Obsessed(58)

My body broke out in trembles, and I sniffed quietly. I kept those eyes shut so the tears wouldn’t escape, but I felt them at the corners. God, how embarrassing was this? Not only did he win our staring competition, but he had to watch me break down like a crazy person afterwards.

A hand settled on my back. “It’s alright,” Doctor Crowe said quietly. “You’re alright.”

I collapsed against him, my head hitting his chest. I sobbed, clutching the shirt of a stranger as I broke down. His arm wrapped around me now in a warm embrace. It felt perfect. Like Aston kind of perfect. In this bubble, I was clutching on to Aston and he was holding me, telling me it was alright, giving me the love I’d begged for since Dad’s death. For a split second, I couldn’t remember what was wrong.

I needed this. I needed it so badly.

My trembles eventually died down, and my tears stopped. A euphoric wave passed over me, and then…realization. I was holding on to my ER doctor, not Aston. He smelled like antiseptic wash, not spices. He also had dark eyes, not green, and I kept waiting for him to break out with lines from White Collar, but he did not. It was a day of disappointments.

I pulled away abruptly, like I’d been jolted. His arm dropped straightaway as I backed into the bed, staring at him with wide eyes.

“Aren’t you supposed to be tending to everyone else?” I asked him, forcing a fake smile. This was unbearably awkward, especially when I glimpsed at the wet patch on his chest. His hard chest.

He smiled back warmly. “No, I’m all yours for the time being. I’m going to be back to administer a local anaesthetic and clean that wound up. It should be a relatively painless procedure.”

“What procedure?”

“You need stitches.”

“It’s that bad?”

“It could have been worse.” He got back up. “Give me a few minutes.”

When I nodded, he left and I sat there, listening to more jingle fucking bells.

*

Doctor Crowe was very gentle. He put me back together again. Physically, that is. If only it worked that way with feelings.

There was a nurse in the room with us, and I kind of wished she was gone. I liked when he had held me and told me it was okay. He’d been human to me, whereas now he was painfully professional. I kept waiting for him to act awkward about the whole hugging him thing, but he didn’t look flustered in the slightest. I realized very quickly this was a man that controlled every inch of his emotions. Like Aston. I should have been tired from guys like that.

“It’s going to heal very slowly,” he informed me after he’d finished and bandaged it. “It’ll be red, then pink for a long time. You can use topical creams to help it fade. Take it easy with your hand, don’t prod at the stitches. If anything happens, you come right back. Aside from that, you’re all set to go.”

When I nodded, he stood up. “Have a good afternoon, Miss Wright. And… take care of yourself.”

He left a beat later, not a glance over his shoulder. Why was I expecting anything different?

The nurse led me out. Adrian was still in the waiting room, and he smiled kindly at me as I joined him. We didn’t speak, but he wrapped an arm around me and took me back to the car.

He took me home, but he purposely took a long, scenic route there. We drove through farmland, lakes and areas with stunning mountain views. The sky was so clear, I could see the mountain peaks, and the trees on them looked like giant green cauliflowers swaying in the light breeze. I felt soothed by the sight and the headache that had been pounding inside my skull dulled.

“I know everything is hard,” Adrian told me. “You’ve been through a lot, Elise, but…”

I glanced at him and shrugged half-heartily. “But it wasn’t right what I did. I know that.”

“I’m concerned for you.”

“You don’t need to be. What happened was…Shit, I don’t know what that was.”

“A breakdown.”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, sighing. “I’m going to talk to your mother when we get back. She seems absent.”

“You have no idea.”

“She needs to be there for you. You’ve been alone. I saw that at the funeral. Aston…I can understand his grief. That boy’s been through hell and back as a child, but your mother needed to be there for you.”

I didn’t respond. I just swallowed and numbly looked out the window again.

“We all mourn differently,” he told me. “We shut down, we get angry, we run away. But eventually we have to find ways to move forward. You have to tell your mother that.”

I just nodded because it seemed easier than to argue. He didn’t seem to understand Mom was gone. She couldn’t be brought back, not with my help anyway.