nurses ruled absolutely. They could bend any policy they wanted to.
She smiled at me. “Well, it’s against the visitor guidelines. But I think we can do that. I’ll buzz her back in.”
I made a case for Claudia too and got the nod.
When I came back out into the waiting room and gave Sloan and Claudia the news, they both hugged me before slipping back into the ICU.
I turned to Kristen. “We should go home. Get some sleep.”
We were the last two left in the waiting room, and weariness started to take me down. I was emotionally and physically exhausted.
I put my hands on her arms. “There’s nothing else you can do for Sloan at the moment, and sleeping in a chair isn’t going to help matters. He’s stable. Let’s go home.”
She folded herself into my chest, and I tucked her head under my chin and closed my eyes, wrapping her in my arms. I’d never seen her this vulnerable. Her guard was totally down, and it made me feel protective over her.
“Come on.” I kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes and leaned into it. “I’ll drive.”
On the way home she pulled her legs up to her chest and leaned against the door of the car. I held her hand.
We stopped at Del Taco, grabbed food, and ate while we drove. Both of us just wanted to get in bed. I don’t think either of us had slept the night before because of our fight, and we were both spent.
When we got to her house, we brushed our teeth together and went right to sleep without talking. She curled up against me, and I held her to me all night.
In the morning, when the sun cracked through her window and I woke up next to her for the first time in weeks, my heart felt full, despite the events of yesterday. I nuzzled into her hair, breathing in the warm fruity scent that was her.
My hands wandered over her body and I pulled her close, kissing the back of her neck, waking her up slowly. I wanted to get lost in her, just for a little while, before the reality of what we had to go back to came into focus.
She stirred. “Josh, no.”
“No what?” I breathed, moving against her, my hand sliding between her legs.
She wiggled out of my arms and sat up, her hair falling seductively over her eye. “No. We’re not doing that anymore.”
I slumped. I’d hoped we had moved past this. “Kristen, I don’t care about the hysterectomy. I mean, I care. It’s fucked up and I’m sorry it’s happening to you, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. We can talk about—”
“No. And don’t say you don’t care, because that’s bullshit. I didn’t tell you about that so you could say it’s fine, or figure out some sort of work-around.” She flung the blanket off her and got up. “We’re not seeing each other anymore. I let you stay with me last night so you wouldn’t be alone. That’s it.”
She turned for the bathroom, and I got out of bed and followed her.
She stood in front of the sink putting toothpaste on her toothbrush, and I came up behind her and slid my hands over her shoulders. She shrugged me off.
I looked at her through the mirror. “Kristen, we’re in love with each other. I want to be with you. Let’s sit down and have a convers—”
She whirled on me. “No.” Her face was hard. “I listened to you talk about having kids for months. We’ve already had the conversation. Plenty of times. And there is absolutely nothing you can say to me now to convince me that’s suddenly not some major priority for you. I can’t give you a family. I’m no different from Celeste.”
“Celeste didn’t want kids. It’s not the same thing,” I said.
She scoffed, waving around her toothbrush. “Isn’t it? The outcome is the same. In vitro is only forty percent successful—did you know that? Do you even know what it costs? Or how hard it is to find a surrogate? We could try for years, go broke, and never even have one baby. Not even one.”
“Then we can adopt, foster—”
She rolled her eyes and gave me her back as she ran her toothbrush under the faucet and put it in her mouth.
“Kristen, you’re being ridiculous.”
I put my hands back on her shoulders and she shrank away from me.
She spit in the sink and turned back to me. “Josh,