His lack of enthusiasm was not wasted on Ayres. I mean it, Morgan. Yes. I was pissed as hell when you disrupted my OR, but you saved my patient. Our patient. Sure. Maybe it would have been okay. Maybe Vincenzo would have come through one more procedure. But maybe he wouldnt have. Then that little girl back there would be growing up without her Daddy. Ayress eyes clouded up for a second and he coughed. You and I both know that there are some patients who cant be saved, but Vincenzo isnt one of them. I would not have wanted that on my conscience for the rest of my life.

He turned and walked down the hall, back toward the Neurology Department.

Morgan watched him go, trying to get a handle on all the feelings surging through him. That had definitely taken a turn he hadnt expected. Maybe Ayres wasnt quite the scalpel jockey Morgan had thought he was. He went into the lounge to wait for Lexa. His cell phone buzzed again, this time with an incoming text. He sighed. Ashley asking him to call when he had a minute to talk. So civil. So polite. So utterly depressing.

Sometimes he wished she'd scream at him, throw stuff against the wall. It would be easier to handle than the sadness he saw in those big blue eyes of hers.

He did everything he could think of to make the doctors lounge coffee drinkable, adding enough cream and sugar so that the damn thing might as well be a milkshake. Still, it tasted nothing but bitter.

Maybe it wasn't the coffee's fault. Maybe that bad taste was permanently in his own mouth.

He sat down at the long table, scarred with water marks, and leaned back looking at the ceiling, long legs extended in front of him. Fatigue dragged at him. There was a time that the coffee wouldnt have mattered. It could have been made from actual horse dung and still would have tasted sweet.

Hed loved his job and a save like this one would have made him feel like he was flying. That family would stay intact. He could see the tangible results of his hard work and study.

Why wasnt it enough anymore?

He looked down at his phone again. Did it have to do with Ashley?

Maybe.

While hed poured his attention and focus on other peoples lives and families, hed neglected his own and now he was losing that. Ash wanted a divorce.

If he didnt have his marriage and his job no longer kept him going, what was the point? He didnt know.

The room was like so much else in the hospital. Generic. Unremarkable. Two couches and a coffee table with nearly every major medical journal in the country strewn across it, clogged with the stench of old coffee and the lingering scent of burned coffee grounds.