I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 07

I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 07

Grant went very still.

“What?”

“You heard me.” I kept my voice level, pleasant, surgical. “Sign the divorce agreement, and I’ll scrub in for the Vance procedure. That’s a good deal/ isn’t it? You get your miracle. I get my name back

He stared at me with an expression I’d never seen on him-the look of a man watching the ground reorganize itself under

his feet.

Ever since my resignation email, he’d been losing his grip on me, and he knew it. He just refused to belleve it. For five

years he’d run the same protocol: apply pressure, stay cold, wait for Sienna to fold. It had a one hundred percent success

rate.

“No.” He found his footing, or thought he did. “These are two separate matters. You can’t hold a patient’s life hostage to-”

“I’m not holding anyone hostage.” I cut off his escape route. “I’ll do the surgery either way-after a court orders you to

espond to my petition, which will take months your patient doesn’t have. Or you sign tonight, and I’m in the OR tomorrow. ‘m offering you a discount, Grant. Take it.”

Beside me, Nolan made a small, delighted sound, like a man at the theater.

Grant’s mouth opened and closed. The most articulate surgeory on the Eastern Seaboard could not assemble one sentence. Finally he-managed, “Don’t bring personal emotions into a case.”

“But you know I haven’t.”

And he did. He knew exactly what I valued: the work. The dying stranger upstairs had done nothing wrong; I’d treat him

ike any patient. But the marriage-the marriage was a tumor, and I was done pretending it was benign.

“Grant,” I said quietly, “the one who’s always brought personal emotions into work is you. Don’t deny it. You banned me

‘rom an entire hospital because your feelings were hurt. You blacklisted me across state lines because I stopped flinching. You built a career on control and called it standards. And our marriage was never anything but a pressure valve-a place to

out your temper where it couldn’t cost you anything. Ending it is good for both of us.”

The lobby had gone silent. Somewhere behind the glass, half his staff was watching their untouchable boss get opened

up without anesthesia.

Nolan waited until I finished, then applauded. Loudly. “Caldwell, your turn to choose. But don’t stress-if you’d rather stay married, I’ll personally bankroll her divorce litigation. I’ve been looking for a hobby.”

And then Bree arrived, mascara already running, right on cue. She grabbed Grant’s sleeve and sobbed that she didn’t know what else to do, that her daddy was dying, that please, please, Grant. It was so pitiful it nearly broke my heart.

Nearly

1turned and walked out with Nolan into the evening air.

“You realize,” Nolan said as we crossed the street, “that I’ve waited twelve years to watch that.”

“Glad my marriage could entertain you.”

“Your marriage was a public health hazard. This was the cure.”

Early the next morning, a courier woke me at the hotel. Two envelopes.

The first: the divorce agreement, signed. Grant’s signature, usually a confident slash, looked like it had been written by a

man with a tremor.

The second: a formal surgical engagement letter from Caldwell Memorial, naming me lead surgeon on the Vance procedure, with full privileges restored for the duration.

I wasn’t surprised. Grant cared about his reputation the way other men care about oxygen. Having taken the case publicly, he couldn’t afford to lose it. To win it, he needed me. To get me, he had to free me.

Simple math. He’d just never expected to be the variable.

Nolan caught an early train back-Pierce Memorial didn’t run itself. I stayed to prep, working entirely from the hotel. I had 10 desire to sit in that building one minute longer than the OR required.

During pre-op week, Grant came to see me once.

“Everything at home is still where you left it,” he said stiffly. “If you won’t come to the hospital, you could come… home.”

I shook my head. “That’s not my home. And those things-throw them away. I don’t need them anymore.”

He looked at me, mouth opening, closing, opening. A man fluent in six surgical subspecialties, unable to conjugate the

verb to stay.

He wanted to keep me. He just had no idea how. He’d never needed to learn.

What neither of us knew was that in forty-eight hours, in his own hospital, a stranger in scrubs was going to tell him

exactly what he’d lost.