Second Chances: The Seahaven Series - Book One (11 page)

All of this makes me so mad I can barely stand still—I want to go over to the father and break his arm so he can feel what it's like. Danny's angry, too. The two of us are standing at the counter, waiting for our discharge paperwork, seething and staring daggers at the dad.

I see Matt go into an ER cubicle. My breath catches. I'm pretty sure he's been avoiding me because I haven't seen him much, but if I'm going to get over him I'm going to have to work at it to stop feeling this way. I can't help it. The way my body responds to the sight of him is so automatic I can't control it.

His hair is tousled and he has about three days' worth of blonde stubble. He looks tired. I want to go to him and fix what's wrong. I want to buy him a coffee and hash it out. I want him to take me home and put his hands on me.

It's been a week since he's talked to me.

Danny sees me looking at Matt. “Maybe he can come over here and punch that guy out like he punched the dude who choked you.”

I nod and look back at the drunk dad and say, “That would be nice.”

Maria walks over to us shaking her head. “Can you believe that asshole?” she hisses. “I want to knock him out.”

“Get in line,” says Danny. “We got dibs.”

“What happens next?” I say, looking in at the boy. Another woman has just joined them.

Maria says, “CPS just got here, so she'll check out the mom and then they'll make their recommendation. Mom's not drunk, at least. She's a dipshit for not protecting her son better, but I'm sure they'll let him stay with her. Daddy's going to jail, though. That's the bright side.”

Another nurse comes over and hands Danny and I our sign-out papers. We scrawl our signatures and date and time and hand them back. I check my watch and my radio.

“I think that's it,” I say to Danny.

“Crazy night,” he says.

I nod. “One for the books.”

He says, “Want to get some breakfast?” I flash back to Matt and I leaving the hospital to get breakfast. The parking lot. Him inside me, us sitting together looking into each others' eyes.

I come back to reality. “I can't,” I say. “Another time, though. I have to do a couple things here before I go home.”

Danny nods, disappointed. Maria joins us again, slinging her purse over her shoulder.

“Did I hear something about breakfast?” she asks. “I'm off, too. Can I crash?”

“It's just me,” says Danny. “Ellie can't make it.”

“Then it's just me and you. Your loss, sister,” Maria says to me. She hits Danny's arm. “You want the one with the pancakes or the one with the pancakes?”

“See you tomorrow,” I say to them.

“See you today,” Danny says back.

They talk as they leave the hospital, friendly and having fun.

I turn my attention back to the drunk dad in the chair. I stare at him. Not only is he mean, but he looks mean. His son must be scared of him constantly.

I walk across the room and stand in front of the dad. The cop guarding him studies me for a second, glances at my EMT badge, and looks away.

I squat down in front of the drunk dad. He studies me drowsily.

“What do you want?” he slurs angrily.

I take a breath. “I want you,” I start, “to never, ever hit your son again. I want you to try harder to be a good father. I want you to love him, and if you can't love him for real then pretend you love him. I want you to give him a chance to grow up to be a decent person, not like you. I want you to be good to your wife so your son knows how to treat women when he grows up. I want you to stop drinking so the monsters stay inside your head and don't get unleashed on your family. I want you to stop wrecking other people's lives.”

I search his face for any kind of understanding. But what he does is spit. Half of it hits me on the cheek. In one swift motion the policeman hauls him up from his chair and smashes him against the wall, then drags him to a private room.

I stand up slowly. A grandmotherly nurse comes over with tissues and sanitizer to clean the spit.

“You're having some run-ins around here, honey.”

I take a tissue. “I guess I am.” I clean my cheek.

“Tonight you took one for the team,” she continues. “Every single person in here wants to take him out back and beat him to a pulp.”

She walks away, and I chuckle at the grandma wanting to beat up the drunk dad.

A few minutes later I'm zipping up my coat and pulling on a knit cap to leave for the night, exhausted. I walk through the automatic double doors into the outdoor ambulance bay and a blast of rainy, pre-dawn, wet morning air hits me. The rigs are lined up against the left wall, in a line, so that they can get in and out quickly for emergencies.

I hurry through the rain and go to my ambulance, opening the back doors quickly. I climb in to check that everything's in order for the next shift before I go. I start with the defibrillator kit: pads, gel, charged, check. I look in all the drawers for syringes, gloves, tubes, EKG leads. I initial the checklist for each item. Everything is in order.

As I'm closing drawers and cabinets I hear a knock on the back door. I open it, expecting to find my shift change EMTs coming on board. But it's Matt.

He's wearing civilian clothes and his hair is wet. He's holding a newspaper over his head to try and stop the downpour, but it isn't working. He's drenched.

I just stare at him. I wasn't sure I'd ever see him up close again, face-to-face.

“Is it okay if I come in?” he asks.

I snap out of it. “Yes, I mean for a second. Shift change is happening any minute.”

He climbs inside, hunching down so he doesn't hit his head. I hand him a couple of paper towels and he rubs his hair with them.

And as he's drying off, I realize what I'm feeling. It's anger, and hurt. After what we shared and where it felt like we were going and what he said to me, if he could walk out of a restaurant, leave me guessing why, then not speak to me for a week, how strong could what we had really be? I feel duped. I feel betrayed. I feel like if I let him say what he needs to say and I come back to him that maybe he'll do it again on a whim the next time he feels like it. It's better to save myself from being hurt again and cut my losses now.

He looks at me. Those eyes. That face. Stay strong, Ellie. Hold fast.

“I want to apologize,” he starts.

I shake my head and look down at my hands.

“I want to explain to you why I acted like I did.” He watches me, waiting for any sign that I'm willing to listen. The problem is that I want to know. Even if I choose not to be with him again, I really want to know why he shut down the way he did.

When I lift my head to look at him, he holds out his hand. After I moment of searching his eyes, I take it.

Chapter Eighteen

We're driving in his truck to his house. Neither of us is saying much. He's obviously still in the same state he was in, quiet and contemplative, and I'm not giving him an inch. I'm not joking around, and I'm not lightening things up. I want this to be fixed, I want to be back together the way we were, but it's in his court now. If he doesn't have a good reason and a good explanation for his behavior this past week, it's the end of the road for us. Gorgeous eyes and face be damned.

We pull up to his house. He parks and turns off the engine. “Come inside with me. Please.”

He opens his car door and walks towards the house. After a moment I get out and follow him.

When I get to the sliding door, he's already inside. He's standing by the fireplace, by his framed photos.

He turns towards me and he's holding the picture of him with the blonde woman. I close the door slowly behind me.

“I need to explain this to you even thought I don't want to,” he says.

“Then don't,” I say. “You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.”

Then I wait, wondering if maybe he really won't. He looks troubled. Really, really pained. Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe it's better not to know after all.

“I do.” He says. He looks over at me and points the picture at me so I can really see it. I come closer and look at it.

“She's beautiful,” I say, meaning it. I look at him and wait.

“She's my wife,” he says.

I take a step back and suck in my breath. Hearing it is like a slap in the face, and even though I thought I was prepared for it I wasn't. He's married! I was just to the point of feeling like this man was mine, like he and I were really together and in love, so how can this be happening? But as I'm freaking out internally Matt holds a hand out apologetically to draw me back in.

“No, that's not accurate,” he stammers. “Was. She was.” He looks down and shakes his head, as if trying to rid it of something horrible.

I feel my breath return. My body loosens.

He looks at the photo. He shakes his head. “Her name was Jane, and she was my wife, and she died.”

“Oh, Matt.” I move closer to him, the quick shock of the news replacing every jealous, worried thought I've been carrying around for the last week. It never made sense, a man like him two-timing his wife, living a double life. I can't believe how stupid I've been.

“I'm so sorry,” I say. “I didn't know.”

He shakes his head again. He's having a really hard time. I'm trying to imagine what he's been through and I can't. I stand next to him, waiting, not knowing if he wants me to ask questions or if he wants to stop talking about her.

“It was a year and a half ago, in Sydney. She was walking near Bondi Beach. A truck ran the light and hit her. They brought her into my ER in bad shape. I was the attending.”

He was the attending. He had to work on his dying wife in his ER.

He stops. I feel tears pooling in my eyes, but I force them back. I take his hand and wait.

“I didn't save her,” he says.

The fact that he just used the word 'didn't' tells me he hasn't forgiven himself. And a doctor with the power to save people, who couldn't use those powers to save someone he loved, is a giant powder keg of guilt waiting to explode.

“You couldn't,” I say.

“No, I didn't,” he says. “I should have tried harder. I should have done something... else. She was alive when she came in and then after I worked on her she wasn't.”

His guilt is running deep. Scary deep.

“You've seen what it's like when they know they're going,” he says. He lets out a long breath. “She wasn't even thinking of herself when she was dying. Her concern was the baby. She just wanted me to save the baby. But I didn't do that either.”

I put my hand over my mouth. The forced-back tears spill out of my eyes. I can't help it. “She was pregnant?”

He nods, bereft. I can't help it, I cry harder. I sit down in the closest chair and put my face in my hands and cry. I'm so sad for him. I'm so sad for them. I'm imagining the pain he went through and the agony that's still eating him away and it's devastating. How he even has the energy to get up and go to work is a mystery to me.

I feel his hands on mine and his chest against my knees. He's kneeling in front of me, peeling my hands away from my face.

“Hey,” he says, “I didn't tell you to make you cry.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I'm so sorry I'm crying. I know it's not about me. I'm just so sad for you, for all of you. How are you even functioning? You should be in a puddle in a corner somewhere and the worst you did was ignore me for a few days.”

“And I'm sorry for that,” he says. “It was inexcusable and it won't happen again.”

“No, no, I'm saying you need time to heal. You're entitled to any feelings you have, you shouldn't have to worry about me.”

I'm still crying, I can't help it. I'm imagining being her, knowing I'm going to die, and I'm imagining him going through it. I've been through terrible things in my life, but nothing like this. Nothing even touches this.

He wipes the tears away from under my eyes and holds my face in his hands.

“I want to worry about you,” he says. “You're the only thing that's made me feel human again. For the first time in a year and a half I've felt hope since you came into my life. Do you remember what I said to you after that drunken yob choked you in the ER?”

It's hard to think while I'm trying to stop crying, but then I remember. I nod. “You said I saved your life. But I wasn't sure that's what I'd heard because I was in shock a little.”

“You heard me right,” he says. “Ever since I met you you've been saving my life. Minute by minute you're bringing me back. Being in that restaurant and your ex saying he wished you were dead so he could get over you, it made me think about the past again just when I'd started to put it behind me. I started to think that if you and I stayed together I would lose you. My brain went haywire, I couldn't climb out of it. And I couldn't stand the thought of the hurt and pain from losing you.”

I look into his eyes and press my forehead against his. “You won't ever lose me,” I say. “You won't.”

I put my hands on top of his and I kiss him and he kisses me back. He tastes like home.

Chapter Nineteen

I wake up in the late afternoon. I'm on the couch with all of my clothes on, shoes off, a blanket over me. I look around for Matt but he's not here. I wrap the blanket around myself and walk to the sliding door. There he is, out on the sand, throwing a ball to Buster.

I open the slider and step onto the deck, pulling the blanket tighter. The weather has changed. It's officially fall now. I can feel a chill in the air that wasn't there yesterday.

I watch them on the beach and I smile. The fact that Matt remembered Buster was at doggie day care and went to get him reminds me what a thoughtful guy he is. But then I start to think of what Matt told me last night and about everything he's been through and I get emotional all over again.

The thing is, it's not scaring me off. I'm not thinking about how I can never compete with a dead wife and child, or how he'll never be able to love me the way he loved her. I just want to help ease his pain. And it's different from the co-dependence I've been guilty of in the past, where I've taken on other people's (Paul's, my brother's, my father's) burdens and made their problems mine. I just want to be there for Matt. I want us to be strong together.