The email was the last nail in the coffin that encompassed three insanely bad days.

He didn’t see it until several hours after it was sent, and that was only because Vivian couldn’t stop talking about it when he went up to the nurse’s station. He’d logged into his work email on his phone and the message completely staggered him. If he’d been standing, he wasn’t sure he would have stayed that way. As it was, he stayed in his chair, just staring at the words for an embarrassingly long time until he was called by name to come check on a patient.

Hidden Creek was losing its emergency services, which accounted for a large chunk of why the hospital even existed. It wasn’t just the cases brought in via ambulance, it was the people that could be triaged, too, most of whom had no insurance or very limited coverage.

The hospital was their only chance at care, and with those services gone, they’d be forced to drive for nearly an hour to get it, all without the guarantee of quality they’d come to expect from Hidden Creek Memorial.

Oh, he had no doubt the county would try to buy Sloane out regardless and turn this place into a walk-in clinic, but in his experience, those were money-making extensions of whatever hospital owned them. Many had the right to turn away patients because they didn’t deal with truly emergent cases, and the vulnerable citizens of Hidden Creek would be left in the lurch.

People like Mrs. Hartford, who only had coverage through Medicare—and poor coverage, at that. She was stabilized now. Kyle’s next stop was to check in on her and make sure she was getting everything she needed. But where was she supposed to go to treat complications from her COPD in the future?

It was devastating, and he was absolutely helpless to do anything about it. Of course, the first place his mind turned in its desperation was to Wes, but he was fighting his own battles.

Kyle knew what lay underneath his need to control every aspect of a frenzied procedure. He understood and even sympathized with it. But he also knew that Wes’ tendencies had and would continue to endanger patients, and his lack of trust—while not extended Kyle’s way just yet—could easily swing in that direction.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the harsh, public thrashing Kyle had given the man. Words that needed to be said, but maybe not in front of the other nurses and medical staff.

He intended to apologize once all this was over, but he doubted it would make a difference. This seemed like the death knell as far as their burgeoning relationship was concerned. If they couldn’t work together without bringing their personal feelings into it, it would be better if they just… didn’t have those feelings at all.

Easier said than done, as every time he saw Wes in the hospital he felt a sharp pain deep in his chest. He wanted to go to the man, comfort him and steal him away to someplace quiet where he could make sure he rested and ate something. But knowing Wes, he could imagine the attention would be unwanted, and the patients needed them both, besides.

Case in point, he set his own personal drama aside and made his way to Mrs. Hartford’s room. They’ve moved her upstairs, mostly because of a lack of beds on the ground floor. She would’ve been moved up there eventually, since she’d been formally admitted, and Kyle was glad to see that she could recover someplace far more comfortable.

Putting on his bravest, friendliest face, Kyle knocked before entering her room. He’d expected to find her resting, but she was sitting up, extra pillows propped behind her, the TV on above him.

“You must be feeling better,” he said dumbly, somewhat amazed by her resilience. This was an almost seventy-year-old woman who’d gone into cardiac arrest not six hours earlier.

“And you must be exhausted. You want the bed?” she asked, patting the side of the bed.

Kyle gave her a genuine smile. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be heading home soon, I just wanted to check on you first.”

“Still alive. Still can’t breathe worth a damn without these little tubes,” she said, pointing to the thin tubes supplying oxygen through her nose.

“It should get easier once your blood oxygenates.” He moved to the side of her bed, checking her IV and her vitals, pulling down a blood pressure cuff from the wall. “In the meantime, is there anything I can get you? More pillows? Another blanket? A better cable package?”

He expected her to laugh and joke along with him, but Mrs. Hartford just looked up at him with a sad, knowing smile. As he went to slide the stethoscope under the cuff, she put a gentle hand atop his.

“You don’t have to put on a brave face for me. I know everything’s going to shit.”

“You heard, huh?”

“Hard not to. It’s all anybody around here’s been talking about since I came to,” she said, removing her hand so he could get the vitals he needed.

Kyle was quiet for a moment, concentrating on her pulse as he inflated the cuff by hand. The needle veered wildly, finally settling on a blood pressure that was at the low end of normal.

“There’s still a chance things will work out. And you don’t need to be thinking about any of that right now, anyway.” The sound of Velcro filled the brief silence as he pulled the cuff off. “You need to focus on getting better.”

“Honey, I am way too old to buy any of that bullshit,” she said, arching one brow at him. “Unless you’re some kind of saint, I know you don’t believe things are just going to magically work out. Not now.”

She was right, and the weight of that truth hit him hard. It felt like a sudden pressure on his chest, as though he were the one who’d experienced cardiac distress. The ache bore deep, reaching him on a level he didn’t expect, in a way that wasn’t just about the hospital losing so much of what Hidden Creek needed, but also about his own losses.

His father. His relationship with Brandon. Rebecca. And now Wes. Not all of them equal, but losses just the same, and the last hurt just as much as any of the others.

“No,” he admitted softly, “I don’t. I wish I could say differently, but… you’re right. Everything’s going to shit.”

“Ahhh.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Trouble with Doctor Tall, Dark, and Moody?”

Kyle let out a reflexive snort at the moniker, but it soon clicked that she apparently knew about him and Wes. Did everyone know? They hadn’t exactly been subtle, but he’d tried to keep things professional at work.

“It was bound to happen, right? You don’t dip your pen in the company inkwell, and all that.”

“I don’t know. If I had a pen to dip, I definitely would’ve dipped it in that inkwell,” she said, her gaze faraway as though she were picturing Wes.

A blush rose in Kyle’s cheeks. He wasn’t about to correct her and admit that it was Wes’ pen and his inkwell, not the other way around. Not yet, anyway. Not ever, now.

“Honestly? Right now I’m more worried about you and everyone else who depends on this hospital,” Kyle said, settling into the chair beside her bed where he updated information on Mrs. Hartford’s chart.

“Oh, I’ll be just fine. Might have to eat a bit of crow and let my daughter call around to some of the assisted living places in Houston, but I was going to end up there eventually.”

God, that was horrible. She said it so casually, but when Kyle looked over at her, he could see the struggle behind her eyes. It didn’t take a psychology degree to know this was a fiercely independent woman, and to have to move over to a long-term care facility because the nearest hospital was gutting its services was absolutely devastating.

“Now what’d I just say?” she demanded. “You stop worrying about this right now. None of this is your fault, and you’ve got your own life to sort out. And other patients to tend to,” she pointed out with a self-righteous nod.

There were tears glistening in her eyes, and Kyle’s heart cracked just a little bit more. He wanted to stay, but it was obvious she needed to be alone right now.

“I’ll go,” he said softly, laying a hand on her arm. “But I’ll be back a little later.”

“If you must,” she managed with just a hint of dramatic flair. Kyle stepped back, slotting the chart into the edge of her bed, then started reluctantly toward the door. “Oh, and I wouldn’t say no to another pillow.”

By the time Kyle came back later that night, all sign of Mrs. Hartford’s tears was gone. She was her regular spunky, sassy self, joking with the orderly who’d come in to change her sheets.

She was stronger than all of them, by far. Since the news broke, he’d witnessed his co-workers caring for patients while distracted, fighting back emotions at every turn, some of them even leaving before their shift ended just to get away from it all.

He didn’t blame a single one of them. It was a very thin thread holding Kyle together, keeping him from doing the same. But that thread was there, and it allowed him the chance to appreciate the differences.

Daisy Hartford had grieved her lost independence, but then she’d gone right back to trying to make the people around her happy. She deserved to live life on her terms. She deserved to have a facility that could help her—save her—if she ever needed it again.

And when that became the focus of his thoughts, he was brought back to a time a couple of months ago, when he was researching the viability of rural hospitals.

He’d done it again when searching for solutions, he just hadn’t been in the right frame of mind. He’d been searching for ways to cut corners and still keep the lights on.

But what if there was a way the hospital could afford its trauma designation? What if they could make themselves desirable to people from all walks of lives, for services they couldn’t get anywhere else? The thought wasn’t an original one. He’d found mention of it in several of the articles he’d read. But back then, he’d overlooked it.

Now, it was the only path he was willing to take forward. It had to be, because the alternative was something the people of Hidden Creek couldn’t withstand. So when his shift finally ended, Kyle headed straight home and fired up his laptop. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He just searched for an answer.

And finally, in the early hours of the morning, when it was still pitch dark outside, he found one.