The calorie-laden meal filled the hole in his stomach. Unfortunately, the aching maw in his chest was not so easily appeased. It hurt. His whole body hurt. So be it.
He turned the vehicle around and headed for Royal. Monday morning would come bright and early. He’d taken far too much advantage of his flexible schedule lately. If he kept this up, the hospital board would decide they had made a mistake in hiring him.
Hutch was good at medicine. He was lousy at love. It made sense to concentrate on the one aspect of his life that had never disappointed him.
When he finally made it back to Royal, darkness had fallen. He deliberately avoided looking at Simone’s house when he was forced to pass by it on the way to his. At home, he walked from room to room, pacing aimlessly. In the back bedroom there were still a few boxes he hadn’t unpacked yet. Maybe he would list the place this week and move across town.
If he were honest, though, he didn’t want to give Simone the satisfaction of knowing she had that kind of power over him. He’d been taken in by a pro, but he didn’t have to let it happen again.
* * *
Monday morning, he showed up for work clean shaven and bright eyed. He’d slept reasonably well from sheer exhaustion. Despite that, the pain in his chest and his gut remained. Doggedly, he concentrated on the cases at hand. His own personal trauma would not be allowed to interfere with the quality of his performance.
The day lasted a thousand hours. It was all he could do to dispel the images of Simone from his mind. She was what she was. He needed to cut his losses and move on.
He was thirty minutes from finishing his shift when he ran into Janine.
She frowned at him. “You look like hell. Are you ill? Go home, Hutch. Get some rest.”
“I’m not sick,” he said. “Just tired. I was about to leave.”
“I know you’re glad Simone is doing better,” she said.
Hutch went still. “Oh?”
Janine frowned. “I assumed you’ve been with her since she got out of the hospital. Isn’t that why you look like you’re running on four hours’ sleep?”
“I haven’t seen Simone recently,” he said carefully. “What’s wrong with her?”
The other doctor stared at him. “She collapsed at the party Friday night. One of the guests found her in the parking lot. No one could find you, so they called an ambulance.”
Hutch felt his bones turn to water. “An ambulance?”
“Her blood pressure skyrocketed. She had some kind of panic attack. Because she was already weak from the battle with nausea, we had to give her IV fluids again. Simone told me you were meeting her at her house. That was the only reason I released her when I did.”
“I wasn’t there,” Hutch said slowly. His heart slugged in his chest. “But I’m headed there now. Thank you, Janine.”
This couldn’t be happening again. Another woman he cared about slipping away, and him powerless to save her. Simone wasn’t perfect. If he took a mental step backward, though, he could admit that the love she had demonstrated for her babies was real and fierce.
Maybe he had made too much of her original motives. God knows, he had screwed up at several major points in his own life. Was it fair to judge
Simone for her missteps, when his had been equally egregious?
The truth dawned slowly, in tandem with incredulity. The reason he’d been so angry with her at the party was because he loved her. Her betrayal had cut straight through to his heart, leaving him bleeding in more ways than one.
He drove like a madman, half expecting to find Simone unconscious or worse. When she answered the door at his first knock, the moment was anticlimactic at best.
“Why did you lie to your doctor?” he demanded, going on the attack.
Simone gazed at him with blank eyes. “What are you doing here, Hutch?” She didn’t back up, and she sure as hell didn’t invite him in.
Suddenly, everything coalesced into one shining bubble of certainty. “We need to talk.” He said the words quietly, trying not to spook her.
“I don’t think so.” She tried to shut the door, but he stuck his foot in the opening.
“Please, Simone. Let me speak my piece. Then if you want, I’ll leave.”
She lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Whatever.”