LITMIR.BIZ

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not at work. Conley was a nonstarter. No matter how fantastic she smelled. No matter how delightfully freckled her skin.

      “Dr. Wolfe?”

      Jenna’s voice broke through the wrong direction his thoughts had taken, reminding him where he was and what he was supposed to be about. With a patient, preparing to cajole her into eating. He should be joking. Not focused on the sexy-sweet wake left behind the departing southern belle with her long Es and gentle cadence.

      “I think I’ve got bad breath,” he said, snapping back into the appropriate mindset as he turned back to face the young girl.

      She grinned at him, her cheeks still dimpling no matter how badly her body was failing her. No matter what he’d been told, her spirit still sparkled through the veil of the sickness draped over her. “Why do you think that?”

      “She left very quickly, your Angel, didn’t she? And right after I got here.” He lifted one brow, his best Sherlock Holmes impression.

      Someone had charted a mountain, but whatever had been wrong with the girl had been a molehill. She seemed in her normal Jenna–high spirits.

      He didn’t mention that Conley always left quickly when he was around—that would mean he noticed. Or cared. Maybe she did that when anyone was around. He enjoyed light-hearted chatter with everyone, but, during the year since she’d arrived, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Conley around anyone outside patient consultations and their irregularly scheduled department meetings for Pediatrics, which shouldn’t matter to him either.

      “She’s in a hurry because she’s going to the tree lighting tonight.”

      “Ah, Christmas. Gets earlier every year, doesn’t it?” Earlier and more obnoxious, but Wolfe knew better than to try and explain his feelings on the holiday to a child, especially one who needed to look forward to the magic he’d heard it held but couldn’t quite remember feeling. Inadequate small-talk about the holiday was the best he could do.

      She argued, though with less energy. “No, it takes forever to get here.”

      The tree was just the official, publicly agreed as acceptable kick-off to the Lousy Season. Stores had begun pushing Christmas about the same time they began pushing Halloween. Which was when he stopped going to stores and wouldn’t really resume until February. The explosion of tinsel and fairy lights that covered the city? Harder to avoid.

      It was on his lips to tell her that time moved faster the older you got, but it sounded like a promise he’d love to make but couldn’t. “Are you waiting for Santa?”

      “No.” She rolled her eyes at him and then looked at him far too closely. “Why don’t you like the tree?”

      He must’ve made a face...

      “It’s just a big tree,” he answered, adding, “and it’s cold out there.”

      Just as he was about to ask her about the lunch he’d heard she’d refused, and the breakfast she’d also refused, she started squirming in the bed, trying to shift up higher so that the bend of the mattress fit the bend of her body, and all the color drained from her face.

      He knew that look. Pain. Kids could forget they’d had their bodies cut open and that they weren’t yet able to move freely.

      “Easy...” he said, stepping in to gingerly help her into a more comfortable lean. “Don’t want to pull a staple. I did a good job there, but I’d like to revisit it about as much as I’d like to go see that big silly tree.”

      She settled, and he watched her for a few seconds as her breathing evened out and she lost some of that worrisome pallor. “All right now?”

      “I love the lighting and the tree.” She sailed right past his question and got back to what she wanted to talk about. But the fact that she was talking at all answered his question. “We go every year.”

      When her little mouth twisted at the end of the statement, he knew it wasn’t physical pain.

      Conley had been there before him, and had done something to brighten Jenna’s spirits, but he’d somehow just made her sad again.

      Emotions. He wasn’t good at emotions. He could generally identify them, or when there had been an emotional shift, but he wasn’t good at responding. At least, he wasn’t good with all the emotions that weren’t amusement. He was good at that one. But even he failed to amuse when things ran too deep, too real.

      Without his usual joking to fall back on, and knowing he’d not made the situation any better, it took him several seconds to come up with something resembling the proper response. “Family tradition?”

      She nodded, then swiped her eyes with the arm that didn’t have the IV in it. “Except this year. They’re going without me.”

      Joking wouldn’t help this. Even with his limited emotional palette, he could see that.

      The location of the door through which he could escape became this presence in his mind, temptation glowing behind him. Hard to ignore. It would be so easy to say something polite, manufacture a reason to dart out and make his escape, maybe summon Conley back to cheer Jenna up again. Easy, but impossible. Good guys didn’t do that kind of thing.

      “Aww, lass. I’m sorry you’re stuck here with the like of me this year.”

      She sniffed, mustering such a pitiful little smile he felt worse for wanting to leave. “I like you.”

      “I like you too.” It seemed the thing to say. Reassuring. Maybe even putting the conversation back to one where he knew how to respond.

      Then she asked, “You really don’t want to go to the lighting?”

      “Nah.” He waved a hand, made an exaggerated face of dismissal, shook his head, played up what silliness he had in him at the moment.

      Then he saw it, a little sparkle returned to her dark eyes. She tilted her head and crooned, “You wouldn’t go with me if I could go?”

      The playful and entirely unserious flirting of a twelve-year-old? That he could deal with. Much easier to play than try to solve problems he had no business making worse through his inadequacy. Stick with what he was good at: bodies. He was good at fixing bodies. He wasn’t a neurologist, or a psychologist, although that might’ve been helpful when his brother had been shot. Or now, with a fragile, overwrought twelve-year-old girl.

      Ruffling Jenna’s short, dark hair, he teased, “That’s a bit different, isn’t it? I’d be goin’ with you for the company. No’ the silly tree.”

      “You would?”

      “Course I would,” he assured her, then, trying to make sure this was on proper ground, added, “We’d bring your whole family. And Dr. Angel.”

      “Dr. Angel’s going to take me tonight,” she suddenly announced, voice far brighter than it had been. “And you can come with us!”

      Her happy, chirruped words set his shoulders to granite, stiff and rigid enough to build on.

      Was that how Conley had brightened her mood? The woman who smelled of heaven had promised to take his patient out of the hospital without a discharge order or consultation?

       Surely not...

      “Dr. Angel said she was taking you to Rockefeller Center tonight?” he asked, just to be sure. Always best to do your due diligence before ripping some hide off a colleague.

      “Jenna, don’t fib to Dr. McKeag.” Angel’s voice came from the door at his back, then she came into view and he looked at her fully.

      Smiling. She was smiling. This was a joke?

      Jenna argued, sullenness drifting into her voice as she folded her arms. “It’s true. Sort of.”

      “Yes,” Angel agreed. “But the ‘sort of’ part is important. Look how red

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