Second Chance With The Surgeon
Her lips twisted again, this time in a wry smile. “I know it’s not ideal, taking advantage of her good nature when she has a tough time getting around. But they won’t let me take a taxi by myself, as you well know.”
“You should have told me you were having trouble finding someone,” Beth said. “I can take you home. You’ll just have to hang around in Recovery until the end of the day. You’ll still be partially out of it for a bit, anyway. I assume you have a friend to take care of you tonight? You know you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I think Kandie from the other office is planning to stop by and check on me at some point. And my sister’s coming sometime later this week. But she’s got a big project at work and can’t take off right now.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t figured all this out already.” Conor looked from Jill to Beth, then back. “She’ll be coming back tomorrow to get the cast off, right? And what about the dogs? Plus, your sister’s work schedule is almost as bad as mine, so how can you count on her to get here soon?”
“You know, I appreciate your concern, but frankly I don’t see how this is any of your business,” Jill said, her chin jutting out with that mulish look he was all too familiar with. At the same time he could see plain as day that she felt anxious about how she was going to manage everything post-op. “The dogs and I will be okay.”
“Considering you’ve seen hundreds of patients, and know how they feel the day the cast comes off and you work with them to make a splint, I’m pretty sure you know how much pain you’ll likely be in. How completely non-functional your arm and hand will be at first. Hudson’s a big lug—not to mention there’s no way you can take them outside for a walk. Not for quite a while—until your bones and the titanium plate and screws have fused. If you fall again before that happens it could be a disaster.”
“I won’t fall. And there are dog-walking services, you know,” Jill said. “I... I didn’t think to look one up before surgery, but I’m sure I can find one. And, like I said, Briana is coming as soon as she can.”
“Let me check to see if there’s a nurse or one of the office staff who wouldn’t mind making some cash by helping you tonight and bringing you back tomorrow. Walking the dogs, too,” Beth said, looking from him to Jill, then back. “Meanwhile, we have to get you into twilight sleep and to the OR—or the whole day’s schedule will be messed up, which nobody wants.”
Obviously Beth’s calm tone was designed to keep Conor from getting upset about this, but it wasn’t working. Jillian might not be his anymore, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still care about her. Wouldn’t worry about her.
“I have a light surgery schedule this morning, so I can take you home,” he said. “Though I do have a—”
Abruptly, he closed his mouth. He’d almost followed his comment about taking her home by telling her he had an appointment at one o’clock with some of the decision-makers from Urgent Care Manhattan, to go over the details of the potential collaboration with HOAC. Telling her that he’d take her home when the meeting was over. But his work and business schedules had been part of the reason why she’d left and how badly he’d failed her.
But this was an emergency, damn it. Much as he hated any delay in getting the deal closed, his competitor shut out and the urgent care department up and running, he’d just have to reschedule the meeting.
“I’ll come to Recovery as soon as I’m done with my last surgery and I’ll take you home. Get you settled.”
“Conor, no.” Despite her obvious need, her beautiful eyes widened in clear dismay. “I—”
“Perfect,” Beth interrupted cheerfully. “I’ll meet you in Recovery. And now, Jill, it’s time for Dr. Fixit to fix you up.”
Jillian opened her pretty lips to protest more, which tightened his chest. Was it really that horrifying for her to have to spend a few hours with him?
Conor watched the anesthesiologist administer twilight anesthesia through Jill’s IV. Her long lashes swept her cheeks as her lids slid closed, and he forced himself to turn away from her beautiful face in sweet repose. She looked very much as she had back when he’d held her in his arms every night as she fell asleep.
Damn. That ache pressed in on his chest again, but at the same time his heart strangely, bizarrely, lifted. He was going to get to be with her this evening for the first time in nearly a year. Drugged up and in pain, she wouldn’t be like the smiling Jillian he’d loved. But knowing that she needed help, that he could be there for her at least for a few hours, made him feel better than he’d felt in a long time.
And never mind that the hollow loneliness he knew he’d experience when he went back to his regular life without her in it might feel every bit as bad as when she’d first left.
CHAPTER TWO
CONOR DOUBLE-PARKED IN the loading zone outside Jillian’s apartment building and prayed he wouldn’t get a ticket—or, worse, towed. Presumably it wouldn’t take long to get her into her apartment and comfortable, and he could get the car to the parking garage down the street after that.
He jumped out of the car and ran around to open the passenger door. “Okay, I know you’re still feeling weak and weird, so I’m going to hold you up in case your legs feel wobbly.”
Her eyes blinked up at him and she nodded. He reached into the car to place his hands around her waist, pretty much lifting her out of the seat—which wasn’t easy, considering she couldn’t help much and he was worried about jostling her arm. Not that he needed to be concerned that he’d hurt her. It was covered in a cast and an elastic cover and would stay totally numb from the nerve-block for at least twelve hours.
“You’re doing great,” he said as she walked slowly beside him to the front doors of the building, keeping his arm wrapped around her waist to keep her steady.
Thank God he’d had the foresight to get her keys before they got out of the car. It would have been a serious juggling match trying to get them out of the pocket of the jacket he’d draped over her shoulders without her falling down right there on the concrete steps.
Once they were in the building, maneuvering her to her apartment wasn’t difficult. He’d only been there once—the day he’d brought the dogs over to live with her after she’d moved out—but he remembered exactly where it was. Had often pictured her there when he was lying in bed at night. Wondering how she was doing. Wishing he was a different kind of man. Wishing things could have gone differently for them. Wishing she hadn’t stubbornly refused any money from him so she could live in a bigger place. He had hoped she was happier now, even as the thought of her being happy with someone else tore him up inside.
The moment he unlocked her door he heard the dogs running across the hardwood floor. Worried that Hudson might accidentally knock her over in her current wobbly state, he turned her sideways and put his body in between them as a buffer, reaching to scratch the dog’s head.
“Sit, Hudson. That’s a good dog. Good boy.”
It tugged at his heart that the dog obviously remembered him, whining and thrashing his tail back and forth so hard his hind end went along with it. Yorkie leaped up and down on his short legs, too, equally excited to see him.
Damn it. Letting down Jillian had been the worst, but the dogs’ happy greeting reminded him he’d let them down, too. She’d wanted them to have dogs and he’d gone along with it. Had wanted her to be happy. Wanted to know what it would be like to live a completely different kind of life from the one he’d grown up in. To love someone who loved you back and have a family that was always there for one another.
Instead he’d turned out to be a bad husband and bad dog dad, incapable of giving any of them what they needed. Thank God they hadn’t had children for him to hurt, too. He’d failed at being there for his mother the way he should have been, and he had failed at being there for Jillian.
That dismal reality had shown him that the focus of his life had to be only on what he was good at—and that was surgery and business and building his bank account and portfolio. Lonely, maybe, but at least he wouldn’t hurt the people he loved. He believed providing for them financially, for their future, was the best way to show his love.
Jillian hadn’t agreed.
“Sit. Sit, you two.”
He held up his hand to signal that he meant it, the way the dog trainers had shown him and Jill when they’d first gotten the puppies. Jillian tripping over the excited animals on their way to the sofa would not be good, and he was both glad and surprised that they actually did as he told them to.
“Jill, we’re going to walk to the sofa. I’ll be holding on to you, so try not to trip over Yorkie if he jumps around again.”
“Okay. I’m not as unsteady as you think I am.”
“That’s good. But I’ll hold on to you anyway.”
Because the feel of her body in his arms felt better than anything had in a long time, even as the ache of his failures burned in his chest.
He eased her down on to the sofa. “You feel like sitting for a while? Or do you want to lie down in bed?”
“I feel okay. Just groggy. But I want to wake up, not go to sleep. Once I’m feeling more alert you can head on home. Or back to work, probably.”
“I don’t have any surgeries or patients to see this afternoon. And I canceled a meeting I had scheduled, so I’m all yours.”
Or he had been once.
But for today, at least, he had this chance to be there for Jillian in a way he hadn’t during their marriage, although at the same time he somehow needed to keep a cool head and an emotional distance. Except looking at her now, with her arm in its huge cast, her hair all messy and her expression a little vulnerable, he wanted to scoop her into his arms, sit on that sofa and hold her close. Kiss her face and stroke her hair until she relaxed against him.
Bad idea for both of them.
He cleared his throat. “You hungry? How about a little soup and toast, or something like that?”
“Maybe in a little bit. I’ll just sit here for now. Why don’t you take the dogs out? Their leashes are in that basket by the front door.”
“Okay. Come on, you goofs.”
Wagging tails and little leaps from Yorkie had him smiling despite the weight he felt in his chest at being here. At the memories of him and Jill during happy times together. He’d never expected to be a dog person, but he had loved spending time with them. Loved seeing how much Jill enjoyed them. In some ways that seemed like a long time ago, and in other ways it seemed like yesterday that they’d lived together and loved one another until it had all imploded.
Heaving a sigh, he took the dogs outside. They were better behaved on their walk than he remembered them being as puppies, and he had time to ponder how it was going to work out, him helping Jill. He was pretty confident that she’d be okay on her own most of the time, so long as he saw her every morning and evening and took care of the dogs until her sister showed up.
Problem was her apartment was a long way from work, while his was just a couple blocks away from the surgery center. Somehow he’d have to find extra hours in the day, or look for someone to walk the dogs.
The animals were panting by the time they got back to Jill’s door, and he pulled her key from his pocket and tried to open the door quietly, in case she was sleeping—then wondered why he’d bothered when both dogs leaped into the room, making all kinds of racket on the wood floor.
Her eyes were closed when he looked across the room at her, but her lids lifted and she sent him a surprisingly sweet smile. Probably because the drugs hadn’t worn off enough for her to remember that she didn’t like him much anymore.
“Seems like you just left. Were the dogs good?”
“Really good. You’ve done a nice job training them.”
“Don’t think I can take a lot of credit. They just needed to mature a little bit. But they still have their moments, believe me.”
“Moments like when they get upset at other dogs and get tangled up and make you fall and break your wrist?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
Her lips curved even more, into the kind of laughing smile he’d fallen for like a ton of bricks when they’d first met, and it felt good to smile back.
He stepped closer and crouched down in front of her. “How you feeling?”
“Arm feels like someone attached a log to me. Can’t feel it at all yet. Sometimes I forget and lean down, then it swings out and I have to grab it back. I know you always tell patients that’s what it’ll feel like, but I’ve gotta tell you... Much as it makes me want to laugh when I lose control of it, it feels super-weird.”
“It’ll be numb like that for at least another eight or nine hours. Then it’ll feel tingly, like you’ve laid on it funny and it’s gone to sleep. Then it’ll finally feel normal.”
“I think you mean my new normal—for now. Painful and immobile.”
“Yeah.” He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach out and tuck those wisps of hair behind her ears, as he would have before. “You feel like eating something now? I can get some soup from the deli? Or does something else sound good?”
“Something light, like soup and crackers, sounds perfect.”
“You got it.”
It would be good to have something to do besides talk with her and look at her. From the first moment he’d seen her in the occupational therapy room two years ago, he felt like he’d been smacked in the head by some unexplainable force. She’d stood up from the table, her athletic runner’s body in a slim-fitting dress, and her laughter at something her patient had said slipped into his chest. When her beautiful gray-green eyes had lifted to meet his he could have sworn his heart completely stopped.
Looking down at her now, he felt waves of tenderness mingle with memories of that day. He wished that he could take away the pain he knew she’d be in as soon as the brachial plexus block wore off. Felt the desire to pull her close, to take care of her, to make all that pain go away.
“I’ll be right back.”
He made himself turn away before he reached for her, and then left for the deli. He chose two kinds of the soup he knew she liked, and a bagful of crackers. When he came back and opened the door to her apartment he stopped abruptly when he saw she wasn’t on the sofa, and neither one of the dogs were in sight, either.
No way would she have decided to venture out while still half drugged up. Would she?
A panicked sensation rose in his chest and he strode to the galley kitchen, shoved the food onto the counter, then moved to her bedroom. “Jill? Jilly?”
One of the dogs whined before she answered. “In here. The bathroom. I... Go ahead and come in.”
He pushed open the door. Was stunned to see both dogs and Jillian sitting on the floor of the tiny room. Her sweatpants were twisted around her thighs and her good hand was held to her forehead.
He dropped to his knees. “What the hell happened? Did you hurt yourself?”
“Kind of. I’m so stupid. I had to go to the bathroom, and while I was sitting here I dropped the new roll of toilet paper. I leaned over to get it. Forgot all about my arm. It flung forward and dragged me off the toilet. I landed right on my cast and hit my head on the wall. Kind of funny, really.”
She sent him an adorable crooked smile and his heart squeezed even tighter. He grasped her wrist to lift her palm from her forehead. “Let me see.”
“Just a bump. Not a big deal.”
“Maybe not compared to your broken wrist, but it still hurts, I bet.” He wanted to lean down and kiss the offending red lump, and drew in a deep breath to quell the urge. “Let’s get some ice on it.”
He wrapped his arm around her back to help her up, and realized she was having trouble standing.
“You hurt your leg, too?”
“No. I just... I couldn’t get my stupid pants pulled up using only one hand while sitting on the floor.”
He lifted her to her feet. “Hang on to the sink while I finish pulling them up so you can walk.”
“This is ridiculously embarrassing,” she said, her face now stained pink and no longer smiling. “My ex-husband having to pull up my pants.”
“Just think of me as your doctor. Not a big deal.”
Logically, it shouldn’t be. But the truth...? The sight of the smooth skin of her thighs, of her round rear peeking out from beneath her panties and all the memories it conjured, made him want to tug those pants down, not up, and touch her and kiss her until neither of them could breathe.
He gritted his teeth and pulled up the sweatpants as fast as possible, before lifting her into his arms to move them toward the sofa. The scent of her wafted to his nose and he breathed her in. Who’d have thought the woman could smell so good after being in surgery and then Recovery half the day? But it wasn’t perfume, it was simply her, and he remembered it so well it seemed they’d been holding one another just yesterday.
Damn it.
“I can walk,” she protested.
“Yes, but this is easier and faster, and there’s no risk of additional injury.” He sat her on the sofa again. “I’ll get some ice for your head, then you can have some soup.”
“I don’t need ice. It’s just a little lump.”
“Trust the doctor. You need to ice it.”
“I see Dr. Bossy is alive and well.”
Her pretty lips tipped into a smile as she rolled her eyes and the tightness in his chest loosened. He had to grin, remembering all the times she’d given him that look.
“I consider the nickname Dr. Bossy to be a compliment. Where are your plastic bags?”
“In the second drawer, next to the refrigerator.”
Once a bag was filled with ice and wrapped in a towel he sat close beside her. Slipped strands of hair away from the bruise before he placed the bag on it. Their eyes met and he nearly forgot to place the bag on her injury, wanting so much to kiss her instead.
“That’s cold!”
Thank God for that distraction.
“Ice generally is cold. It’ll help with the swelling and make it feel better.”
“Yeah, well, right now my forehead hurts way more from the ice than the bruise.”
“Once your skin is numb it won’t hurt anymore.”
“Says the surgeon who lies to his patients about pain every day.”
“Lies to my patients? I never lie. I may downplay what they’re going to experience so they don’t freak out, but I never lie.”
“You forget I’ve heard you talk to patients when they’re in occupational therapy.” Her voice went into a bass tone. “Well, sir, your bones are healing nicely and the ligaments are stretching out well. In no time your fingers are going to be playing the piano again. You don’t play piano? Well, because of my magical surgical skills now you will.”
He had to laugh at her words and her cutely ridiculous expression. “I don’t believe I’ve ever said that to a patient.”
“No? I do sometimes. It’s an occupational therapy joke that most people enjoy.”
“And that’s one of the many reasons why your patients think you’re wonderful.”
He knew they did. Her numerous thank-you notes and high patient satisfaction scores proved that. He’d always thought she was pretty wonderful, too, even though she hadn’t believed it.
“Feeling any less painful?”
“Um...yes, actually.”
He watched her lids slide closed and held himself very still so he wouldn’t stroke her soft cheek or lean in to kiss her, which he suddenly wanted to do more than he wanted to breathe.
“Thank you. I’ll take over holding it now.” Her hand covered his on the ice before he slid his away.
“I’ll warm your soup. Which do you want—chicken noodle or tomato basil?”
“I love both—as you know.” She opened her eyes and turned to him, her expression serious. “I appreciate all this. I do. It’s... awkward me being here with you, and I know it’s awkward for you, too. I’m sorry about that. But I realize you were right. You bringing me home was lots better than trying to have my neighbor do it. She wouldn’t have been able to steady me the way you did. Or pick me up off the floor and bring me food, and walk the dogs and all. So thank you.”
“No thanks necessary. I...we might not be together anymore, but I’ll always care about you.”
And the truth of that made his throat close and sent him to the kitchen to busy himself and get her some food before he showed her exactly how much he still cared.
He helped her move to one of the two chairs at the tiny table placed at one end of the living room. “You comfortable enough to eat here? Or do you want to sit in your armchair and drink the soup from a mug?”
“This is okay. Smells wonderful.”
“I’ll take the dogs out again while you eat. Don’t try to get up until I get back, promise? We won’t be gone long.”
She nodded, and he escaped with an urge to kiss the top of her head before he went, as he often had when he’d left for work or meetings in the past.
The dogs were excited to be outside again, and he wondered how often Jill had to walk them. Did she take them on her runs sometimes? Probably only Hudson would be up for that. Yorkie might have a big attitude, but there was no way his short little legs could handle the miles Jill logged.
Probably he should keep the dogs out longer, but he felt an uncomfortable niggle, worrying about Jill and how she was doing all alone, and hurried back after only about twenty minutes.
Seeing her still sitting at the table when he nudged open the door had him smiling in relief.
“I see you’re being a good patient.”
“Did you doubt me?”
The smile she sent back held a hint of the mischievous Jill he’d adored.
“I’m limiting myself to one event per day of finding myself on the floor.”
“How about trying for zero events? The first one about gave me a heart attack.”
“I’m still sitting here, aren’t I? By the way, Kandie called and she said she can stop by after work tonight to check on me, see if I need anything. How would you feel about taking the dogs to your place until Briana gets here? I mean, I know you’re super-busy, but you can hire a dog walker to take them out while you’re at work. It...it wouldn’t be for long.”
How much he didn’t want to leave her or the dogs shocked him, and his feet seemed rooted to the floor even as he’d been thinking about how difficult it was to be here with her.
“Is Kandie spending the night?”
“No, of course not. She has a young son, and there’s no reason for her to do that.”
“Post-op orders are for you not to be alone tonight.”
“I feel okay. Barely woozy from the pain meds now. I’ll be fine.”
“Is the woman who just fell in the bathroom actually saying this?” He stared at her. “You’ll need to take meds when you go to bed, to help with the pain when the block wears off. And what if you fall again with nobody here?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“It did happen—and, since you’re a smart woman, you know that’s not something you can assume.”
He folded his arms across his chest, ignoring her mulish expression. Two could play at the stubborn game, and he had no intention of losing because the thought of her lying hurt and alone chilled his blood.
He realized there was only one solution that would solve the problem, difficult though it might be.
“You and the dogs are coming home with me, and staying there until your sister comes.”
CHAPTER THREE
JILL’S HEART BUMPED hard against her ribs, then seemed to stop for a moment before revving up again. Stay at Conor’s place? Be close to him for hours on end, reminded of all the good and bad parts of their marriage and why it had fallen apart?
“No.” A feeling of panic filled her chest. “I’m not doing that. Period.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. I live just a couple blocks from HOAC. Tomorrow morning you’ll get your cast off and have a splint made, then you’ll be able to easily go back to my apartment and get some rest.”