December Reunion in Central Park
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Deanne Anders
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18,4K
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15
CHAPTER ONE
ENDLESS CLOUDS FLOATED by as Dr. Scott Thomas looked outside the plane that was taking him home. Home? Was it still home? Despite how hard the last year and a half had been, he’d come to think of London as home. But still something was missing. No, make that someone. His home hadn’t felt the same since he and Felicity had dashed off to New York to be with her parents. He’d not known at the time that she wouldn’t be coming back with him.
He punched the pillow he’d been given earlier and tried to reposition himself. The transatlantic flight was going to be rough on him the next day if he didn’t get some rest, and he wanted to be at his best when he arrived to work the next day. The chance to help another hospital set up a specialty cardiac unit like the one at his own hospital, the Royal Kensington Hospital, was something that excited him, and it had been a while since he’d been really excited about anything.
Nothing could have surprised him more than to be offered this chance to be part of The Kensington Project, and while a part of him had been only too happy to return to New York, another part of him worried about what he might find when he finally made it to his hometown.
His parents, of course, were thrilled with the opportunity to see him, especially since he’d be remaining in New York till after the holidays. And then there was Felicity. Would she be happy to see him? Or would she wish him on his way, as she had the last time he’d seen her? Where exactly had they gone wrong?
“Is there anything I can get you?” A soft voice came from beside him.
Looking up, he saw that one of the flight attendants was standing over him. She’d spoken to him earlier in the flight, offering him a blanket and pillow.
“No, I’m fine, but thank you,” he said. It had been pretty apparent that she wanted to start a conversation with him, though he had been careful not to encourage her.
“You sure?” she asked. “You seem a bit...distracted.”
Her badge said her name was Kristen, and she made an attractive picture in her trim navy suit with her honey-blond hair and golden sun-touched skin that hinted of time spent in much warmer climates than those with which he was familiar. And just like every woman he had met in the last eighteen months, he wasn’t even tempted to ask her for her full name.
“May I?” she asked as her hand indicated the empty seat next to his.
“Sure,” he said as he repositioned himself more upright in his own seat.
“I take it from your accent that you’re from the States. So am I. Are you headed home?” she asked.
There was that word again. Home. It had never seemed as complicated as it had in the last few months.
“I grew up in New York, but I work in London now,” he said. “Is New York your home?”
“It is right now,” she said. “I move around a lot. So, married? Single?” she asked with a smile that could be dangerously sexy, he was sure, but still he felt nothing.
What would it take to make him feel that heart-pounding adrenaline-buzz attraction again? He feared there was only one smile that would ever get that kind of response from him.
He realized she was staring at him and still waiting for his answer. “I’m single. I mean... I’m not married.”
“A girlfriend, then?” she asked him.
The conversation was making him a bit uncomfortable, but he knew it wasn’t her fault.
“It’s complicated,” he said, hoping that this would end her interrogation.
“Isn’t love always complicated?” She gave him another smile and moved to get up. Apparently she had heard all she needed to hear. “Maybe we’ll meet again sometime and things won’t be complicated.”
He watched as she walked back and joined the other attendants at the front of the plane, then adjusted his pillow once more. Love, complicated? It had never seemed to be that way for his parents, but the last few months had proved to him that emotions made people, even people you thought you really knew, unpredictable.
He stretched his seat back and closed his eyes. Immediately his mind got caught up in thoughts of complicated love and memories that seemed to be burned into his brain on a movie reel that he had replayed over and over for the last eighteen months.
It always opened up the same way...
A perfect moonlit night at that little sidewalk café that was her favorite; laughter while they sipped wine and talked about their day. Then they’d walk through the English garden in the park just blocks from his London home.
He could almost smell the sweet scent of the hydrangea blooms as they walked hand in hand and talked of everything and nothing, never tiring of hearing what the other had to say. It was always as if they were two strangers meeting for the first time and wanting to know everything about the other, instead of two people who had grown up together from childhood.
And even when silence fell between the two of them, there was no sign of awkwardness. They’d continued their walk until they stopped to share a kiss that seemed to change everything—a change they embraced as one kiss led to another until they were both racing to his place, together.
If only he could stop the memories there...
Scenes of kisses and touches played over in his mind: a vision of her stripped bare for him; the sight of her stretched out in his bed; the feel of her in his arms as they lay sated from their lovemaking.
He twisted in his seat and tried to will his mind to stop there. To leave him with that last happy memory of brushing long blond hair from sleepy blue eyes and wishing her a good night as they fell into slumber together, wrapped around each other for the first time.
But, no, there was no happy ending for the movie his mind insisted on playing for him each night as he tried to sleep.
There was always the insistent ringing of a phone, and the words his father had choked out as he gave Scott the news that had brought his life to a screeching halt—Scott’s best friend, and Fliss’s brother, was dying. Suicide, his father had said, though Scott refused to believe that this was possible, arguing with his father that he had to be mistaken as his father pleaded for him to find Fliss and break the news to her in person so she wouldn’t be alone.
He’d looked down at the woman lying in his bed, the one he was falling in love with, and had known instinctively that nothing would ever be the same.
Finally the last scene replayed itself.
In his arms, he held his lover and friend, whose tears and sobs broke what was left of his heart after the loss of his friend.
Scott’s eyes flew open. Looking around the plane, he was glad to see he hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention. He looked at his watch. He had three more hours before they landed at JFK and there was no way he was going to sleep now. Dragging out his laptop, he dug into the reports he’d been given on Brooklyn Heights Hospital’s new cardiac unit. He might be tired when he showed up the next day, but at least he’d be up to date and ready to get to work.
It had finally happened. She’d lost her mind. That was the only excuse she had for why she was standing in the middle of the emergency-room hallway, staring at the back of some man’s head. It had been bound to happen at some point. She couldn’t continue to work seven days a week, twelve to sixteen hours a day, without this happening. Of course, she could see why this man had gotten her attention. That thick head of dark chocolate-brown hair in that specific close-cropped cut was like a magnet for her eyes—eyes that were apparently tired from lack of sleep, because no matter what they were telling her, that man couldn’t be Scott.
She looked around the hallway. It was the same New York City crowded hallway where she had spent most of her hours in the last year. It was definitely not the Royal Kensington Hospital elite cardiac unit in London, where Scott could be found.
Clenching her hands, she felt the vial of medication in her hand. She had to get back to her patient. She didn’t have time for this nonsense. There had to be plenty of men that could resemble Scott from the back.
She two-stepped it down the hallway, dodging stretchers and wheelchairs, but a sense of unease still followed her back to her patient’s room. It had been a strange experience to react to a man that way, especially when she could barely see his profile.
Entering the room, she noted that the young woman’s heart rate was still tachycardia and had gone from running in the one-eighties to the two-hundreds now.
“It’s going to be okay, Jenny,” Felicity said to the young woman who was even more pale and diaphoretic than she had been when she first arrived.
“The vagal maneuver hasn’t helped?” she asked the emergency-room doctor.
“No. Go ahead and draw up the adenosine,” he said.
Drawing up the medication, she wiped down the IV port and then attached the syringe. “Has Dr. Campbell explained how adenosine works?”
“He said it should make my heart slow down, but also that I might feel some chest pain and dizziness.” Jenny’s bright green eyes shone with a look of panic that Felicity was used to seeing in the emergency room.
“I’ll be right here with you,” Felicity said as she took Jenny’s hand into her free one, preparing to inject the medication into the IV line.
“Are you ready?” she asked her patient, then looked over at the doctor who nodded his head for her to push the medication that would basically stop Jenny’s heart before it returned into a normal rhythm.
She squeezed the young woman’s hand and pushed the medication. Everyone’s attention went to the monitor above the bed as the cardiac rhythm began to slow until there was a pause.
“Oh,” the young woman said as she clutched both of their hands to her chest, bringing Felicity’s attention back to her. Pain and panic filled the woman’s eyes.
“It’s okay. The worst is over, I promise. Just hang on a few more seconds.” Felicity looked back up at the monitor to see that the heart rate was gradually slowing to a normal sinus rhythm. “Is it better now?”
Jenny nodded her head, but Felicity could tell that she hadn’t totally recovered. At least some of the young woman’s color was returning now. “Can I get you something?”
“No, I’m better now.” The young woman’s voice trembled, but she let go of Felicity’s hand and closed her eyes. “I’m just going to rest a minute.”
“I’ll be right here if you need anything,” Felicity said as the rest of the staff began to leave the room. She would remain in the room with her patient until she was assured the young woman was stable and then have her transferred to the cardiac floor for observation and more testing to find the cause behind her tachycardia.
She was turning to get her patient a blanket when her eyes came to a stop as she saw the man from earlier standing outside the glass doors of the trauma room. Who was he, and why did he have to be here in her ER, upsetting her now when she needed to be concentrating on her patient?
Yes, the man was at least as tall as Scott and they did share the same basic build that included a pair of very wide shoulders. And, yes, this man did have the exact same haircut that Scott had always favored, but it was more than that. Something deep down inside her told her she knew him.
Turn around. Let me see your face.
Her heart was beating as fast as her patient’s had earlier.
For a moment she let herself imagine that it was Scott. That he had come back to see her. But how would he have known where to find her? Unlike the years when they had been separated by colleges in different states, there had been no late-night calls that went on for hours, nor had there been the funny texts that they had shared for years as they checked up on each other. Felicity had known they needed a clean break. Ignoring his calls and texts had added more heartache to her life, but she would never have survived hearing about Scott’s life without her.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Campbell asked as he came to a stop at the door, blocking her view. For a moment she thought the doctor was talking to her patient before she realized he was speaking to her.
“Yes, we’re good. I’ll let you know if there are any changes in her rhythm.” She had to get herself together. She had a job to do and it did not include daydreaming.
She took a blanket off the shelf beside the stretcher and covered the young woman before allowing herself to walk over to the doorway. If Scott’s doppelgänger had ever actually existed, he was gone now. It was official. She was losing her mind.
Checking her patient’s vital signs again, she made herself concentrate on getting her charting done. There were only a couple of hours left in her shift and then she had to go to the new unit and check on progress there.
“Hey, Felicity, Jodi said I should relieve you so you can go to a meeting Dr. Mason just called,” said Matt, startling her, a few minutes later. One of the new nurses who had been hired to take the place of the nurses who were going to the new cardiac center, he moved extremely quietly for being a giant teddy bear of a man at six feet six inches, with the large build to match.
In the last two weeks, Dr. Mason had begun making a habit of calling these last-minute meetings that were making it difficult for her to help fill in while the rest of these new nurses were being trained.
“I’m sorry. I have to leave you.” She checked the monitor and saw that Jenny’s heart rate had settled into a normal sinus rhythm in the nineties. “But Matt’s going to take great care of you. He’ll get you admitted and transfer you to the cardiac unit.”
“Thank you for taking care of me,” Jenny said before shutting her eyes again. The poor woman had been through a lot today. She deserved her rest.
“Believe me, I’d rather be here taking care of you than going to another meeting,” Felicity said as she gathered her stethoscope. When she’d accepted the brand-new position of nursing manager at the new clinic, she’d had no idea the number of meetings and the piles of paperwork that were necessary to start the new department.
“Thanks for helping me out. Dr. Mason can be difficult if anyone misses one of his meetings.” Felicity couldn’t help but feel guilty about leaving her patient with another nurse at this point, but there was nothing that could be done about it. She’d taken the extra shifts in the ER to help out, but everyone knew her first priority had to be her new department.
“No problem,” Matt said. “I saw him in the unit introducing some new hire to the ER docs. Rumor says he’s some hotshot from London.”
A wave of tiny pinpricks rushed over her, making her skin sting and tingle. It was just a coincidence. That was all. New doctors were arriving at Brooklyn Heights every day. Besides, why would Dr. Mason pull everybody in for a meeting concerning some new doctor?
Unless this doctor was a cardiac doctor who had been involved with a specialty ER department. Unless he had been one of the leading members for such a program in his own hospital. The Royal Kensington Hospital in London had such a program. Scott had been there for the planning and opening of that program. Was there a possibility that Scott was actually here?
With the sound of her heart drumming a staccato rhythm in her ear, she tried not to rush through her report to Matt before she hurried off to the meeting room. Her steps became faster as she approached the door. And there, standing once again with his back to her, was the man she had seen earlier in the emergency room. This was getting ridiculous. Was it Scott or not?
Stopping outside the door, she took in everything she could see of him—the perfect cut of a well-tailored suit, one of Scott’s indulged weaknesses since graduating from medical school; the broad shoulders, which he’d developed while playing high school football with her brother; and the confident stance, shoulders back and feet solidly planted, which invoked leadership. All these things she could see in this man.
And then he turned, and suddenly her eyes were locked with a pair of hazel ones that mirrored the shock she knew had to be in her own. He was here. Dr. Scott Thomas had returned to New York.
