Page 45 of My Heart Before You

His vision pulled down to her tear-washed eyes. They locked with his for a few agonizing seconds before they flitted to his hair, to his lips, and down to his wet scrub top where her head had been only seconds ago.

He was stunned by his own inability to speak. His body resonated at every point of contact it shared with her as the muscular contractions in his chest sped. If there was movement or noise or light in the area surrounding them, he could tell you nothing about it. His entire being was solely focused on how it seemed that she was holding her breath. Tension ran through his body as he waited for what she would say or do.

Slowly, she pulled herself upright, and he felt his arms reluctantly release her. The pinprick sensation at her separation was only heightened with his anticipation of her rejection. Even with this expected blow, his need to help her burned in his chest like air held too long when diving underwater.

“What can I do?” His voice was huskier and more breathy than he’d expected.

She sat with her red eyes trained on the table before answering. “Nothing.”

The simple word knocked him down harder than he’d anticipated. He took a deep breath and released it. A glutton for punishment, he didn’t stop. “Can I take you home?”

She exhaled, shocking him with another simple word. “Sure.”

They arranged to meet in the lobby in a few minutes to allow each of them to grab their belongings. Only when they both stepped out of the side exit to the hospital into the crisp twenty degree night did he see it was snowing lightly. Each falling snowflake took its turn catching an amber glow as it passed under the arching street lights.

“My car’s just a block away in the garage of my building.”

“I’d rather walk home tonight.” She seemed impervious to the freezing weather as she slowly shuffled down the sidewalk. “If you’d like to head home, I understand.”

He took two large steps to catch up with her before setting his pace to match her cadence. “I could use the fresh air.”

There was no way in hell he was going to let her walk home alone in the freezing weather as upset as she was.

Misty white clouds of breath puffed ahead of them as they tracked over the mostly cleared sidewalk. Snow had been on the ground for a solid month now, and the piles of cleared snow were getting larger and dirtier. He was grateful that she’d changed, like him, out of her scrubs into jeans and snow boots under her coat.

They walked for several minutes in silence as intermittent gusts of wind stung his face, coercing him to pull his jacket’s hood over his head. He thought he heard her mumble something over the swiping sound of his snowboard jacket.

“Did you say something?”

“We’re even,” she said.

“What?” He furrowed his brows.

“You cried all over my scarf, and I’ve cried all over your scrubs. We’re even.”

Watching her forward fixed face slide into a genuine smile warmed him more than a roaring fire would have in that moment.

She took a deep breath and her smile fell. “I was a mess tonight. It hit me harder than I thought. Thank you for being there.”

He wanted to say that it was his extreme pleasure and could he please hold her for the rest of the night, but he managed, “You’re welcome. Mary will be missed by us all.”

“She really will.”

They trudged through the newly collecting snow for a few moments in agreeable silence. Their boots crunched and squeaked with each step, compressing the snow beneath.

“Where are you from? Originally?” Her question materialized from thin air, and he realized that whenever they’d talked at work, it had always been about the present. His lack of knowledge about her life before working at Boston General suddenly felt expansive.

“I was born and raised in North Carolina.”

He yearned to ask her a million questions to find out more about her but decided against it. Things could go back to the way they’d been at any moment. Right now, he’d just enjoy what he could get.

“I thought you were from the South. Sometimes the way you describe things your accent comes out a little. It’s very subtle though. My mom is from northern Georgia. Where I grew up in Virginia, some people had a slight accent, but not everybody.”

He chanced another gaze at her face tucked under her hat and hood. As they passed through a shaft of light pouring from a nearby building, he could see that her nose and cheeks were adorably pink from walking in the frigid temperature.

“I try to keep the colloquialisms out of my professional speech.” He tightened his hood around this face. “But I grew up in a smaller beach town, so most of us speak with it. Though it’s a bit different sounding than a Georgian accent.”

“I don’t really have an accent. My dad didn’t, being from the Northeast, and between the two of them, I just adopted more neutral speech.”

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