Chapter 110
Holding His Woman
Chapter 103: Holding His Woman
Logan’s POV
We looked at each other for a moment.
+25 Points
Pointe
I thought about calling Cameron again and demanding that he come down here and take me to my wife. I thought about what Cameron would say when I told him I was standing in the lobby of St Anthony’s. About the particular quality of his voice when he’d said *don’t come to the hospital unannounced* and I’d agreed and then done exactly that, come unannounced.
“Is there patient services?” I asked trying to see if there was something else that I could try, that did not have to involve calling Sedona’s family who would shut it down before I could see her. “A liaison I could p>
“I can connect you with patient services, yes. Though I want to be upfront that they’ll be operating under the same privacy guidelines and they take the patient privacy extremely p>
She was already reaching for a phone. “If you’d like to take a seat, I can let them know you’re here.” “Thank you,” I said, because there was nothing else to say.
I moved to the waiting area and sat in one of the chairs that lined the lobby wall and looked at the floor and thought about what I was doing.
I’d been in Seattle for thirty-six hours. I visited eight hospitals. I’d called Cameron twice. I slept badly for three nights. I was sitting in the lobby of the correct hospital knowing she was somewhere in this building and having no way to reach her, unless I started checking every room in every corridor in every floor of this enterprise building.
The lobby around me moved with its quiet purpose-more people arriving, staffs going about their morning duties with no issues attempting to the needs of people who were unwell. A man with flowers. Two women with a child between them. An elderly couple moving slowly but together, the same rhythm that immediately gave me nostalgia that if I had not messed up, in 50 years that would be me and Sedona.
I could not bear to look at the couple anymore so I was looking at the floor.
And then I heard it. Sedona’s laugh.
It came from the direction of the corridor to my left-the one that led, I’d noticed when I came in, toward the garden wing, the outdoor spaces that cancer centers often had for patients mobile enough to use them.
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+25 Pointe This wasn’t the fake version she used when she had to be extremely polite to people who belittled her without me stepping in, because I believed she was insignificant and she understood that being married to a certain class came with certain sacrifices. No this was the real one. The one that surprised her, that came from somewhere she wasn’t keeping control of it. I was on my feet before I’d made a conscious decision. The corridor to the left was longer than it looked, connecting the lobby to a glass-walled section that opened onto the hospital’s garden space. I walked it quickly, following the sound, following something that would lead me to the woman I had been searching for. I reached the glass section. And stopped. There was a garden beyond the glass wall, one of those careful hospital gardens that were designed to feel natural without requiring anything of the people in them-paths and benches and plantings that provided something green to look at, a place to be outside that was still safely inside enough. The morning light was doing something particular in it, filtering through the gray of the Seattle sky in the way Pacific Northwest light did, soft and even, without the harsh directionality of sunnier places. Sedona was in the garden. The first thing I registered was that she was walking. Moving under her own power, without the careful fragility I’d seen at the hospital in Chicago, without the paleness that she had that day I saw her with Cameron in the hospital corridor and she looked like she could barely stand up. She was thin-visibly, significantly thinner than she’d been and she was wearing a coat that was too large for her current frame. But she was walking, and her posture had something in it, that made me look again, narrowing my eyes in confusion because I did not believe it. She was carrying a baby. A small one-less than a year, round-faced, dark-haired, looking at the world with the alert interested expression of a baby who had decided everything was worth investigating. The baby had both hands wrapped around the lapel of Sedona’s coat with the trusting grip that babies used when they’d decided a person was safe, and Sedona was holding her with the ease of someone who’d done it many times, the shift and adjustment of an experienced holder, her chin dipping toward the baby’s head as she said something I couldn’t hear through the glass. And beside her- The man was tall. Significantly tall, the kind of height that registered before anything else did, with MON 1 2/3 +25 Points the particular build of someone who maintained physical conditioning professionally. He was walking beside Sedona with a proximity that wasn’t casual-not the neutral spacing of acquaintances-moving in the same direction, but the close, deliberate proximity of someone who had decided that the distance between them was the correct distance and had placed himself there intentionally. His hand was at her waist. Not holding her up. His hand was at her waist the way you put your hand somewhere when the person beside you was someone you’d decided to be near. Sedona said something. He said something back. The baby made a sound, reaching for something -the collar of his jacket, maybe-and he looked down at her with an expression I couldn’t read from this distance but that involved, unmistakably, a smile. Sedona laughed again, the real one, the catch at the end, her head tilting back slightly amused at the scene happening in front of her and making no effort to hide it. Comments LUCK DRAW > Vote 1 Admins2