“Right,” Melanie muttered under her breath. “I just bet he was.”
Polly had been in charge of the shelter for a dozen years and had become accustomed to dealing with other people’s disappointments as well as her own. She apparently survived by always looking at the positive side.
“We were lucky that he came when he did,” she told Melanie.
But Melanie was angry. Angry at the doctor for breaking his promise to the shelter, but most of all, angry that he had in effect broken his promise to April because the little girl had taken him at his word when he’d said he was returning Friday—which was today.
“We’d be luckier if he honored his word and came back,” Melanie bit off.
“A volunteer is under no legal obligation to put in any specified amount of time here,” Polly pointed out. “Just because he came once doesn’t mean that he has to come again.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Melanie agreed. “But most people with a conscience would come back, especially if they said they would.” Turning on her heel, she started back down the hall.
“Melanie, where are you going?” Polly called after her nervously.
“Out,” Melanie answered, never breaking stride or turning around. “To cool off.”
And she knew exactly how to cool off.
She slowed down only long enough to tell April that she was going to go talk to Dr. Stewart.
“Why can’t you talk to him here?” April asked, following her to the front door.
There were times when April was just too inquisitive, she thought. “Because he isn’t here yet and if I wait for him to get here, I might forget what I want to say to him.”
“Maybe you should write it down,” April piped up helpfully. “That way you won’t forget.”
Melanie paused at the front door and kissed the top of her unofficial shadow’s head. This was the little girl she was never going to have. The kind of little girl she and Jeremy would have loved to have had as they started a family.
Tears smarted at the corners of her eyes and she blinked hard to keep them at bay. “This way is faster, trust me,” she told April.
With that, she was out the door and heading to her car.
In all fairness, she knew what Polly had said was absolutely true. Mitchell Stewart had no legal obligation to show up at the shelter ever again if he didn’t want to, even though he’d said he would. He’d signed no contract, was paid no stipend.
But how could a man just turn his back on people he knew were waiting for him? Didn’t he have a conscience? Didn’t the idea of a moral obligation mean anything to the man?
She gunned her car as she pulled out onto the street.
Maybe it didn’t mean anything to him, but in that case, he had to find out that there were consequences for being so damn coldhearted. If nothing else, calling him out and telling him what she thought of him would make her feel better.
As sometimes happened, the traffic gods were on the side of the angels. Melanie made every light that was between the shelter and Bedford Memorial Hospital. Which in turn meant that she got from point A to point B in record time.
After pulling onto the hospital compound, Melanie drove the serpentine route around the main building to the small parking area in the rear reserved strictly for emergency room patients and the people who’d brought them.
Once she threw the car into Park and pulled up the emergency brake, Melanie jumped out of her vehicle and hurried in through the double electronic doors. They hadn’t even opened up fully before she zipped through them and into the building.
The lone receptionist at the outpatient desk glanced up when he saw her hurrying toward him. Dressed in blue scrubs and looking as if he desperately needed a nap, the young man asked her, “What are you here for?” His fingers were poised over the keyboard as he waited for an answer to input.
“Dr. Stewart’s head,” she shot over her shoulder as she hurried past him and over to the door which allowed admittance into the actual ER salon.
Ordinarily locked, it had just opened to allow a heavyset patient to walk out, presumably on his way home. Melanie wiggled by the man and managed to get into the ER just before the doors shut again.
Safe for now, she buttonholed the first hospital employee she saw—an orderly—and said, “I’m looking for Dr. Stewart.” When she’d called the hospital on her way over, she’d been told he was still on the premises, working in the ER. “Can you tell me where he is?”
The orderly pointed to the rear of the salon. “I just saw him going to bed 6.”
“Thank you.”
Melanie lost no time finding just where bed 6 was located.
The curtain around the bed was pulled closed, no doubt for privacy. She was angry at Stewart, not whoever was in bed 6, so she forced herself to be patient and waited outside the curtain until the doctor was finished.
As she stood there, listening, she found that Dr. Stewart was no more talkative with the hospital patients than he was with the women and children he’d examined at the shelter.
It occurred to her that if he was like this all the time, Dr. Stewart had to be one very lonely, unhappy man. Obviously he was living proof that no matter how bad someone felt they had it, there was always someone who had it worse.
In her opinion, Dr. Mitch Stewart was that someone.
* * *
Mitch had been at this all morning. Rod Wilson, who had the ER shift right after his, had called in sick. Most likely, Wilson was hung over. The man tended to like to party. But that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t coming in and that left the hospital temporarily short one ER doctor. Which was why he’d agreed to take Wilson’s place after his own shift was over.
As far as he was concerned, this unexpected event was actually an omen. He wasn’t meant to go back to the shelter, this just gave him the excuse he needed.
He’d felt out of his element there anyway, more so than usual. Here at least he was familiar with his surroundings and had professional people at his disposal in case he needed help with one of the patients.
That wasn’t the case at the shelter and even though he knew his strengths and abilities, he didn’t care for having to wing it on his own. Too many things could go wrong.
Finished—he’d closed up a small laceration on the patient’s forearm caused by a wayward shard from a broken wine glass—Mitch told the patient a nurse would be by with written instructions for him regarding the proper care of his sutures.
With that, he pulled back the curtain and walked out.
Or tried to.
What he wound up doing was walking right into the annoying woman from the homeless shelter.
His eyes narrowed as recognition instantly set in. “You.”
He said the single word as if it were an accusation.
“Me,” she responded glibly.
Since he’d started walking, she fell into place beside him. She wasn’t about to let him get away, at least not until she gave him a piece of her mind—or a chance to redeem himself, whichever he chose first.
Mitch scowled at her as he pulled off the disposable gloves from his hands. “You realize that this is bordering on stalking, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You’re not at the shelter.”
“Mind like a steel trap,” he marveled sarcastically. He paused to drop his gloves into a covered garbage container. “Tell me, what gave you your first clue?”