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“Chloe, do you know where you are?”
She nodded, her mind having put together the fact that she was in the Intensive Care Unit.
“Did you know you were pregnant?” Erin asked softly.
Pregnant. No. That couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be pregnant. She had only been with one man in the past two years and Tate had worn a condom. Wouldn’t she have known if she was pregnant? She had been bleeding off and on for the past month, but her cycle was screwed up because of all the stress. She had been nauseated and dizzy, but that could be stress too. Wouldn’t she have known if she was pregnant with Tate’s baby? A warm flush passed through her as she thought about a child.
“I’m pregnant?” she managed to ask, her voice still weak.
“No, Chloe. You were pregnant. The pregnancy was ectopic, in your right fallopian tube. It ruptured. That is what led to your collapse. We did an emergency laparotomy and had to take out your right fallopian tube to stop the bleeding. You also were transfused with a lot of blood products, so we decided to keep you in the Intensive Care Unit. But you are okay now, Chloe. Your blood work is stable and there are no signs of anymore bleeding. You are going to be okay.”
“I lost the baby.” It wasn’t a question for Erin, but more a confirmation to herself of everything she had just heard.
“Yes. I’m so sorry, Chloe.”
Grief filled her. It was the final insult. It shouldn’t hurt to lose something she had never known she had, but that didn’t stop the pain. Maybe it was fitting that she felt the same way about her baby’s father. She had never had him either, but that didn’t make losing him any easier.
She looked around the room, surrounded by glass and curtains and monitors that would show everything about her. She didn’t want to be here.
“I want to go home, Erin. I need to go home.” She couldn’t be here—not in public, not where she worked, not where Tate worked. Not knowing he was so close and wanting him to be with her at this moment so very badly and knowing he wouldn’t be coming.
“Chloe, you are barely twenty-four hours post-op. You know you are in no condition to go home. You just started breathing on your own and haven’t even sat up yet.”
She tried to push herself up, to prove that she could do it, but her body betrayed her. Between the physical exertion the act required and the sense of dizziness that swept over her she barely lifted herself for a few seconds before collapsing.
“Chloe, please let me handle this. I am going to have you transferred to Obstetrics, where no one knows you and you can have some privacy.”
She knew she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t leave even if she wanted to. The obstetrics ward … Pregnant woman and babies … Could she do that? Now? On the other hand Erin was right—it was a ward where no one would know her.
“Okay,” she assented, before closing her eyes, exhausted physically and emotionally. She felt Erin pull the blankets over her. “Thank you for everything,” she managed, right before sleep overtook her.
Chloe stirred, the pain in her abdomen still sharp and making her restless. She felt a hand sweep her hair from her face. Kate. She had told her best friend to go home but apparently she hadn’t listened.
Pain coursed through her as she tried in vain to find a comfortable position and a soft moan escaped her.
A hand fell onto her arm and she instantly knew that it was not Kate beside her. The hand was heavy and large and she recognized Tate’s touch. She didn’t open her eyes. She wasn’t ready to face him. She heard her call bell go off and Tate asking for a nurse.
The exchange was brief, and within five minutes Chloe felt some of the pain dissipate from her body—but not her heart.
“I know you are not sleeping, Chloe.”
Tate’s voice broke through her thoughts. She opened her eyes to meet his. Each of them was trying to decipher the other. He looked tired, with new shadowing along his face and a redness in his eyes that served to heighten the light green irises. Despite her need for him she felt overwhelmed by his presence.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“Because I’ve watched you sleep,” he answered, as though the statement held no intimacy.
“No, I mean how did you know I was here?” she asked, not wanting to betray any of the information she had barely had time to digest.
“I’m on nights this week and saw you in the operating room.”
She grimaced at the thought of him seeing her exposed—not one she enjoyed.
“Is the morphine not enough? Do you need something else?” he asked, misreading her cue.
“No, I’m fine.” A complete overstatement, but she felt vulnerable and not ready for this conversation.
“You scared me.”
The honesty in his face and his statement humbled her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is there a reason you didn’t tell me?” His voice had quietened.
“What do you mean?” He was searching for an answer but she didn’t understand the question.
Tate stared at her as though he could learn the answer if he just looked hard enough. She looked back at him, equally searching for an answer. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell me about the pregnancy?”
He knew. She didn’t know how, but he did. He probably had known before she did. Just one more insult in what was already an untenable situation. He was asking her if he was the father of her baby. What must he think of her if he thought there might be more than one possibility?
She blinked hard, trying to calm herself against the ugliness she felt inside. When she opened her eyes he was still staring at her, waiting.
“Does it matter, Tate?” The hurt in her voice was apparent even to her own ears.
“Yes, it matters.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“It just does, Chloe.”
“Because if you were the father then, what? You would take pity on me? Feel guilty? But if you weren’t then everything people say about me must be right and you can walk away and count your blessings for your near miss? I’m sorry, Tate, but neither of those options works for me. I think you should go.”
“We’re not done, Chloe.”
She wanted to cry and tried hard to keep in her tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Be honest with yourself, Tate. We never started. I need you to go.”
“What if I want to stay, Chloe?”
“Then you should have stayed six weeks ago. Or at least listened to me when I tried to talk to you afterward. But you wanted nothing to do with me then, and you don’t get to change your mind now. I want you to leave.” She could hear the pleading in her voice but she didn’t care. She couldn’t do this—not now, when she had already depleted every physical and emotional resource she had.
“But the baby …?” His voice was hushed but still she heard the small crack that betrayed him.
“There is no baby,” she told them both, and the words hurt as much as anything she had felt. Tate blurred before her eyes and she couldn’t read him as tears formed. She watched him get up and walk away from her and felt both relieved and wounded by his departure.
She heard the curtains close and the sliding door of her intensive care room slide shut and she closed her eyes, willing the tears to stop. She couldn’t do this—not here.
She barely had time to process the sound of the guard rail going down, or the weight on her bed, before she felt herself being picked up as strongly, and yet as gently as possible, and held tightly within a strong embrace. She felt pain tear through her abdomen, but it was nothing compared to what was going on in her heart. She shouldn’t do this—she shouldn’t feel better in Tate’s arms. But she did.
Her complete loss of control over her life overwhelmed her and she gave in to the urge she had been fighting since she woke up. For some reason she knew she didn’t have to be brave right now—she didn’t need to put on the funny, reassuring front she had for Kate. Right now she could just hurt and it didn’t matter. She had nothing to lose with Tate; she had lost everything already.
She felt his grip tighten as the sobs began to rack through her body, each movement both bringing and taking away the pain. He brought his chin down to rest on her head while his hand stroked up and down her back.
“I didn’t know about the baby,” she confessed into his already soaked scrub top.
“It’ll be okay, Chloe. You are okay,” he murmured in reassurance.
“It’s not okay. How could I not have known about my own child?”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
No, it wouldn’t have. A child between them wouldn’t have changed Tate’s mind or his feelings toward her. “I didn’t deserve a baby.”
“You didn’t deserve any of this.”
“Didn’t I?” She had done the unthinkable. She had fallen in love and slept with her best friend’s ex, who the morning after had found her lacking. The only reason Tate was here now was because he felt sorry for her, but to be honest not more sorry than she felt for herself.
He pulled her gently away from his shoulder, reaching up to cradle her face in his hands. “No, Chloe, you didn’t.”
She wished she could believe him. She had never put much stock in karma before—you couldn’t when you spent your life treating people you were sure didn’t deserve what was happening to them. But now she wasn’t sure.
She felt fresh tears forming in her eyes at the pain of her thoughts and from staring into Tate’s eyes too much. He really looked as if he cared for her. If only that was the case.
She felt his lips press against the dampness of her cheek before she was once again tucked into his arms and held tightly. She didn’t know how long they stayed like that. She didn’t even remember him leaving. But when she woke he was gone.
Post-operative day two was excruciating. Everything felt like a struggle. First thing in the morning a nurse had come to help her “dangle’, which had basically turned into a torture exercise of being forced to sit upright with her legs dangling off the bed, maintaining her balance. She’d lasted for less than five minutes and then slept for the next three hours to recover. When she woke Kate was there, propped in a bedside chair reading a heavy hardcover text that almost completely covered her. She was comforted by her friend’s presence.
“Hey,” Chloe greeted her, watching as Kate’s focus shifted and she herself was assessed by the good surgeon.
“You look better,” Kate said reassuringly.
“That’s not saying much,” she replied, still having to work to keep her eyes open.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Kate asked tentatively.
She hadn’t thought about much in the last twenty-four hours, but what she had thought about, other than Tate and the loss of their baby, was what was she going to tell Kate?
Kate—her best friend, the person she had been closest with during the past decade. She couldn’t lie, but how much of the truth was too much? Especially when the explanation for how she had gotten to this day was unexplainable even to herself.
“I had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured.” Nothing had prepared her for what she saw in Kate’s face. She wasn’t even sure she had been that surprised.
“I didn’t realize you were in a relationship,” was all Kate managed after minutes of silence.
Beyond the words she could see the hurt in her friend’s eyes. The thought that Chloe had been keeping something from her was painful for Kate.
“I’m not, Kate.” Truer words were never spoken.
“Oh.”
She knew that Kate was not going to ask her more, but felt she owed her friend more of an explanation. “I slept with someone a few weeks ago. It was a mistake. It didn’t work out.”
Kate didn’t respond immediately. She seemed to be processing the information until her look of surprise was replaced by one of understanding. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” And she was. A lifetime spent thinking about the man you loved who’d got away would have been better than the crash-and-burn drama that had unfolded with Tate.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I don’t suppose I can convince you to help bust me out of here?” she asked faint-heartedly, realizing that she likely couldn’t even make it as far as the elevator right now.
“No, sorry. No chance of that happening. Try again.”
“I would love my own clothes and stuff to take a shower.”
“That I can do. So you’ll be wanting your make-up and finest lingerie, then?”
Kate winked at her and Chloe was grateful for the lightening of their conversation.
“Definitely. Goes great with these disposable mesh underwear I am ashamed to admit are surprisingly comfortable.”
“Is it hard being a patient?”
“Yes, but I haven’t figured out what is worse: feeling helpless or being a patient where I work.”
It was the truth. She was so used to doing, to being active, multi-tasking, and now she couldn’t perform the simplest of tasks for herself and was dependent on people she was used to impressing with her abilities. It was hard to be this vulnerable.
“It is a big change, but the first couple of days are the worst. By tomorrow you’ll be moving around a bit more and you will be home in a few days.”
“Not soon enough.” She waited for a while, trying to decide if she really wanted to know the answer to her next question. “Does everyone know?”
“No. The story around the emergency department and amongst some of the other services is that you had a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst. I think the residents in your program are planning on sending flowers. All your shifts have been covered for the next eight weeks so that you don’t have to work before the board exam.”
“Eight weeks seems like such a short and a long time all at once.”
“It’s not too long, Chloe. You need to focus on yourself for once. If you had a patient who had just gone through the same experience you would counsel her the exact same way.”
“I agree completely.”
A new voice came from behind the curtain before it was opened to reveal Ryan Callum.
“Hi,” Chloe greeted him, embarrassed again at her lack of knowledge about that night, but knowing Ryan had to have been there.
Kate rose and stared at Ryan, then at her. “I’ll leave you two alone. I’ll be back later this afternoon with your stuff.” Kate gave her one final look and then left, pulling the curtain and the door shut behind her.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Ryan responded, taking Kate’s now vacated chair.
“You’re not.”
“How are you feeling?”
She could see the clinician in him assessing her and did her best to reassure him.
“I’m okay, and Kate assures me that every day is going to be a little better.” She was counting on that in more ways than one. “Did you take care of me the other night?”
“Yes. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I wanted to stop by and make sure you were okay. I also wanted to make sure you knew that no one in the department other than me saw the results of your beta-HCG that night.”
She felt a flush of embarrassment pass through her, but also a sense of relief at what Ryan was telling her. No one else had seen the positive pregnancy test, which explained why they all believed she had had a ruptured cyst. Having managed to maintain her privacy was a small relief.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully.
“Don’t thank me. I don’t want anything standing between you and your future staff position here at Boston General—which, by the way, will be waiting for you whenever you are ready.”
“Thank you,” she said again, this time struggling to keep tears from her eyes.
“You’re worth it, Chloe. Please remember that.”
She could tell he was holding something back, which was far from normal. “Why do I feel like there is something you are not saying?”
“Because there is. But I don’t think this is the time or any of my business.”
“Since when did you hold back your praise or your criticism, Ryan?” she goaded him, not wanting anything to change in her life more than it already had.
“Tate Reed.”
Her heart stopped and she briefly looked around to ensure Tate, or anyone else for that matter, had not come into her room. What else did Ryan know? What else had happened that night?
“What about Tate?”
“I want you to be careful, Chloe.”
“It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?” she responded, understanding that somehow Ryan knew about her involvement with Tate.
“Just be careful. I don’t know Tate well, but I know his type. And if the hospital administration was ever forced to choose between their prized vascular surgeon and you, you wouldn’t win.”
“Tate would never …” she started, and then stopped herself. She didn’t know what Tate would or wouldn’t do. “Thank you, Ryan—for everything.”
CHAPTER THREE
POST-OPERATIVE DAY THREE was better. She could move around her room and was able, with some assistance, to take a shower, which felt better than any pain medication she had received. Her nausea was still there, but less than what it had been, and she imagined it would be a while before all the hormones of pregnancy were cleared from her system. She used similar reasoning to explain her new-found propensity toward tears. She cried when she was frustrated, she cried when she thought about what she had lost, she even cried when the nurses were kind to her.
Kate had brought her things and she struggled to keep her eyes open as she read one of her textbooks: another attempt at distraction. A new knock at the door signaled the end of her struggle. Kate peered around the privacy curtain that separated the door from her bed, the smile on her face the first thing visible. Chloe automatically smiled back.
“I have news,” Kate announced before she could even cross the room.
Chloe could tell she was barely containing herself and felt her own excitement build. She pushed herself up in bed, happy to have made the effort to put on her own clothes, even it was only her favorite yoga pants and a fitted gray sweater.
Kate pulled up the visitor’s chair right beside her. “Matt has asked me to marry him and I’ve accepted.”
“Oh, my God,” Chloe gasped. One look at Kate was all it took for her tears to return. Never had she seen her so joyous. She reached up and Kate met her halfway.
“He loves me—he always has,” Kate explained.
Chloe simply hugged her harder. Of course Matt loved Kate. She was perfect. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out a burgeoning feeling of jealousy at all Kate had. She needed to stop this. She was lucky to be alive and she had friends she loved who loved her. She just didn’t have the man she was in love with.
They broke apart and she was once again rewarded with the look of pure happiness on Kate’s face.
“I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“I’m so happy for you. And for Matt.”
“So you’ll be my maid of honor?”
“Nothing would make me happier than to stand beside you on your wedding day.”
“Wedding day?”
A voice intruded into their moment—a voice she knew by heart.
Tate, dressed in charcoal tailored pants and a fitted yellow dress shirt, stood in the corner of the room. She hadn’t seen Tate since she had left the intensive care unit, but that hadn’t surprised her. He had said what he needed to say and they had nothing left between them.
“Matt asked me to marry him and I’ve agreed,” Kate answered elatedly.
“Congratulations, Kate.”
Kate rose from her chair and Chloe watched painfully as the two embraced. Was Tate thinking of his proposal to Kate? The one she had rejected? She couldn’t read Tate’s response, and any further conversation was cut short by another knock at the door.
Erin and Ryan walked in together, and soon her little room was full of people who all loved and cared for her, and she felt ashamed at the self-pity and jealousy she had been indulging in.
Erin had already been in earlier that morning, on her official morning rounds, but Chloe had gotten used to her checking in before she left for the day.
“I just came to see if you needed anything,” Erin explained, her eyes fixed only on Chloe. Maybe she too felt the awkwardness of the Chloe-Tate-Kate love triangle.
“I’m good, thank you.”
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