Like she was already learning not to count on it.
Chapter Thirteen
Madison
The hernia repair ran long. They always did with Brauer assisting—the man had good hands but made slow decisions—and by the time I scrubbed out it was past three and I'd missed lunch again. The coffee I'd left on the counter in the break room was going to be undrinkable, which was fine because I was going to drink it anyway.
This was the part of the job I was good at. The corridor between one thing and the next, the momentum of it, the way a full schedule left no room for anything that wasn't the schedule. I'd built my days like that on purpose and I didn't examine it too closely.
I checked my phone. Two messages from Tom about the Seattle conference. One from Reyes about tomorrow's roster. Nothing I needed to deal with in the next ten minutes.
I put it away and kept walking.
The break room was empty. I poured the coffee, which was exactly as bad as I'd expected, and stood at the counter and looked at nothing for a moment and that was when it got in.
Cassie Henley had been dead for thirty-six hours and I couldn't stop thinking about the ways I'd let the years go. Not the big version of it—not the why or the what it meant—just thespecific, small accounting of it. The unreturned calls, and the last time I’d seen her at that coffee shop curb. The photo she'd sent when Lily was born that I'd looked at between shifts and filed away under soon. God, I was good at soon. I'd been good at it for years and now soon was gone… and what was left was a five-year-old two floors down who'd never know I'd meant to do better.
That was the part I couldn't let go of.
And now, somewhere out there, Jack Henley was on a plane. Or in a car. Coming from wherever he'd ended up, which I didn't know and hadn't let myself wonder about until now.
I picked up the next chart and read the same line three times before putting it back down.
The sensible thing—the obvious, clean, professionally appropriate thing—was to stay in my lane. I'd checked on Lily once already. That was enough. I wasn't family, wasn't assigned to the case, wasn't anything except a surgeon who happened to have known the girl's mother a long time ago. Deb had it. The family liaison team had it. My job was the OR, and I had two cases tomorrow and a consult at five that was already running late and absolutely no business going back to the second floor.
And yet, I went back to the second floor.
* * *
Deb was at the nurses station when I came around the corner, writing something, reading glasses low on her nose. She looked up.
"Dr. Clarke."
"Just checking in," I said. "The Henley girl. How is she?"
Deb set her pen down. "Better than yesterday. She ate something this morning." A pause. "Her uncle came in."
I looked at her.
"Just left. Maybe twenty minutes ago." Deb's expression was carefully neutral, the way it always was when she was giving information she suspected mattered more than it appeared to. "Flew in from North Dakota. Went to the ME's office first, then came straight here. He sat with her for a while." A pause, then a shrug. "The little girl gave him her rabbit for a while."
I didn't say anything.
"Sad situation all around," Deb continued. "Phelps has given him forty-eight hours to get his ducks in a row before she looks at other options."
I nodded slowly. "Between us… how does Phelps think it's going to go?"
Deb was quiet for a moment. She took her glasses off and set them on the desk. "Karen doesn't share her thinking until she's sure," she said. "Eleven years and she hasn't changed." She looked at me. "But I can usually tell. And right now I can't."
I stood there a moment longer than I needed to. Then I thanked her and turned back toward the elevator.
Twenty minutes. He'd been in this building twenty minutes ago and I'd been two floors up with my hands in someone's abdomen. Now he was gone and that… that was fine. It really was. Jack would sort out his forty-eight hours or he wouldn't, and either way it had nothing to do with me.
I made a conscious effort to banish all thoughts of Jack from my mind as the elevator went down.
The lobby was quiet at this hour. A couple in the far corner, a man on his phone by the entrance, the security guard at his desk doing something on a computer. I was already looking for my car keys when I saw him.
He was sitting in one of the chairs along the wall. He wasn't even looking at his phone, or watching the door. He was just sitting there, elbows on his knees, looking at nothing inparticular. Like he'd been there a while and hadn't decided yet what came next.