ankle feeling?”

  “It’s sore, I can’t deny that. But I’ll manage.”

  “You keep pushing yourself too hard.”

  “I’ll be fine. You know I go crazy if I’m off my feet for too long.”

  “Yes, I know. Just promise me you won’t stay out too late tonight. You need your rest.”

  “You do also. Are you back at your hotel room?”

  “Yes. I have a breakf
ast meeting at 7:30.”

  “Why do you always have meetings around food?”

  “It’s called multi-tasking.” Another pause. “Call me tomorrow when you get home from work. I don’t want to keep you too long from your friends.”

  “It’s just Kate.”

  “Still, you need to eat, and you do have to work tomorrow so you shouldn’t stay out too long.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” Though I’d said the words jokingly, they sounded strange and foreign to my ears. From the silence at the other end I could tell he felt the same way.

  “I wish I were there with you,” he said finally.

  “Me, too.”

  “Good night.”

  I disconnected the call. When I headed back inside and slid into the booth, Kate looked at me with concern. “That was a short call. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, of course. You know Darcy. He’s not exactly a conversationalist.”

  I took a long pull from my drink, then flagged down the waitress to order a sandwich.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Homecoming

  After coming home from my outing with Kate, I showered and studied as much as I could until exhaustion brought sleep and my alarm woke me for my shift the next day. That started my routine the next few weeks. Work, study, sleep - going through the motions of a life that seemed grayer and duller without Darcy in the center of it.

  Our nightly phone calls were much the same as the one at Riley’s: perfunctory, almost clinical. We’d never needed to talk on the phone like that before. We’d always been able to converse every day in person, even if it was only for a few minutes. Those few minutes every day had been bright and full - so different from the conversations of the past week.

  My only consolation was that Darcy was coming home tonight. He would take the plane back to Meryton directly after his last meeting and be home by dinner. Even Mrs. Pratchett anticipated his return by planning his favorite meal of filet mignon wrapped in bacon and served with asparagus and new potatoes.

  His flight was delayed several hours by a cold front which brought with it a series of severe thunderstorms. “Please don’t wait for me to eat,” he insisted. “I’m going to have dinner here at the airport.” So Mrs. Pratchett and I enjoyed the very excellent meal, both of us masking our disappointment with smiles and polite conversation about the weather. I couldn’t help but feel like one of those Regency wives awaiting her husband’s return from a business trip abroad. Even though it hadn’t even been a week since I’d last seen Darcy, it felt like several.