Page 94 of Stuck with Doctor Grump

“She’s going to be. I did everything right. The team applauded when it was over.” I let out a breath that trembled at the edges. “And I thought… I thought that would make everything clear. Like it used to. Like it was supposed to.”

The silence stretched between us, thick with everything we hadn’t said in days.

I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the seat.

“But all I wanted,” I said quietly, “was to come home to you.”

There was a breath—sharp, caught. Then a sound I hadn’t realized I missed until just now: Ruby’s voice, breaking around the truth.

“Then do. Please, Damien. Because I can’t keep waiting for the version of you that only exists in an operating room.”

That hit me like a defibrillator straight to the chest.

“I know,” I said, barely audible. “You’ve been loving me through a shadow. A version of me that left his real self behind in a sterile room with no windows.”

“And I’ve been trying,” she whispered. “I really have. To understand. To give you space. But Damien, I don’t want to be the thing you come back to after you’ve given all of yourself away. I want to be the place where you begin. The person you choose—first.”

“I know,” I said again. “And you deserve that. You always have.”

I could hear her breathing on the other end. Slow. Uneven. Like she was holding back tears.

“Then come home.”

I swallowed hard, my throat thick. “I am. But not just for you, Ruby.”

Another pause.

“I’m coming home for me.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was full of everything we’d needed to hear.

“You mean that?” she asked.

“I do. I’ve been chasing the wrong thing for so long, I forgot what it felt like to be… whole. And I didn’t even know how broken I was until you showed me what real healing looks like.”

There was a soft laugh from her—relieved, trembling.

“Do you still have it?” she asked suddenly.

I blinked. “Have what?”

“The daisy. The first one I tucked behind your ear after that awful fundraiser. You called yourself ‘a daisy in disguise.’”

A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. I reached into my coat pocket, fingers brushing the waxy paper where I’d carefully pressed it weeks ago.

“I have it right here.”

She laughed again, quieter now. “Of course you do.”

“I’m turning in my badge tomorrow morning,” I said. “Not because I’m quitting medicine. But because I’m finally choosing how I want to practice it.”

“You’re choosing Cedar Springs?”

“I’m choosing peace. I’m choosing that old man I walked through the garden with last week. I’m choosing the little girl I saved and the community I want to keep whole. And I’m choosing the woman who built a life from petals and purpose.”

I could hear her sniffle. “You always did have a way with words when you weren’t using them to be a stubborn mule.”

I chuckled, finally feeling the air move cleanly through my lungs.

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