Three hours and seventeen minutes after Ethan called me, a surgical resident I didn’t recognize came through the double doors. She looked around the waiting room and her eyes landed on me.
“Monica Rivers?”
I stood up so fast I nearly knocked over my chair. “Yes. How is she?”
“The surgery was successful. We managed to stop the internal bleeding and relieve the pressure on her brain. She’s being moved to ICU now. The next forty-eight hours are critical, but she has a chance.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, feeling tears I didn’t understand streaming down my face. “Thank you so much.”
The resident nodded and disappeared back through the doors, but before they closed, I caught a glimpse of someone in surgical scrubs standing at the end of the hallway, shoulders slumped with exhaustion.
Ethan.
I texted him: I’m in the surgical waiting room when you’re ready.
Twenty minutes later, he appeared, still in his scrubs, his hair disheveled and his eyes red-rimmed. He looked like he’d aged five years in the past three hours.
I stood up and he walked straight into my arms, resting his head on my shoulder like he used to do when he was small.
“I saved her,” he whispered against my shoulder. “I don’t know if I should have, but I did.”
I held him tighter. “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” He pulled back to look at me, and I saw confusion and pain and something else in his eyes—maybe relief, maybe regret, maybe both. “She threw me away like I was nothing, and I just spent three hours of my life putting her back together. What does that make me?”
“It makes you a better person than she ever was,” I said firmly. “It makes you someone who chose compassion over revenge. Someone who honored his oath even when it hurt. I am so proud of you I don’t have words for it.”
He nodded slowly, exhaustion washing over his features. “Can we go home?”
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
Two days later, Ashley regained consciousness. The hospital called to inform me, and I stood in the ICU doorway for a long moment, trying to decide if I wanted to see her. Fifteen years of anger and hurt warred with something else—not forgiveness exactly, but maybe closure.
I pushed the door open and walked in.
Ashley looked small in the hospital bed, her head wrapped in bandages, tubes and wires connecting her to various machines that beeped and hummed. She turned her head slightly when she heard me enter, and her eyes widened.
“Monica,” she croaked, her voice rough from the breathing tube they’d removed earlier that morning.
“Ashley.”
We stared at each other across the distance of fifteen years and countless wounds.
“They told me what happened,” she said finally. “The surgery. They said a resident stayed the whole time, did most of the work. They said he was exceptional.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” she whispered. “It was Ethan.”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her bruised cheek. “Why would he save me? After what I did?”
“Because he’s a better person than either of us,” I said simply. “Because he chose to be a healer instead of letting bitterness destroy him. Because that’s who he is—not because of you, but in spite of you.”
Ashley’s face crumpled. “I need to see him. I need to apologize. I need to—”
“No,” I said firmly. “You need to leave him alone. You gave up the right to be his mother fifteen years ago. He doesn’t need your apology or your guilt or your attempt to make yourself feel better. He has a life now, a good life, and you’re not part of it.”
Leave a Comment