Playing Doctor (9 page)

He went completely still. Had she crossed the line?

“You don’t have to if you’re uncomfortable with it,” Beth said quickly. “It’s just…before the wedding, in the bride’s chambers, there were some women talking, and they said it was a pulmonary embolus that took her. I was just wondering if she had been ill…”

She could feel him relax, almost a muscle at a time. After a moment, he said, “Quid pro quo?”

This for that.
Of course he would ask. She should have expected it. Beth slid her hand from his knee, fingered the faint scar on her lower abdomen. How much was she comfortable sharing with him? Other than her therapist, she hadn’t spoken about what happened between her and Jamie to anyone except her family and Connie. Unlike so many who had approached her with pity shortly after it had happened, they gave her love and support, vented and cursed with her. Backed off when she needed solitude. She hated the pity. She worried her lip with her teeth.

“Yes, quid pro quo,” she finally agreed.

His hands dropped from her breasts, sank into the water at his hips, as though touching her intimately while speaking of his wife made him uncomfortable—never mind that they were naked, sitting in a tub with her ass snuggled against his groin.

“Rita was a sports physical therapist. She and her assistant were doing a session with a football player on the balance beams. Big guy, six-four, around two hundred and forty pounds with a spinal injury. All the safety measures were in place, but…” His chest rose and fell against her back. “It was a freak accident that shouldn’t have happened. He fell on Rita, broke her femur.” Gabe found her hand in the water and brought it back up to rest on his knee. He slid his palm over the back of her hand, drew his fingers through hers. “Your turn. How did your husband die?”

“Vehicle versus pedestrian,” she answered without hesitation. “He ran out of a bar, into the street, and into the path of an eighteen wheeler. The truck won.” She felt him cringe. His soft grunt of commiseration puffed across her cheek.

“Damn. Running, like…from something?” His voice took an upward lilt at the end. Clearly you didn’t often hear of anyone running
out
of a bar, unless it was either on fire or a big-ass bouncer was after you.

“Law enforcement—they were arresting him for assault and battery. Why did you feel it was your fault Rita died?”

His chest rose against her back with a quick indrawn breath, held there, and then came out in a chuff that breezed past her ear. “Well, hell, those women obviously know my life story. Maybe you need to look one of
them
up for that answer.”

She’d put him on the defensive, the last thing she’d wanted to do. She turned on her knees, braced one hand on his chest and cupped his cheek with the other. “I’m sorry, that was thoughtless of me to ask.” But she wanted to know.

Gabe tilted his head back and stared up at the tray ceiling. He scrubbed his hands over his face, as if doing so would erase the memories.

“Sorry. No, it’s okay.” He rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes briefly, then leaned back again and took a breath. “I used to have a private practice as a pulmonologist. I was ass deep in office visits, admissions, consultations, my on-call schedule sucked—you know the routine, especially when you’re building your practice.” Beth nodded, so he went on. “When the accident happened, I was so wrapped up in my practice that I didn’t see what was happening right under my own nose, with my own wife.” He tipped his head to the side. “Who did your husband assault?”

“Me. What was happening that you didn’t see?”

“What?” Gabe bolted straight up in the tub, splashing water over the rim. “Whoa, whoa…back up. What do you mean,
you
?”

And here we go.

“He was abusive.”

The shock always came first, and Gabe was no different. No matter how many times you read about it in the papers, saw it on the news, or dealt with it at work, learning that domestic violence had touched someone you knew or cared about was difficult to absorb. Beth understood the shock, had seen it on her coworkers’ faces when the ambulance brought her to the ER. It was there when Jamie’s parents arrived and learned what their son had done. The anger came with her own parents when they saw the sutures on her face, the bruises, the blood on her clothes the ER team had cut from her battered body. So much blood…

Gabe reached for her. She scooted back to lean against the other end of the tub and pretended not to notice. It would be easy, so very easy to go to him, feel his arms fold around her and hold her against his big warm body as she recanted the horror of that night, but as much as she craved that warmth, that solace, she had to remember what this night was about. She didn’t want his pity, his empathy—she’d had her fill of that over the years. To allow his touch, accept the comfort he offered would indicate an emotional bond, a connection that went beyond their agreement of no strings, no relationship, no complications. Tonight was about sex, and nothing more. Cloaking herself in indifference, Beth took a fortifying breath and continued.

“He wasn’t always. Please don’t give me that look. I’m not defending him, I’m telling you how it was. It began when he came home from Afghanistan.” Once she started, it all spilled out.

“We were your typical high school sweethearts—head cheerleader, captain of the football team. He was a year ahead of me and in his first semester of college on an athletic scholarship when I got pregnant.” She drew her knees up, hugged them close to her body and focused on the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“We were married during fall break. Money was tight. Jamie worked part time, attended classes, and trained with the football team the rest of the time. He was the only married player and got razed a lot by his teammates. He began hanging out with them more, partying. His grades began to drop and it wasn’t long before he was booted off the team and lost his scholarship. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came home and told me. Jamie ate, lived, and breathed the game. He was all about the
team
, had played since Pee Wee League in grade school. Football was his ticket to college. College ball was his chance at the pros, and yes, he was that good. Then it was gone.

“He was devastated, became depressed. For the next two years he drifted from job to job. Our relationship became strained—we hardly spoke, were seldom intimate, and although he never actually said anything, I could feel his resentment toward me growing, as though it were my fault. The hardest part was he hardly paid any attention to Drew.” Her own resentment flared, as it always did when she thought about the way Jamie had shunned their son, an innocent caught in the middle.

“I think joining the military was a form of escape for him, his way of leaving us without actually
leaving
us
, although I didn’t see it at the time. Once he started boot camp, he was suddenly the old Jamie again, vibrant and happy. The army gave him the structure and discipline missing from his life. It wasn’t football, but he was part of a team again. Our relationship improved, was even better than before, and he doted on Drew when he came home. I was so happy it didn’t register with me that I was the only one sad when it was time for him to return to duty.” She swirled her hand in the water, stared at her fingertips. She was pruning.

“Then he re-upped, was deployed to Afghanistan, came home less often—sometimes less than once a year. When they sent him home, he was a different man—the things he’d seen, the things he’d done. He became withdrawn, moody. ”

“PTSD.”

“Yes.” Beth rolled her shoulders, but the knot of tension refused to budge. “He had the usual symptoms, but the worst were the unpredictable episodes of anger and hypervigilance. VA arranged for family therapy, and Jamie dove into psychotherapy, became obsessed with it. Eventually his psyche backtracked, searched for and fixated on the moment when his life had changed. That moment had been when I told him I was pregnant with Drew. Then he went a step further and decided that…”

“Had you not had sex with him, none of it would have happened.”

“Yes.” Beth’s eyes shot up to Gabe’s at the matter-of-fact statement. He knew his psychology. She swallowed, her throat dry and tight, and reached for the wine Gabe had set on the glass-top table beside the tub.

“I’ve got it.” He poured two glasses, handed one to her, tossed his back, and poured himself another. Then he waited, patient and still, for her to go on.

“As is typical, it started with emotional abuse—everything bad in his life was my fault. My getting pregnant started it all, and he had no qualms about telling me so—I should have been on the pill; I should have used more restraint, said no, shouldn’t have liked it so much.” Tears burned the backs of her lids. She blinked them away. “When I pointed out that he had been an active participant as well, he told me I was oversexed and needed to see a psychiatrist.”

Gabe held up his hand, his
doctor
face firmly in place. Thank God there wasn’t any pity there. She could handle the shock, the anger, but never the pity. “You are
not
oversexed. His thinking was irrational. Labeling you was his way of shifting the blame for his failures onto you.”

“Yes, I know, but sometimes, if you’re told something long enough, if you’re vulnerable enough, you begin to believe it.” But it felt so very good to hear him say it. Knowing it hadn’t kept the insecurities from creeping in, didn’t give her the confidence to put herself out there again to risk a relationship with someone new.

“Shortly after that, the abuse turned physical. The first time he shoved me into the wall…” She shuddered, recalling the gleam of satisfaction in Jamie’s eyes when she’d cried out in pain. “It escalated from there, and then the night I told him I was pregnant again… I had known for some time, but…”

Gabe’s eyes narrowed. Beth could see the wheels turning, the physician compiling data. It wouldn’t take him long to put two-and-two together and come up with the accurate equation.

“You knew he wouldn’t take it well.”

“No. He didn’t take it well at all. Drew was there, tried to help me, and Jamie…he hit Drew.”

“And you lost the baby.”

No. I didn’t lose the baby. He beat it out of me.

“Yes, and the ability to conceive another. I have one left ovary, one right fallopian tube, and an off and on functioning uterus.”

Gabe took the glass from her hand and set it on the edge of the tub. She hadn’t realized how tightly her fingers gripped the glass until he’d gently tugged it from her grasp. This time, when he reached for her, she went willingly into his arms. She burrowed into his embrace, giving in to the overwhelming need to hold and be held after baring her soul. His hands moved over her back, the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear comforting. As her breath shuddered out, she pulled his strength in. The knot of tension between her shoulders slipped away.

Her eyes drifted closed and her defenses gave in a little more. Tonight, just for tonight, she would allow herself to feel. Then tomorrow, she would let him go.

The water had begun to cool. He lifted his foot and manipulated the faucet with his toe and added some hot.

“Quid pro quo.”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve told you mine, now you tell me yours. What was happening with your wife’s medical condition that you didn’t see?”

He turned off the water and settled back against the tub, pulling her between his knees. “How ‘bout this…I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

Was he stalling? She could fix that. Tucking away the pain of the past, she tipped her head back and grinned up at him. “How about, you tell me yours, then we lock it all away and play doctor?”

His arms tightened around her and it seemed to take him a moment to gather his thoughts. “You play dirty.”

“It’s a special nursing course, much like the one doctors take on illegible penmanship.”

Gabe’s chest hitched with a silent laugh, then he drew in a fortifying breath. “I called her at lunch and she said she was feeling a little short of breath. She’d been up, moving around on her crutches, so I told her to kick back and take it easy.” He shook his head. “I’d see it once, maybe twice a month in a patient referred to me after a long bone fracture, but I sure as hell didn’t see it in my own house. It was
right there
, the most common sign of a blood clot in the lungs…and I didn’t see it.”

She stroked her hand over his chest, felt the heavy thump of his heart beneath her palm. It was impossible to imagine the pain, the guilt, the blame he placed on himself. There was nothing she could do about the pain—only time would heal that wound, but she could give him clarity. What he did with it was up to him. No one could do it for him.

Pushing away from his chest, Beth leaned back against his arm where it rested on the edge of the tub. “Was Rita increasing her time on the crutches, pushing a little more each day?”

A faint smile touched his lips. Memories. Good ones. “Every day. She pushed herself as hard as she did her patients.”

Maybe even harder, especially if someone wasn’t there to stop her. “Did she have any signs of an embolus when you left her that morning? Any of the symptoms you just described?”

“She was fine when I left her, but…”

“Was it something that started slowly, something you’d seen gradually increasing over a matter of days?”

The look he gave her clearly said,
were you sleeping in class during the lecture on this?
“No, of course not. You know as well as I do that’s not how a blood clot works in this instance.”

Bingo. “And if it were one of your patients or a colleague, if the situation were reversed, what would you tell them?”

He just stared at her, wheels turning, thoughts processing. When he finally spoke, his voice held a tremor. “The same thing you’re telling me. What everyone has been telling me for the past two years.”

“And that is?”

“It wasn’t my fault.” His chest rose and fell with large gulps of air. “It wasn’t my fault.” He wrapped his body around her and buried his face in the curve of her neck. She held him there, as the water churned around them, until the shaking stopped.