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Jamie tilted his face down. His fingers tracing down my belly to my Caesarean scar. His touch tingled and buzzed. He traced it back and forth a few times before he dropped a soft kiss where it ended shy of my hip bone. I didn’t think it was noticeable. In fact, it was just a pale line across my skin, like I’d laid in the sun with a string across the bottom of my belly. He kissed up from it all the way to the ink under my breast. His fingertip drawing the dits and dahs like he was repeating my
son’s name in his head. It shouldn’t have been comforting or relieving, but the look on his face was like he was trying to draw out my pain.
“I want to fix this.” He kissed the tattoo before he planted his elbows on either side of my shoulders and tangled his fingers in my hair. “I will never let you hurt like that again. Not alone. I promise.”
He kissed my forehead and laid back down with his head on my chest.
“There are some things in this life, Jamie, that you can’t fix.”
“Why?”
I stroked his hair and his jaw. “Because you are human. Because there are things that serve a higher purpose. Because it’s life.”
I’d learned that the hard way. I’d learned that life was cruel to be kind. If I hadn’t lost my child, I wouldn’t have him. I’d probably still be married to a man who I’d never been enough for. Yet Jamie looked at me like I was everything and more. Like he’d won the jackpot.
“Sometimes we need to let go. Just let life do as it may. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty but that’s how it goes.” I cradled him closer to my chest.
“What if I can’t?”
“You can.” I kissed the top of his head and pulled the duvet over us. “I promise.”
Walking into the hospital holding hands hadn’t been the smartest thing to do. But the emotional and sexual high had impaired the logical part of our brains from doing its thing. I guess I didn’t think that anyone would notice. Jamie and I had done it a thousand times before—walked into work together.
We hadn’t even really spoken about what we were doing. We hadn’t talked about telling the girls or even Richard and Jenna. But I don’t think either of us were ready to let go. He’d held my hand as we left his home and as he helped me into his Range. He’d rested his hand on my knee and stroked the skin of my thigh affectionately throughout the short journey to the hospital. And then he’d just taken my hand when we got out of the car and just like that we’d walked in. Like it was just another day. Because for everyone else it was just another day.
There were only a few other members of staff when we got to the locker room, probably finishing their shift. Wednesdays were always strange. I spent most of the day doing admin and signing discharge papers until an end of shift page from the trauma team. It was predictable like clockwork that every Wednesday at the end of my shift I’d get called into theatre. I’d like to say it was because I was the best, which I was, but the reason it was always me that got the end of shift trauma was as stupid as I was the newest Cardiothoracic Consultant on the block. Which meant that both of the older Consultants managed to always get away.
Jamie on the other hand, never had that problem. He’d been a Consultant for over three years now which meant that he could run rings around most of the staff well enough that before they even thought to page him, they’d already paged someone else along the line. Unless it was the good stuff. The really messy traumas where the patient’s brain was bulging out of their skull or something equally as interesting. Definitely not an overweight, middle-aged City slicker who’d had a heart attack on the train because their arteries were completely clogged with the last ten years’ worth of desk lunches and takeaways. I saved that guy.
I put my lab coat on over my grey tweed pencil skirt and dark green cashmere jumper. I checked myself in the small mirror at the back of my locker. I’d barely had time to do my make-up this morning. Jamie had made sure that our day started on the up. Next time we needed to wake up earlier…or make it quicker. I wasn’t fussy. I combed my hair up into a high ponytail and before I forgot fished out the keys his sister had given me yesterday.
“Can you give these back to Dorian?” I held them out to him.
“I wondered how you got in.” He looked at them like he was disappointed. “I thought you had ninja skills. I felt so proud of myself for bagging a ninja.”
“Nope. Still just me.”
“I like still just you too.” He finished putting his things away and closed his locker door. “You should keep them.”
“I’m not keeping your keys.”
I could feel my face flush. My fingers tightening around the keys to stop them from shaking.
“They’re not mine, and clearly my sister doesn’t need them anymore.” He slipped his fingers in the front of my skirt and dragged me to him.
“Not here.” I smacked his hand away and instantly felt the loss of his touch.
“Keep the keys, I enjoyed your impromptu drop in.”
“I can surprise you even if you have to buzz me up.”
He laughed and dropped a quick kiss on my lips before he turned for the door. Without taking the keys.
“Fine, I’ll give them to her myself.”
“That’s between you two.” He called over his shoulder as he left.
I threw the keys back into my bag and followed him out of the room to my side of the hospital. I saw a few of my patients that needed following up and chased a couple of labs as well as one or two x-rays. It wasn’t really what I should be doing, I’d graduated from that just over a year ago. But, the reality was that unless I went trolling for patients I had to wait for them to come to me. Which they did, just not today. So I made my calls, grabbed my files and went and sat next to Jack, the Davies’ boy.
