“I’m available if you need me.” And just like that, it was out there. Not exactly the way he’d envisioned this conversation going. He’d been all set to chastise her for flouting his request that she moderate her hours, and she’d ended up subtly chastising him for putting himself above their patients.
And she was right. His embarrassment over his hand did drive some of his decisions. Including being the motivating factor behind calling her into his office a few days ago. It had nothing to do with her patients—or even her well-being—and everything to do with him.
That had to change. Starting now.
“Thank you, Dr.—I mean Garret. You won’t regret it.”
He already did, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead, he nodded at the tablet in her hand. “Nothing neurological this morning?”
“Not so far. Just a gator hunter who shot a hole in his boat. But not before the bullet went through his buddy’s foot.”
His brows shot up. “Well, I can’t remember seeing anything like that at my last hospital.”
“You didn’t have hunters in New York?”
He thought of the gangland shootings and senseless loss of life. “We did. But they tended to hunt a different kind of prey, and when they shot someone, it wasn’t an accident.”
“We have that here too.” She sighed. “I wish people were different. Kinder.”
“There are still some good ones out there.” Addy was one of those good ones. He could see it in her work ethic, in the fact that she cared enough about her patients to risk a firm refusal when she’d asked him to consult on cases.
Sometimes, with hospital politics in play, it was easier to just go with the flow and try not to make waves. But that wasn’t always what was best for the patient. Here was someone who was not only willing to make waves, but more than willing to swim against the current. Well, surfers had to do that each time they took their boards into the water, didn’t they? She was just doing what came naturally.
“Yes, there are. Some of those good ones even come from New York City.” She gave a smile that lit up her dark green eyes. Eyes that met and held his for long seconds.
He swallowed. She didn’t know him very well. Because if she did, she’d know he wasn’t good. Not by a long shot.
But even as he thought it, a warmth seeped into his chest that had nothing to do with a defect in the hospital’s climate control system. It had been a while since someone had handed him a compliment that didn’t originate with his position at the hospital. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
Better just to ignore it. And the way that her smile messed with something inside him.
“So what happened to the man in the boat? The one who was shot?” he asked.
“What didn’t happen to him? He fell overboard right after the bullet hit him, dousing his foot with swamp water. Then once back in the boat, he had to bail more water, while his friend drove them back to shore, giving his foot another good dunking.” Her smile widened, and it kicked straight to areas best left alone. “So we soaked it with the good stuff, shot him full of antibiotics and updated his tetanus booster.”
“Poor guy. And it wasn’t even his fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. I don’t think he and his friend are on speaking terms at the moment.”
Eyes that had seemed tired and defeated during the meeting in his office now sparkled with life and laughter. He liked the transformation. He tried imagining her with a surfboard under one arm, water streaming down her back, her dark hair wet and tangled from riding in to shore. That was another transformation he’d like to see. And one he wasn’t likely to.
“I imagine they’re not.” He tried to turn the conversation around before he ended up showing the cards in his hand. Cards he had no business holding at all. “Anyway, about the appraisal. I’ll let the person in charge of the auction know about the necklace.”
“Good. I was hoping to drop it off without making a big production out of it.”
That wouldn’t have happened. “We would have put a notice in the staff newsletter asking for information, just in case the donor had no idea as to its value.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m glad that’s not how things went, then.”
“I can understand that. Now. Its presence at the auction isn’t going to complicate things for you, is it?”
“I doubt my ex will even attend, so no. It was a wedding gift from him to me, so it’s mine to give away. Just like our marriage was his to give away.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
He waited for a nurse to go past, lowering his voice. “He cheated?”
A single nod. “How else do you throw a marriage away?”
He could think of lots of ways. One of which he’d done. Or maybe it had been inevitable, once they’d lost their daughter to a disease that was as relentless as it was deadly.
“Did you try counseling?” He often wondered if he could have saved his marriage if he’d suggested that earlier, before it had been too late. Instead, he’d become unreachable, staying away from home as much as possible.
“Counseling. Right. Would that have been before or after he slept with a mutual friend? Or moved in with her once I discovered what they were doing—had been doing for almost a year.”
“Ouch. Sorry.” The one thing he’d never done during the whole grieving process was turn to someone else. He’d been so destroyed, so emotionally empty that he’d had nothing to give to anyone else, not even his wife.
None of that had changed with time, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it to. The divorce had been his fault—he could acknowledge that now. Some people just didn’t deserve second chances.
“It’s okay. I knew on some level something was wrong. He was unexpectedly called into work a lot of nights—which now I see probably wasn’t the case. Even when he came home, he wasn’t really ‘there,’ if that makes sense. I was dealing with some issues of my own, but if I’d suspected he was that unhappy, I would have done something. Before it got to the point it did.”
Garret, on the other hand, had been able to see the slow slide of his marriage and had chosen to do nothing…except put in grueling hours at work. His wife had left him after the accident, while he’d still been in the hospital, saying she wasn’t going to watch him throw his life away. She was right. He had been. He’d gotten counseling afterward, had tried to convince her to go with him, but she’d refused. And that had been that. Papers had been waiting for him at the house where they’d raised their daughter. Within weeks he’d sold the place, resigned from his practice, and, after a year of surgery on his hand and physical therapy, the offer from Miami’s Grace Hospital had come up and he’d decided to make the move to Florida. But at least his divorce hadn’t been as a result of either of them cheating.
“I’m sorry he put you through that.”
“It’s over. I’m kind of relieved, actually. I’m my own person again.”
“A person who surfs in her spare time.”
She glanced at him. “You’ve really never tried it?”
“Nope. Not ever. Is it like snow skiing?”
“Um, no.” A quick laugh. Although the falling part might be similar. “Why don’t you come with me on Wednesday and see?”
“Excuse me?”
She blinked as if not quite sure what had just happened. “My bad. You’re probably not even interested in surfing. Forget I said anything.”
Addy