He didn’t notice the lunch bag hiding behind the coffee maker.
Good.
I wanted to see his face.
At eleven-thirty, I shoved a client’s seating chart aside.
I grabbed the lunch.
I drove across Ashford Hollow with the radio up.
I was practically giddy.
Eleven years, and I’d never once surprised him at work.
He always said a hospital was no place for surprises.
I parked in the visitor garage.
Level four.
I remember that because later it would matter.
I rode the elevator up to his floor.
The doors opened.
Somebody at the nurses’ station dropped a clipboard.
It was Denise.
Denise Albright had run that floor for twelve years.
She’d thrown my baby shower.
She’d taught Poppy how to fold a paper crane.
Now she was staring at me like I’d walked in on something.
She didn’t bend to pick up the clipboard.
“Lauren,” she said.
Just my name.
Flat.
“Surprise,” I said, and lifted the bag.
“I brought my husband lunch.”
“Is he in the OR?”
Denise glanced at the young nurse beside her.
The young nurse stared hard at her screen.
Nobody answered.
“Denise?”
“Honey, maybe you should sit down.”
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
“Why would I sit down?”
“Is he hurt?”
“Did something happen?”
“He’s not hurt,” she said quickly.
“Then where is he?”
She opened her mouth.
She closed it.
Behind me, footsteps.
I turned.
Owen Pratt was coming down the hall.
Owen had been Nate’s best friend since their first week of residency.
He’d been the best man at our wedding.
He was Poppy’s godfather.
He’d eaten at our table a hundred times.
His skin looked like wet cement.
He stopped a few feet away.
He looked at the lunch bag in my hand.
Something in his face just broke.
His eyes filled.
Right there in front of the whole station.
“He never told you,” he said.
It wasn’t really a question.
“Did he?”
“Told me what?”
Owen shook his head.
He couldn’t get it out.
Behind me, the elevator dinged.
The doors slid open.
And there was Nate.
Blue scrubs.
