Page 67 of Perfect Imperfections

Oh damn, now there was no holding back the tears. Having the adoration of a little girl was one thing, but to have a wonderful, sexy, smart, successful man she adored think she was some kind of wonder being? It was almost too much.

“Ellie, are you okay?”

Oh shoot, Charlotte had seen the tears. Sniffing, she wiped her cheeks clean with the back of her hand. “I’m fine, sweetie.”

“Did you bite your tongue? Sometimes I eat too fast, and I bite my tongue. It really hurts.”

“No, I just had something in my eye.”

“You should have Daddy look at it. He’s a doctor. It’s his job.”

She couldn’t stop the smile at the child’s endearing words. “I’m fine now but thank you.”

They finished up dinner and took dessert into the living room, where they would put the puzzle together. The two-hundred-jigsaw pieces that created a beautiful picture titled Elephant Water Fun had been a birthday gift from Gavin. She assumed it would be difficult for a child of Charlotte’s age, but as she discovered last week, Charlotte had a very advanced skill with puzzles.

The three gathered on the floor around the solid oak coffee table, spreading out the pieces and searching for the corners and sides. Sullivan had placed the box top at the end of the table so they could all see what the picture was supposed to look like.

“I like this,” Charlotte stated as she sifted through the mass of jagged pieces, carefully inspecting each one she picked up.

“Me too.”

“They’re cool because it looks all wonky, but then the pieces all go together and make a picture. I like it better than coloring. Coloring you already see the picture. That’s boring.”

She’d never thought of it that way, but the kid had a point. There was a bit of a thrill when putting together a puzzle. Even if you knew what the final picture would look like, the moment you dumped the pieces out of the box, it just looked like chaos. But in that chaos and all those seemingly broken pieces was a perfect picture, just waiting to be put together.

A hush fell over the room as they all concentrated on the project in front of them. She was so focused that when Sullivan’s phone pinged with a text message, she jumped in surprise. Glancing up, she saw him pull out his cell and frown.

“Excuse me, I need to make a call.”

Charlotte barely paid attention to her father. One hand gently picking up puzzle pieces and placing them in their appropriate piles, the other—not so gently—shoving huge chunks of brownie in her mouth.

After a few minutes without Sullivan’s return, Ellie got a sinking feeling in the pit of her gut. Putting on her biggest smile, she tapped Charlotte on the shoulder.

“You want some milk to go with that brownie?”

“Yes, please.”

The child didn’t even look up from her sorting. She really took her puzzles seriously. Shaking her head with humor, Ellie rose from the ground and headed into the kitchen after Sullivan and the promised milk. She found him with his head down, hands braced against the sink.

“Hey.” Not knowing what was wrong, but sensing his distress, she came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist in a comforting hug. “You okay?”

His large hand came up to pat the hands she had secured around his waist.

“Yeah. That was the on-call doctor at my practice. One of my patients took a turn for the worse recently. She has asthma, but it’s been getting worse. I did a scan a few weeks back, and we found some tumors. I was hoping they were benign, but it turned out to be lung cancer.”

“Oh, that’s horrible.” Ellie’s great aunt died from breast cancer. It was a horrible disease. In any form it took.

Sullivan sighed. “She was going to start chemo, but I just received a call that she decided to forgo treatment.”

Why would anyone do that? Ellie didn’t have the easiest life, but she couldn’t imagine not fighting for it tooth and nail if she had even the slimmest possibility of survival.

“Her husband was a lifelong smoker. Lost the battle to lung cancer a few years back. I guess she decided not to go through what he did. She’s eighty-eight. I suppose she feels it’s her time.”

How horrible. To make such a tough choice couldn’t have been easy for the woman. And poor Sullivan. It was his job, no his purpose, to save people. Logically, he couldn’t save everyone. She knew he tried his hardest to make sure all the people who came to him for help received it. It must kill him to think he failed this patient. But he hadn’t failed her. The woman made a choice. Was it the right one? Who knew? It was her life and only she could say, but Ellie could feel how much this decision pained Sullivan.

“You did all you could to help her,” she whispered against his back, placing a soft kiss between his shoulder blades, trying as hard as she could to infuse comfort into the man she held. The man she knew was hurting.

“I know. And it’s Mrs.—it’s her choice to decline treatment. Unfortunately, it would only give her a few more years at most and there’d be pain and suffering with the treatment so I can understand her decision, but…”

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