Page 29 of Dr. Attending

All sides that I liked seeing from him.

Chapter 11

Weston

The lights are off in the hotel room when I step out of the bathroom, pulling a T-shirt over my head. From what I can see in the darkness, it looks like Caroline is snuggled beneath the covers on the opposite side of where I was sitting earlier. I can’t tell if she’s already asleep, but I move as quietly as possible, just in case.

I pull back the duvet and settle into the queen size bed, turning toward the wall so that the light from my phone doesn’t bother her. I have no doubt that I’ll be able to hear Carter if he wakes up, but I want to do a quick check one last time before I pass out.

As I open the monitoring app, I hear Caroline whisper, “Did you set an alarm?”

I smile to myself because she has no idea that an alarm isn’t necessary when you have a baby.

“Six.”

It sounds like a statement, but I mean it as a question. We can get up whenever she wants, as long as I’m able to get a few hours of sleep before we start driving again.

“That’s fine. Based on the texts I’ve gotten tonight, they won’t be up early anyway.”

She’s not wrong.

I checked my messages while she was in the shower and had a few from Parker that were barely coherent, so I doubt any of our friends will be out of bed before noon.

I plug my phone into the charger and pull the covers up to my shoulders, feeling the mattress shift as Caroline rustles beside me.

This is my first time sharing a bed with a woman I’m not sleeping with, and I wasn’t sure what the proper protocol was, so I offered to sleep on the floor.

Of course, she had a problem with that, though—like most things I do. She told me I was being ridiculous, and that it was only awkward because I was making it that way.

And now that I’m lying beside her, I completely agree because nothing about this is awkward. In fact, I’m more comfortable than I have been in a while, and I’m unsure if it’s due to my sheer exhaustion or the woman beside me.

Unfortunately, being comfortable doesn’t seem to equate to being able to fall asleep.

I flop onto my back and close my eyes, focusing on the steady hum of the air conditioner above my head. I need to quiet my mind and get some rest or this detour will have been pointless.

“You okay?”

I turn my head, and even though I can’t see her expression, I can tell that she’s being sincere.

“Yeah . . . sorry. I was so tired earlier that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But for some reason, now I can’t fall asleep.”

For a second I wonder if she’s going to respond because there’s a long pause. But then she asks, “Is that why we stopped?”

I stare at her through the darkness, knowing that I owe her an explanation—I just don’t know where to start, or how much I should share.

“Yeah.”

I’m used to functioning on less sleep than the general population because my years in surgical residency were riddled with chronic exhaustion. And while getting by on less than five hours of sleep prepared me to be a father, they didn’t prepare me for tonight.

None of the tricks I typically try to stay awake were effective in a silent car. I couldn’t exactly jog up a flight of stairs to get my blood flowing or blast 80s music when I had two people sleeping in the back seat. So when the trees on the side of the road tonight started looking like ghosts from a children’s cartoon, I knew that I needed to stop. I wasn’t going to add another item to my list of regrets.

Caroline lets out a long sigh, and if I had to guess, she’s probably rolling her pretty blue eyes in exasperation. “I would have driven the rest of the way, Wes. Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“Do you really believe that?”

I’m not trying to come off as patronizing, even though it probably sounds that way. But I know without a doubt that there’s no way she could’ve taken over. The winding mountain roads were pitch black and required a level of concentration that neither one of us were capable of.

“I mean . . . I could have tried.”

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