“How do you do it?” Maggie asked quietly. After Michael left, she phoned Taryn. Taryn picked up Lexi and they were at Maggie’s within the hour.
“It’s not easy, Maggie, but doing this is part of who they are.” Taryn sipped her coffee, her violet eyes naturally intense. “It’s one of the things that attracts us to them in the first place. We crave their intensity, their sense of honor. Regular men just won’t do it for women like us.”
Maggie wasn’t sure she agreed with that. She fell in love with Michael when she thought he was just a doctor, and she relayed as much.
“Maybe you didn’t know up here,” Taryn said, pointing to her head, “but you knew here.” She pointed to her heart. “You can’t tell me you didn’t sense it, Maggie. It reaches out to you, calls to you, and if you’re the one, you can’t help but respond to it.”
Had she known? If she was honest with herself she had to admit that she had been instantly drawn to Michael, feeling a connection she’d never felt with anyone else, even when her brain tried to convince her that she was imagining it, that such things didn’t really happen. The power of her feelings for him defied all logic, all the rational expectations she’d ever had. And because of that, she was terrified.
If anything happened to Michael, it would destroy her. The past few weeks had proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. The pain of missing him – but knowing he was safe and well – was nothing compared to what she would face if... Her mind refused to complete the thought.
“I just don’t think I can bear sitting around, waiting for that phone call or knock on the door,” she said without answering, wrapping her arms around herself.
“You’d be surprised at what you can do for the love of a man like that,” Lexi said with quiet strength. “And you won’t be alone. You have us. We know what you’re going through, and we help each other through it.”
“Besides,” Taryn pointed out. “Nothing in life is guaranteed, Maggie. How many people die every day? People who wake up one morning and never see it coming?”
“True, but let’s face it, what they do is pushing the envelope a bit, don’t you think?”
“We know what we face, as do they. They are good at what they do, Maggie. The very best. And they leave absolutely nothing to chance. ”
“All the more so if they have a reason to come home.”
The words were left unspoken, but Maggie sensed the implication easily enough. She’d heard enough of Jake and Ian’s quiet exchanges with the others to glean that Michael had taken chances he shouldn’t have. Was it because of her? Was it because he thought he had lost her forever? Because Jake and Ian had wives and babies waiting for them, and he didn’t?
“Michael was shot,” Maggie said firmly, suddenly feeling restless again. She got up and absently started collecting together the ingredients for a coffee cake. Thinking better of it, she put everything away and pulled out items to make a sweet dough so she could knead some of her stress away. Every time the image of him lying there came into her mind she felt like part of her was dying all over again.
“Have either of you had to look at your husband lying in a hospital bed, wondering if they were ever going to open their eyes again?” She spoke the words not with accusation or sarcasm, but with a deeply-seated need for someone else to really understand what she was feeling.
“No,” Taryn admitted. “But each of them has had to sit beside our hospital beds, wondering the same thing of us.”
Maggie stilled for a moment then turned slowly.
“It’s true,” Lexi admitted. “And I thank God every day that Ian didn’t walk away because of it.”
“Me, too,” agreed Taryn. “Jake was there for me every step of the way. And Michael was there for you, Maggie.”
“But that’s different,” Maggie insisted defensively. “I didn’t purposely place myself in danger.”
“Didn’t you?” Taryn asked quietly.
Maggie froze. Did she? By ignoring her symptoms, by refusing to listen to Michael’s pleas to be checked out, hadn’t she been doing just that? Michael had never given up. Hadn’t he stuck by her, even though, she realized now, he had been worried about her, his doctor’s instincts telling him that something was terribly wrong despite her stubborn insistence otherwise?
“You’re a strong-willed woman, Maggie. What if, when you left the hospital, Michael decided he couldn’t handle the possibility that something like that would happen again and left you forever?” Lexi offered gently.
Maggie sank down in the nearest chair as the bitter truth dawned on her. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
“And your baby?” Taryn said. “Could you look into your child’s eyes, knowing that your love is what brought him into this world?”
“Our baby,” Maggie repeated softly. “Michael doesn’t even know about our baby.”