Hobie quickly turned to see the exchange. “That figures,” she muttered. She turned away. “What do you want?”
“I, um, I guess I came to find you...to apologize.” “Apologize?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why on earth would you want to apologize to me?”
Baylor looked surprised. She had expected Hobie to be mad, but this seemed like something else. “Um...because I like you. I care about you,” she said uncertainly.
“You shouldn’t.” “Huh?”
“Care. I’m not worth it.”
___
LJ
Maas
“I disagree. Look, Hob, I’m confused. Why do you sound so weird?”
“If you’d known me long enough, it wouldn’t sound weird at all.” Hobie wore a bittersweet smile.
“I don’t get it.”
“I’m mad! All right?” Hobie stood and crossed to where Baylor stood. “I’m just mad!”
“At me?”
“No, at me,” Hobie said. “You’re just...in the way.”
Baylor concentrated on not smiling. She had a feeling that it would only make Hobie angrier, but it was so hard to keep a straight face. Hobie looked too damn cute. Even if Baylor had wanted to remain angry, she couldn’t resist that face. “Can I do anything to help in this war you seem to have going on between you and you?” Baylor couldn’t help it. She smiled the tiniest bit.
That action brought about a much-needed change in Hobie, whose features relaxed for a moment until her brow furrowed. Suddenly, she covered her face with both hands.
“I’m so sorry, Baylor. I didn’t mean those things. I didn’t mean any of it. I didn’t mean it when I said I didn’t want to see you again, I can be such a bitch. I—”
“Honey, honey.” Baylor moved to envelop Hobie in her arms. “It’s okay. You know, I did have a small part in all of that nonsense.”
“No, no.” Hobie shook her head as she buried her face against Baylor’s chest. “I’m just that way. I can be such a failure.”
“A failure at what?”
“I don’t know. Life. Everything.”
Baylor pulled away slightly to look at Hobie. She lifted Hobie’s face and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Okay, calm down. All right? I don’t understand. You’re probably the most successful woman I’ve ever met. You’re an MD and a DVM, for God’s sake. What do you mean you’re a failure?”
Hobie took a deep breath. “Can we sit?” “Absolutely.”
Once seated, Hobie didn’t look up at Baylor. She didn’t feel as though she could admit to that part of her past with those soft
___
Rebecca’s
Cove
gray eyes looking at her. It touched her heart when Baylor gently grasped her hands and silently waited for her to begin.
“I was pretty idealistic as a kid. I guess it really intensified after Dad died. I had a rough time with it, but I hid that from everyone. Inside, though, I promised myself that I would never let some other kid go through what I had to go through. Like I said, pretty idealistic.”
“I don’t have a hard time picturing that,” Baylor said.
Hobie smiled. “I guess I’m not too terribly different than that little kid that everything came so easily for. Maybe I was too smart for my own good. I suppose I thought I could do anything I put my mind to. Maybe it didn’t help that I graduated from high school at sixteen and a half.”
“You really were a whiz kid, huh?”
Hobie smiled. “Yeah, I was one of those pain-in-the-ass kids you read about. Studies came too easy to me. I sped through my education, and when it came time to choose my career path, I went with a branch of medicine that suited my character. I wanted to become a surgeon. I had no idea I would turn into such a failure.”
Baylor could only stare at the woman seated next to her. “How did you do it? How were you able to change so much? You seem so happy and self-confident. You say you failed. Do you mean at medicine?”
Those questions made Hobie feel better. Baylor hadn’t judged her or dismissed her, but simply accepted what Hobie had told her as the truth. Accepted and desired the same sort of change in her own life. To Hobie, that was the most beautiful part.
“It started my third year of med school when I was seeing patients. I started to realize that it wasn’t about me. It was about the patients and their families, and I could make a difference. I could save these people, keep them from going—”
“Keep them from going through what you went through,” Baylor said, squeezing Hobie’s hands. “That’s a noble impulse.”
“Yes, it was, at first. But after my surgical rotation, when I started saving lives, I felt like…like I was God, almost. I held people’s lives in my hands. I could choose whether they would
___
LJ
Maas
live or die. I thought I could cheat death.” She laughed bitterly. “Can you imagine the arrogance?”
“I’m sure that’s not uncommon among surgeons,” Baylor said.
“No, it isn’t. But then I gave up. I came home. I had just finished my first year of residency when I started to feel...I don’t know exactly. I think it was about the time I lost my first baby. We did everything for her, but she was just too small and weak. She got a postoperative infection and died in the middle of the night. I failed at the one thing I swore I would be good at. I finally had to accept that no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t save everyone. I started to see the faces of patients I lost, and I heard their families crying in the waiting rooms.”
“So that’s when you gave up medicine and came back to the island?” Baylor asked.
“No. I changed to a family practice residency program. I thought it would be better there and it helped for a while, but then I had a terrible month I went on code after code, and unfortunately, that’s when I started to drink. At first, it was just a couple of glasses of wine when I came home at night, something to relax me. It escalated to the point where I would just drink until I could look at myself in the mirror, look at myself and not see a complete failure staring back. That usually meant until I passed out. It didn’t last long enough to become a major problem. It was only a couple of months before I realized I didn’t want to live that way. I finished up my residency, then I came home.”
Baylor smiled in understanding, having undergone some amazing changes herself since living on the island. “It was Ana Lia, wasn’t it? That changed you.”
“I guess that’s as good an explanation as any. I felt so lost by the time I got back home. I had no confidence or ambition of any kind. I was in limbo. I think it was a gradual process. The kind of thing where you can’t really look back and identify the exact point where it all changed. I started to get involved in people’s lives, listening and accepting. Goofy little things like starting a flower garden or helping out at the grade school. One day, I woke up and realized that I liked myself. I also had a few conversations
___
Rebecca’s
Cove
with Rebecca Ashby.”
Baylor grinned. “The key to happiness.” “Yes. How did you know?”
“I’ve talked to her a little bit about that very thing. Not that I’m any closer to figuring it out, but it’s an interesting concept.”
“It took me a number of years to put it all together. I started working with Mary Thigpen, a visiting veterinarian. One thing led to another and here I am today. I can’t say it was one thing—it was a hundred—but I know it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t come back to Ana Lia. The icing on my cake was having Noah. He was the only thing I felt I was missing in my life.”