A Doctor's Watch. Vickie Taylor

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      Statement, not question. No sense denying it, she thought. The facts would be in her medical record.

      “A long time ago,” she said flatly.

      “After you lost your husband?”

      “And my sister six months before that, and my parents a year before that.” Her heart constricted painfully at the memory. Memories.

      A moment of silence passed. “That’s a lot to go through in eighteen months.”

      “Too much.” She turned to him, her lips pressed in a grim line. “Or so I thought at the time.”

      His smile was gone, and the look that had replaced it brought a lump to her throat. His face glowed with a warm, quiet concern.

      Compassion.

      “But not anymore?” he asked.

      She took a deep breath, raw at having to expose herself like this to a stranger. Most people had a right to privacy. To dignity. Not so the mentally ill, or those suspected of mental illness. They were expected to drag their deepest fears, their most personal vulnerabilities out for inspection by anyone with the right abbreviations or acronyms behind their names.

      She considered lying, knew it would only delay the inevitable. He would pick at her until he got the truth.

      Looking down, she saw her hands were trembling and clasped them together to hide the weakness. “I spent eight months in the hospital learning to deal with my grief. I clawed my way back to normalcy day by day. Sometimes minute by minute or second by second, but I made it.” She threw her chin in the air. “My doctor there had me keep a journal. I still do it. I record my good days and bad days and why each was the way it was. As of this morning, I’d had three hundred and ten consecutive good days. Three hundred and ten.”

      When she dropped her gaze again, she realized she’d fisted her hands so tightly her knuckles had gone white.

      Dr. Hansen gave her a few seconds to collect herself, then asked gently, “What happened this morning?”

      She hesitated. “I fell.”

      He checked the file, then said in that same placid, calming tone, “You told the police you were pushed.”

      “I was confused. I hit my head.” She touched the knot on her temple as if to prove it. Damn it, she shouldn’t have to prove anything to him.

      But she did, if she wanted to go home, and she did want to go home, even if it meant lying. She’d told the police and the first doctor who had examined her that she’d been pushed into the road.

      It hadn’t gone over well.

      She ducked her chin. She would not give him reason to call her paranoid. “Maybe some snow slid off the trees and hit me in the back. The sun was warming things up pretty good.”

      She lifted her head. “Or maybe I just stumbled. That’s how I ended up in the road.” Desperately, she tried to give him a reassuring grin. It wobbled and she gave up. “I did not throw myself over a cliff on purpose.”

      To her surprise, he smiled back. “Good.”

      She rolled her shoulder, feeling the tension easing out. He believed her. Didn’t he?

      He made a few notes on her file and then raised his head. “What were you thinking about before you fell?”

      “Todd’s Christmas present. My son, he’s eight. I was deciding what to get him.”

      He made a sympathetic noise. “Tough age to buy for. Young enough he still wants all the good kids’ toys, but too old to admit it.”

      “Exactly.” She couldn’t believe he understood. Maybe there was more to him than a pretty face. “You have kids?”

      “No, but I was one once. And I know how little boys’ minds work. I am male.”

      Surprising herself, she swept her eyes from his broad shoulders to his lean waist, long legs and back up again.

      Definitely male.

      It had been a long time since she’d noticed that about anyone.

      “So what did you decide on?” He grinned at her. She couldn’t decide if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking or if he was really as innocently naive as he seemed.

      “I didn’t,” she explained, heat rising to her cheeks. Focus. She needed to focus on the conversation. She had no business noticing anything about this man. He was a doctor. The doctor who held the power to declare her sane or crazy. “I was wishing my husband were there. He would know what to get.”

      “How did it make you feel that he wasn’t there?”

      She snorted, suddenly disappointed in Dr. Handsome. “Oh, please. Not the ‘how did it make you feel’ question. How do you think it made me feel?”

      “Sad? Lonely?”

      She wrinkled her nose. “Have you ever been married?”

      “No.”

      “Maybe if you had, you’d have some inkling of what it means to be twenty-five years old, with a four-year-old baby and to lose all the family you have, not to mention the man you love, the only man you’ve ever been with, without warning. Until then, don’t pretend to understand what I do or don’t feel about my dead husband.”

      He stilled the pencil he’d been twirling between his fingers and looked her right in the eye. “Well said, and with lots of feeling. You’re very good. How many doctors have you used that shtick on?”

      The accusation took her aback. Until she recognized it as the truth. “A few.”

      “Did it work?”

      “More times than not.”

      He strolled toward her, his tongue in his cheek. “Then you’ve been seeing the wrong doctors.”

      He locked his golden gaze on hers and she couldn’t look away.

      “Let’s try this again,” he said, towering over her. “How were you feeling just before you fell?”

      The irrational urge to run swept over her. He was too close. Physically and emotionally. He smelled like Polo cologne.

      And tasted like fear. Her fear.

      She was not crazy. She wouldn’t let anyone say she was.

      “If you want me to say I was depressed, you can go to hell,” she said.

      “Been there. Didn’t care for it.” His face remained impassive, but his eyes changed. Cool intellect gave way to a dark, hot fury that burned somewhere deep inside him. The kind of fury only someone who has suffered could feel.

      “Me neither,” she said. “Depression was my hell. I almost had to die to do it, but I escaped. I won’t ever go back.”

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