Chapter 32 32
Harmony's POV
The bus dropped me two blocks from the address Dr Sherman had sent. I walked the rest of the way with the files under my arm and my bag on my shoulder, telling myself this was purely professional. I was delivering documentation, and I was briefing a nurse. I was doing my job, the same way I would do it for any other patient. And the fact that this particular patient happened to be Roman Foster was entirely beside the point.
The apartment building was a modest mid-rise on a quiet street in Wicker Park, nothing flashy. I went through the lobby and stopped at the front desk.
"Roman Foster's apartment?" I asked the man behind the desk.
"Three fourteen," he replied without looking up.
I found the staircase and took it, which had nothing to do with wanting to delay the inevitable. I just preferred stairs. That was all.
By the time I got to the third floor and found three fourteen, my heart was lodged in my throat. I rang the bell and stood back, shifting the files from one arm to the other.
The door opened and a middle aged woman in a white uniform looked back at me with sharp, assessing eyes.
"Oh! You must be Miss Sinclair," she said. "I'm Nurse Sarah. Come in."
I stepped inside and kept my eyes on Nurse Sarah, not on the apartment. I was not here to look around, I was not here to get a picture of how Roman Foster lived, and I was absolutely not here for anything other than these files in my arm.
"I actually have to be somewhere quite soon," I told her, already pulling the first folder out. "So I'd love to get through this as quickly as possible, if that's alright. Three minutes, maybe five at the most."
Nurse Sarah raised an eyebrow skeptically, but she gestured toward the coffee table. I set the files down and started talking immediately.
"So, his patellar fracture was graded moderate, no surgical intervention required. When he left the clinic, we were already two weeks into the recovery and he had started range of motion work, here," I tapped the relevant page, "and we had just introduced light resistance training the day before discharge. His flexion was improving ahead of schedule, which was promising, but he still needs at least...."
I stopped short of my next sentence, because from somewhere down the hallway to my right, Roman Foster's voice drifted out. "Sarah, who are you talking to? Did my food get here?"
He was coming!
I glanced frantically at the front door, then back at the hallway. I could make a run for it before he came out and saw me.
But then he appeared in the living room doorway a second later, barefoot and in blue shorts and a white t-shirt. He came to a surprised stop when he saw me.
We looked at each other.
In the silence that followed, I became acutely aware that I was in simple clinic scrubs, the plain navy blue ones that I wore when I had no reason to expect to see anyone. I wished for a second that I had worn something prettier, before I caught myself and shut that thought down completely.
Stop it, I told myself. Stop it right now.
"What are you doing here?" Roman asked.
"Dr Sherman sent me," I replied, keeping my voice even. "Your nurse requested my physiotherapy notes and recovery plan from the clinic. I'm the only one with the full picture of where things stood, so I'm here to brief her and hand over the documentation. You don't need to worry, I'll be out before you even miss me."
Roman looked at me for a moment. Then he turned and walked to the balcony door, pushed it open and stepped outside, leaving it open behind him.
He was upset, and I didn't need to guess why. The morning after we had slept together, I had essentially handed him a list of reasons why it could never happen again and then walked him out of my apartment. He had felt bad, surely, I had given him every reason to feel that way.
A strange feeling of sadness had clogged my throat. Shaking my head and squaring my shoulders, I looked at Nurse Sarah. "So! Where were we?"
"The flexion," she replied.
"Right." I found the page again. "His flexion was improving ahead of schedule, but the resistance work will need to continue at a graduated pace. He cannot rush this, no matter how much he wants to. The temptation for athletes at this stage is to push too hard too fast because they can feel improvement, and that's exactly when reinjury happens. The protocol in section three outlines the weekly progression, and it's important that you don't skip ahead even if he's doing well."
Nurse Sarah was reading along with me, her eyes moving carefully across the pages. She asked two different questions about the resistance band exercises and one about pain management, and I answered all three without hesitation.
When I finished, she closed the last folder and looked up at me. "This is thorough work," she commented. "Genuinely thorough. I'm impressed."
Those kind words pushed thoughts of Roman Foster further out of my mind. "Oh, that's kind of you. Thank you."
"I'll be honest with you," Nurse Sarah continued, stacking the folders neatly. "When Mrs Foster told me about the clinic and mentioned that Roman's physiotherapist was a student intern, I expected something far more basic than this. Students at this level usually produce competent work but rarely anything that shows real clinical instinct."
She looked at the files again. "Of course, a fully qualified physiotherapist would have been the ideal, and in a case as time-sensitive as Roman's, one has to wonder whether a student placement was the most appropriate assignment from the outset."
The smile died on my face immediately.
"Glad it's useful," I muttered, and picked up my bag. "My contact details are on the cover page if you have questions. Take care of his knee, will you?"
I pushed my chair back and stood up. Then I walked to the door, pulled it open and left without looking toward the balcony.
I did not look back. I took the stairs down, pushed through the lobby doors and walked out onto the street. I told myself that the tightness in my stomach was irritation at Sarah Caldwell's backhanded compliments and nothing else. It was definitely nothing else.
I spent the rest of the day at the clinic. By the time the evening shift started winding down, I had already managed to stop thinking about Roman standing on that balcony with his back to me.
I was at the nurses station with Patricia and two of the other student nurses, in the middle of a conversation about nothing in particular, when Dr Sherman appeared in the doorway with his hands clasped in front of him. He wore the same expression he usually wore when he was about to deliver news he already knew someone wasn't going to like.
"Miss Sinclair," he said. "A word?"
The other nurses exchanged a look. I pushed off the counter and followed him to the edge of the corridor, out of earshot.
"I had a call from Sarah Caldwell this afternoon," he began.
I waited.
"She was very complimentary about your visit this morning. Said your documentation was thorough, and you clearly had a strong handle on where Roman's recovery stood. So, she has requested that you assist her a few times a week going forward."
I stared at him in disbelief. "I'm sorry?"
"She thinks having you involved would benefit Roman's recovery. Given how well you know the case, she feels the continuity would help."
"Dr Sherman," I told him, very carefully, "that woman told me to my face this morning that she was surprised my work was any good because I'm just a student intern. She basically said I shouldn't have been assigned to Roman in the first place."
"Well, be that as it may—"
"There is no way!" I had started to raise my voice. "There is absolutely no way that I am going back to that apartment on a regular basis to work under a woman who spent ten minutes undermining everything I did!"
"Harmony." His voice was patient, but firm. "Think about this from a bigger picture perspective. The Fosters are an influential family, and Mrs Foster was not happy with this clinic when she left. If you go back, and if you work well with Sarah and Roman Foster continues to recover, Mrs Foster will see that. It brings them back into our orbit and it repairs a relationship that was damaged, partly because of choices made in this clinic."
I opened my mouth to speak, but Dr Sherman was not done.
"Choices," he added, with a pointed look, "that we have already discussed at length."
He was talking about the kiss—of course he was. This was my penance.
And going back to that apartment, being in Roman's space three times a week after what had happened between us, after the way he had looked at me this morning and then turned his back, after all of it, was the absolute last thing I needed.
"It's already been decided, hasn't it?" I asked.
"It has," Dr Sherman replied, with an apologetic smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You start on Thursday."
He walked away, and I turned back toward the nurses station.
That scheming, backhanded, passive aggressive woman, I thought, with every colourful name I could assemble. That absolute snake in a white uniform!