When a doctor and a filmmaker reconnect...

Just who is healing whom?

Two years ago, Dr. Wyatt Reid shared an unforgettable goodbye kiss with Mia Fiore. Now a scuba diving accident brings the daredevil documentary filmmaker into his San Francisco ER. Could this be their shot at a real relationship? But Wyatt, haunted by family tragedy, saves lives, and Mia risks hers every day. Can they find the way to a future on both their terms?

CARI LYNN WEBB lives in South Carolina with her husband, daughters and assorted four-legged family members. She’s been blessed to see the power of true love in her grandparents’ seventy-year marriage and her parents’ marriage of over fifty years. She knows love isn’t always sweet and perfect—it can be challenging, complicated and risky. But she believes happily-ever-afters are worth fighting for.

Also By Cari Lynn Webb

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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Doctor’s Recovery

Cari Lynn Webb

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08500-7

THE DOCTOR’S RECOVERY

© 2018 Cari Lynn Webb

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Wyatt leaned toward the bed and held Mia’s good hand between both of his.

The contact satisfied nothing. He wanted a reaction. He wanted her to wake up, squeeze his fingers and reassure him that she really was alive. How pathetic had he become?

Mia Fiore needed someone to watch out for her and keep her from putting her life at risk again. She needed someone to show her that she was worth more alive than dead. She needed someone to love her beyond all reason.

That someone wasn’t Wyatt. He only lived within reason. When he was with Mia, he lost every bit of common sense. That was an unacceptable flaw. He’d been trained to be a doctor, not a lovesick fool.

He held on to her hand, reluctant to let go. He’d forgotten how well her hand fitted inside his.

Dear Reader,

My mother is a retired RN. She worked full-time through her first three pregnancies. When I came along (the last of four and the only girl) she stopped working, as raising four children required full-time hours. When I was in seventh grade, my mom decided to go back to nursing. A few weeks into her return to work, she came home and told me that she was considering quitting. She’d been out of the medical field for a while and the learning curve had increased over those years.

My mom says that I told her that she wasn’t allowed to quit. That she wouldn’t let us quit something until we’d given it a year, or a full season if it was a sports team. I also added if she gave up, she’d be teaching me that it was okay to give up, too. I don’t remember this conversation, but I love the memory my mom gave me. My mom never quit all those years ago and just like my mom, I knew I couldn’t give up on my dream of writing because I didn’t want my daughters to ever give up on their dreams. I have her to thank for that childhood lesson that has stuck with me.

I love to connect with readers. Check my website to learn more about my upcoming books, sign up for my mailing list, or chat with me on Facebook (carilynnwebb) or Twitter (@carilynnwebb). If you know someone in the medical field, give them a hug today and tell them thanks for all they do.

Cari Lynn Webb

To my daughter, Hannah, who believes in dragons, too. I love you more than you can imagine. Don’t ever stop believing in magic.

Special thanks to Diane S. for your guidance with all things hospital related and Michelle W. for sharing your physical therapy expertise. To Melinda Curtis and Anna J. Stewart for your support and friendship. And thanks to my husband and family for their patience and understanding during deadlines and for keeping me focused, even when I just wanted to watch TV with you guys.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

MIA FIORE COLLAPSED on the deck of the Poseidon. Hands tugged, rolling her over. Faces blurred above her. The ringing in her ears dulled the shouts snapping into the wind. Her arm burned from wrist to elbow. Her toes and legs tingled as if pricked by a thousand sea urchins. Every breath hurt as if her skintight wet suit crushed her ribs together. An oxygen mask covered her mouth. And when she considered drifting into the beckoning oblivion, one of her crew yelled for her to keep awake.

Each smack of the dive boat against the choppy surf of San Francisco Bay pounded through her body, short-circuiting her thoughts as if rearranging time itself. Her brain skipped through images like a slide show on fast-forward: the predive equipment check, the pair of leopard sharks posed for a picture, her dive knife drifting to the ocean floor, fishing line—so much fishing line—wrapped around her, no air to ascend. Dinner with her film crew in the city. Her father’s laughter. A different dinner with the crew. In a different time. Different place.

Another jolt of her body against the unrelenting bay waters. Another command from her dive partner, Eddy, for Mia to stay with them.

More hands lifted her from the boat onto something soft. The straps across her legs drove those tingles deep into her bones. A woman with calm blue eyes and a paramedic uniform replaced Eddy beside Mia. She rattled off numbers and ordered Mia to stay with her before the sirens drowned out every thought.

The effort to remain conscious exhausted Mia. If she could only rest. Close her eyes. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Recharging moments, her father would call it.

Nausea rolled like a powerful riptide through Mia, jarring her awake. Mia gasped at the loss of clean air.

“Easy.” A hand pressed her back. Another mask covered her mouth.

Fluorescent lights had replaced the sky above her head, and a “code blue” announcement replaced the sound of sirens. Even more hands prodded, shifted and poked at her. Still the pain bored through her, the tingles pricked.

Mia rolled her head when she heard Eddy’s voice beside her. Eddy, his wet suit gone, held her cold hand, but he never looked at her. “Dr. Reid? Wyatt?”

Another voice rumbled on Mia’s other side. She’d once known a doctor named Wyatt Reid. But that was a lifetime ago. In Africa when Eddy had needed immediate medical attention and her father had still been alive. That was all in the past, wasn’t it?

“Answered prayers, Mia.” Eddy squeezed her hand. “Dr. Reid has you now.”

But Wyatt Reid had never had her. She’d never had him. Not then. Not now. Mia strained, pulled by the warm touch on her forehead. She knew those ash-gray eyes. Knew that face. Knew that inflexible, gritty voice.

He repeated, “Mia, stay with me.”

But Wyatt had to know that he asked the impossible. Her eyes refused to focus and she finally gave in, succumbing to her body’s insistent need for a recharging moment. As she drifted away, she wondered if Wyatt Reid realized that her heart had never left him.

* * *

WYATT WOULD’VE SWORN Mia mumbled something about her heart always belonging to him. But the Mia Fiore he’d known would never put her heart up for the bargaining. He added delirium to her list of symptoms from severe decompression sickness.

Wyatt issued several more orders to the nurses and paused to look at Eddy Fuller, one of Mia’s longtime film crew guys and most likely to be listed as Mia’s emergency contact. “Stick around, Fuller. We’ll need the details about the dive.”

“It was only supposed to be an exploratory dive. To get the layout, make lighting adjustments before we filmed later this week.” Eddy thrust his fingers into his hair, the mass of thick curls cushioning his scalp from his tense grip. “Fishing line snagged her and her equipment.”

Mia was an experienced, well-trained diver, as was her entire crew. She’d never have attempted the dive without Eddy beside her. “Where were you?”

“She’d given me the all clear to ascend.” Guilt saturated the man’s voice, and his shoulders sagged.

“But she wasn’t with you,” Wyatt accused.

“She must have turned to photograph something.” Eddy crammed his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. “It’ll be on the film.”

Wyatt nodded. Of course, Mia’s camera would’ve been rolling the whole time, capturing every all-consuming second. He’d known she’d give her life for the right footage for one of her documentaries despite her protests back in Africa. Her heart could never have been with Wyatt when it belonged completely to her work.

Eddy’s gaze twitched several times to the double doors that separated them from Mia. Wyatt added, “She’s going to be admitted for more than a night. She needs hyperbaric treatments and wound care.”

“We’re on deadline.” The fatigue settling into the dark bruises beneath Eddy’s eyes softened his protest.

“Adjust your schedule.” Wyatt stepped closer to Eddy. He didn’t have to stretch to look the tall, lanky man in the eyes. “She almost died this afternoon. The only deadline she has now is to heal.”

“So she isn’t going to...you know...” Eddy lost his voice and only managed to swallow several times before his gaze fixed on the closed double doors and his skin paled.

A fall from a rappeling accident in Africa had broken Eddy’s femur, snapped six ribs and readjusted several internal organs. The villagers had insisted only Wyatt could save such a damaged man. Mia had swooped into the medical camp and insisted death wasn’t a viable option before making Wyatt vow to save her friend’s life. She’d never flinched when Wyatt had requested her assistance. Only one thing had ever made Mia retreat.

Eddy would likely faint and make Wyatt catch him if Wyatt told the man he required his help now. Thankfully, they stood in Bay Water Medical Center, not an understaffed, undersupplied medical hut in Central Africa. Wyatt squeezed Eddy’s shoulder. “Mia isn’t going to die tonight.”

Relief shifted through Eddy and spread into his grin.

“However, I make no guarantees about her life once she’s discharged and on her own again.” On her own, Mia embraced adventure and dared life to challenge her more. Stopping to smell the roses would only perplex her. She’d wonder why anyone would stop for the ordinary when they could traipse through the Everglades to glimpse some rare orchid.

Eddy lifted his hands. “As her doctor, it’s appropriate that you give Mia her recovery orders.”

“I’m only her doctor while she’s in the ER, but I’ll make sure she has the best care upstairs.” Wyatt scanned Eddy’s face, searching for twinges of discomfort or latent distress. He’d been in the water with Mia. Decompression sickness wasn’t always instantaneous. “No numbness or pain?”

“Only the same twinge in my thigh that keeps me from taking too many risks these days,” Eddy said.

Too bad Mia didn’t have a similar internal monitor to keep her safe.

Eddy tipped his chin toward Wyatt. “You sure you can’t treat Mia upstairs, too? I owe my life to you.”

“We got lucky that day.” And he intended to continue being lucky. Despite what he’d told Eddy, Mia was far from in the clear. Yet living was the only viable option for Mia, as well. He walked toward the double doors and looked back at Eddy. “She’ll have a skilled team taking over her care, but I’ll check on her.”

Eddy’s mop of curls bounced. “Wait till I tell Frank and Shane that you have our girl.”

“Once she’s stable, I move her out of my care.” And out of my life. Wyatt shrugged at the empty hall. Eddy had already escaped into the waiting area to find his friends.

Mia Fiore had arrived as a patient, and she’d leave as one. Their relationship was nothing more than doctor and patient. They’d set that status two years ago in Africa after one night of confessions and secrets revealed. A night that had ended with a kiss that had offered acceptance and hope and promised something more. But sunrise had clarified what the darkness had concealed. The truth: their kiss had been nothing more for Mia than an unspoken goodbye. Until tonight, he hadn’t seen or talked to Mia Fiore in several years. If he’d thought about her more than once over the last twenty-four months, he’d never confess.

Wyatt squeezed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, rushing the past into place beneath his stethoscope and medical degree.

Mia needed the doctor now. The one who saved lives with methodical care and single-minded focus. Besides, once he transferred Mia out of the ER, she’d no longer be his concern.

* * *

MIA GLARED AT the TV bolted to the wall across from her hospital bed and the exuberant talk show host with her wide smile and unfiltered laugh filling the flat screen. That same laugh had woken Mia yesterday afternoon like an abrasive alarm clock. The first night, she’d slept through cinching blood pressure cuffs, needle pricks for IV lines and seven hours in the hyperbaric chamber. She hadn’t been as fortunate last night.

Sleep had come in sporadic snippets. Mia preferred the nighttime cacophony of insect songs in the rain forest to the beeps of monitors and stat pages for doctors. The light of a full moon never startled her quite like the hall light streaming across her face when the nurses arrived to draw blood or redress her wounds.

She’d always pushed herself to the limit when she was awake to give her body no reason to avoid sleep. Now pain disrupted her dreams. But awake she forgot to breathe through the intense muscle spasms that locked her shoulder inside its socket. Awake she forgot and tried to massage her knotted thigh muscles and only drove those invisible pins and needles deeper into her bones. Her nerves misfired like arcs from live wires brushing against each other, and her body never deflected the shock.

Miscommunication surrounded her like that time Eddy and Mia flew into Grenada in the Caribbean Sea and the rest of the crew landed in Granada, Spain. They’d laughed about that mishap, sipped piña coladas on the beach and waited for the crew’s arrival. The urge to laugh failed to overtake Mia now.

An absentminded rap on her door interrupted the TV show’s relationship expert’s monologue about confidence in the workplace and beyond. Dr. Hensen pumped exactly two drops of antibacterial gel into his hands from the container on the wall by her bathroom. Six steps brought him to her bedside. He moved with precision, as if he preserved his physical energy for the cell-sized version of the doctor who typed away wildly inside his brain. She suspected Dr. Hensen was a certifiable genius who had graduated medical school at the age of sixteen. Since she’d met him yesterday, she’d wanted to know if he could legally consume alcohol.

Mia muted the volume on the TV as the relationship expert exclaimed, “Fake it until you make it, ladies.”

If only Mia had brushed and braided her hair. If she looked put together, Dr. Hensen might believe she was. She nodded, as that also improved confidence, according to her new TV advice expert. She was confident that her doctor would see his way to sign her discharge papers.

She’d risked two questions yesterday while Dr. Hensen examined her, and he’d looked as if she’d interrupted his latest theory on DNA regeneration. Today she waited for him to finish. He removed his glasses and pulled back as if adjusting the viewing lens on his microscope before inspecting the deepest part of her cut near her ankle. She had no explanation for slicing her right shin open in a ten-inch jagged arc.

He covered her leg wound and applied the same scrutiny to her arm. The memory of her dive knife flaying her wet suit and skin open from wrist to elbow came in quick spurts like ten-second sound bites scattered throughout a nighttime newscast.

Finally, Dr. Hensen peeled off his latex gloves and blinked three times as if slowing his brain.

Mia launched into the silence. “It’s been almost forty-eight hours since the accident. Today seems like a good day for stitches.” She smiled to cover her flinch and hoped the good doctor dismissed the wince in her voice. The throb from his deft prodding pulsed through her entire arm, goading her to press the pain medication pump on her IV.

He repositioned the bandage on her arm, tugging in increments until satisfied. “The paresthesia has subsided in all extremities?”

Mia paused to translate Dr. Hensen’s medical textbook speech. “After the hyperbaric chamber this morning, I moved my entire right side.” She skipped over the nerve pain and continued numbness that absorbed most of her skin, restricting a full range of movement. But she was better than yesterday. Certainly, that counted for something. “If you won’t close my cuts, then can we add more sessions in the chamber?”

Dr. Hensen patted her shoulder, the motion awkward as if he’d closed the textbook, yet she found no comfort in the fit of his bedside manner. “The body heals at its own pace, Mia. We must respect that.”

“But the chamber helped me move today.” She swallowed, pushing the panic down her throat. Her cuts needed to be stitched because normal patients suffered through sutures, then got discharged. Routine patients received discharge papers. There was nothing routine about another night in the hospital. Unease skimmed over her, leaving a sticky chill across her skin.

“You’ll continue daily sessions in the hyperbaric chamber and physical therapy. We’ll need to keep monitoring you for infection.”

“But you won’t stitch it all up?”

“Lacerations sustained in a marine environment are susceptible to uncommon pathogens. There is a serious risk for infection in extremity trauma such as yours.” Dr. Hensen added another stiff pat on her shoulder, once again stepping out of his textbook. Compassion softened his voice. “Sutures won’t get you discharged.”

Her skin absorbed that unease, kicking her pulse into overdrive. How would she convince her Bay Water Medical team she was ready to leave?

The information dry-erase board across from her bed listed today’s wound care nurse: Kellie K. Her hyperbaric physician: Dr. West. Her physical therapist: Robyn. Her team’s lead: Dr. Hensen along with a handful more support staff. The hospital employees overseeing her care outnumbered her documentary film crew by three to one. As if she was a critical patient.

If she was critical, she’d have to admit the severity of her injuries, and that meant admitting she’d made several crucial dive mistakes. Those phantom pins and needles pierced through her stomach, letting the dread and distress leak in. Her father had died from his mistakes.

But she’d promised her dad she’d honor each of his final wishes. She’d always coveted her father’s love, and that meant she’d take over the Fiore Films business, continue his life’s work and not fail him. You always lacked discipline and focus, Mia. But now you can make me proud. She didn’t have time to debate her character with her father’s ghost. She had one too many open wounds to contend with now.

“So I’m supposed to just lie here and do nothing? Then lie in the chamber and do nothing again?” She’d only ever been a visitor at the hospital. She’d never been the patient waiting on her own visitors. “And just keep on doing nothing.”

“Your body needs rest to facilitate healing. It may seem like nothing, but restoration of injured tissue is a complex process.” Dr. Hensen looked at her, his smile a small twitch. “Healing is quite an exhaustive process for the body.”

“But I have an actual job.” She clutched Dr. Hensen’s arm, holding him in place. The startled look behind his round glasses hinted at his retreat back inside his mental textbook. Mia continued, “And an important deadline to meet.”

A brisk knock and sure footsteps preceded the order from a familiar voice. “Right now, your only job is to heal.”

Dr. Hensen tugged his arm free and darted toward Wyatt Reid. Relief coated Dr. Hensen’s voice and slid into his extended handshake with Wyatt. “Nice to see that they let you out of the ER, Dr. Reid. We could certainly benefit from your skills up here.” He pushed on his glasses and glanced at Mia. “I agree with my colleague, Mia. You need to concentrate on your recovery. Don’t fight the process. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Mia nodded. This was so not how she’d envisioned her first meeting with Wyatt. She excluded their ER encounter, as her hallucinations and her reality had collided and become indecipherable throughout the night.

But there was nothing imaginary about Wyatt now from his navy scrubs to slate eyes to his hair still long enough to run her fingers through and rearrange. That was all wrong. Confusion must be a side effect of her pain meds. The only running she intended to do was out of the hospital and away from Wyatt. The blood pressure cuff squeezed her arm as if on cue to censure any thoughts about leaving.

An IV line and monitors tethered her to a hospital bed. That she couldn’t tether the giant moths that escaped her stomach and fluttered through her chest annoyed her. Why hadn’t she prepared for this better? Of course, seeing Dr. Wyatt Reid again had never been on her schedule. Neither had an extended stay in the hospital.

She held on to her smile until Dr. Hensen closed her door before glaring at Wyatt. “You didn’t have to admit me. You could’ve treated my wounds and sent me home with Eddy.”

“Should I have sent you home when you passed out in the ER? Or after the hyperbaric chamber when you passed out again?” He moved to the foot of her bed and stared at her. “And the blood loss? Was I supposed to give two CCs of blood to Eddy to pump into you that evening?”

The logic in his questions and composure in his tone grated on her. That something inside her sighed at his presence shoved her into the irrational. “I have a job.”

“So do I.” He gripped the bed frame and leaned forward, fully prepared to take her on. “I took a Hippocratic oath to save lives, including yours.”

An oath that he lived and breathed. Always. Just like she lived for her job. She tipped her chin up and held his gaze. “I cannot miss my deadline.”

“It can wait.”

“Easy for you to say,” she said. “You’re walking around, doing your job just fine like always.”

“You’ll be back doing your job soon enough.”

“Not if I miss this deadline.”

“They’ll understand.”

He didn’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to be the patient. She didn’t make mistakes that could cost her her life or those of her best friends. Those pinpricks turned her stomach inside out, stealing her breath. If they’d just let her leave, then perhaps it wasn’t such a big mistake. And her life could return to normal like she wanted. Why did her old life make her hyperventilate now? She loved the life she’d built with her father.

Wyatt tilted his head and studied her. “Are you afraid to be here?”

“Of course I don’t want to be here.” Not with Wyatt close enough to touch, but so far out of her reach. But that was all wrong. She wanted discharge papers, her old life back more than she’d ever wanted Wyatt. She pressed her fist into the bed. “You do know what happens in places like this.”

“Yes, I know what happens in hospitals.” The softness in his voice slid into his gaze, tempering the cool sleet color. “We save lives.”

“Or not.” She scowled at the fragile crack in her voice and blamed Wyatt for making her weak.

Wyatt walked around to her side and lifted his arm toward her.

Everything in Mia stilled. The air in her lungs, her pulse, all of her waited and wished.

He made a midcourse correction to adjust her IV line, denying her his touch. “I’m really sorry about your dad.”

Mia buried her arm under the covers. She didn’t need his support. She’d never needed that. She’d handle her grief like she handled everything else: on her own terms. Besides, it was his fault she was there. Not entirely, she admitted, but she needed someone to blame to keep her sanity. Otherwise she might crumble beneath the ramifications of her accident. “Why are you here?”

“I work downstairs in the ER.”

“I know that.” She tugged on the blankets, refusing to look at him. “Why are you up here?”

“My mother is down the hall, recovering from a second hip replacement.”

That brought her focus to him. “I’m not your mother.”

“I’ve noticed.” The laughter in his voice melted into his smile.

And ping-ponged something warm through her like the first sip of homemade hot chocolate. She remembered that comforting feeling from their time together. But she hadn’t missed him. She’d chosen to leave and live her life. “Why are you in my room specifically? I’m not your patient.” His name wasn’t on her information board. She was thankful for that, wasn’t she?

“I can’t check up on a friend?” he asked.

“Is that what we are?”

“Unless you prefer another definition for our relationship.”

They had no relationship. Wasn’t that the point? “We haven’t spoken in twenty-six months.”

“That’s rather exact,” he said.

“Yet true,” she said.

“I promised Eddy I’d check on you.”

“Eddy was here?” Relief rushed through her. Nothing had happened to Eddy. Her friend hadn’t suffered because of her error.

“Eddy, Frank and Shane have all been here.” His eyebrows pulled together, highlighting his perplexed voice. “Your crew still follows wherever you lead.”

“They work with me because they want to,” she said. Unlike Wyatt, who’d never follow. He’d wanted to be with her, too, at one time. But only on his terms. And those were terms she would never accept. She crammed her pillow behind her head. “Well, you’ve checked up on me. Dr. Hensen told me to sleep and let my body heal. Could you dim the lights on your way out?”

“I’ll be back.” There was a hint of warning in his tone.

With any luck, she’d be asleep. Mia closed her eyes, shutting him out and severing her awareness of him as anything more than a doctor. Wyatt Reid was a doctor first and always, same as she was a filmmaker first and always.

“If you need me, the nurses know how to find me,” he added before the lights dimmed and silence rushed through the room.

Mia wanted to stuff the pillow over her face and scream. That would no doubt get her another specialist for her care team and a psychological evaluation. There had to be at least ten hospitals in San Francisco, and she’d ended up at the one where Wyatt Reid worked. Not even fate could’ve conjured that twist.

CHAPTER TWO

THE DOOR TO Mia’s room clicked shut, soft and quiet, despite Wyatt’s tight grip on the steel handle. Slamming the door might’ve satisfied him, but he doubted that would be enough to disrupt Mia’s determination to greet her father in the afterlife. Stubborn woman couldn’t see past her current deadline. She’d almost died. Died.

Yet she railed at him for admitting her as if the entire incident was his fault. As if he prevented her from finishing her precious film. Had she learned nothing from her father’s death? She’d brushed off his condolences about her dad like a decade-long chain-smoker given a pamphlet on how to quit.

Still he’d treat her like any other patient, the same as he’d declined to make an exception for his mother. He refused to lose his objectivity only to have them suffer for his misstep. Emotional lockdown was the only prudent course of action. Not that he had to worry with his mom. However, Mia triggered something inside him, something that rattled that lock and disturbed his composure. He simply had to regulate his neurological response to Mia with more precision and resist any urge to be more than a doctor who knew what she needed even if she didn’t. It was past time Mia slowed down, reassessed and grieved.

Of course, knowing what was best for someone didn’t guarantee the person’s agreement or cooperation. That much he learned every day with his mother. He seemed to be surrounded by difficult women. Good thing he’d never walked away from a challenge.

Wyatt slowed at the nurses’ station and met Nettie’s gaze, waiting for the charge nurse’s signal. Wyatt believed in gathering as much information as possible before any confrontation, and when it came to his mother, he’d gather information from any source willing to release it. Nettie smiled. Her thumbs-up allowed the breath he’d been holding to slip out.

His mother’s references to her final days had quadrupled since her first hip surgery eight weeks ago. It’d gotten so bad, her parting line most evenings had been: you’ll need to look for me in the morgue tomorrow if you wish to visit me. After her second hip surgery, she’d revised her morgue commentary and now suggested suitable places to scatter her ashes depending on the season she’d arbitrarily determined would be her last. Fortunately, his mother hadn’t referenced pushing up daisies in the last three days, and every signal from the charge nurse had been positive.

Wyatt knocked on his mom’s door and entered the room. His mother wore her receiving pajamas, the ones with roses and vines that she’d deemed appropriate attire for visitors. That made three days in a row. Wyatt frowned as his mother muttered. Her face was pressed close enough to her notepad screen that her nose would leave an imprint. Even with her glasses on, the strain could trigger another seizure. He’d need to talk to her primary care physician about her seizure medications after her discharge.

“Mom.” He kissed her wilted cheek and imagined she leaned in for his greeting like she’d used to when he was a clumsy kid climbing onto her lap for a good-night hug. But mother and son had stopped leaning on each other years ago. He shoved his useless childhood memories aside and nudged her notepad lower before enlarging the image on her screen with his fingers. One quick glance confirmed the photographs that absorbed all of her attention. He’d forwarded that latest set of pictures he’d taken in her greenhouse to her email account last night.

“Well, that’s much better.” Her focus remained fixed on her screen, but appreciation tinged her voice.

While his mother continued to check the vitals on her precious plants, he took an inventory of her, searching for anything the medical team might’ve missed like last time: new bruises on her arms, involuntary winces of pain, signs of infection. Anything that might signal another unexpected decline.

“The begonia needs to be repotted before the weekend.” She flipped through several more photographs. “The snapdragon seedlings need more light.” She glanced at the window, her eyebrows pulling in behind her round glasses at the fog swirling against the pane. “Bring them into the house and put them under the lights for the next few days.”

“We already put the primrose seeds under the house lights,” he reminded her. Newborns with jaundice belonged under special lights. Preemies required such meticulous care and attention, not plants. But that wasn’t an argument he intended to revisit with his mother. Her greenhouse was a sacred place; everything inside those glassed walls was her family now.

She flicked her hand back and forth as if sweeping away his words like spilled soil. “The pots aren’t too big. They can share the space.”

If only everything in life was so easy and simple. Wyatt and his mother struggled to share the same space.

“You could buy a new light.” She lifted her gaze above her oversize glasses.

No way. He wasn’t adding another UV light. Soon enough the DEA would be knocking down the door to bust him for growing illegal substances, as he had too many lights going now. Either that or the neighbors were convinced he had a deep-seated fear of the dark. The lights matched his night-shift schedule: on all night, off in the morning. With his work schedule changing to days, he’d have to change the plants’ schedule, too. His mother preferred consistency, but it was the best he could do to keep everything alive. In another time, she’d concentrated on her family with the same meticulous consideration. Now her devotion belonged to her plants and the nursery she’d built in her backyard. Not that he wanted her fawning over him as if he was one of her struggling plants. “I’ll make it work.”

She smiled and pulled up another photograph. “The orchid has taken to the new food mixture. There’s happiness in the blooms now.”

But not in his mother. He hadn’t seen real joy in his mother in over five years, long before his brother’s unexpected death. He remembered the lightness in her laughter and happiness on her face when his father would come home and dance her to her seat at the dinner table every night. He’d even witnessed the same dance, the steps slower and more cautious, when he’d returned home from college, months before cancer stole his father and dimmed his mother’s light. Still there’d been moments after the grief had settled and the memories no longer stung. Then came Trent, when love had proved to be a poor antidote to his brother’s inner turmoil and anguish and nothing had slowed his downward spiral. Then not even Wyatt could reignite any sort of happiness in his mother.

He cracked his knuckles. The pop realigned his bones and his focus. He hadn’t slammed the door to Mia’s room, but he could slam the door on memory lane and lock it.

Besides, he needed his mother to concentrate on her recovery and talk about her living situation after room 326 on the transitional care floor at Bay Water Medical. After her discharge, all of his mother’s love could return to her flowers. He only cared that she was safe when she left the hospital. That was his duty as her son. He had her love as a child, that was enough. Something scraped across his insides like a dull razor, leaving deep gouges in its wake. He rubbed his chest and discarded the phantom ache. “Your neighbor in the Craftsman brought over his cactus last night. It’s dead.”

“You didn’t tell Samuel that, I hope.”

“I suggested that he drop it in the recycle bin on his way back home,” Wyatt said.

“I raised you with better manners than that.”

He smiled. He did consider dropping the pathetic plant in the recycle bin himself on his way to work. Even a tempered truth had less cruelty than false hope.

His mother eyed him. “Where’s the cactus?”

“Sitting beside the other neighborhood plants begging for resuscitation and prompt care.” His mother had a plant-based ER in her nursery. The neighbors and her so-called friends were obviously taking advantage of his mom’s green thumb skills. Her greenhouse wasn’t the local garden center at the hardware store or inside one of the city’s impressive parks with multiple staff to attend to it. She was one person, living alone, among her plants. In his opinion, her garden and greenhouse had gotten more than a bit out of control. She needed to say no more often.

“What kind of cactus is it?”

“The cactus kind.” Wyatt dropped his keys and cell phone on the window ledge and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Really, Wyatt. If you asked for details about a gunshot victim downstairs, you’d hardly accept bullet wound as an appropriate response.”

Bullet wounds and his patients were not even in the same stratosphere as a dying cactus. Especially a cactus that could be replaced with a trip to the local home improvement store and a five-minute walk through the garden center. Wyatt sighed, picked up his mother’s tablet and searched cactus images on the internet. “Maybe this one, if its shoots weren’t all shriveled up.”

“Ask Samuel if this is his great-grandmother’s Christmas cactus that he told me about,” she said.

“If you get on email, you could ask him yourself,” Wyatt suggested.

His mother waved her hand. “This is quite personal. You don’t talk to your patients’ family members through email when they come into the ER.”

He wasn’t adverse to the suggestion, especially given some of the family members who’d confronted him in the past few months. But again, plants and patients hardly belonged in the same sentence. “It’s a cactus.” Wyatt stressed the word because it needed repeating. A replaceable cactus.

“Yes, but it’s been in his family since his great-grandmother settled in the city. The plant has deep, meaningful roots.”

He once had meaningful roots in the city, too. But that was the problem with roots—when they died, it hurt all the more. At least the neighbor needed to grieve only the loss of a plant, not his family. What was wrong with him? He blamed Mia Fiore for stirring up the unnecessary emotional pot inside him. “Tell me what to do with Granny’s cactus.”

“Bring me a stem.” Helen powered off her notepad. “In the meantime, look for the cactus food. It’s on the third shelf to the left of the door of the greenhouse.”

In the meantime, he’d be working in the ER, looking for nitroglycerin to treat chest pain and injecting alteplase to dissolve blood clots in the brain or giving morphine to decrease crippling kidney stones. “That’s the only neighborhood plant SOS from yesterday.” Wyatt injected lightness into his tone. Still, his mother looked crestfallen at the news, as if rescuing neighborhood plants gave her a reason to live. “Mom, we need to discuss...”

“Discuss these applications for the foundation,” she finished for him and pulled out a stack of papers from the drawer in her bedside table.

His level of frustration soared. Two months ago, before her fall, his mom had decided to give away the family money to local charities through her newly formed foundation. They’d already talked about that. Right now, they had to discuss assisted care and her living arrangements after her discharge. Once he knew she was safe, he could return to Africa and the medical aid program he’d started there. The one that depended on his return to expand into more remote locations. “You were going to cancel the ad and put the foundation on hold for now.”

“You decided that, but I decided differently.” The warning rapped through her voice like marbles striking a tile floor.

She’d approached helping Trent the very same way, agreeing to Wyatt’s suggestions but then doing exactly what she’d wanted, and look how badly that had turned out. If his mom had only accepted his brother’s addictions and risked revealing the truth of Trent’s condition to friends and family by admitting his brother to an in-patient rehab center, Trent might be alive today. Wyatt straightened, met her gaze and smoothed the boyish plea, as if he was six again and wanted a puppy, out of his voice. “But we already talked about this.”

“No, you told me that I’d be stopping the foundation funding like you instruct your patients on medicine and follow-up appointments. I doubt you use such an overbearing tone with them.” She smoothed the clear tape over her IV line port. “But I’ve reasons, good ones, for continuing to disperse funds from the foundation.”

Doing it because he didn’t want her to was not a good reason. Nor was her insistence that her days were limited. Her days hadn’t been limited since they’d cleared the infection from her femur bone and replaced her hip for the second time. “These applicants need to be vetted. You don’t even know if they’re real organizations or not.” He swiped the first application from the pile and scanned the messy handwritten form from Project Save the Leprechauns. “It’s nothing more than a mad money grab.”

“There’s nothing mad about it.” She patted her hair into place as if her perfectly set updo would keep all the dissenters at bay. “I wish to see the family money put to good use while I’m still alive. It isn’t as if you need it. You can go through the applicants and I can write the checks.”

Wyatt dropped his chin to his chest and jammed both hands into his hair. That stack contained at least a hundred more pages. He had real work: patients to care for and conference calls to attend with his partners overseas. “You want me to go through all of these?”

“Yes. I need to concentrate on my therapy.” She pulled her robe tighter across her chest. “I don’t want to disappoint the charities that are relying on my money to keep up their good work.”

“Yes, I’m sure Project Rescue the Dust Bunny is impacting the needy in the city with its wonderful deeds.” He crumpled the second application from the pile in his fist. One vetted, only ninety-nine to go.

“I promised to help fund local charities in my ad, and I’ll keep my word. I only need the best twenty from that pile.”

She was going to be bankrupt before her discharge. “I’ll do this, if we talk about the brochures I left with you.”

“I threw those out.” Satisfaction, not remorse, steadied her gaze. She never flinched, as if she was a heart surgeon wielding a scalpel.

He squeezed the crumpled paper tighter, trying to squeeze the irritation from his voice. “You cannot move home.”

“I most certainly can.” She raised her voice with the same dignity she’d raised two boys. “And will.”

“I cannot ensure your safety at home.” His cell phone rang.

“You won’t have to ensure anything. You’ll be back in Africa, where you’d clearly rather be right now.” Disdain hardened her voice, and disapproval shifted into the scowl she aimed at his phone. “It must be eight o’clock. Africa calls at this time every night you visit me.”

“I’ve already explained that my partners and I expanded our clinic before I left. My schedule and the time change make it difficult to talk, and there are things that only I can handle.”

“Yet you aren’t the only doctor within your organization. But then you must prefer the interruption. After all, there are twenty-three other hours to choose to schedule your conference call.”

Silence swelled inside the room.

She acted like he’d traded her for Africa. He’d have talked to her about his plans for his medical aid work if she’d gone to her own son’s funeral five years ago. But neither her youngest son’s funeral nor her oldest son’s departure to a foreign country had been important enough for her to leave her precious gardens unattended. Resentment ricocheted through him, nothing new there.

But the sting that hitched his breath and tightened his chest was too fresh, as if his mother’s absence still hurt. Yet he wasn’t wading into that emotional quicksand. That was the past. Not forgotten, but past. Now wasn’t the time or the place. There’d never be a time or place for that particular discussion.

He closed off his emotions. Sentiment only ever distorted the logic and rationale he’d come to depend on in the ER and every other part of his life. Was it too late to steer the conversation back to her nursery? If only there’d been another neighbor with a plant emergency. “My life is in Africa.”

“Then you should return.”

But not stay. Not ever stay. She’d never ask that of him. “When you’re settled.”

“You need to live your own life, not dictate mine.”

As if he’d returned only to boss her around. Not because they were the only family left and needed each other. Wyatt squirmed at the thought. “I came home for you.”

“I never asked you to,” she said.

The last five years their conversations had been trivial: her plants, which friends had passed away and who had moved in on her street. She wouldn’t ask when he was coming home, and he wouldn’t volunteer to return. She hadn’t even asked him to come home when she’d first fallen and injured her hip. He’d come back at the request of a distant cousin. He pushed out of the chair, wanting to push the past back in its place and get moving again. His agenda: move forward. To always keep moving forward. Perhaps then he just might outrun all the what-ifs. “A good son looks after his mother.” And Wyatt was determined to be a good son, even if his mother didn’t appreciate his interference.

“You’ve done that,” she said.

“I’m not finished.”

“I can take care of myself now.” His mother tugged on the belt around her waist, but the flimsy fabric refused to stay tied, and the satiny bow unraveled in her fragile hands, discrediting her claim.

“Not in your house.” Wyatt set his hands on his hips and eyed his mom. “Not alone.”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze, but her chin lifted. “Being alone is nothing new. Besides, I have wonderful neighbors.”

Neighbors who Wyatt believed needed nothing more than his mom’s green thumb. A distant cousin had been the one to find his mother after her fall, not one of her supposedly wonderfully attentive neighbors. He hadn’t been there either. Not that she needed him. He turned his back to all those complicated emotions. “You’re obviously tired.”

“Not especially.”

Well, he was. Exhausted. Wyatt pressed a kiss against his mom’s pale cheek. “We can talk about this tomorrow. I’m on days this week, and I need to sleep.”

She reached up as if to touch him, but her fingers stirred only the air between them. “My mind is made up.”

He wasn’t sure if it was the bed rail or something else that held her back. Not that it mattered. He’d long ago outgrown his need for motherly affection.

Besides, his mind was made up, too. He might be surrounded by stubborn women, but that wouldn’t stop him from doing what was right.

CHAPTER THREE

MIA TUGGED ON the twin ties on her hospital gown and gritted her teeth. She’d needed only one day to learn to tie her shoes in grade school. No way was a flimsy gown going to beat her. Of course, in elementary school her fingers hadn’t been numb or her arm stiff and sore from even the smallest movement. Still, she’d tie her gown closed as she had nothing else to do until her morning physical therapy in an hour.

This was the perfect catnap opportunity. Yet her mind refused to let her sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, images from her accident bombarded her. She wasn’t certain what was real and what was manufactured by her nightmares. Real or imagined, fear rippled through her like the explosive screech of a frightened red fox and retreated only if she opened her eyes. She’d never considered herself stupid or irrational. Until now. Clearly three days without decent sleep had taken its toll.

At least she had a plan. Because another night of no sleep was unacceptable.

Her fingers trembled, and the thin strap slipped from her grip. Numbness absorbed her arm, and her leg throbbed from Dr. Hensen’s routine exam. Tears pooled in her eyes. She refused to cry, especially over stupid things. Still her chin sagged toward her chest, and her arms drooped to her sides. Everything inside her went limp, and defeat rushed in.

“You better not be crying.” Eddy Fuller’s voice filled her room, the nervous tremor in his tone increasing his volume. His curly hair always reminded her of a cup of coffee sweetened with too many creamers and complemented his usual laid-back style.

“I’m not.” Mia mumbled into her chest and avoided looking at her best friend and her father’s longtime video editor.

“Good. Tears are annoying.” Eddy stopped just inside the room and set the bags he carried on the floor near his feet. “Then what are you doing?”

“Trying to tie my gown.” And squeeze her stupid tears back behind her eyes.

Eddy made quick work of the ties behind her neck before retreating against the wall near the bathroom. His skin looked faded. He pinched his lips together as if struggling not to breathe too deeply. Eddy and hospitals did not play well together.

Mia latched on to her friend’s discomfort like a life preserver, pulling her out of her own self-pity pool. “You watch criminal and medical dramas in marathon sessions every week. How can my cuts bother you?”

“They look worse today.” His gaze lowered from the abstract art hanging on the wall behind her to her face, where it stuck. “You’re pushing too hard.”

She ignored the last part. She wasn’t pushing hard enough to get out. “You didn’t even look at my leg.”

“I don’t need to look at the ooze and pus to know it’s there.” Eddy’s gaze never wavered, unlike the ashen color that rolled over his skin.

“It’s supposed to look like this. It’s healing.” She hoped. The throbbing in her leg had become steady and constant, even before Dr. Hensen took the culture of her wound that morning. “Give me the laptop and I’ll release you from this torture. I really appreciate that you came all the way to my room.”

Eddy pushed away from the wall and kept his focus on Mia. “Will you still appreciate me when I tell you that I called your mom?”

“You talked to my mom?” The back of her head pounded like someone had smashed the abstract art frame against her head.

Eddy squeezed the wedding ring tattooed around his ring finger like he always did whenever doubt seized him. “She needed to know.”

“That I’m fine,” Mia added.

“That you’re in the hospital and working toward being fine,” Eddy clarified.

“You told her everything?” Everything would only make her mom worry. And her mom already made a worrywart sound like an optimist. The throb extended around to Mia’s temples and stabbed.

“I explained that you had a diving accident during a filming session.”

That was more than enough for her mom to book the first flight from New York to San Francisco. Almost seven hours in the plane for her mom to fret about how Mia should live her life with less risk. To strategize about how Mia could still express her passion for saving the wildlife by donating to charities rather than camping out in the wilderness as if she was a native. Seven hours for her mom to torment her already high-strung nerves into a full-blown anxiety attack over Mia’s refusal to make a big difference in the world from behind a nice, secure cherry-stained desk.

Mia grabbed her phone and texted her mom, stalling any flight confirmations and keeping her mom at home, where she’d always been the calmest. Still, Mia had to finish her film and get back to her life before her mom arrived to turn Mia’s world inside out. “I’ll deal with my mom later. I just need the laptop now.”

Eddy tilted his head and studied her, his curls shifting as if to emphasize his internal debate. “You can watch Shane’s footage from Sunday on your phone.”

“I don’t want Shane’s edited version.” Mia motioned toward the laptop bag that sat on the floor. “I want to watch all of it.”

“You need to concentrate on healing, not reliving the accident.” Eddy made no move to pick up the computer bag. “It wasn’t easy for us to review.”

That was Eddy’s sensitivity to blood and hospitals talking. Besides, she already relived the accident every time she closed her eyes. Every time she fell asleep. If she watched the footage, maybe her dreams would find new content, instead of replaying the same thing. “We’re going to need new footage to finish the film.”

Eddy’s gaze skipped away from her, but it wasn’t the pus and ooze chasing off his focus this time. It was doubt. Doubt that Mia could get new footage. She’d never seen Eddy second-guess any of her father’s decisions. He’d never questioned her father’s ability to get even the most difficult shot.

But Mia wasn’t her father, and Eddy made that fact more than clear when he said, “We need to wrap it up with what we have and just be done.”

She wouldn’t just be done until she finished the film to her father’s standards. Nothing else would ensure his legacy. Nothing else would ensure the recognition and accolades her father had always coveted in life. Nothing else would ensure her mother’s lifestyle remained the same just like she’d promised her dad. “We’ll be done when it’s finished like my father expected and it’s worthy of the Fiore name.”

Eddy stiffened. “You sounded like your dad just now.”

“Excellent,” she said. Yet confusion creased into the edges of his eyes and uncertainty tipped his chin down. Her friend still doubted her. So be it. She’d become who her father had planned for her to be and prove Eddy and everyone else wrong. “I’d think the more like him I am, the better for all of us.”

Eddy set the computer bag on the bedside table. “Just be careful you don’t lose yourself in your father’s ghost.”

Her father wouldn’t be a ghost if she’d stepped further out of her comfort zone. Only the lazy and uninspired curl up in their comfort zones, Mia. I raised you to be more than that. Now she had to be more to keep from disappointing anyone else. “I’m upholding the Fiore family legacy.”

Her duty as an only child was to continue the Fiore filmmaking tradition as her father had always envisioned. Her responsibility as the only Fiore child was to take care of her mother just as her father had always done. Just as she’d promised him she would.

Eddy pulled a smaller leather case from the paper shopping bag he’d brought in and dropped it on her lap. “The guys and I got you something.”

Mia unzipped the top and gaped at the digital camera tucked inside. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Take pictures. Open your creative mind,” Eddy said. “It’ll be a good distraction while you’re here.”

Her creative mind was open and ready to finish the final documentary in her father’s acclaimed series. Her creative mind was already at full capacity with her film work. Art must always send a message that impacts many lives, Mia.

Pictures of IV lines, needle containers and hand sanitizer hardly impacted lives. Portraits wouldn’t pay the mortgage on her mother’s house. Unless, of course, those same pictures were taken in the aftermath of a bombing in the Middle East. Yet she wasn’t in Syria and Bay Water Medical wasn’t inside a war zone. Photojournalist wasn’t her job title. Neither was photographer.

Besides, only her body had been damaged in the accident, not her mind. Not her creative side. She ran her finger along the zipper, the uneven edge matching the uncertainty knotting through her. What if she’d lost something more precious like her passion? Not possible. More than just her livelihood relied on her finishing this film and securing new contracts. “You expect me to take pictures? Here?”

“It’s a camera, Mia, not a bow and arrow.” Eddy swatted at the air as if annoyed by a pesky mosquito, not his good friend. “We aren’t suggesting you have target practice out in the hallways.”

No, it was worse than that. Her friends suggested that she betray her father’s memory by wasting her time with still photographs. “What happened to crossword puzzles and books to fill the time?”

Eddy grinned and walked to the door. “Have to think outside the box to keep the creativity lines open.”

He’d quoted her father. But her dad had meant with film work. With the important work that touched many lives. With the film work that supported her mother all these years. The soft knock on the door followed by the cheerful greeting from her physical therapist saved Mia from correcting Eddy’s misconception. She set the camera bag on the rolling table and pushed it away, along with her doubts.

Time to concentrate on therapy and exercise. Walking without pain. Moving without pain. There was nothing wrong with her creative mind. Nothing that a camera could fix. The hospital walls compressed in on her. The bland, dull paint made everything stark, barren and exposed her uncertainties. Clearly, she’d been alone with her own thoughts too much. She needed breathing space. “I want to walk the entire floor today, not just this hall.”

“How’s your pain?” Robyn unclipped several of Mia’s monitors.

“Tolerable,” Mia said. Numbness and pain wouldn’t interfere with her therapy. She had to prove she’d made progress, and that had to start now. With every hour she remained inside Bay Water Medical, her resolve leached into the pale walls like blood into white carpet.

“We’ll take it slow and easy,” Robyn said.

“We can stop at the nurses’ station,” Mia suggested. “Take stock. Turn back or keep going.” She had no intention of returning to her room until she’d walked every linoleum-covered inch of the third floor.

Mia managed to cover only one hallway before she leaned against the nurses’ station and tried to wrestle her pain back into submission. Another physical therapist accompanied a woman. Her pure-white hair and the unsteady grip of her hands, all knuckles and veins, on her walker betrayed her age even though gravity had failed to diminish her height and transform her into one of those pint-sized seniors. The pair paused beside Mia.

“Helen, let me see your hand.” The charge nurse, Nettie, leaned over the counter toward the older woman. “I swear you must have a green arm because no normal green thumb could’ve saved my plant.”

The silver woven through Nettie’s black hair broadcast her experience with life, making her a cross between the neighborhood’s favorite nana and the matriarch of a dignified political family. Nettie’s straightforward nature and disdain for sugarcoating made her one of Mia’s favorite nurses on the floor.

Nettie tapped her phone, spun the screen around and grinned proudly. “I was ready to toss that gardenia into the Dumpster, and now look at it.”

Mia assumed she’d have a dead thumb if she tried to grow anything. Her mom believed in silk plants and Waterford crystal to decorate a home with life. Her father believed nature belonged in its native habitat. Mia wasn’t sure if she agreed, but she’d need more than a home for a plant. She’d need to give it her time and attention, and that was in short supply.

“Isn’t it just lovely.” Helen pushed her glasses up. Her smile bloomed up into her eyes, filling her fragile skin with light. “The scent when it flowers will fill your entire house.”

Roslyn, a nursing assistant with the ink still drying on her certification, glanced at the phone over Nettie’s shoulder. “The city gardeners could learn something from you.”

“I’m an amateur with no formal schooling,” Helen said.

But the older woman had passion even without formal training, and that mattered. A passion that glowed from within her like the sunrise streaking burnt gold across the plains in Zimbabwe, rousing the wild to life. Only Helen awakened someone’s love for nature.

“You’re a plant whisperer, Ms. Reid.” Awe lowered Roslyn’s voice into a church whisper.

“Nothing like that.” Helen patted her hair as if she’d revealed too much and needed to tuck her secrets back in place. “I’ve grown my share of gardenias over the years. Once you understand their temperament, they thrive and blossom.”

“If only you had a cure for a temperamental man, Helen.” Nettie’s grin lifted her eyebrows. “We could bottle it, make millions and retire in style.”

“I have better luck with plants.” Helen reached for her walker, her movements slow, as if someone lowered the dimmer switch inside her.

“Nonsense.” Nettie looked at Mia. “She’s got a son working more hours than sanity recommends down in the ER. You raised him right, Helen.”

The plant whisperer is Helen Reid. As in Wyatt Reid’s mom. The one Wyatt had told Mia was recovering from hip surgery down the hall from her. Helen had an inch or two on Mia even hunched over her walker. Wyatt’s height hadn’t come from only his father’s side. But Wyatt’s personality fit into every inch of his six-three frame. His willpower alone displaced any soft spots. Nothing on Wyatt appeared weak. Everything about Helen was fragile, from her thin frame to her shaky grip on her walker. She reminded Mia of one of those flamingos at the zoo, standing on one thin leg, regal and proud yet looking as if the slightest jostle would topple her. “Are you Wyatt Reid’s mother?”

“He’s my son, but he hasn’t needed me as his mother in quite some time.” Her voice wilted like her white curls that drooped against her head as if faint from dehydration.

“Wyatt mentioned he was on his way to see you when I spoke to him last night,” Mia said.

A three-point walker turn and small shuffle brought Helen face-to-face with Mia. Her eyes, not slate like Wyatt’s but hazel, blinked behind large round glasses, reflecting an all-too-familiar calculated focus. Mother and son were not that different.

Only one blink interrupted Helen’s slow study of Mia, as if Mia squatted under a microscope. “He cannot be your doctor, dear, as he only treats patients in the emergency room.”

“He saved my life the other night,” Mia confessed. Wyatt required no boost to his ego. Yet his mother should know the depth of her son’s medical skills. “Although we’d already met several years ago in Africa.”

Helen winced, as if in pain, but never reached to massage her tender hip or sore side. Only that flinch of discomfort pinched her skin, flexing the age lines across her face. “Do you volunteer with Wyatt’s organization, too?”

“No,” Mia said.

Helen’s face cleared and her mouth softened, as if the phantom pain receded. Her wispy eyebrows lifted above her glasses, her only encouragement for Mia to continue.

“I’m a documentary filmmaker.” Mia sank into the older woman’s open gaze, recognizing the flicker of loneliness in the hazel depths. Mia knew all too well about feeling alone, even in a crowd. Helen’s gaze hooked inside Mia and prodded her to keep talking. “One of my crew fell from a cliff, and the locals told us to take him to Wyatt in the neighboring village. They were convinced only Wyatt could help him.”

“And did he live?” Robyn finished writing her notes and tucked the paperwork in the back pocket of her scrubs.

“Thanks to Wyatt.” Mia maneuvered her walker next to Helen’s.

“Like I said before, Helen, you raised him right. And a boy raised right always needs his mama.” Nettie set her phone on the counter and turned away to answer a patient’s call on the intercom system.

“That’s kind, but it’s utter nonsense.” Helen’s quiet laughter failed to mask the sadness that burned into the dark rims around her eyes.

Robyn stepped up beside Mia. “Okay, ladies, we’ve rested and it’s time to walk.”

Helen’s PT joined them. “Ready to head back, Helen?”

“I suppose it’s my only option, unless you’re going to let me make my escape.” Helen pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the main elevators. “You’d only need to look the other way for five minutes.”

The women laughed. “You can rest in the chairs at the end of the hallway until Occupational Therapy arrives. There’s a good view of the elevators from there. You can run on OT’s watch.”

Helen set her hand on Mia’s walker. “They’re not going to let you leave either, dear. You might as well tell me about this filmmaking while we walk. You’ll save me from answering more questions about my pain level and bathroom successes.”

“It’s a family business,” Mia said. “Or was until my father passed last fall.” She always remained detached in the retelling. Always. Until now. With Wyatt’s mom. Now the grief cinched around her lungs like some medieval corset, replacing air with tears. Save the emotion for the film reel, Mia.

“I’m sorry.” Nothing false slipped through Helen’s words. “Now you’re left with the burden to carry on alone.”

The sincerity in Helen’s voice crested through Mia, and the understanding in her gaze loosened several tears. Helen knew loss. She also recognized loneliness. The similarities between mother and son clearly ran only skin deep. Mia brushed at her damp cheek. “My dad taught me everything I know, and I can’t fail him.”

“Of course you won’t, my dear.” Helen squeezed Mia’s arm with the same confident strength that bolstered her voice. “Now tell me, what do you film?”

“My father started with human rights before transitioning into environmental issues. His last two series covered endangered wildlife around the world and the effects of urban sprawl on their habitats. I’m finishing the final film in the series about the human impact on the environment for the Nature Wildlife Network.” Mia inhaled, searching for air to clog the wheeze in her throat. Walking and talking had never before left her winded.

“If you’re traveling for your films, where do you call home?” Helen asked.

Lately wherever her tent stakes stuck in the ground. “I’m a bit of a nomad.”

“Or perhaps you haven’t discovered that one place you want to settle in,” Helen suggested.

Nothing relaxed inside Mia at the idea of living in the same place. Her mother had established herself in New York. But Mia wasn’t a stayer like her mom. She wasn’t made for settling. Her father had taught her to live her passion. Documentary films weren’t made behind a desk, scouring the internet for video footage. To be a success she must embrace her father’s lifestyle and not settle for anything less. “I’ve settled into being a nomad.”

“My husband never liked to travel.” Helen paused and held out her hand, curving her arm like a graceful ballerina. “I always wanted to dance through a field of heather or touch a red ginger flower in the wild or collect seashells along a white-sand beach.”

Mia had dug more than her toes in the white sand in the Gulf of Mexico. She’d crawled across the beach on her stomach, filming the rare Kemp’s ridley hatchlings emerging from their nests to crawl home to the ocean. Sand stuck to places it never should’ve been weeks after they’d wrapped filming. She hadn’t exactly danced through the field of heather; more like trampled the purple flowers, tracking the sea eagles on the Isle of Skye. Yet the cloud of midges and her severe allergic reaction to the bites from the hundreds of tiny bugs downgraded the trip from cherished to agonizingly itchy. If only she hadn’t followed her father up the mountainside for a shot that had never made the final film cut.

However, she could envision a younger version of Helen Reid sashaying through that same field, pausing to greet each flower like a garden fairy from the ancient myths. The images clicked through her mind, vivid stills of moments captured and preserved. But Mia wasn’t creating a memory book for Helen. “You could celebrate your full recovery by traveling to Scotland with Wyatt.”

“He has other important commitments and I have my gardens. At least for now.” The steel in Helen’s tone gave the sadness in her quiet gaze a backbone.

“Have your doctors restricted you from gardening when you get home?”

“My doctors like to tell me I’ve a bionic hip now.” Helen patted her leg. “I may need to replace the other one so it can keep up with its new-and-improved partner.”

“When will you be back to your gardens?” Mia asked.

“As soon as I can convince my doctor to sign off on my get-out-of-jail paperwork.” Helen’s therapist guided her into the chair. After ensuring Helen’s comfort, the woman disappeared into another patient room. Helen shifted to look at Mia. “When do you get to leave?”

“As soon as Dr. Hensen agrees to close my wound and any doctor signs my discharge papers.” Mia lowered herself into the chair beside Helen and swallowed her sigh of relief. She refused to look at Robyn, who scribbled across her paper notes before checking over Mia one last time and rushed off.

Helen tugged her walker closer to rest her arm on. “We both need someone to recognize we’re more than capable of handling our own affairs and seeing to our own health.”

“You’ll let me know when you’ve found that person, won’t you?” Mia tipped her head against the windowsill behind her and inhaled around the throbbing in her leg.

“As long as you promise to do the same,” Helen said.

“Wyatt must’ve noticed your progress,” Mia said. “Surely he wants you back home.”

“My son is not the person we need,” Helen said. “He doesn’t believe I’m safe in my gardens.”

“Wyatt wants you to give up your gardens?” Mia asked. Wyatt wanted Mia to give up on her film to focus on her recovery, as if she couldn’t do both successfully.

“Insists I’m not safe in my own home now. Can you imagine? I’ve lived there longer than he’s been alive.” Helen shifted in her chair. “Wyatt doesn’t believe in anything he cannot control.”

Like love. Wyatt had wanted Mia to stay in Africa to discover if there was something more than attraction between them. But that meant putting her work second. Something he hadn’t been willing to do himself. It also meant taking a chance on love.

But she’d vowed years ago never to risk everything for love. Her mother had loved like that and had ended up alone with only her wedding ring as proof of her thirty-year marriage. Besides, she’d witnessed her father choose between his work and his wife. There hadn’t been enough love for both in his life. You have to be willing to sacrifice for your art, Mia. It’s the only way to build a legacy. Perhaps her father was right, except there was nothing for Mia to sacrifice if she never risked her heart.

The elevator doors slid open and Wyatt stepped onto the floor, confidence and determination in every sure step down the hall toward them. Awareness fired across her nerves, straightening her spine and kicking up her pulse. He irritated her, nothing more than that. How could he take away his mother’s passion and crush her like that? How insensitive was he? Keeping her mom in the home she’d bought with Mia’s father on their first anniversary was Mia’s priority.

But then Wyatt would’ve made Mia choose, too: between him and her art. Fortunately she’d fled with her heart intact and no regrets.

Wyatt nodded at her and leaned down to press a soft kiss on his mother’s cheek. Mia clenched the chair arms to keep from touching her own cheek. Greetings from her ex-boyfriends had been absentminded and distant at best. Her father’s greetings had included a cold cup of coffee and instructions to keep the day on schedule. Annoyed that he made her miss something insignificant like a simple kiss, she frowned at Wyatt.

“Wyatt, you never mentioned your friend was a patient here, too.” Helen tugged on her robe, adjusting the silk material around her legs. “But then you never mentioned Mia when you met her in Africa either.”

“You never mentioned you’d become the welcoming committee for the third floor.” Disapproval thinned his mouth into a flat line.

Which would’ve been more than acceptable if the urge to make him smile didn’t jolt Mia. Clearly, she needed a cup of her father’s cold coffee and a dose of reality. She stretched both legs out as if she’d just finished an hour of hot yoga, not struggled to walk the length of the hallway without slowing to catch her breath. She needed to concentrate on her recovery, not Wyatt’s lack of humor. “We’re between therapy sessions.”

Helen reached over, patted Mia’s arm. Each tap made Mia’s grin broaden as Wyatt’s frown lengthened. His mom added, “There are no rules against patients visiting with each other.”

But this wasn’t about two patients. This was about a mother and a former something—Mia wasn’t sure how to label what Wyatt and she had been in Africa. Still, she knew that hard gaze, that stiff stance from his taut shoulders to his tense hands on his hips. Wyatt had worn that same look every time Eddy had failed to follow his orders exactly. Now Wyatt leveled his displeasure on Mia and Helen. Except Mia wasn’t sure what Wyatt Reid rule the women had violated.

“Was there a reason you were keeping Mia a secret?” Helen’s voice was mild, as if she didn’t care if she violated a rule or not.

Mia was curious, too. “Maybe he thought we’d plan to escape together.”

Helen laughed. “And fly to Scotland to stroll through the fields of heather that I’ve always wanted to feel under my bare feet.”

Wyatt’s mouth opened, the smallest fraction that betrayed his surprise before he smashed his lips together.

Mia eyed him, enjoying his discomfort. “There’s still more to learn about your mom.”

“Wyatt is content with the mother he knows.” Resignation slipped through Helen’s voice.

“Certainly, your son wouldn’t presume to know everything about you.” Mia kept her gaze fixed on Wyatt and her voice just a notch above scolding. He’d claimed to want to learn everything about Mia one time, too. But only if Mia fit conveniently into his work schedule with little disruption to his life. “People change and grow all the time.”

Wyatt crossed his arms over his chest and kept his gaze fastened on hers, the challenge clear. “People also believe they need the approval of others to feel valuable and waste their entire lives seeking that approval, which they’re never going to get.”

Good thing she never required or needed Wyatt’s approval. She’d be waiting a long time. Maybe forever. “Everyone wants to be accepted and liked for who they are.”

“But sometimes who we are isn’t enough.” His voice was raw, as if bruised. His cheeks pulled in, accenting that grim air around him.

Her mother hadn’t been enough to keep her father home for longer than a weekend. Mia worked every day to prove she was more than enough to step into her father’s illustrious shoes, despite the doubts from the network, the film industry and even her own crew. She’d prove herself, keep her promise to her father, and then she’d be fulfilled. She’d finally be good enough. And that would be enough. Yet her gaze locked with Wyatt’s, and those slate eyes narrowed on her as if he heard the whispered denial coming from deep inside her chest. She slapped her palm over her ribs, blocking out Wyatt and disrupting the rumblings from a heart she had no intention of ever listening to.

“Well, I’ve had enough philosophical chitchat for the day.” Helen pulled her walker in front of her. “I don’t understand why your generation can’t simply say what they mean.”

“We do. Your generation just doesn’t want to hear it.” Wyatt shifted his attention to his mom, releasing Mia from his shrewd focus.

Mia sagged against the chair as if she’d run ten city blocks, not shutting out Wyatt and keeping him from revealing truths she rejected.

“Perhaps because it’s all nonsense.” Helen touched Mia’s arm and grinned. “Mia, I’ll see you when the therapy dogs arrive later.”

“Mom, you don’t like dogs.” Wyatt set his hands on his hips. Surprise jutted his chin forward.

“Nonsense. I had a German shepherd growing up.” Helen’s smile looked more girlish and young from the memory. Her voice eased into the wistful. “Smokey was my favorite pet.”

“You never mentioned Smokey before.” Wyatt rubbed his chin, his gaze dropping to the floor.

“You never asked,” Helen countered, her voice stiff and starched.

Mia winced from the lack of lightness in Helen’s tone.

Wyatt never flinched from Helen’s barb. Only stuffed his hands into his scrubs pant pockets and tucked his elbows into his sides as if preparing himself to absorb more of his mom’s rebukes. “Trent and I asked for a puppy every year until I left for college. Every year you said no.”

“Your father told you no, not me.” Helen turned to Mia. Her voice lowered, as if they’d stepped into a hushed confessional. “I’d overruled my husband on several things like the tree house, skateboards and video games. Thought I’d let him have his way with the no-dog rule. Good marriages are about knowing when to let the other one win.”

Mia had witnessed only the elements of a bad marriage with her own mother: unrequited love, a stalled life and a husband who paid for the stability his absence couldn’t provide.

“So good marriages are a competition, then, and not about compromise and mutual respect.” The humor in Wyatt’s tone soaked the sarcasm from his words as he stepped to the side of Helen’s chair. He reached out as if anticipating his mom’s next move.

“Good marriages are about real love, knowing what really matters to your spouse and romance.” Helen gripped her walker and stood up, greeting her therapist with a wide smile. “Vicky, you’ve rescued me from explaining the intimate details of a good marriage to my son.”

The older woman laughed and squeezed Wyatt’s shoulder before assisting Helen. “Follow your mother’s example and you’ll have a fulfilling marriage.”

Wyatt stepped back and rubbed his neck as if the idea of marriage misaligned his spine.

Mia cleared her throat, trying to break up her own laughter.

Helen turned toward Wyatt. “You’ll be back for dinner.” It wasn’t a request or suggestion—it was a command from a mother to her son. Disobedience wouldn’t be tolerated. Wyatt had more in common with his mom than Mia had first assumed. The Reid family certainly liked to order others around.

Helen shuffled down the hall, her laughter mixed with the therapist’s. Mia watched Wyatt’s eyebrows draw together as if he suddenly didn’t recognize his own mom.

“Good thing marriage isn’t on either of our to-do lists.” Mia let her amusement disrupt the silence.

Wyatt faced her, his fingers tapping against his bottom lip. “You wouldn’t claim to know everything on my to-do list, would you?”

Mia’s laughter fizzled like a candle in a rainstorm. Wyatt’s slow smile streamed through her, spreading a warmth like the sun’s first appearance after that storm.

Robyn arrived, pushing Mia’s transportation to the hyperbaric chamber between Mia and Wyatt. Mia sighed, relieved she’d get to sit in the wheelchair, instead of relying on her walker and sluggish legs and muddled mind. Robyn couldn’t carry her away from Wyatt fast enough.

CHAPTER FOUR

WYATT STRETCHED HIS neck and rolled his shoulders. He’d been crammed into the too-small recliner in his mother’s room for too long. He should go home and stretch out in a real bed. But there was more comfort in the stiff recliner than at his mom’s house.

His childhood home had been overrun by foliage and greenery, and no matter where he looked he couldn’t find any old childhood memories, good or bad. The cactus terrariums replaced the kid-art shelf of awkward clay pots and smeared-handprint pictures. Oil paintings of roses and orchids displaced family photos across the hallway walls. The scent of earth and soil lingered in every room, where vanilla and fresh-out-of-the-oven sugar cookies used to fill every breath. Even the tree house he’d built with Trent one summer before fifth grade had been overtaken by vines. The house was slowly being eaten by his mother’s plants.

He crumpled up another foundation application and tossed it into the wastebasket. Each scammer application etched his cynicism all that much deeper. “You’ll be lucky to have even ten real applicants to choose from.”

“Now isn’t the time for judgment.” His mom glanced up from her crossword and pointed her pen at him. “Just because these organizations don’t bring medical care to an entire country doesn’t make them less worthy of our support.”

He’d lost her support when his brother had died. He doubted he’d ever get it back. Fanning out several applications, he waved the papers at her. “You should go through these and decide for yourself.”

His mom removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I’m too worn out tonight.”

“Spent too much time greeting new patients and playing with the dogs.” His mom was a closet dog lover. Nothing about that made sense. Nothing. Surely he should’ve known such a small personal detail about his own mother. He could recite the medical histories from his great-grandparents to his parents. Knew the family suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes and fraternal twins peppered the family tree on his mother’s side. He knew the vital information and important facts. That he’d only just learned about his mom’s dog history shouldn’t matter. The small dose of worry stuck in the back of his throat like a partially dissolved pill that should’ve been easy to wash down. After all, he knew everything that he needed to about his mom, didn’t he?

The click of her pen on the bedside table pulled Wyatt’s attention back to his mom.

She tossed her crossword book on top of the pen. “I only met one patient, and the dog visits are good for my health. They lower blood pressure, alleviate stress and anxiety.”

Maybe he should thank the therapy dogs for pulling his mom out of her death-is-coming-for-me phase and stop worrying about the things that didn’t matter, like her childhood pets. “You seem more relaxed tonight.”

“I owe that to Mia.” The pleasure in her smile brightened her voice in the dim room.

The words on the application in Wyatt’s hand blurred until all he saw was Mia’s wide copper-tinted eyes and even wider smile from earlier. A smile that punched him in the gut, deep enough to leave a permanent imprint and rattle his resolve to think of her as just another patient. Now Mia made his mother happy, too. That was unacceptable. His gut twisted around that punch. “Did Mia distract you with stories of her filmmaking adventures?”

“No, she was rather closed off about her life.” Helen frowned. “I’ll have to talk to her more about that tomorrow.”

Wyatt could hardly describe his relationship with Mia. Except from the moment he’d seen her in mud-coated hiking boots, a T-shirt splattered with blood and a fierceness in her attitude, he’d been drawn to her. Even when she’d demanded that he save her friend’s life. Even when she’d defied his orders to leave the surgery area and instead positioned herself at the door like a guardian angel ready to swoop in if he failed her friend.

He wondered how Mia would describe their time in the village. He crumpled up another scam application, shooting it into the trash can, along with his wayward thoughts. Mia’s version didn’t matter. Nothing good came from dissecting the past. Lessons had already been learned, and he prided himself on not being a repeat offender. “Don’t pry where you’re not invited, Mom.”

“Mia supports my desire to return home.” Helen took off her glasses and folded the arms together. “I’ll only be reciprocating the concern.”

“She told you to move home?” No wonder she’d made his mom giddy, telling her exactly what she wanted to hear. Wyatt struggled to keep his face impassive. How dare Mia put such impossible ideas into his mom’s head. His mom already had too many impractical plans on her agenda.

“The idea that you were forcing me to give up my gardening appalled her.” Helen’s glass case closed with the same snap that punctuated her voice. “Mia believes a life not spent doing what you love is a life wasted.”

Mia needed to analyze her own life and leave his mom’s alone. Besides, one stroll through his mother’s house proved his mom might’ve escalated her passion to an obsession. Something her new friend could surely understand after chasing her own father around the globe. The drive for the perfect film footage had consumed Carlo Fiore so fully, he had nothing else to give his only daughter. Mia wanted a father, Carlo wanted a legacy. And it looked like Carlo had won. Mia had almost died for her film. That was passion in the Fiore family and stupidity in Wyatt’s mind. Still, Mia embraced her father’s life just as he’d trained her to. Just as Carlo Fiore had expected. Yet Wyatt wondered how much Mia loved the reality of her life now. “You can still garden and grow your plants.”

“There’s hardly room for more than two plants in the single window in those places.” Her frown joined the distaste in her voice. “Never mind the sunlight required for an herb garden.”

“If you looked at the floor plan, there’s more than one window.” Wyatt crammed the stack of applications into his backpack, ramming his frustration inside, too. “It isn’t a prison.”

“Mia suggested that my therapists do a home visit to assess the dangers before I move back.” Helen adjusted her covers, tugging the blankets up to her chin. “I spoke to both of my therapists this afternoon and offered to give them my set of keys if you’re schedule is too full to accommodate such a small request.”

Wyatt tapped his fist against his mouth, knocking his retort back behind his teeth. He really must thank Mia for her abundant help.

His mom lowered the head of her bed, signaling her desire to sleep and the end of their conversation.

Mia needed to stop making suggestions. Now. His mother needed to stop acting as if she came last in his life. He’d come home, hadn’t he? He swung the backpack on his shoulder and kissed his mom’s cheek. “I’ll talk to your therapists tomorrow.”

Right after he set Mia straight before things went too far and she’d written his mother’s discharge and home care orders herself.

Wyatt strode down the hall and noticed the light streaming from Mia’s room, not the soft night setting that allowed patients to see their way to the bathroom. But the full daylight setting that lit up the room like the noon sun across the desert. She knew the importance of sleep. A hospital room wasn’t a home office, and pulling an all-night work session would set back her recovery.

She had to be awake. No one could sleep in that flood of light. After he yelled at her for working all night, he’d order her to stay away from his mother. And if he sounded like a father warning a detention-stricken boy away from his honors-achieving daughter, maybe she’d listen and get in line.

“It’s lights out, Mia.” Wyatt tugged on the curtain shielding Mia’s bed. “As in stop working and go to...” Whatever else Wyatt might’ve said drained from his voice.

Several pillows propped Mia upright as if to better support her work session. Except her hands clenched the laptop like metal clamps. The deep, dark pockets under her eyes cast shadows down her cheeks. Strands of her chestnut hair poked out from her braid, stiff and crinkled, not soft and silky. Her right leg rested on top of the covers, but her foot, encased in a Bay Water Hospital sock, remained flexed, her knee locked and toes rigid as if she prepared herself to absorb the impact of ramming into the wall feetfirst.

“Working all night isn’t part of your treatment plan.” Wyatt reached for her laptop.

“I’m not.” Her grip on the computer tightened as if someone secured those clamps. “I have to.”

Wyatt checked her IVs, wondering if some sort of night terror was being caused by the pain meds. “It can wait.”

“I just need to watch.” Her hold never loosened. Only her wide gaze lifted to collide with his, her words toppling over each other. “If I just watch, everything will be fine again.”

The terror that burned the edges of her amber eyes seared through him, spiking his own blood pressure. He hadn’t ever witnessed her fear. As far as he knew, Mia dared fear to try to scare her. But in this moment, he couldn’t deny that fright engulfed her like uncontained wildfire.

“You can watch tomorrow.” He soothed his voice into the placating style of those hostage negotiators he’d seen on TV and tugged on the laptop, gaining some traction. She certainly hadn’t slacked off with her fitness in the past two years. Of course, all those adventure and wilderness shoots didn’t happen from the comfort of a jeep.

“Wyatt, press Play.” Mia’s gaze locked on the computer screen. Her cheeks paled as if she’d whitened her warm beige skin with bleach. “Just press Play, please.”

The shiver of dread leaking through her voice crept up his spine. Time to end this and regain control. He sat on the side of the bed and shifted into her view, replacing the computer screen with his face in her line of sight. “Mia, inhale now. Breathe in until I tell you to stop.” He cupped her cold cheeks in both of his hands. “Good. Exhale.”

He mimicked her breathing, matching his inhales and exhales to hers. The hitch in her breath stopped after the fifth exhale. She blinked after five more inhales. Another set of five and the warmth returned to her skin beneath his palms.

“You can let go.” Mia blinked, the movement slow and exaggerated, as if her eyelashes cleared the lingering fear from her gaze.

He rubbed his thumbs over her cheeks. “I’ll let go when I want.”

“Really, I’m fine now.” Still she leaned into his touch.

The shadows finally settled back into the bruises beneath her eyes. She was better, but far from fine. “You need to get some sleep.”

“I was trying to do that,” she argued.

“With your laptop.”

She pushed his arms away and grasped the computer as if he’d caused the crisis. “I’m being stupid. I already survived. It’s not like I’ll die from watching the footage.”

He flattened his palm against the laptop, keeping her from lifting the screen. “What footage?”

“There’s video from my accident. I need to watch it.” Confidence coated her voice, yet the tremor in her fingers as she tried to open the computer gave her away.

He set his hand over hers as if he had every right. As if she was more than just another patient. “Eddy and Shane can pull out any useful footage.”

“Shane already did that.” She curled her fingers into a fist beneath his palm.

“Then let it alone.”

“I can’t.” She stared at their hands. Her fingers twitched beneath his touch.

“There’s no point in reliving it.” If she only released her fist the tiniest bit, he could weave his fingers through hers and draw her focus back to him. He wanted to replace her fear with something better. Something meaningful. Something worth remembering. Like their first and only kiss.

“I relive it every night already,” she whispered.

“Isn’t that enough?” Couldn’t he be enough? No, he didn’t want to be her anything. He straightened and folded his arms over his chest to keep from reaching for her again. Or doing something absurd like giving in to his urge to hold more than her hand.

Mia was his past. Their brief time together nothing more than an inaccurate reading on an otherwise normal EKG. His future involved setting up medical clinics to those in desperate situations, not succumbing to what was nothing more than a chemical reaction in his body. He’d touched Mia and his brain released dopamine and norepinephrine to charge his nerves, trying to enhance his emotions, trying to lead him astray. Yet science was his specialty, and any reaction to Mia, or any woman for that matter, he controlled.

The only heart-related discussions he planned to have involved words like cardiac arrhythmias, coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction. There were no medical degrees in fairy tales and pipe dreams. Besides, if love truly saved, his brother would be alive today. Love always exacted a price, and that was a price he’d never pay again.

He shoved the clinician inside him forward and eyed her as he would any other irrational patient. “There’s medicine to help you sleep. Nurses right down the hall who can administer the medicine into your IV.”

“Sleep won’t help me.” She latched onto his arm and squeezed as if more pressure would make him understand her better. “Why can’t you get that?”

Wyatt curled his fingers into fists, coiling his arms tighter against his chest like a cornered rattlesnake. Taking her into his arms and kissing her panic away had not been prescribed. Disgusted with his misplaced impulses, he didn’t pause to dilute the acidic bite in his tone. “Why can’t you be reasonable? Take some medicine and forget the accident.”

“There is no forgetting. I almost died.” Her eyes opened like a B-list horror film actress before she slapped her hand over her mouth as if trying to snatch back her confession.

“And that scares you.” As it should. Finally, she recognized the risk she took, and all for a few minutes of footage for a film. No film was worth her life.

“I don’t have time for this.” She waved away his comment. “I just need to get some decent sleep.”

And to let go of her fear. But he wasn’t her psychologist or her doctor or her anything. She didn’t need him. Still, he never moved from the side of her bed. “So what’s your plan?”

“Watch the actual footage. Set my memories straight and fall asleep like usual.” She nodded, quick and bold, as if the lack of hesitation convinced them both.

Wyatt squeezed the back of his neck, trying to pinch his inner commentary back down his throat. She’d only be giving her dreams more footage to twist through her nightmares. “Isn’t there a saying about how ignorance can be bliss?”

“In this case, it’s a nightmare. Literally.”

“May I?” He picked up the laptop and, at her nod, set the computer on the bedside table.

“I still have to watch the video.” Relief softened her warning, and she relaxed into the pillows behind her.

Wyatt still had to walk away. Not look back. Instead he dropped into the chair, propped his feet on the edge of her bed and turned on the TV as if this was exactly where he belonged. He channel-surfed until he found what he wanted. “Let’s try something, and if it doesn’t work, you can grab the laptop and put the video on Replay for the rest of the night.”

“We aren’t seriously going to watch Ruined and Renewed,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you live this life every day.” Mia adjusted the covers around her injured leg. “Unless you like to critique the show and point out all the flaws and inconsistencies with the patients’ medical emergencies and the doctors’ surgical treatments.”

“Except I don’t get to see the buildup. What prompted these people to do what they did? Who had the common sense to take the person to the ER?” Wyatt upped the volume, trying to tune out Mia and the alarms warning him that staying any longer in her room was a bad idea. A very bad idea. “It’s always good to have a change in your perspective. To see things from someone else’s point of view, even if it’s an utterly insane viewpoint.”

Two episodes later, after an esophagus repair caused by a knife-swallowing dare and a botched face-lift performed by an unlicensed fraud, Mia slept with her good leg pressed against Wyatt’s feet and her face turned toward him. Wyatt remained wide awake, rooted in the chair like one of his mother’s plants. Unable to move. Or perhaps unwilling to move. He should leave. He had to leave.

Reaching for the laptop, he settled it on his lap, pressed the power button and prayed Mia had finally adopted the habit of password protection. The desktop filled the screen, the movie program already launched and no request for a password. Some things hadn’t changed.

Wyatt hit the mute button on the TV sound, checked on Mia and pressed Play. Twenty too-long minutes later, he closed the laptop and tried to smother the queasiness rolling through his stomach. Resting his elbows on his knees, he inhaled, forcing air deep into his lungs to crowd the panic out of his body. Nothing in the ER or in a medical tent in Africa ever left him this raw, exposed and twitchy. All that from watching a video.

He glanced over at Mia’s bandaged arm resting on top of the covers and winced at the reminder of a disoriented Mia hacking through her wet suit into her flesh with her dive blade as she thrashed around to untangle herself from the kelp and fishing line. All while running out of air. He rubbed his chest, drew another breath. Then another because he needed the reminder: he wasn’t drowning. He wasn’t trapped under the ocean, out of oxygen and time.

He leaned toward the bed and held Mia’s good hand between both of his. The contact satisfied nothing. He wanted a reaction. He wanted her to wake up, squeeze his fingers and reassure him that she really was alive. How pathetic had he become?

Mia Fiore needed a keeper. She needed someone to watch out for her and keep her from putting her life at risk again. She needed someone to show her that she was worth more alive than dead. She needed someone to love her beyond all reason.

Fortunately, that someone wasn’t Wyatt. He lived only within reason. Clearly when he was with Mia, he lost his common sense. He’d suffered a panic attack from simply watching the video of her accident. If he actually witnessed another one of her near-death incidents, he’d probably lose his mind altogether. That was an unacceptable flaw. He’d been trained to be a doctor, not a lovesick fool.

He held on to her hand, reluctant to let go. He’d forgotten how well her hand fit inside his.

Another few minutes wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t as if he needed to touch her to feel better. He just wanted some time to remind his body that his feet were planted on the ground, not the deck of a dive boat.

Besides, he’d be leaving soon to return to Africa. And he had every intention of boarding that plane with a sound mind and his heart intact.

CHAPTER FIVE

MIA TIPPED HER head toward the door, and delight spiraled through her stomach, making her smile fill her from the inside out. Wyatt stood inside her room as if she’d wished him there. A young girl and boy anchored him on each side, and all wore matching grins as if they’d raided the dessert bar in the cafeteria and escaped undetected. She would’ve joined them if they’d only asked. And that was proof of just how restorative last night’s sleep had been. She’d never done silly things as a child, but the trio in her doorway tempted her now.

“Mia, I’d like to introduce you to my friends.” Wyatt’s mouth seemed to be late in catching up with the smile flaring from inside him. Happiness surged through his cool gaze. His movements were relaxed and easy. Clearly Mia and he needed to watch more marathon sessions of Ruined and Renewed, as Wyatt looked as refreshed as Mia felt. Wyatt shifted, allowing the blonde curly-haired girl gripping his elbow with one hand and a white cane in her other to move into the room. “This is Ella Callahan.”

“My mom brings the therapy dogs to visit everyone here.” Ella folded her cane and pushed her lavender glasses up on her nose. “I’m too young to get a guide dog, but Mom promised me when I turn sixteen, we can apply. But Mom says she’ll be a working dog, so she can’t come visit sick people.”

Mia took a deep breath for Ella. The precious little girl spoke fast, as if she was in the final round of a timed debate. “Nice to meet you, Ella. The therapy dogs are wonderful, but something tells me I’m going to enjoy this surprise visit even more.”

Ella grinned and tugged her purple sweatshirt stamped with the words Power to the Dreamer down over her bold-striped leggings.

Wyatt set his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “This is Ben Sawyer.”

Not releasing his hold on the stack of board games in his arms, Ben jerked his head and flicked his copper bangs off his forehead, revealing deep green eyes. “My dad drives the ambulance here.”

Wyatt guided the pair toward Mia’s bedside. “Guys, this is my friend Mia Fiore. She’s the one I was telling you about who makes films.”

“Cool.” Ben shifted his weight and leaned forward, his gaze fixed on Mia’s open wound. “What happened to your leg?” Fascination, not horror, widened the boy’s eyes, as if he happily imagined every sort of grotesque reason for her cut.

“I was in a diving accident,” Mia said.

“Did a shark bite you?” That wonder spilled into Ben’s breathless voice.

“Not exactly. I cut myself with a dive knife.” Ben’s shoulders drooped, and his long sigh filled the room, making Mia want to take back the truth and confess she’d fought off a great white shark.

“Amelia got cut with a knife, too.” Ella leaned into Wyatt. “Except Dr. Wyatt says the doctor had to cut her. Amelia’s appendix made her sick. Ben and I have stayed in hospitals because my eyes don’t work like they’re supposed to and neither does Ben’s pancreas. So we came to visit Amelia.”

“And Dad wanted my port checked, even though Aunty Ava told him the port was fine.” Ben shook his head and adjusted the board games in his arms.

“Ms. Ava would know. She was in the war.” Ella tipped her chin down as if daring anyone to argue with her statement. “And she rides in the ambulance with Ben’s dad.”

“Dr. Wyatt told us Aunty Ava saved you on the dock.” Ben eyed Mia.

The children’s adoration of Ava was more than clear. Mia admitted she wanted to meet the real-world superwoman who captured this pair’s love and support. “I need to meet your aunt, so I can thank her.”

“I get to call her Aunty Ava even though we don’t share blood or anything like that.” Pride made Ben’s thin shoulders straighten. “But Dad says you don’t have to have the same blood to be family.”

“My dad is like your aunty Ava,” Ella said. ‘We don’t share blood either, but he’s my real dad. Dr. Wyatt, do you have family that isn’t family like us?”

Wyatt wrapped an arm around each child and pulled them close into his sides. His gaze locked on Mia, causing her to feel more than happiness at his visit.

He made her want to change her perspective. He made her want...

Wyatt added, “I’m starting to think it’s time that I expand my family.”

Right now, Mia wanted to wrap the trio in her embrace, hold on tight and demand that they tell her what it would take for her to reach Aunty status. “What are you three up to?” And can I join in? Please.

“Our board game tournament was halted thanks to the nurses having to do blood draws, vitals checks and other nurse things.” Wyatt shuddered as if all those tests terrified him. “We were afraid they might test us, too, so we ran away and decided to hide here in your room.”

Ella and Ben giggled.

“I see,” Mia said. “What’s your plan now?”

Wyatt checked the wall clock. “We’ve got a good hour before their parents come to get them.”

“We have games.” Ben lifted the boxes.

Ella patted the front pocket on her sweatshirt. “If you don’t like those games, I have two decks of cards in here.”

“I’m not sure I should play.” The list of final edits and sound bites waited on her laptop.

Both kids stretched out the word please in unison.

Wyatt tipped his chin toward the children as if he’d dropped a challenge in the form of two adorable ten-year-old kids. As if he dared her to turn them down.

Mia swept her hair up into a bun and would’ve rolled up her sleeves if she had any on her hospital gown. “It’s just that I really like to win, and I don’t want to make Dr. Wyatt cry when I beat him.” Challenge accepted.

Ella covered her mouth with her hand, but her giggle slipped around her fingers. Ben dropped his forehead toward the game boxes and tipped his head to peek at Wyatt. The quiver in the boy’s thin shoulders gave away his laughter.

Wyatt straightened and set his hands on his hips. “I’m undefeated in chess and cards today.”

“Not for much longer,” Mia said. “Ella, should we team up? Girls against boys for a chess tournament.”

“Yes.” Ben edged into Wyatt’s side.

Ella grinned. “The losers have to buy whatever dessert the winners want, even if they hate it.”

“Deal.” Ben leaned around Wyatt to look at Ella. “Get ready to eat moldy cheese jelly beans, Ella.”

“You have to win first.” Ella turned her head toward her friend and frowned. “But you’ll be eating beet ice cream when we win.”

Ben grimaced and turned to consider Mia’s leg. “Can you get out of bed, Ms. Mia?”

“I need to get out of this bed, Ben. Thanks for giving me an excuse.” A quick round of finger flexes proved the numbness had lessened in her right hand. Wiggling her toes didn’t grant the same results. Yesterday Robyn had steadied her more than once during her bed-to-chair transfers. She’d need help now, too, but she was playing in this tournament despite any discomfort. “Dr. Wyatt, you take the kids and set up in the visitors lounge. I’ll have Roslyn take me down there.”

“When the boys win, you might wish you stayed in bed.” Wyatt bumped his fist against Ben’s knuckles, as the boy wouldn’t relinquish his grip on the games.

“When the girls win, you’ll wish you’d stayed on the other ward and let the nurses run tests on you,” Mia countered.

Ella cheered.

Mia waved toward the door. “Now go while you boys still have a few minutes to strategize.”

“What about us?” Worry pinched Ella’s eyebrows together behind her glasses.

“We’re girls,” Mia said. “We were born to win.”

Ella brightened and set her hand on Wyatt’s elbow. “I’ll make sure everything is set up correctly, Ms. Mia.”

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