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“All’s well at the moment.”
Both nurses knew how quickly that could change.
Kelly punched her personal code into the medicine cart that tracked each nurse opening the medicine dispensing device. “I’m going to administer this, and then you’re going to tell me what you have planned for this weekend. Jason’s having a cookout and I want you to come if you aren’t busy.”
This weekend? Liz racked her brain, trying to recall what was going on the upcoming weekend. The fourth of July. She’d be working a twelve-hour shift on Saturday and Sunday.
The previous year’s Fourth of July celebration sprang into her mind. She closed her eyes, picturing Adam and herself sitting on a blanket in the city park. They’d been holding hands, staring up at the bright, exploding lights in the sky. Adam had leaned in, kissed her in the magical way he had that had made fireworks rivaling those in the night sky go off inside her chest.
“Liz?”
She opened her eyes and stared into the object of her fantasy’s blue eyes. He still looked tired, but it was so wonderful to see him that Liz fought throwing her arms around him. “Adam.”
She hadn’t seen him since they’d made love. Since he’d held her, kissed her, admitted he needed her. Unfortunately, she barely recognized him as the same man who’d made love to her. He looked grumpy.
“Were you daydreaming?” He frowned, appearing for all the world like he couldn’t stand being near her. “Your mind should be on your job.”
Liz did a double-take. Not once had Adam or any doctor had cause to complain about her treatment of any of the patients in her care. Not once. Regardless of what was going on, or not going on, between them personally, she hadn’t expected him to attack her professionally.
“Pardon?” she asked, thinking that perhaps she’d misread his tone, his look. Maybe she was being overly sensitive because she was so hurt he’d left without waking her.
“Lives are in your hands.” He didn’t meet her eyes, but instead scribbled something on a notepad. “You shouldn’t be daydreaming.”
“I wasn’t.” But she had been, she thought guiltily. Daydreaming about him when he so obviously didn’t want her to be.
But why wouldn’t he even meet her eyes? Why did she get the impression he was hiding something from her? That he’d been hiding something for weeks? Something beyond his hot and cold attitude toward her?
Yes, he’d left her house without saying her goodbye, but she loved him, wanted him in her life, and wasn’t giving up without a fight.
Regardless of what had changed, Adam did have feelings for her. She knew he did. She wasn’t going to let whatever was happening between them tear them apart without at least fighting for their relationship.
“Perhaps I was daydreaming just a little,” she admitted, giving what she hoped was a bright smile. “Kelly mentioned the Fourth of July and I was thinking back to last year.” She willed him to look at her and as if he felt the force of her thoughts, his gaze met hers. “You kissed me for the first time that weekend. Do you remember?”
He looked startled that she hadn’t reacted to his antagonistic remark. Had that been what he’d been hoping for? A fight? His mouth opened, but he didn’t speak, didn’t say whether he remembered or not. No matter, she knew he did. Memories were written all over his face. Memories and emotion. Raw emotion.
His gaze traveled over her face, settled on her lips. He remembered. And wanted to kiss her even now.
She studied his handsome face, the crow’s-feet near his eyes that seemed more deeply etched than she recalled, the fatigue weighing down his expression, the bleakness in his eyes that had disappeared when they’d made love. Desperately she wished she could read his mind, know his thoughts, understand what was driving his recent behavior.
“Adam, why didn’t you wake me before you left the other morning?”
If she’d shocked him by refusing to fight with him, her blunt question shocked him more. She saw something akin to remorse flicker across his face, but before he answered the unit secretary buzzed her to the room of a patient whose IV machine alarm was sounding. She replaced her beeper and turned to ask Adam if they could grab a bite together and talk when she went on break.
He wasn’t there.
Glancing down the hallway, she watched him nod at something Kelly said and disappear with her best friend into a patient’s room.
Liz bit into her lower lip. What was going on? Nothing made sense. Adam’s actions said one thing, his eyes another.
Her beeper buzzed in her pocket again and with another quick glance toward the room Adam had disappeared into she went to reset Mrs Sanchez’s IV.
Kelly at his side, Adam greeted his patient, then paused beside her bed.
How much longer could he do this?
The truth was, he was only delaying the inevitable, but he hadn’t been able to utter the words to tell Liz it was over the other night.
He cursed his own weakness, wishing he could blame that, too, on his MS, but he couldn’t.
“She’s running a low-grade temperature, but all her other vitals are normal.” Kelly cut into Adam’s self-derision.
How could he have fussed at Liz for daydreaming and then done the same minutes later?
“Dr Cline?” Kelly said again.
He shook off his melancholy and checked his patient, assessing her closely for signs of infection to go along with the temperature. Not finding any, he gave Kelly discharge orders with instructions for the patient to contact his office immediately if her temperature spiked or any new problems developed.
With dread he left the hospital room and prepared to face Liz. Since Kelly, walking beside him and chatting away, said Mrs Arnold was the only one of his patients she had been assigned, the other two must be under Liz’s care.
Immediately, he spotted her waiting outside Mrs Arnold’s room.
Kelly shot Liz a knowing smile, which Liz nervously returned before meeting Adam’s gaze. Kelly elbowed him, then headed toward the nurses’ station.
Adam refused to name the emotion pulsing through him at the sight of Liz, standing in the hallway, looking unsure whether to slap him or kiss him.
She was hurt, confused. He could see it on her face, in her golden brown eyes. She deserved so much better than what he was giving her.
“Liz,” he started, then paused. He couldn’t flat out say they were finished in the middle of the hospital hallway, but he couldn’t give her reason to think they’d work through this either.
“Mrs Sanchez is ready to be discharged, but I’m not so sure about Robert Keele,” Liz said in a professional tone, her spine straight. However, her gaze couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than personal. She wanted to know what was going on and wouldn’t sidestep the issues any longer.
He needed to put some distance between them.
“Whether or not Mrs Sanchez is ready to be discharged is for me to decide. Not you.”
Liz’s eyes widened. She gave him a doe-caught-in-the-headlights stare. A doe who had just been fatally struck by the hunter she’d mistakenly trusted. Him.
He could do this. No matter that his insides wrenched. No matter that his heart felt like it might explode. No matter that he’d rather die than hurt her this way.
She pinned him with her stare. “Have I done something to upset you? I know I’ve been distracted with Gramps’s death. If I’ve said or done something wrong, I’m sorry.”
He