Page 54 of His to Seduce
Licking my lips, I leaned forward and pressed my elbows to my thighs. “So, I became a doctor. I studied and I learned. I worked really fucking hard and I’m really fucking good at it.” My hands balled into fists and I forced them to relax. When I met her gaze, I asked, “But what happens when you realize that the whole reason you became a doctor in the first place isn’t possible? What happens the day that you realize it was killing you from the inside out, that there were more losses than wins, that you didn’t have the passion or the ego necessary to deal with all the death you saw surrounding you and that every time you somehow miraculously saved a life, you lost five more?”
Gavin Merryfield’s face when I told him about his wife dying, the fact thatIhadn’t been able to save her, flashed in my mind and I cringed, fell back into my chair. I pressed my hands into my pockets and shuddered, unable to stop my reaction. I had never seen a man so completely fucking destroyed by news I’d had to deliver before.
“Did…did something happen?” Camden asked hesitantly. “Something specific?”
When I opened my eyes, Camden was no longer in her protective ball. Her blanket was at her feet and she was leaning forward, as if the mere sight of me fucking losing it in front of her made her feel safer with me.
I hated that, too.
“Lost a woman,” I coughed out. Hell. I needed another beer. Water. Something to wet my throat to get the rest out. “I worked downtown at Chicago General in their emergency room. Twenty-four-hour shifts. Drug deals, pimps, drive-bys, gang shootings. I saw the worst of the worst, and this one patient—” I stopped and focused. She wasn’t just a patient. She’d been a woman. A mother. A wife. Someone’s soul mate. I had no use left for clinical descriptions. “A woman. Her name was Ella Merryfield. Beautiful. A few years older than us. But hell, she was pretty, and she had this daughter brought in. Ten years old, spitting image of her mom, and all I could see was blood staining their blond hair. There was so much it was red.”
“David—”
She choked my name out, but I was gone. Back to that night, to the brightness of the ER. To the shouts and the explanations and the bleeping machines that I still heard ringing in my ears, late at night when everything else was quiet. “You don’t have to—”
“I do.” I hadn’t talked about it at all yet, and even I knew the best doctors had to unload that shit on someone. Either that or it all ended up drowned in a bottle of alcohol, and I didn’t want to be that guy, either. I had just thought moving back to Latham Hills, being there for Aidan after he lost Derrick, would help me refocus all of it. I’d hoped helping Aidan and Declan after Derrick died would be my redemption.
“Thirty-two years old, her little girl was ten, and they were minding their own business, leaving Chicago after a night out atThe Lion Kingfor her daughter’s tenth birthday, and they were carjacked. Either by a gang member or a druggie looking for a fix.”
“God, that’s horrific.” Camden’s chin wobbled and she blinked rapidly.
“And the husband…God, I’d never seen anyone like that. When I had to tell him that his wife didn’t make it, that I couldn’t save her, it was like he died right in front of me.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and Camden gave me a moment of silence. I didn’t particularly want it, but I needed it before she asked, “The daughter?”
“She’ll walk again someday.”
I gritted my teeth so hard to main control of my emotions, I thought they might crack when I turned back to her and let her see how tortured the memory made me. “I became a doctor, Camden, so no one would ever have to go through what I went through when I saw my dad.” Tears burned my eyes, and fuck if I could hold them back any longer. I didn’t give a shit if she thought I was a pussy. I was crumbling and I didn’t have the self-respect to hide it any longer. “What in the fuck was I supposed to say to that man, or to his little girl, when it was my fault I couldn’t save their mom and wife? When at the end of the day, it was my hands that couldn’t stop her from dying? I was the one who filled them with the same pain I didn’t want anyone to feel.”
“Oh…David…” She rushed from the couch, scrambled around the coffee table between us.
As she reached me, her arms outstretched, I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her waist. Her arms went to my neck and I squeezed her harshly, shoving my head into her shoulder.
“It wasn’t your fault; it was the man’s fault who shot the gun.”
“Everything happened hours after I got the call about Derrick,” I muttered, admitting the truth for the first time. “I shouldn’t have even been fucking doing the surgery. I wasn’t focused; I was shaky and not ready.”
“Oh, no,” Camden whispered, holding me tight. “That can’t be true, David. You just said you were a really good doctor. I’m sure you did everything you could.”
It hadn’t been enough. If I hadn’t been distracted, wanting to get the hell out of the ER and take time off for the funeral. If I hadn’t been reeling at the news about Derrick…would it have been different?
“We’ll never know, will we,” I said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that she still died at my hands and I wasn’t focused like I should have been.”
“I’m so sorry.” She hugged me tighter and I let her. It had been little over a day, but it felt like weeks since she’d been in my arms.
I hadn’t even told herwhyI’d held all that back from her, and there was still more truth to reveal.
But I waited. I waited until my breathing slowed and the stampede in my chest calmed to a trot. I inhaled the scent of her hair; and when I was beginning to think I could continue, I raised my hands at her back, untwisted the fucking tie in her hair, and slid it onto my wrist.
She pulled back and rolled her eyes. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “I have more to say, and you might not like the rest, either.”
