Stella MacLean - The Doctor Returns

A child who had lived only fifty-two hours.

Unable to bear it any longer, she made another quick note and closed the chart. “I’m going to transfer your daughter now.”

“Morgan, you’re going to be okay. I’ll see you in a few minutes,” he said.

His voice drew her like a moth to a flame to the man who had once held her heart. Not fair. Totally not fair.

She felt the urge to touch him, to be in contact with him, his skin on hers. Nothing had changed. Years after he’d dumped her, he’d returned to her life and the fantasies were beginning all over again.

What is the matter with me?

Is this what having no man in your life did to you?

Not if I can help it. Time to take back control.

And she knew just where to start. Her grip on the stretcher was strong and uncompromising as she unlocked the brakes, tucked Morgan’s chart under the corner of the mattress and moved toward the door.

Hitting the door pad, she waited impatiently for it to swing open, and then strode out into the corridor, pushing the stretcher ahead of her.

Look on the bright side. At least the dreaded first contact with him is over.

She turned the corner and headed toward the elevator. And wasn’t it just as well that he hadn’t recognized her? No need for awkward “how have you been?” chatter. No going back over the past twelve years and dredging up old memories that still held the power to inflict pain. But most of all, no empty excuses required.

She was free to go ahead with her plans, confident in the belief that the worst was over. She could look forward to her job in Portsmouth and her new life.

CHAPTER TWO

AS SHERRI APPROACHED the outpatient clinic nurses’ station the next morning, her mind was made up: from now on she’d refuse any shifts outside the clinics she normally worked. Now all she had to do was finish her shift in the outpatient clinic and then she was off for a couple of days.

She was going to Portsmouth to look for a place to live and to meet with the members of the nursing department she’d be working with in her new job. During the interview a few weeks ago, she’d discovered that she and the nursing coordinator shared the same approach to risk management, a key function in modern hospitals. She might even go to Bangor tomorrow and buy something special for the trip. Just thinking about her new job and the potential it held for a career in nursing management excited her.

Seeing Neill with his daughter, being aware of how focused he was on his life now, had made one thing clear. Neill Brandon had moved on; he had made decisions in life to meet his own personal goals. And so should she. When she’d told her friend Gayle Sawyer about meeting Neill, Gayle had been shocked to learn he hadn’t recognized her.

Gayle’s take on the situation was that the sooner she resolved her feelings around Neill, the easier it would be for her to move on with her life. In Gayle’s mind, there were unfinished issues between them. What Gayle didn’t seem to get was that Sherri had moved on. She wasn’t interested in resuscitating an old relationship. Neill’s presence in her life would be fleeting and of no real importance in the end.

After work yesterday, Sherri had dropped into her mother’s house before going home to her condo. Colleen had been preoccupied with the fact that her son, Ed, was about to be paroled and what that would mean in their lives. With her mother’s attention on Sherri’s older brother, it wasn’t difficult to talk about seeing Neill again. Her mother had been curious about the incident, but Sherri had convinced her that everything had gone well, that they had been perfectly civil with each other. Nothing more.

Her mother didn’t know that Neill was her baby’s father. Even back then, her mother’s attention had been on Ed, who’d just been jailed for drug smuggling. Sherri didn’t want to give her mother any more reason to worry.

Sherri’s husband, Sam, had died five years ago. She’d let her mother assume that her baby had been Sam’s. He’d been in love with Sherri for years, and when she’d met him again in Bangor, they’d started dating. When she could no longer hide the fact that she was pregnant, she’d confided in him what had happened. He proposed to her that night. Feeling she had no other option, she’d accepted.

Sam wanted to be a father very much, and was delighted to have her son carry the Crawford name. She was so grateful for everything he had done for her, and it seemed the right thing to do under the circumstances. He’d supported her by telling everyone that the baby was his. He’d even gone along with fabricating a story about the date she’d conceived. But all of the small lies and minor fabrications had been unnecessary in the end when her son died only hours after he’d been born.

Sam’s parents and his brother Charlie still lived in Eden Harbor, and she saw them at church on the Sundays she wasn’t working. Charlie and his wife, Freda, included her in their children’s birthday celebrations and the Crawford family always invited her for Christmas. She would forever be thankful that Sam was the kind of man he was, despite his problems with alcohol, and that his family treated her like a daughter.

Neill’s arrival in Eden Harbor had complicated her life, but it was nothing she couldn’t manage. She’d decided six months ago to leave Eden Harbor, long before she’d heard that Neill was moving back. She was not leaving because she didn’t like living there; she loved it. But she needed to expand her horizons, find a more challenging nursing job and meet new people. The social scene in Eden Harbor consisted of married couples and twenty-year-olds. Obviously, she didn’t fit into either category.

As Sherri approached the desk, Gayle Sawyer glanced up, her mass of black curls bouncing around her high cheekbones. Any other day Sherri would’ve arrived early for her shift so that she and Gayle could start the day off with a quiet chat. Although Gayle had only arrived in Eden Harbor a year ago, they’d developed an instant rapport that had led to a very close friendship. There were few secrets in Sherri’s life that she hadn’t shared with Gayle, including her relationship with Neill.

“Sorry I’m late, but I got caught in the traffic on Higgins Road. There are days when I wonder why I bought a condo so far from the center of town, but I love waking up to the sound of the ocean.” Her condo building was designed as a series of semidetached units that wrapped around the edge of a hill with a view of the ocean.

“They’re finally doing those road repairs they’ve been talking about. None too soon,” Gayle said, her smile anxious. “I’ve got some bad news.”

Resting her arms on the raised counter in front of Gayle, she waited, fearful that Gayle’s teenage son, Adam, was in trouble again. “What happened?”

“Dr. Brandon is working the clinic this morning.”

“Neill’s here today? His daughter’s a patient on Pediatrics. What’s he doing here?” Sherri had a sudden urge to check her makeup; instead she controlled her rush of anxiety by tidying the already-neat pile of charts on the desk.

“He’s covering for Dr. Keith, who’s been called away on a family emergency.”

“They all seem to be having family emergencies,” Sherri said. “What’s next, I wonder?”

“You’ll have an overwhelming urge to leave work early?” Gayle’s eyebrows twitched.

“Not a chance. Neill’s return to Eden Harbor is just fine as far as I’m concerned.”

“Sherri, it’s me, remember? What if someone starts gossiping about you and Neill? People have long memories, especially when it comes to a new doctor in town. Rumors can ruin lives.”

Sherri suddenly remembered that her medical chart was in his uncle’s office—now Neill’s office—with her past health history, including what had happened in Bangor. Neill knew about the pregnancy, and if he read her chart, he’d learn how their son had had no chance of survival. The struggle she’d had to keep her sanity, and how that struggle had ended. What she didn’t want him to discover was what had happened after that. She was entitled to her privacy when it came to the man who had no right to know what she’d been through. “He won’t find out. I’m out of here in a couple of weeks, and I’m taking my chart with me.”