Page 36 of Mended Fences

Because if it wasn’t…

The thought alone was enough to send me right into relapse and back to rehab. As I mentally spiraled, the question hung between us, heavy with everything we’d been, everything we’d lost. Elena’s hand tightened on the charts she was holding, her knuckles going white.

A nurse appeared at her elbow. “Dr. Ventura? They need you in Three.”

Elena’s gaze held mine for one more moment, and I saw everything there—relief, fear, grief, something that might have beenhope.

But I didn’t miss what the nurse had called her.

Not Dr. Stone.

Dr. Ventura.

“I have to go,” she said quietly.

I watched her walk away, her white coat flowing behind her, until she disappeared around the corner. Then I slid down the wall to sit on the floor, not caring who saw.

I missed my first meeting.

Chapter Ten

ELENA

Now, December 2024

“Is it mine?”

Chase’s words echoed in my skull like a church bell. I’d come up to the second floor for a face-to-face consult with Dr. Morrison about a cardiac patient from my ER—chest pain, normal EKG, elevated troponin. The kind of case I’d normally delegate to a resident, but the hospitalist had specifically requested me.

Looking up from the nurses’ station to see Chase standing in front of me had my chest aching worse than the constant heartburn I’d been enduring throughout this pregnancy. The shock on his face when he noticed my belly was nothing compared to the anguish that registered when I’d told him I was twenty-four weeks and he did the math.

Now, standing in room three, the steady beep of vitals monitors did nothing to drown out Chase’s voice in my head.

“Is it mine?”

My hands shook as I checked my patient’s IV line, and I had to count the drips three times before I trusted my own math. I forced myself through the case presentation to Dr. Morrison, grateful for the years of practice at sounding professional even while my mind spun like a broken compass.

Back in the ER, the chaos was too loud, too jarring. For the remainder of my shift, I’d have to compartmentalize. But I was good at that; I’d done it for years when I was with Peter.

The trauma alert blared through the ER speakers, jolting me from my spiraling thoughts about Chase, about Peter. I rushed to bay one, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves.

“What do we have?” I called to Toby, our charge nurse.

“Motorcycle versus guardrail. No helmet. GCS 3 on scene, intubated in the field.”

“Who the hell rides a motorcycle in December?”

The paramedics wheeled in a stretcher, the patient’s leather jacket cut away to reveal massive chest trauma. Blood matted his graying hair and covered his face.

“On my count,” I ordered. “One, two, three.”

We transferred him to the trauma bay bed. His body flopped lifelessly—dead weight.

No. Different patient. Different day.But the memories of Chase’s admission crashed over me: his bloodied face, the alcohol on his breath, his hand reaching for mine before he lost consciousness.

“Starting compressions,” Toby announced. “Dr. Ventura?”

I forced myself back to the present. “Push one of epi. Get me an ultrasound.”