I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 08

I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 08

Pre-op day. Caldwell Memorial, fourth floor. The walls remembered me even if the staff pretended not to.

Grant was, suddenly, attentive. He carried my coffee. He cleared my schedule conflicts personally. He hovered outside e imaging suite like a resident hoping for praise. It was the most care he’d shown me in five years of marriage-and genuinely couldn’t tell if it was for me, or for Bree, or for the version of himself he was trying to renovate before the emolition crew arrived. 1

You don’t have to be here every day,” I told him while reviewing the angiograms. “I’ll be wearing makeup tomorrow for the ess photos, by the way. I know you can’t stand it. Allergies.”

I don’t-” He stopped. Swallowed whatever it was. “Wear whatever you want.”

Five years too late, the man learned a sentence.

The elder Vance was worse than the file suggested. Toxic cardiomyopathy with extensive fibrosis-the procedure would e ten hours minimum, and the margin between success and a funeral was about the width of a suture. I ordered a final und of labs and went to check the patient myself.

That’s when it happened.

The charge nurse on four was a small, gray-haired woman named Dolores. She took one look at me, and her clipboard

agged.

‘Oh,” she said softly. “It’s you.”

‘I’m sorry?”

‘Bed seven.” Her eyes went glassy. “The night of the storm. The blackout. You were my patient-you came in alone, emorrhaging, and you held my hand and apologized for the mess.” Her voice cracked. ‘I’ve thought about you for weeks, oney. I’m so sorry about your baby.”

The corridor went absolutely silent.

Because Grant was standing six feet behind me, holding two cups of coffee.

I heard one of them hit the floor.

I didn’t turn around. I thanked Dolores quietly, told her I was fine, and walked toward the consult room with my spine straight and my pulse hammering in my ears.

He caught up to me in three strides and pulled me into an empty office, and his face-I had never seen his face like that. Gray. Dismantled. A building mid-collapse.

“What is she talking about.” It wasn’t a question. It was a plea pretending to be one.

“Patient confidentiality,” I said. “Ask the hospital you own.”

“Sienna.” His voice broke on my name. He had never once broken on my name. The night of the storm. The night of the

gala. You called me twice. You said you were at the hospital-I thought-” He stopped, because there was no version of I thought that survived daylight. He thought was working. He hadn’t asked. He had declined the calls and driven her home and posted about canceling everything for someone worth it.

“You were pregnant.” The words came out of him like shrapnel being removed. “How far-”

“Eleven weeks.”

“Why didn’t you tell me-”

“I tried ninety-nine times.” I finally looked at him. “Every ultrasound I begged you to come to. Every dinner you skipped. I

was going to tell you at the anniversary dinner. The one you missed because Bree had something urgent.” I smiled, and I watched the smile land on him like a verdict. “Don’t worry, Grant. It won’t affect the surgery. I don’t bring personal emotions

nto work.”

He sat down. Grant Caldwell, who had never in his life sat down because his legs stopped working, sat down on a plastic chair in an empty office in his own hospital and put his head in his hands.

“I declined the calls,” he said, to no one. “She was bleeding in my own ER and I declined the calls.”

For five years, I’d imagined what it would take to make this man feel something. I’d thought it would feel like winning.

It just felt like an autopsy. Accurate. Cold. Too late to save the patient.

I picked up my files.

“Get some sleep,” I said from the doorway. “I need the hospital director functional tomorrow. Your girlfriend’s father is joing to need every one of us at our best.”

“Sienna-”

“Oh, and Grant?” I paused without turning around. “The anniversary gift you threw on the sofa for me. I left it at the house. You should open it.”

I walked out and let the door close on whatever sound he made next.

The gift box I’d carried in my bag that night-the one I never gave him-was still sitting on his sofa where I’d tossed it.

Inside was a sonogram.