One Moment Please (Wait With Me #3) - Amy Daws Page 0,107

surprised to learn you were still practicing.”

I adjust my stethoscope around my neck, suddenly self-conscious. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Mark’s eyes flare. “Josh…what the fuck, man?”

I brace myself for the hits that will surely come. Either verbal or physical. Last time I was alone with this man, he beat his fist into my face over and fucking over again, and I laid there and let him. In fact, I egged him on. I remember begging him to punch harder and stop holding back. I told him to make me pay for everything I did to his son. To Julian.

He fractured my cheek and his knuckle in the process.

The next time I saw him was in a conference room where I wanted to give up my medical license, but the hospital silenced me and our lawyers worked out a cash settlement for him and his wife for the loss of their son. The settlement meant I got to keep my license and they got money to help with the sting of losing their only child. As if any amount of money could ever dignify what happened to Julian.

“I’m glad you’re still working, Josh,” Mark says, catching me completely off guard. “You’re a brilliant fucking doctor. Wasted in an ER like this, if you ask me, but I’m glad you’re still helping people.”

The muscle in my jaw ticks. “How can you of all people say that?”

Mark exhales heavily and pins me with a sympathetic look. “Josh, if you would have answered any of my fucking calls, emails, or letters, you’d have known how sorry I was for everything that happened after Julian.”

“What the hell do you have to be sorry for?” I ask, my jaw dropping with disbelief. “It was my fault.”

“It wasn’t, man,” he says, shaking his head and moving toward me so we’re only a few feet apart. “And don’t try to convince me it was. I’ve done months of therapy to get where I am right now, and I’ve pored over his medical records. You did everything you could, and I will not let your grief pull me back into the darkness.”

Pull him back? He’s out of the darkness? How? He lost his fucking son. “I don’t understand how you’re okay with everything.”

Mark blinks slowly, a sadness to his eyes that I know all too well. “I’m not okay with it, but I’m living with it. I’m living. Julian would want that.” The corners of his mouth lift into a smile. “I like to imagine he’s always watching, and the happier I am, the happier he is.”

A pressure pushes down on my chest that’s so intense, I have to press my hand to it because I literally feel like my body could split in half right now. My voice is hoarse when I say, “I’m still in the darkness, Mark.”

He nods. “That’s what Kayla said. She said she couldn’t even make eye contact with you when you came to help her with her patient files.”

I blink away the sting in my eyes and try to remember what the fuck I even said to Kayla. I barely remember going to meet her that night. After Lynsey walked out, I destroyed the baby’s room with a fucking wrench and stormed out of the house. I’d been driving around for hours when Kayla called me, begging me for help again. I vaguely remember going to her hotel room and feeling grateful for the distraction. And grateful for the reminder that I’m a doctor and that I can help people. Once I immersed myself in those patient files of hers, my wall came up again, and I was Dr. Richardson. Or Dr. Dick as Lynsey would call me.

Since then, I’ve been working as many hours as the hospital will legally allow me. I haven’t even been home, choosing the bed of the ER on-call rooms over the one that still smells like Lynsey. My entire fucking house is Lynsey. Every square inch is covered with something of hers, and being around it after only a week is too much to bear.

“How’s Kayla’s patient? Do you know?” I ask, trying to get my mind off Lynsey and the baby.

Mark nods. “Sounds like you were right, and they were treating the wrong symptoms. She switched some things around, and the kid is perking up.”

My nostrils flare as I exhale through my nose. “Good.”

“Josh,” Mark says, touching my arm.

I flinch at the contact, bracing for him to knock me out again but also strangely