Page 158 of Just One Look

“Ah,” Nils said. “I wondered.”

“You did?” Luka asked. “Why?” Elizabeth wouldn’t have told him they’d broken up. That wasn’t like her at all. She’d be holding that in, carrying the weight of it inside her.

Feeling like she’d failed.

It was true, so why wasn’t he angrier? Because the person he was angriest at was himself, maybe. She’d been in a flood again, watching four people struggle through the water and nearly be washed away. What had that taken from her? He hadn’t even mentioned it, he hadn’t eventhoughtof it on that horrible, endless drive, and now, it was too late. What, he’d ring her up and ask, “How’s the PTSD?” He hoped she was getting help, if she needed it. She was a doctor, so she should know how.

The problem was, the last person she’d think about helping was herself.

It didn’t matter anyway, because he was too tired to be angry. At this moment, in fact, all he wanted was to go home, lie down on his bed, and make it stop. The stabbing pain, and the dragging ache.

Home, with no inadvertently funny, incurably honest, seriously brilliant, almost accidentally sexy girlfriend, and no big, goofy dog, either. No clumps of dog hair blowing around in the corners even though you’d just hoovered, no hair elastics in the shower, and no makeup pouch where his shaving kit belonged. No box of tampons under the sink, and no bottles of perfume nestled in a lingerie drawer full of fragile things that would take his breath away.

And no duffel by the door, packed and ready to go for the morning. No mouthguards, and no rugby boots.

He didn’t want to see all that blank space, the holes where his life had been. He didn’t want to feel it. He wanted to close his eyes and go away from this. Not forever, but for now, because he had no strength left to face the world. It was gone, drained away. It had never happened before, but surely it wouldn’t last long. It couldn’t. This wasn’t going to be his life.

It was his life now, though. He was a man who moved forward, but right now, he was in that sucking mud, and he was standing still.

Nils looked up from where he’d been jotting on a prescription pad. “Why did I wonder? Sorry, I assumed you knew. She’s left the hospital. She flies back to the States tonight. Pity.”

* * *

Wednesday afternoon,and she was packed. She’d never unpacked, in fact. She needed to take Webster over to Nyree and Marko’s again, two days after she’d collected him, because he was going to be living with them for the rest of the year, and it was time to leave.

“We’re still careful with the baby,” Nyree had told her on Monday, when Elizabeth had asked her. “But he’s a nanny dog. He lies down beside her wherever she is, ready to jump in anytime he’s needed, and when I take her in the pushchair, he walks where he can keep his eye on her. Also, they’re comical, dogs, and he’s more comical than most. Yesterday, when Marko was changing Arielle, Webster pulled out a nappy from the changing-table shelf to give him. Helping, eh.”

So, yes, Webster was being adopted. Fostered. Something. With people who’d be home, not on call for days on end, and who’d love him. With the baby he clearly longed for, because he’d missed his boy, and she hadn’t even seen that she wasn’t enough. Now, he saw her pick up her purse and went to do his trick. On his hind legs, reaching for his leash on the hook and bringing it over to her, his tail waving like a flag.

She crumpled.

She was on her haunches, then on her knees, shaking. Sobbing. Her body racked with it, wrecked by it. Seeing Luka with that rope around his waist, flung against the barrier and not holding on to it. Holding onto the woman—Marjorie—instead, forcing the strength into his legs to somehow, out of some bottomless reservoir of strength, resist the force of that water. Not to save himself, because he wouldn’t have been thinking about himself. She’d have bet money that the thought of letting go of Marjorie wouldn’t even have crossed his mind. She saw him washing away, swimming in the chocolate milk, going over the rail, and she shuddered and sobbed and curled into a ball on the floor. Trying to be small. Trying to disappear, because it was too hard to be out here in the cold. Too hard to be without her shell, defenseless. Too hard to be alone.

Webster, crawling forward, nudging at her face with his nose. Whining softly, lying close. She put out a hand, buried it in his fur, felt his warm breath on her cheek, and cried.

How could she leave him? How?

She had a dog to deliver and a plane to catch. She had a furnished apartment in Atlanta that the hospital had rented for her, a car they’d leased for her, and the job of any surgeon’s dreams. And she had nothing here. No job, and no life. She’d thought she did, but it had been washed away, and now, there was nothing left.

She cried. Not just tears. Shecried,the sounds that came from her ripping through the gathering dusk the same way they ripped at her chest, her throat, and left them raw. She cried until she was woozy with it, until she was dehydrated and exhausted and weak, and then she lay on the floor and thought,Obvious PTSD. It’s treatable, and anyway, I have to go. I’m already late. I have to go now.

I can’t.

Get up,she told herself.It’s five steps to the kitchen. Drink a glass of water, then drink another one. Wash your face. Put Webster in the car and go.

She had discipline. She had focus. She had willpower. Working a hundred hours a week willpower. Standing in surgery for fourteen hours straight willpower. Staying up late to study until her eyes burned, so she’d get all A’s and her father would be proud, willpower. Going to sleep alone in a strange bed, in the dark, because she was four and her mama was gone, willpower.

Leaving Luka, after everything she’d helplessly, foolishly, started to believe in had turned out not to be real after all, willpower.

But she still couldn’t get up.