Page 45 of Between Our Hearts

Now shewasvulnerable. Vulnerability raced through her veins every day. Now she was the unhinged person who buried flower roots in the dark soil of various city parks because she couldn’t bury her lost children.

Now she was the person who was pushing away the only person who’dchosento love her because she couldn’t see a way to open her mouth and let the waves of grief out without disintegrating entirely.

Now she was the person who couldn’t even find refuge in the noisy hours of suction canisters running, machines beeping, and oxygen’s gentle hiss in the background.

Her head fell into her hands again.

“Did someone die?”

Everything in her schooled instantaneously—her shoulders strengthened, her back firmed, her chin lifted to a resolute but not defiant position. “Not today.”

“Ah, a good surgery day then.” Her colleague Vinay settled himself in the chair opposite her. “Are you done for the day? I’d like to run through the resident schedule for July one last time. I had to change their shifts again to account for a new lecture series the medical school wants them to attend every Thursday.”

She kept her face from flinching. The last thing she wanted to do was run schedules again; it felt like this was the thirtieth time they’d done this. But . . . it kept her from facing the unavoidable for another hour. “Sure. I can do that.”

???

Before she turned onto their street, Sadie paused for an extended time at the stop sign, rolling her neck like a boxer before a fight. Though Clark’s words had been accommodating and understanding when she’d called and said she was going to be late coming home, his tone had alluded to something else.

Apprehension bounced inside her ribcage as she pushed her clogs into their wooden cubby and hung her keys. She had checked the woodshop first but hadn’t found her husband there. Silently stalling, she’d run her fingers over his newest wall hanging designs—one that looked like a succulent plant in wooden form and another that resembled a magnified image of the veins of a leaf.

A full search of the house didn’t reveal Clark’s whereabouts, but the bolt to the backyard was unlocked. It’d rained today, though she hadn’t been aware of it until after she pulled her car out of the employee garage, and the slick deck wet her socks. Clark’s hunched form, sitting on the top deck stair, didn’t stir. The faint yellow light from the wall sconce by the door dimly lit his profile as he stared out into the dark yard.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be home before I went to sleep.” His words held a slight edge.

“I’m sorry.” Sadie settled herself on the same step, rainwater seeping through her scrub bottoms. “I’d rather have been here.”

A rough derisive breath burst from her husband’s body. “So you’re saying that you weren’t in the least bit relieved when Vinay sidetracked you after your last surgery?”

Her slight hesitation tore an expletive from his lips.

“This is never going to work if you’d rather be going through residency schedules than talking to your husband.” His last two words were bit through closed teeth.

“I wasn’t trying to avoid you tonight.” That last modifier made the statement true. She hadn’t been tryingtonight. There had been many other nights when it’d been intentional, but Vinay had found her, not the other way around.

“Sure,” he scoffed.

Her quads tensed, and before she recognized the action, she was standing, towering over her husband. Didn’t he know how incredibly hard this was for her? Why was he making it worse? Her hands gripped tightly at her sides as everything in her singed hot.

“Screw you, Clark.”

Six distinct emotions ran across her husband’s face before some manifestation of contempt remained. “Screw me? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? Screwing me and then leaving me? I guess I should be happy with that, right? That’s what you’re saying. I should take what I can get and be happy because God forbid I ask for something as simple as a conversation.”

“I didn’t say that. You’re putting words in my mouth.”

His jaw tightened before his gaze cast back over the grass. “At least someone is.”

“That’s not fair.”

His eyes flicked back with a darkness that slapped her in the chest. “I don’t think things have been fair for quite some time.”

A sweeping tension coursed through her veins, telling her to run or fight or both. It was reminiscent of the handful of times one of her brothers had trapped her in a wrestling hold that she’d known was inescapable.

He shook his head. “You don’t think I haven’t noticed the change in your schedule? You don’t think I haven’t noticed that for the last week you’ve been home on time every day, and yet on the one night I need something from you, you get sidetracked? Tonight, you were supposed to putusfirst, to show me that I might actually mean something to you.”

Her mouth dropped open with a wheeze as if he’d smacked her in the stomach. Of course, Clark meant everything to her. And theyweregoing to talk; she’d just been delayed.

Clark only stiffened with her silence, punching to his feet. “Don’t come upstairs. I’ll toss some scrubs over the banister for your call tomorrow.”

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