“How long are you going to keep running away, Reese?”
Here we go. “Don’t start,” she warned.
“Damn it, Reese, can’t you see how crazy this is, how irrational you’re behaving? If I skipped town every time I lost a patient?—”
Anger slashed through her. “Don’t even go there.”
He sighed harshly. “Reese?—”
“No,” she snapped, her voice trembling with leashed anger. “I don’t want to have this conversation with you. You made your feelings perfectly clear before I left. There’s nothing more to discuss.”
“Merda! Would you just listen to me?”
“I’ve heard enough!” she shouted, lurching away from the counter. “I can’t believe you’d be callous enough to throw Deidra Thomas’s death in my face like that! The most awful day of my life was the day I had to look her husband in the eye and tell him he had to raise their three young children alone. I will never forget—” Her voice broke, and she blinked back hot tears.
“Reese—” Victor began.
“I’ve been trying my damnedest not to think about what that poor man and his family must be going through. God knows it hasn’t been easy. Every time I talk to him or Deidra’s sister, I want to get on my knees and beg their forgiveness for letting her die. Every time one of them texts me a new picture of little Faith, my heart breaks all over again.” Reese swallowed hard around the knot of emotion in her throat. “Maybe I’m not as strong as you are, Victor. Maybe you would have handled Deidra’s death so much better. But I’m not you, okay? Deidra was my very first patient. I delivered all of her children. I dined with her family, watched them celebrate the news of each pregnancy. They welcomed me into their lives and put their trust in me. So yes, losing her sent me into a bit of a tailspin. I needed to get away for a while and clear my head, and I’m not going to apologize for that.”
“I never asked you to,” Victor said defensively.
“Haven’t you?” Reese shook her head, tears blurring her vision. “I needed you, Victor. I needed your support, not judgment and criticism. I needed your empathy and compassion, not condescending lectures. Even if you thought I was being overemotional, I needed you to let me cry on your shoulder. I needed you to hold me and tell me everything would be okay. I needed you to show me you cared. But that was asking too much of you, wasn’t it? I mean, you can’t even be bothered to call Deidra by her name. You call her my ‘patient’ or ‘that woman’ because she didn’t mean anything to you, and so therefore, she shouldn’t mean anything to me, right?”
There was a long, heavy silence.
She waited tensely. Waited for him to acknowledge her feelings. Waited for him to apologize for his insensitivity and lack of emotional support. Waited for him to defend himself, at least, to offer some kind of explanation, no matter how flimsy.
She waited, and finally he sighed. “Let’s not argue anymore, cara mia. Please?”
Anger flooded her again. “That’s all you have to say?”
He made a frustrated sound. “What do you want me to say, Reese? I disappointed you, fell short of your expectations. And now you’re there and I’m here.”
She shook her head at the ceiling. “I have to go,” she said tightly.
“Reese—”
“I want to finish making dinner so I can catch a movie later.”
“Alone?”
“Yes,” she bit off. “Alone.”
“Will you call me tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Can I call you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He started to protest, but she cut him off. “I meant what I said about taking a break. I haven’t changed my mind.”
He cursed under his breath. “You’re going to meet someone else, I just know it.”
An image of Michael’s face flashed through her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block it out as she said evenly, “We need a breather from each other, Victor. That means we shouldn’t talk for a while. No exceptions.”
He sighed harshly in her ear. “If that’s what you really want?—”
“It is.”