They reached Chelsea’s room, and he shoved aside a new ache in his gut. The one that had struck when he’d realized the young woman’s age was close enough to a certain deadly encounter to make him wonder whose she was.
Three months earlier and this story could have had a different ending.
No. It couldn’t.
He’d done what he’d had to do back then—left—and he had no regrets.
Jessi glanced back and caught his look, her brows arching in question.
Okay, maybe he had one regret.
But it was too late to do anything about that now.
His fingers tightened on Chelsea’s chart, and he started to push through the door, but Jessi stopped him. “I’ve been hearing things about the VA hospitals, Clint. You need to know up front that if I feel like she’s not getting the treatment she needs here, I’ll put her somewhere else.”
His insides turned into a hard ball. He cared about his patients. All of them. No matter what the bean counters in Washington recommended or the hospital administration at whatever unit he was currently assigned to said or did, he treated his patients as if they were his comrades in arms … which they were. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard. As long as I’m here, she’ll get the best I have.”
“But what if the hospital rules tell you to—?”
One side of his mouth went up. “Jessi May, always worried about something. Since when have you known me to play by anyone’s rules?” A question they both knew the answer to, since he’d challenged almost every regulation their high school had been able to come up with.
“Would you please stop calling me that?”
His smile widened. “Is it a rule?”
“No.” Her whole demeanor softened, and she actually laughed. “Because it’ll just make you worse.”
“I rest my case.”
A nurse walked down the hallway, throwing them a curious look and reminding him of the serious issues Jessi was facing.
He took a step back. “Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
Clint entered the room first, holding the door open for her.
Sitting in a chair by the window, his patient stared out across the lawn, not even acknowledging their presence. Hell, how could he not have seen the resemblance between the two women?
Chelsea had the same blond hair, the same pale, haunted features that her mother had once had. Only there was no way the young woman before him today could have survived basic training while maintaining that raw edge of vulnerability, so it was new. A result of her PTSD.
It affected people differently. Some became wounded and tortured, lashing out at themselves.
And some became impulsive and angry. Hitting out at others.
Clint wasn’t sure which was worse, although as a teenager with a newly broken pinkie finger, he could have told you right off which he preferred.
Only he’d never told anyone about his finger. Or about his father.
And when he’d found Jessi crying outside the school building because of something her own father had done … he’d thought the worst. Only to have relief sweep through his system when it had been something completely different.
He drew a careful breath. “Hi, Chelsea. Do you remember me from earlier today?”
No reaction. The waif by the window continued to stare. He glanced at her chart again to remind himself of the medications Dr. Cordoba had prescribed.
He made a note to lower the dosage to see if it had any effect. He wanted to help Chelsea cope, not turn her into a zombie.
Jessi went over to her daughter and dropped to her knees, taking the young woman’s hands in hers and looking up at her. “Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
“I want to go home.” The words were soft. So soft, Clint almost missed them.
Jessi hadn’t, though. Her chin wobbled for a second, before she drew her spine up. “I want that, too, baby. More than anything. But you’re not ready. You know you’re not.”
“I know.” The response was just as soft. She turned to look back out the window, as if tuning out anything that didn’t get her what she wanted.
Clint knew Chelsea’s reaction was a defense mechanism, but having her own daughter shut her out had to shred Jessi’s insides even though she was absolutely doing what was right for Chelsea.
He pulled up a chair and sat in front of the pair, forcing himself to keep his attention focused on his patient and not her mother. “I’m going to adjust some of your medications, Chelsea. Would that be okay?”
The girl sighed, but she did turn her head slightly to acknowledge she’d heard him. “Whatever you think is best.”
He spent fifteen minutes watching the pair interact, making notes and comparing his observations with what he’d read of her past behavior.
She’d slashed her wrists. Jessi had found her bleeding in the bathtub and had fashioned tourniquets out of two scarves—quick thinking that had saved her daughter’s life.
A couple of pints of blood later, they’d avoided permanent brain and organ damage.
Unfortunately, the infusion hadn’t erased the emotional damage that had come about as a result of what her chart said was months spent in captivity.
Trauma—any trauma—had to be processed mentally and emotionally. Some people seemed to escape unscathed, letting the memory of the event roll off their backs. Others were crushed beneath it.
And others pretended they didn’t give a damn.
Even when they did.
Like him?
Jessi had coaxed Chelsea over to the bed and sat next to her, arm draped around her shoulders, still talking to her softly. He got up and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll give you a few minutes. Stop in and talk to me before you leave the hospital.” He didn’t add the word okay or allow his voice to change tone at the end of the phrase, because he didn’t want to make it seem like a request. Not because he wasn’t sure she’d honor it, but part of him wondered if she’d head back to the front desk and demand to have another doctor assigned to the case.
Clint had to somehow break the tough news to Jessi that she was stuck with him for the next couple of months or for however long Chelsea was here. There just wasn’t anyone else.
So it was up to him to convince her that he could help her daughter, if she gave him a chance. Not hard, since he believed it himself. Clint had dealt with all types of soldiers in crisis, both male and female, something Dr. Cordoba had not. It was part of the reason Clint had agreed to this assignment. His rotations didn’t keep him anywhere for more than six months at a time. Surely that would be long enough to treat Chelsea or at least come up with a plan for how to proceed.
If he’d known one of Dr. Cordoba’s toughest cases was Jessi Spencer’s daughter, though, he wouldn’t have been quite so quick to agree to return to his hometown.
Being here was dangerous on a number of levels.
Jessi’s not the girl you once knew.
He sensed it. She was stronger than she’d been in school. She’d had to be after being widowed at a young age and raising a daughter on her own. And according to the listing on Chelsea’s chart, Jessi was now an ER physician. You didn’t deal with trauma cases all day long without having a cast-iron stomach and a tough emotional outlook.
He’d seen a touch of that toughness in