Page 75 of Stone Vows

“Where the hell are they?” I ask, as if he’ll know the answer.

He shrugs at me and continues his work.

Abby comes up behind me. “Dr. Stone?”

“Where is she?” I ask.

“Elizabeth was discharged this morning,” she says.

I shake my head in confusion. “She wasn’t supposed to be discharged until late this afternoon.”

“Elizabeth asked to leave early and Dr. Anders signed off on it,” she says. “She said she would follow up with her own pediatrician in a day or two for the tests we didn’t get to complete due to her early release.”

“But . . . where did she go? Was anyone with her?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “And I suppose she went home. Where else would she go?”

“How could you let her leave without anyone to help her?”

Abby scolds me with her stare. “That’s not our job, Dr. Stone. She was healing nicely. The baby was doing well. There was no medical reason to keep her. She’d already long passed the forty-eight-hour mark. Don’t worry, I’m sure they will be fine.”

They won’t be fine,I want to yell at her. I want to wring her neck for allowing Elizabeth to leave.

Abby doesn’t understand what she may have done, allowing her to go back to some crack house or shelter . . . or tohim.

But I know it’s not Abby’s fault. It may not be anyone’s fault but mine.

I lied to Elizabeth. I paid for her hospital stay, and then I lied about it. How could we build a relationship when it began on a bed of lies? Why didn’t I tell her sooner? It’s not like she could have left, she was on strict bed rest. She wouldn’t have run back then and risk hurting her baby. Not like she ran now.

I’m such an idiot.

I never should have left last night. I should have come back after my shift and made her listen. Hell, I should have slept here. Iwouldhave slept here had I known what was at stake.

I put everything down on the plastic mattress of her empty bed. I run my hands through my hair. Then I pull out my phone and dial Elizabeth’s number.

I know she won’t answer. But at least I can leave her a voicemail. Try to explain things. Appeal to her motherly instincts. I’ll leave a hundred messages if that’s what it takes to get through to her.

When it rings, however, I hear a noise in the room. I follow the sound over to the trashcan.

Shit.

I reach down and pull out Elizabeth’s phone.

Then I rifle through the rest of the contents of the trash. The birth certificate application. The Nighthawks tickets. And Jell-O.

Lots and lots of Jell-O.

Chapter Thirty-four

Six months later . . .

“Tonight’s the night,” Cameron says as we walk through the halls of the hospital. “I’m going to tell Gina I love her.”

“Seriously?” I stop walking and think about what he’s saying. They’ve been joined at the hip for five months now, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. “I think that’s great, Cam.”

“Do you?” he asks.

I pat him on the back. “Of course, I do. Gina and I haven’t been together for a long time. I told you back then it was all good. Plus, I owe you big time. When you guys started hooking up, it took a lot of the heat off me. I’m just glad we can all still be friends.”

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