Not Quite Forever (Not Quite #4)(10)
Author: Catherine Bybee

Chapter Four

The water in the tub was drained the next morning and the tropical storm didn’t manifest into anything. The power flickered once, forcing Dakota and Mary to take the stairs back down to their room sometime after one in the morning. Their new friends, Monica and Trent, suggested they stay in their suite, but with a room only a few flights down, they decided to take the walk.

A slight edge of discontent sat under Dakota’s skin as she made her way through the early hours of the next day. She hadn’t managed much of a conversation with Walt outside of a joint one with their small party the night before.

When she found him standing outside the room where she finished her morning class, a smile met her lips and her heart skipped. Today he was dressed in a casual pair of pants and a simple pullover shirt, no suit, no sleek shoes, and no briefcase.

“Hi.”

“Hey. Flying home today?” she asked, knowing perfectly well he wasn’t scheduled to leave for two days.

“Flying, but not home.”

Dakota forced the smile to stay on her lips. “Excuse me?”

“The storm,” he tilted his head to the side as if the entire weather event stood next to him. “It’s a . . . it provided an opportunity to take a few of us off to triage some of the islands in the Keys.”

She blinked, twice. “You’re leaving?”

“Trent is flying us down. We’ll probably fly back to the West Coast from there.”

A twinge stuck somewhere between her brain and her lungs and caught. “Oh.”

“I, ah, thought I’d say good-bye before I left.”

His gaze met hers and held.

At a loss for words, Dakota sputtered. “The islands? Are they . . . is there anything serious going on there?”

Walt shook his head. “I doubt it. A good training exercise. Something we can use since we have a couple of pilots and plenty of experienced staff with us.”

“It’s what you do . . . right?”

“Yeah. I thought . . .”

He let his words die off and she thought right along with him. Thought maybe they’d have an opportunity to get to know each other a little better before they both returned to their normal lives.

Dakota reached over to the table outside her room, found several copies of her latest book sitting there. From her bag, she grabbed a pen and opened up the cover.

She handed him the book and offered a smile. “My schedule is more flexible than yours, Doc.”

He glanced at the book she shoved in his hands.

She heard his phone buzz in his pocket. To his credit, he didn’t acknowledge it. Just stared at her. The heat in his eyes registered and made some of the confidence inside her sizzle and lean toward him.

His phone buzzed again. “They’re meeting me . . .” He pointed toward the sky.

“On the roof?”

“Right.”

“Then you should probably go.”

Only, he didn’t move. People walked around them in their rush to get to a class, to move to their next event.

“Walter.” She used his full name and he blinked. “Read the book. Call me.”

He tapped the paperback in his palm and finally broke away. “Right. OK.” He stepped back.

The ball, as they say, was in his court. If he wanted to get in touch with her when he returned to LA, he now had her number. There wasn’t anything else she could say outside of good-bye and that didn’t feel right.

Dakota hiked her bag higher on her shoulder and took a step back.

“Safe flight home, Dakota.”

“You, too, Doc.”

“Walt,” he corrected with a laugh.

She backed away a couple of steps. “Walter . . . is that Walt the Second or the Third?”

He moved away, both of them speaking through the bodies swarming around them.

“The Third. How did you know?”

She laughed. “A hunch. Was Grandpa a doctor?”

When Walt opened his mouth to answer, she lifted a hand and stopped him. “Tell me later,” she told him. “Enjoy the Keys, Dr. Eddy. I hear they’re beautiful this time of year.”

With that, she turned and left him standing there.

Dragging, with his eyes straining to stay open, Walt finished his last verbal dictation for the night. Outside light was pouring in from the ambulance bay. Already the morning was heating up. The California sun’s only redeeming quality was the fact that it was dry. Still, anything in the triple digits meant more accidents, more assaults, more chaos. After three long graveyard shifts following his trip to Florida, Walt was ready for a night off. A night of uninterrupted sleep sounded like heaven.

Walt finished his dictation, hung up the phone, and signed off his charts.

“Walt?” the day shift clerk, Nancy, called out as he started toward the doctor’s room where he left his keys.

“Yeah?”

“You have a call on 2748.”

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment and moved to the private room where he could at least hold his tired head in his hands while he finished any last-minute conversations for the day.

He sat on the unused bed in the private room and clicked into the call. “Dr. Eddy.”

“You sound just like your father when you answer the phone.”

He loved his mother, but her timing couldn’t be worse. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, you have that I’m tired and you’ve called at the wrong time voice.” JoAnne Eddy was a doctor’s wife. She knew all about late shifts and the need to sleep.

“I did just finish three nights in a row, Mom. What’s up?”

“I knew you’d turn off your phone so I called you at work.”

Walt closed his eyes. “You could leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

His mother sighed. He envisioned her oversprayed hair and perfect makeup. “You know how much I hate playing phone tag. The mother is the last to get a call back. I thought I was a good mother . . . one that deserved more attention from her only son.”

Walt was too tired to listen to the guilt trip. “Mom. I’m tired. It was a busy night. You wouldn’t want me to fall asleep on my drive home . . .” He’d learned how to place guilt trips from the best.

“Oh, that’s just mean. But I’ll get to the point. Your father’s birthday celebration is in two weeks. You’re still coming, right? There hasn’t been some silly outbreak of pig flu somewhere that is dragging you away, is there?”

Pig flu? This disgust for how he spent his free time was always a breath away when speaking to his parents. Giving his services away for free somehow mocked them and every dime it took to put him through medical school.