A Heart Healed

There was not one call or text from the man since then. Naomi wanted to call him quite a few times herself since she started working on the case with the hospital director, but every time, she just found her finger hovering over his contact without any hopes of pressing the call icon, often telling herself that this was her choice.

Which it was, she had decided to end things here before the two of them had gotten truly serious, but that didn’t mean that it hurt any less. She didn’t even know what he was feeling about all of this and it was probably the biggest thing that stopped her from making those calls. That and if she did, she wasn’t sure what to say to him.

Naomi just didn’t want to hurt him again and she was sure that he didn’t want to hear from her anyway. Not after everything.

“Jules,” she said, “thanks for everything today, but I want to head home now.”

“But we didn’t do any shopping though.”

She gave her brother a quick hug which he really tried to stay still for a few seconds before he gently peeled away from him. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ll even answer your persistent phone calls.”

“That’s all I ask. Nate also asks for you to come visit soon. He misses being around someone closer to his size.“ He gave her a cheeky grin before Naomi smacked him again, on the back this time, making him yelp as he moved a few steps away from her with a frown.

“Don’t you start with the short jokes. I’m still stronger than you, Jules.”

Julian smiled. “Yes, yes, you are.”

**********

Marc

The next day

“Well, look at that, my baby brother is finally back,” Marc said as he watched one of the airplane staff assist the younger man out of the wheelchair that they had arranged for his flight back from France. Even though it was only a month, it felt like ages since he had seen Ezra last. Of course, this trip had been solely their mother’s doing after the news of Ezra’s accident had somehow reached her in Paris.

It had taken all of three arguments with her before he just told Ezra to spend the month with her. To be fair, although Anna Hewitt was usually a lovely person in the eyes of other people, she had her own means and methods to get her children to do as she wanted. One favorite method was calling his sister in the UK to call them.

As their older, and only, sister, there were very few situations in which Marc and Ezra could ever refuse Leah. Therefore, Ezra had been flown out to France on Marc’s private jet as soon as a passport could be arranged for the aide who they had hired for assistance in the younger brother’s physical therapy.

However, two days later, the aide was sent back, and Ezra was not. Apparently, their mother had not approved of the person they had chosen to care for her youngest child “in his time of need,” her words not Marc’s.

“Oh, thank the heavens I’m back,” Ezra proclaimed with gratitude by the time he had managed to move him into his own padded wheelchair that Marc had actually spent a fortune on since crutches were apparently something that was “too soon” for his legs, once again their mother’s words, not his.

“And how was living with our dear mother again?” Marc couldn’t resist asking with a grin.

“Something I will kick your ass over once I can walk,” his brother huffed as he crossed his arms, taking a look around. “Hey, I thought Dr. Bennett would be with you.”

The older brother flinched. Oh, right, he hadn’t mentioned what had happened that Naomi had essentially dumped him in favor of her job. Okay, wait, that wasn’t exactly what happened, he told himself over and over again whenever the thought came back to him. He wasn’t bitter anymore over it. He had worked through his own five stages of grief and had come to accept that she wanted to pursue her own dreams.

Regardless of whether they had started dating or not.

“We’re not together anymore,” was probably the closest thing to an answer as to what happened without the intrusive thoughts in his head starting the cycle of blaming her for his heartache and then blaming himself for allowing her to live her own life instead of fighting with her over trying to succeed.

“I thought you two were doing well though. You were really happy two weeks ago, enough that Lawrence called me to ask if you were on something.”

Of course, he did, Marc thought with a sigh. “Well, things happened and now we’re not. Now let’s go home. I have work to do.” Ezra looked at him with tired eyes before he just shook his head at his brother. “What?”

“So,” Ezra huffed, “you’re just going to return to boring workaholic Marc again, huh?”

Wait, what? His brow creased as he gave his brother an incredulous expression. “What are you talking about?”

Ezra just clucked his tongue as the younger man frowned deeply at him. “You’re a fu*king idiot, you know that, right? Both for letting her go and for not realizing how much she actually changed your life. She was the best damn thing that happened to you and you’re too damn stupid to even see it.”

*********************

Naomi

“Iris, food.”

Naomi looked around her apartment for her lovable escape artist she called a cat. There seemed to be no other signs of life anywhere around the living room and she had left her bedroom door closed so she had a feeling Iris was somewhere around the building again. No need to worry just yet, she’ll be back for food soon enough.

A yawn escaped her mouth as she carried the food dish to its usual corner before performing the next part of her evening ritual with the water one. With both dishes filled, Naomi could probably take a nap. She was enjoying her time off greatly and she had never gotten this much sleep in years. Only ever needing to get up for the bathroom or food, whether it be for herself or her cat.

Heck, she didn’t even feel like dressing up anything but her comfortable clothes or pajamas. It felt like a true paradise and she was sad that it was going to end in a few days. Going back to the hospital was going to be different by the time she returned, right? She couldn’t have gone through everything that happened just to throw herself into the same situation all over again.

Also, knowing the people in that place, once they realize who snitched, they were likely to make a person’s life a living hell. Not even directly, sometimes through the patients who had been assigned to her name. She had heard of a couple of cases where spite had chosen to put a patient’s life at risk simply because of the patient’s family.

A shudder ran up her spine at the thought of her patients in danger.

She knew that Dr. Adamson promised to take care of her cases, but sometimes she knew that that meant reassigning them to another doctor which still made her nervous.