She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 175

(Natasha)

The night nurse gets ready to leave when the day nurse comes on at seven.

Between the two of them, with quiet efficiency, they confirm what I’ve been watching on the screen above the cot all night.

Hemoglobin: up. Platelets: up. Kidney panel: behaving. Capillary refill: better than yesterday. Colour: pink in a way that makes me want to cry tears of joy.

Lily is asleep on her back with one fist near her ear.

The numbers are sitting where they should and they’ve stayed there for several hours.

Mom has finally gone to the lounge to lie across two chairs and rest her eyes.

Dad has gone to find a real coffee.

Liam was last seen heading down to admissions to "stretch his legs."

I know he’s vaping. My parents pretend not to.

All of them steadfastly refuse to go home.

I stand up and my knees crack from being in the same position for so long.

I press my palm to the small warm cheek that is, at last, the right temperature, before I go to the door.

Chase deserves to know that Lily is doing so much better.

I know James is keeping him informed, but I’m sure he’d like to hear it from me.

I’m too tired to be properly horrified at my behavior last night.

Not the anger. He deserves every bit of that.

But knocking the coffee out of his hand was uncalled for.

The corridor is busy.

A cleaner pushing a cart.

Two doctors on a handover at the nurse's station, speaking in low voices.

The bench Chase has been sitting on all night is empty.

The coffee stain on the wall opposite has been wiped, badly, by someone with a damp cloth and a finite amount of patience.

He left.

I told him to go home and he went home.

A bruised feeling turns over inside me.

It's not relief.

I keep telling it to be relief, because he did exactly what I asked him to for once.

But that’s not what I’m feeling.

It's anger.

A different shade of it than the one I was feeling, but still anger.

He sat on this bench for eight hours while I hovered by our daughter’s bed, and the second the sun came up he stood up and left.

Which is, again, what I told him to do.

I am furious that he did it.

I am furious that I am furious that he did it.

I'm so furious I can feel it making my eye twitch.

I turn around and go back into Lily's room and shut the door and sit down in my chair and look at her instead.

"Hi baby. Mommy's just having a moment."

She doesn't answer.

She has the great good sense to keep sleeping.

It's an hour before Mason finds me.

He pushes the door open with his shoulder because both his hands are occupied.

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