The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(88)
He winces. “Or we could, you know, just call her by her actual name.”
“I nearly died, Graham.”
“Daisy it is, then,” he replies.
Her tiny moving mouth slows, then stops.
“She’s sound asleep already,” I whisper. “She got that from you.”
He lowers the side of the bed and sits beside me. I place her in his arms and he swallows hard as he takes her in, his eyes bright once more.
“Hello, Daisy,” he whispers. Her tiny hand wraps tight around his pinky and I rest my head against his arm. There’s no one alive I trust more. I’m so glad she’ll have him to lean on.
I’m so glad we both will.
Our daughter remains in the hospital for four days, and after pulling some strings, we’re allowed to stay with her. Just before she’s released, Graham goes to install the car seat in the back of the Volvo. Daisy’s asleep in the nursery, so I roam the halls, catching up with people.
Dr. Patel is not supposed to be one of them.
“Do you have a minute?” he asks.
“Do you have another case of Mycobacterium marinum you want me to diagnose?” I ask with a small laugh.
He smiles. “Still resentful over that, I see. Come along. I need coffee.”
I guess I can hear him out. I’ve been realizing this week how much I missed a lot of things about working in the hospital.
“I saw your segment on Mindy and Mills,” he says as he pours coffee into his cup.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me I was amazing.”
He raises a brow. “You did actually attend medical school. It would be sad if you couldn’t do those things.”
Which is exactly what I said, but he could have humored me.
“You did, however, remain commendably composed,” he continues. “I assume you asked the surfer if he had a tetanus shot?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course I did.”
“And the newborn—you felt for the cord as you pulled him out? And you cleared his nose right away?”
He’s really pissing me off now. “Yes.”
“Do you know why I’m asking you these questions, Keeley?”
“I assume it’s because you think I’m incompetent.”
“No.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “It’s because every doctor misses things at some point, and it’s learning from those misses that turns you into a better doctor. You didn’t ask a patient with fish handlers’ disease what he did for a living, but I bet you never do it again.”
I frown. I suppose he’s right. “It still felt like you singled me out. You gave me a patient with a rare disorder and then described in detail how I messed up.”
“I absolutely did single you out,” he agrees, setting his coffee down. “Has it ever occurred to you, though, that I perhaps did that because I knew you could figure it out, and suspected the others wouldn’t?”
I grin. “So you’re saying I’m actually the greatest resident you ever had?”
He laughs. “No, far from it. But you could become a very good doctor. And if you ever tire of telling rich women which retinol to use, I’d be happy to find a place for you here.”
He’s a pain in the ass, but I’ll probably become a better doctor because of him, and the idea of working here excites me in a way Beverly Hills Skin never could.
“I want to stay home with my daughter for a while first,” I warn. “She hasn’t seen the first two seasons of Bridgerton yet.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “Yes, yes, of course. But for your daughter’s sake, I hope her father is good at telling you no.”
I smile. Our daughter is named Delilah Kalamity Tate.
He’s not that good at it.
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48
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KEELEY
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JANUARY
I’m unpacking, waiting for Graham to get home, when I come across the onesies Daisy wore as a newborn. As small as she still is, the tiny garments in this box look like doll clothes to me now. That’s how it is though—you don’t register most change as it happens. It just hits you like an anvil when it’s well behind you.
And on this particular date, a year from the afternoon I met Graham, several anvils are hitting me at once.
Exactly a year ago, no matter what he says now, Graham had just arrived at the Langham and was probably trying to figure out how fast he could get back to New York so he could return to the office—the same guy who now cuts out of work just because he thinks I look tired, and who recently cancelled a shareholder meeting because Daisy had an ear infection.
A year ago today, I was being as rude as possible to him while planning to seduce another guy. It’s a little shocking in retrospect, and it’s taken me most of this year to understand that I was driven entirely by fear. I set my sights on the one guy I knew I’d never want to make permanent, and fought the realization that there was something about Graham—his irritating reliance on logic, his refusal to take any shit from me, and later, of course, that mouth—that I knew I’d want to keep.