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

by Ruby Cruz

  Hal was the first man to treat us like human beings. He tolerated my mother and her eccentricities and treated her with kindness and deference. He had even made me apologize when my big and often rude mouth went a little too far in my criticisms of my mother. Maybe she’d just gotten to be too much for him. Suddenly, my opinion of him slipped down several notches.

  Years ago, when he and my mom had started dating, I’d known he was someone different than my mother’s other SOs. He was solid and dependable. He didn’t say much, but when he did, he always told the truth, even if it was something you didn’t want to hear. He’d balanced my mom, and I’d loved him for it.

  After a bit of grumbling from Lydia, I convinced her that we needed to leave the house until I spoke with Darcy. “But Will hasn’t officially kicked us out yet,” she argued, but I stood firm.

  “Until he and I figure things out, I don’t want him to feel obligated to me about anything. I don’t want to take advantage of him. We’ll stay at a hotel tonight, and Jane said you could hang out at her place tomorrow until things are more settled.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Just get back together with him and you’ll solve all our problems.”

  “I wish it were that simple.”

  As I stood in the master bath and gathered toiletries, I was tempted to do what Lydia wanted and stay, but my conscience won out. Still, I couldn’t help but inhale the scent of his body wash as I retrieved my own from the shower stall. The scent was a part of him, the memory so ingrained in me that I immediately felt a physical response and flushed.

  I finished packing quickly, retrieved my books and laptop, then met Lydia back in the main foyer. “Where are we going now?” she asked.

  “I’ve got a little money. I’ve reserved us a room for tonight.”

  “Ooh, kinky.”

  “Just for the night until I talk to Will. I don’t want to bother Jane again.”

  The hotel room wasn’t anything fancy and they had a heated indoor pool which made Lydia happy, but by the time we checked out the next morning, we were both quiet. “Now what?” she asked me, as if I had all the answers in the world.

  “I’m going to stop at my mom’s house to talk to Hal, then I need to call Darcy so we can wade through this mess and at least figure out living arrangements. You could probably give Jane a call and let her know you’re heading over. Chloe will like seeing you.”

  “Ooh, maybe Jane will let me paint her nails again. Chloe loved it when I drew hearts on them last time.”

  “I’m sure Jane will appreciate the babysitting help.”

  “Speaking of babysitting…” She gave me an impromptu hug which completely took me by surprise. “Thanks, Lizzy, for taking care of me even when you have all your own shit to take care of.”

  “It’s what sisters do.”

  “Call me when you figure out what’s happening with Darcy.” As she climbed into her car and drove out of the parking lot, I realized that while Lydia could often be self-centered, she did have her moments reminding me why we became friends in the first place.

  ~

  A few minutes later, I arrived at my mom’s and noted the garage door was open and Hal’s silhouette was clearly visible in the shadows of a far corner. I let myself into the house, my arrival punctuated by Misty’s high-pitched barks. Shushing her, I waved at my mother in greeting before heading directly through the garage access.

  Hal had moved from the corner and had hunched over his work table, apparently performing some type of autopsy on a grease-covered carburetor for the lawn mower. Or something like that.

  “Hal?”

  He jumped at my voice and straightened. “Jesus, Lizzy. What’d you go sneaking up on me for?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking.” I stepped closer to him. It was much cooler than in the sunshine, and I was glad for a respite from the late summer heat. “I need to talk with you.”

  He returned to tinkering with the gutted machinery. “What about?”

  “Hey, could you put that thing down for a second?”

  Annoyed, he straightened again and looked at me expectantly.

  I regarded him. He wasn’t bad-looking for an older man, a bit rough around the edges, perhaps, with thick dark-brown hair salted with white that should have been trimmed three weeks ago, sedate brown eyes, rugged features that matched his demeanor. He was tall and burly, with a bit of a paunch in the stomach but otherwise fit from years of active work. Lydia had inherited his long arms and legs and his dark hair, but that’s where the resemblance ended.

  Now, when he stared at me with mud brown eyes that were a hint annoyed at my intrusion in his Man Cave, I allowed his annoyance to feed into my anger that he was screwing up the first healthy relationship my mother had ever had.

  “Are you cheating on my mom?” There it was, out in the open. No warning or preamble. That’s how Hal and I worked, and I knew he appreciated it. Between us, there was no subtext, none of those passive aggressive games he played with Lydia or his ex-wife Carol.

  My question obviously threw him for a loop because his eyes widened, then narrowed. Dangerously. As if he’d just watched me kick their annoying little shih tzu and then run over the runt with the lawn tractor. “What’d you just ask me?” He fully well knew exactly the question I’d just asked him, but he was now staring at me like I’d lost my mind. Which maybe I had, just a little.

  “Are you cheating on my mom?” I repeated in that slow, measured cadence used for toddlers and the mentally retarded.

  “Hell no.” He appeared more than annoyed now. Now he was furious. “What the hell makes you think I’m cheating on your mom?”

  “I’m not the one who thinks it. Mom is. She’s a wreck, and you’re too busy playing with your little toys to notice.”

  I definitely had his attention now. He put down the carburetor and the screwdriver he’d been holding in his hands, then ran one of those hands through his graying hair and left a black streak along his temple.

  When he said nothing, neither confirmed nor denied, I cocked an impatient hip. “So?”

  “What makes her think I’m cheating on her?”

  “She’s had a bit of experience in that arena, but I’ll spell it out for you: late nights working, extra charges on the credit card, spending all your time either here or at work. When it’s all laid out, even I can tell something’s up.”

  A beat passed, and he blew out a breath that sounded like a balloon deflating. “Shit.”

  “Hal, what’s going on?” That wasn’t the look of someone who’d just been found out. That was the look of someone defeated.

  “I’m not cheating on your mom,” he said quietly. “You know I’d never do that.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s Lydia. And your man.”

  “What?” What the hell did Darcy have to do with any of this?

  “I know what he did for her, for Lydia, last year in Vegas. It was obvious that the little shithead she’d married hadn’t done anything to help her, but when I got there and your boyfriend - well, I guess he wasn’t your boyfriend at the time, but whatever - he’d been there and had helped straighten everything out.”

  “Wait, so Lydia knew Will helped her?”

  “That girl’s got about as much sense as Misty, and that’s being generous,” he said dismissively. “She thinks George called Darcy to help bail her out, but I knew better.”

  “She never mentioned that Will was there. I mean, I knew he’d really been the one to help, but she’d never said she’d seen him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He took care of a mess that wasn’t his to take care of, and I owe him for that.”

  “He doesn’t see it that way.”

  “I know he doesn’t, but I’ve been working extra shifts, saving money to pay him back.”

  “Have you talked to Will about this?”

  “He wouldn’t accept any money from me, and I know twenty-thousand dollars is probably a drop
in the bucket for someone like him, but I owe him and I’ll make up the difference in any way I can.”

  Hal was a proud man, a hard worker, and I knew he meant every word when he resolved to pay Darcy back.

  “You shouldn’t worry about paying him back, not that he would ever take your money.”

  “Don’t matter if he wants it or not, that’s why I’ve been working all the overtime and weekends. He may think money grows on trees, but I’ve got enough pride that I can’t let another man pay for my own daughter’s mistakes.”

  “And you haven’t told Mom.”

  “She wouldn’t understand. She’s like him, thinks money grows on trees, don’t care how hard I work my ass off, she spends it like it’s water.”

  “But you can’t just go on forever avoiding her.”

  He sighed. “You’re right. I can’t. But also can’t talk to her about it. You know how she is - more concerned about you getting married to him than whether or not you’re really happy with him.”

  That gave me pause. “What do you mean?”

  “I see him come here with you, week after week, for, what, a year now? He comes here, and yeah, he cares, any fool can see that, but I also see that you’re better than he is.”

  “What?”

  “He may be all important with the medical degree and all that shit, but you’re the one who really understands people. Take this for example. You’re the one here talking to me, sussing out why I ain’t talking to your ma. I tried talking to your man about paying him back, but he won’t take the money. I’ve almost got it all, too.”

  I chuckled inwardly. Whom was I kidding? I was no fixer. That would be Darcy, one hundred percent. The guy who moved to rural New Jersey to help out his broken-hearted sister, who paid off thousands of dollars in debt for a guy he hated just so his crush’s stepsister wouldn’t be hurt by the hated guy’s loan sharks. The guy who procured a residency for his best friend because when he thought said best friend was being taken advantage of by a gold digger, who paid off the hated guy so he would leave alone the woman he was in love with.

  He was the guy who would leave his practice, his life’s work, to take over his family’s company and prevent its ruin. And I’d practically dumped him.

  “Oh, shit.” My whole body began to shake as I realized the enormity of my mistake. “Oh, shit.”

  My mind reeled as the lightning bolt of realization struck. I was a bitch. Not the Caroline Bingley hate-the-world-because-you’re-all-beneath-me variety, but I was just as bad. Maybe worse. I’d run away from the only man I’d ever truly loved, a man who would turn his entire life around for the people he loved and cared about, and I’d basically told him I was too scared and hardheaded to leave my safe cocoon of a life and throw caution to the wind and be with him. Granted, he hadn’t gone about things in the best of ways, and he was just as stubborn as I was, but I couldn’t deny the goodness in his heart. How the hell was I going to move on without him?

  Oh shit.

  “You okay?” Hal’s face had that panicked look on him, even more panicked than when I’d accused him of cheating on my mom.

  “Yeah. I gotta go.”

  “Huh?”

  “I just…I gotta go. Talk to mom. Air it out. Please.”

  I sprinted into the house, grabbed my purse and my keys, and peeled out of there.

  This time, I had to be the fixer.

  ~

  I drove back to Darcy’s house to retrieve a change of clothes. He might not want to see me, but I could at least look presentable if I did. He still had all my makeup and toiletries so at the very least I could go to him on the pretense I needed my things. It was a weak excuse, but I didn’t care. I needed to see him so we could decide our future once and for all.

  Mrs. Pratchett hadn’t yet arrived back from visiting her son, so the house was eerily empty when I arrived. I ran up the stairs and was retrieving one of my newer outfits from the Hamptons when my cell phone buzzed.

  When I saw Lydia’s number on the readout, I answered, “What’s up?”

  My heart immediately constricted when I heard her crying and Chloe wailing in the background. “Lizzy, it’s Jane. She’s passed out and there’s a lot of blood. I think she’s losing the baby.”

  Oh, no. “Have you called 911? What about Charlie?”

  “The ambulance is on the way, and I paged Charlie at the hospital to meet us in the ED. She’s so pale.”

  “Just stay with her until the ambulance gets there. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “What about Chloe?”

  “You’ll have to take her with you. You have the keys to Jane’s car. You can drive that to the hospital. I’ll see you there.”

  I disconnected the call, then called Mom to let her know what had happened. I wasn’t in the mood for her histrionics, but she couldn’t be excluded. As predicted, she began panicking when I relayed the situation. “Oh, my baby!”

  “Mom, please, this isn’t helping. Just meet us at the hospital.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I hung up, then grabbed my purse and left.

  ~

  I broke all sorts of speed limits on the way to the hospital. On the way, I called the emergency line for Jane’s OB - I still had it programmed into my phone from when she’d been pregnant with Chloe. After speaking with the answering service and then with the obstetrician on-call, I stopped the call and nearly threw the phone out the window in frustration. With Jane just out of her first trimester, this wasn’t looking good.

  Jane had had some difficulties when she was pregnant with Chloe - she’d had gestational diabetes and had required daily insulin shots, and then she went into preterm labor at 33 weeks and had to go on bedrest until Chloe was born a week later. The fact that she was having complications this early in her pregnancy didn’t bode well for her.

  My phone buzzed and I snatched it up, a myriad of emotions flooding me when I saw Will’s face on the screen. “Hello?”

  “Hey. Charlie called me. I’m on my way to Meryton.”

  “Do you know anything? What’s going on there?”

  “She’s still en route in the ambulance. We won’t know more until she arrives.”

  “What can they do for her? I mean, I know it’s not your area of expertise, but…”

  “She’s not far enough along to do a trans-abdominal ultrasound and with her bleeding…the prognosis isn’t encouraging.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  The line fell silent, but I knew Darcy hadn’t yet disconnected the call. “Are you still there?” I asked.

  “Yes. Lizzy…I…”

  “I know,” I said, even though I had no idea what he’d been about to say. “I’ll see you at the hospital.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll be there within the hour.”

  Once the call ended, I drove as if on autopilot, my mind too full to comprehend everything that was happening. I felt like all the aspects of my life had spiraled out of control. First my relationship with Darcy, then the annoyances at work, Mom’s marriage to Hal, and now Jane. Hadn’t Jane been through enough dealing with Loser Bob? She shouldn’t have to deal with the emotional stress of a miscarriage.

  Life really sucked sometimes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Capable Hands

  When I arrived at the hospital, Charlie was nervously pacing. “Dr. Haddam is examining her now. Thanks for calling her and giving her a heads up.”

  “I couldn’t think to do anything else. How’s Jane?”

  “She woke up in the ambulance once she received some IV fluids. Her blood pressure was dangerously low. It’s come up a bit now that she’s gotten some fluids, and they’ll probably transfuse her.”

  “How could this happen? She must have been bleeding for a while for things to be so bad.”

  “She didn’t want me to tell you, but she started miscarrying a week ago.”

  “What? Why wouldn’t she w
ant to tell me?”

  “She thought you had enough to worry about. She didn’t want to worry or upset you even more than you already were.”

  I felt horribly guilty and selfish at Charlie’s explanation, and when I began to express such thoughts, he stopped me. “Don’t feel guilty. There’s nothing you could’ve done even if you did know.”

  “I could’ve been more supportive. Instead I was wasting your guys’ time talking about my relationship woes.”

  “You’re allowed to vent and have problems like everyone else. Sometimes I think you don’t do enough of that.”

  “You haven’t heard me talking about my boss lately,” I stated in a sarcastic tone.

  “Either way, being more sensitive to what was happening wouldn’t change the fact that this pregnancy wasn’t meant to be.” He scrubbed a weary hand over his face and when he looked at me again, his eyes were wet.

  I stepped toward him to give him a hug, but then Lydia walked in with Chloe, who immediately ran to Charlie. Her little face scrunched up and she began to cry. “Oh, it’s okay, honey. Mommy will be okay,” he assured her as he held her tightly.

  Dr. Haddam emerged from the exam room and Charlie, upon seeing her approach, adjusted his hold on Chloe so he could greet her.

  The doctor glanced at the group of us. “I’m sorry we have to see each other under these circumstances.”

  “Me too.” Charlie’s expression was neutral but he couldn’t quite hide the emotion in his voice.

  “May I speak with you in private?”

  “Of course.”

  Dr. Haddam led Charlie, with Chloe clinging stubbornly to him, down the hall. By their serious expressions, the news couldn’t be good. A few moments later, she went to the nurses’ station to make a phone call while Charlie rejoined the group.

  “They have to do a D and C. That should stop the bleeding. Apparently her hemoglobin dropped over two grams since her last CBC a week ago - not a huge amount, but she was anemic to begin with. They need to transfuse her while she gets prepped for surgery.”