Page 49 of The Next Of Us
She scoffed.“As if I’d take advice from you,” she hissed, stepping forward.
My arm flew back, tucking Nadine neatly behind me.
Rhonda snarled, “At least you’re protective of your own even if your patients mean nothing more to you than a paycheck.”
Nadine’s hand hit my back as she pressed against me.
Holding her behind me, I prayed she’d stay there.Knowing she was witnessing this scene made me cringe.Watching her face as she took it in was more than I could take.
“That’s enough,” she snapped from behind me.“You’re obviously hurting but that doesn’t give you the right to spill your vitriol all over my husband.”
“Nadine, please…” I began, feeling her entire body vibrating against my back.
Rhonda’s eyes bugged out as her face suffused with red.“I nearly lost my boy!”
“Then you best look toward your own self before you start casting blame everywhere else.”
“So sorry!”She screamed.“You just go on enjoying yourself like you don’t owe anybody anything!”
“Enough,” I barked, finding my voice and facing Rhonda dead on.“I wish I could have helped your child, I do.But you still can.Find someone else and get him the help he needs.”
Spinning around, turning Nadine with me, I marched her down the street toward home, Rhonda Deevers’ words trailing us as we left.
Nadine’s breath came in rough pants, furiously shuddering in and out, and her hand shook in mine.
“It’s okay, Dini.”
“It’s not,” she snapped.
“She’s in pain,” I explained, my brain and mouth running on autopilot as all I could hear were the same, tired, questions I’d been spinning for months.
Where did I go wrong?
What more could I have done?
What did I miss?What did I miss?What did I miss?
“Fuck you, Aaron!Fuck.You!”
I cringed, the sound of my name echoing through the cold.Increasing my pace, I pushed my livid wife ahead of me.
“I could kill her,” she fumed.“I could literally kill her.”
“It’s okay,” I intoned bleakly.
I failed them.
And she had a right to be angry.
The truth was, I had been distracted when I’d been treating them.Nadine’s father had just passed.We were stretched thin with her mom’s burgeoning illness.Nadine spent more time running back and forth between her parents’ home and the hospital than she did at our house, and I worried about her constantly.
Did I take my eye off the ball?
I closed my eyes for a second as I ushered her into the car.
No.
I gently closed her door and rounded the front of my truck.
