inside my coat. I sprang to my feet so fast it must’ve seemed like I had spring coils under my shoes. I headed for the door, grabbed my coat from the rack and rummaged through the pockets, looking for my Holopad.
“It’s from the hospital,” I said, reading the short message that occupied the top half of my screen. “I have to go.”
“You’re working yourself into the ground,” Brittany said, much like a gentle mother chiding her child. “You’ve been working nonstop for nine hours straight, and you’ve just left the hospital...what? Twenty minutes ago? Do you really have to go back there?”
“I asked the nurses to let me know if Maya and Dylan came back and asked for me.” I swung my coat on and tucked the Holopad back in its pocket. “I told them to do it even if I was off duty, and that’s what they did. Maya’s there with her kid, so…”
I grinned, barely capable of hiding my excitement. After a week of radio silence, I wasn’t exactly expecting to see her again. Still, maybe fate had given me a new shot at this...whatever this was.
“You told the nurses that?” Brittany asked me, an amused smile spreading across her lips. “Now who’s being disgustingly cute?”
I rushed into the hospital, giving the receptionists on the lower floor a quick wave as I headed into the ward where Dylan was currently being held. I checked my Holopad to make sure I knew the room he was in and made a beeline toward it.
He had been put in a state-of-the-art suite, which did little to ease my anxiety. This could mean that Dylan was very ill, although part of me hoped he had been given the suite just because he had charmed the nurses.
Suites like these were usually reserved for patients with complicated diagnostics. They were made up of two connected rooms—one for the patient and another for consultations and overnight family stays. Both rooms were equipped with the best technology available, including a self-sanitizing operating table which allowed for quick interventions.
Dylan’s wound hadn’t seemed that serious when I first saw him, though, so I wasn’t sure why the nurse had put them there. I stopped coming up with theories once I stood before the suite’s door. I drew in a deep breath and rapped my knuckles against it.
“May I come in?” I asked, pushing the door open just an inch. My eyes darted toward the little kid sitting at the edge of the bed. The moment he noticed me peering in, he jumped to his feet and hobbled toward me.
His violet hair was plastered to his forehead, and his eyelids seemed heavy with exhaustion. Was he running a fever? An infection hadn’t seemed that likely when I first saw his wounds, but maybe I’d made a mistake. One thing was for sure: Dylan wasn’t well.
I went down on one knee to greet him and before I knew it, he had me wrapped in a tight embrace. I wasn’t expecting that.
“He refused to let anyone else check on him while he waited for you to arrive,” the nurse, Tamir, said. She stood next to the diagnostic terminal that was hooked to the bed, her eyes focused on her Holopad as she checked me in. When she finally looked up from the screen, she gave me a quick wink. “You have the same effect on all the nurses too, doctor.”
Having no idea on how to respond, I just laughed. Maybe there was something to what Brittany and Niall had said. Still, as lovely as Tamir was, I wasn’t interested. No, the only woman I cared about was the mother of the child in my arms.
“Maya,” I said, slowly rising to my feet as I finally looked at her. She stood opposite Tamir, one hand on the bed’s rail, and she tucked her hair back once she noticed me looking. The rich brown of her hair caught the light of the room, highlighting her high cheekbones, and my breath caught in my throat. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you too, doctor,” she replied, and my heart tightened as I heard her say it. Was there longing in her voice? Or was I imagining things?
“What brings you two here?”
“It’s Dylan’s wound,” she replied, and her words were brimming with anxiety. That only confirmed my suspicions. Whatever Dylan was going through, it had to do with that gash on his forearm.
“It’s been fine the past couple weeks, but this morning