CHAPTER EIGHT

SPLASHING SO MUCH cold water on his face in the wake of that phone call should have been enough to bring Dom firmly back into the present but, as he knotted a towel around his waist for decency, he found himself standing beside his bed, pausing to take a deep, deep breath as his gaze rested on Emilia.

Taking a moment to forget everything that was rushing towards him and soak in the beauty of this woman. The flicker of fire that her hair made, tumbling against the crisp white of his bed linen. That pale, perfect skin that tasted as good as it looked and those freckles... He had a vague memory of vowing to kiss every single one of them...

Dom could almost feel himself being torn in two, here.

What half of him wanted, so much it felt like a shade of desperation, was to turn the clock back. Just a few hours. To when he’d scooped Emilia into his arms to carry her off to bed. This time, however, he’d close the curtains and turn his phone off and give them complete privacy for a little longer.

But time had run out.

The other half of himself was just as desperate to be near his father as Roberto faced a new crisis. And to talk to his sister, as he’d told Max he would do as soon as possible. It was a no-brainer where his duty lay and what his priorities were and Dom absolutely wanted to be there for his family immediately but he knew, too well, how hard it was going to be to walk away from Emilia.

Because he sensed that this would mark the beginning of the end.

If he had a choice, Dom would never want this to end. It had occurred to him during the gala last night that Emilia was someone that he could easily fall in love with if circumstances were very different. He’d taken the risk of playing with that fantasy, even, and giving himself a night of pretending that things could be that different only to find that it wasn’t simply a possibility. He’d hidden it so well he hadn’t even seen it himself but he was already in love with her and he probably had been for far longer than he knew. Not that that was likely to change anything, of course. Reality was hovering, ready to crash all around him. Around them both...

As if she sensed that she was being watched, Emilia stirred in her sleep and stretched like a cat. Perhaps she was instinctively reaching out to touch him because Dom could see her muscles tense and pause as her arm swept the space that was probably still warm from his body. Her eyes flew open but it took a moment for her to register where she was and that he was standing beside the bed, and then to chase enough sleep from her eyes to really focus.

For a heartbeat, and then another, as he saw the dream filled haze lifting in her gaze, Dom couldn’t help taking this fraction of time to snatch the last piece of that fantasy. To imagine an entirely different world, where he would see this transformation in her face every single morning for the rest of his life. That softening around her eyes that was reaching her lips now to become the beginnings of a smile, as if seeing him was the best thing that could possibly happen in those first moments of waking up to a new day. It looked...and felt...an awful lot like love. Was it possible that Emilia felt the same way about him as he was feeling about her? That, if she had her choice, she would want him to stay here? To stay with her?

He could fight for that. Somehow...

But, in just another heartbeat, Emilia’s face changed again. The focus was far more intense and the embryonic smile vanished.

‘What’s wrong, Dom? What’s happened?’

How could she read him so easily when he hadn’t even been consciously thinking about what was worrying him so much?

‘I just got a call from Max,’ he told her. ‘They’ve finished the scan on my father and he’s not happy with what they’ve found. The tumour is growing and it’s starting to cause problems. His intracranial pressure is rising.’

‘Oh, no...’ Emilia sat up, pulling the sheet to wrap around herself like a toga. ‘They were hoping he’d recover more from the last surgery before they went ahead with removing the tumour, weren’t they?’

Dom nodded. ‘There’s a few more tests to run and then a detailed plan has to be made for a challenging surgery like this. He’s wanting to print a 3D anatomical model for a physical simulation of the surgery.’

‘Wow...’ Emilia looked fascinated. ‘I’ve heard about that technology. I’ll bet I could use it myself in some cases.’

It was so much easier to ease back into reality by slipping into a familiar, professional space. ‘I’m sure you could. It’ll certainly help Max and his team by letting them see exactly what the tumour looks like and how it sits in relation to blood vessels and surrounding brain structures.’

‘How urgent is the surgery?’

‘I guess that will depend on whether his condition remains stable or not but Max said something about the fifteenth—the day after tomorrow. Ironically, that’s the date that his elective surgery was originally scheduled for.’

‘I’ll go and see him today,’ Emilia said. ‘I’ve been more than happy with the way his leg has been healing but I’d like to make sure the fixation is robust enough to cope with any movement that might be involved in the surgery.’ She glanced towards the windows and blinked. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just before eight. What time are you due at work?’

‘I’ve got a late start at eleven a.m. I thought it might be prudent after a big night out.’

She caught his gaze and, for a long moment, a silence hung between them. A silence that acknowledged everything that had happened in the last twelve, life-changing hours. Dom could feel that tearing sensation again, forcing the two halves of himself further apart.

‘I’m due at nine a.m.,’ he said. ‘And I’ll need to be a lot earlier if I can be so I can see my father and talk to my sister. I’m sorry... I’ll have to jump into the shower and get going.’ He cleared his throat, still holding that gaze. Clinging to it, in fact, with his words no more than a murmur. ‘I’d rather be jumping back into bed...’

Emilia got to her feet. The look she was giving him was sharp enough to make him remember the countless times she had needled him into responding to a challenge or teased him because she’d already won.

‘You’re not a very good listener, are you? Or maybe you’ve just forgotten the pearls of wisdom I bestowed on you when we were discussing Thanksgiving that day?’ She shook her head. ‘I guess it was a long time ago. Nearly three weeks.’ Her lips quirked and then she held his gaze and spoke slowly, enunciating every word separately as if she was speaking to someone of very limited intelligence. She even put her hand flat against his bare chest, near his heart, as if she wanted to emphasise just how important this was.

‘Family. Is. Everything.’

There was a gleam in her eyes that softened any put down and her voice softened as well. ‘Your family needs you and you need them, Dom. That has to come above absolutely everything else.’

Still he hesitated. Was he hoping that Emilia would arrange a time and space they could meet again later today? Or that she might offer to go with him?

Instead, her breath came out in a sigh. ‘You still don’t realise how lucky you are to have a family, Dom. It’s something I always dreamed of having but I never have. I never will have...’

Dom shook his head. ‘You could. You could make your own.’

Maybe it wouldn’t be with him but he still wanted this astonishing woman to find the happiness she deserved in life.

But now it was Emilia who was shaking her head. ‘I tried that, remember? With Chandler. Didn’t work and I should have known it wouldn’t. I can look after myself, Dom. Always have and always will be able to. And I’m happy on my own. It’s better this way.’

The touch of her hand on his chest increased in pressure enough to become a shove to send him on his way. ‘Go... Get clean. I’m going to find some of your gym gear or something to borrow so I don’t have to do the taxi ride of shame in my ballgown.’

Was it possible that the memory of a single touch could be powerful enough to become a kind of scar?

Dom was beginning to think that it was possible, given that he was losing count of how many times he could still feel the imprint of Emilia’s hand on his chest as he juggled the next, difficult forty-eight hours. There had been intense conversations with his sister and their father’s neurosurgeon as results came in from examinations and tests and more scans. Time spent by his father’s bedside were coloured by all the anxiety and guilt and even grief in knowing that these could be their last moments together and Dom had not been able to let his father know how much he was loved.

There were flashes of more guilt because he hadn’t seen or spoken to Emilia since they’d spent that extraordinary night together but he knew she would understand that his family had to come first right now. She had, after all, reminded him of that in no uncertain terms.

He’d been successful in barely missing a beat in his beloved ER as well, because keeping himself as busy as possible and as distracted from any personal issues as possible was by far the best way he could deal with such enormous pressure. It meant that when he wasn’t needed in the ER, he had to find other things that were challenging or interesting enough to take his entire focus and that was why he’d come up to one of Seattle General’s operating theatres this morning. Not to check out where his own father was going to be, for probably many, many hours, later today but to follow up on a patient who’d captured his interest weeks ago.

Fourteen-year-old Jason, who had technically died when his heart had stopped beating almost as soon as he’d arrived by ambulance after his fainting episode at school, was due to have an implantable defibrillator inserted into his chest because extensive testing had shown that he had an inherited condition that had thickened the muscle of his heart enough to disrupt the way its electrical system worked. It was a procedure that Dom had never got around to watching so what better way to fill in some of the time before he was due to start his shift in the ER. He would still be able to visit his father before his surgery was scheduled to begin.

Dom pulled a hat and mask from the dispensers in the scrubbing in room adjacent to the theatre. He could see Jason already on the table in front of him and the anaesthetist was administering his sedation and watching vital signs, adjusting the volume of an alarm on one of the monitors. The beeping from the machine reminded Dom of that cardiac arrest alarm he’d heard that had signalled the moment he’d become involved in this case.

He’d been in his office. Talking to Emilia in the wake of her reaction to learning the truth about who he was. It wasn’t just an echo of the alarm he could hear, however. He could hear some of his own words.

I guess I just don’t want to lose what we have, Emmy. Something that’s real. Something I can trust...

And...there it was again. The imprint of her hand burning the skin beneath the cotton of his scrub tunic. Disturbing enough to make him touch the spot himself to try and erase the sensation by rubbing at it.

The movement earned him a sharp sideways glance from the attending cardiologist who was reaching for a sterile towel to dry his hands.

‘Chest pain, Dom?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You’ve come to the right place, then. Shall I see if we’ve got a spare defibrillator lying around that we could bung in?’

‘I only came to watch, Rick.’ But Dom felt like he was smiling for the first time in the last two days. Maybe because the physician’s remark reminded him of the kind of banter he and Emilia had always shared? ‘I like your bedside manner, though. It’s true what they say about you, isn’t it?’

Both men were grinning as they entered the theatre for what should be a routine and relatively minor procedure but one that had the potential to ensure that young Jason would go on to live a normal life that wasn’t shadowed by the threat of sudden death.

Dom’s smile faded as he stood back to watch the team’s well-practised routine of implanting the cardioverter defibrillator. An incision was made under Jason’s collarbone to form the pocket for the small device and wires were threaded through a large vein to be positioned in the heart’s chambers under X-ray. Then it was time to test the device.

‘These things are getting more sophisticated all the time,’ Rick told him. ‘You’ll see, when we get him into VF.’

Dom glanced to where the electrophysiology technician was ready with his equipment.

‘We synchronise a small shock to hit the T wave in the ECG,’ the technician told him. ‘It’s the fastest and most effective way to induce ventricular fibrillation.’

‘Don’t worry...’ Rick must have seen the look on Dom’s face at the idea of deliberately causing a potentially fatal heart rhythm. ‘We’ve got back up to deal with a cardiac arrest if the internal defib doesn’t do its job.’

It took a few minutes to test the device that was capable of delivering a series of low-voltage electrical impulses to pace the heart, a small shock to try and correct the rhythm or a larger shock to deal with the heart stopping completely. Dom found himself holding his breath as he watched the screens of the monitors, waiting for that small device to do what it had taken a whole team in the ER to achieve that day that Jason had been his patient.

‘And that’s it,’ Rick announced a short time later. ‘We just need to close the incision and it’ll be a wrap. We’ll keep him in overnight, though, just to keep an eye on him.’

As Dom was leaving the suite of operating theatres, he passed an area where relatives were allowed to wait until they could visit the recovery room and be reassured that their loved one had made it through their surgery. He recognised Jason’s mother, even though she was sitting with her head bowed, one hand on her forehead. He wanted to stop and reassure her but he’d misjudged the timing of the procedure a little and he was running late to be in the ER. He also knew that she wouldn’t have to suffer much longer because Rick would be coming to see her within minutes to tell her how well the procedure had gone.

That pushing the elevator button would trigger yet another memory of Emilia’s touch on his chest was unexpected. Was it the pushing sensation or the fact that he’d just seen a mother who was desperately worried about her son which was an echo of more than Emilia’s touch? He could hear her words this time.

‘Family is everything...’

And, in turn, that brought a flood of memories of Thanksgiving Day. The laughter. The terrible cooking. The way Emilia had made him feel lucky to have a family, because even with their problems, it was so much more than she’d ever had in her life. Her relationship with that bastard, who couldn’t recognise what he’d been lucky enough to have and had undermined her ability to achieve everything she was capable of achieving, had been an attempt to create a family of her own, hadn’t it? And its failure had been damaging enough to make her believe she was better off—and would be happier—on her own?

Oh...sì... Dom could feel that push on his chest with vivid clarity.

The sensation of being pushed out of Emilia’s life.

She didn’t feel the same way about him as he did about her. She wasn’t remotely interested in forming another permanent relationship and even if she was, she wouldn’t want any part of the future that now lay before him.

Abruptly, Dom turned away from the elevator that still hadn’t arrived. He gave the firestop door at the entrance to the staircase a firm shove and then took the steps at a fast pace. He needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere he’d be too busy to keep thinking about Emilia like this.

Of course she wouldn’t want a part of his future. She loved her work here as much as he did. And she’d always been a private person when it came to her personal life. Dom could be quite sure he wasn’t the only person who’d known her for so many years but had no clue what her early life had been like. Imagine if she was put under the scrutiny of the media who would stop at nothing to reveal information that would sell their publications? What could be better than a princess with a past that was far juicier than simply being a commoner?

He wouldn’t want that for Emilia. And he knew that it would be the last thing she would want for herself. She’d learned to hide that part of her life. She’d said herself that she’d learned to look after herself and succeed against the odds and Dom could be sure that she would continue to do that. And that she’d thrive.

Dom was almost at the ER now and he would be able to immerse himself in what would hopefully be a very busy shift. He had cover, as well, so he could take breaks to be with Giada as she waited for their father to come out of surgery—probably in the same room that Jason’s mother had been waiting.

Emilia was quite right. Family was everything and he had to look after his, especially today. Memories of his night with Emilia and any dreams of her being a part of his life in the future had to be dismissed. He’d managed before, when he’d totally dismissed his attraction to Emilia when he’d first seen her at medical school. He could do it again now.

Because the persona of Dr Domenico di Rossi was getting ready to leave the building. His Royal Highness Domenico Baresi was about to step into those shoes and begin a totally different life.

He, too, needed to learn to look after himself. And thrive. Because he owed that, not only to his family, but to his country as well. Emilia would understand because she understood him, probably better than anyone else ever had. Or ever would.

Trauma Team to ER. Stat.

The clock felt like it was being rewound as Emilia responded to her pager. Back to the day before any of this had started. Before she’d known Dom’s secret and before she’d revealed so much about her own background. Before she’d fallen in love with someone she’d only ever seen as a rival and a colleague and so far before they’d become close enough to make love it felt like a different century.

The case was not that dissimilar to the one that had brought Dom’s father and sister into the emergency room of Seattle General. A car had gone out of control, presumably because the flurries of snow happening today had made the surface slippery, and the driver had been powerless to stop the vehicle hitting a pedestrian at high speed.

The scene in Resus One was almost identical. Dom was there, gathering his team around him as they all donned their protective gear of gowns, gloves and goggles. He was supervising drugs being drawn up and ensuring that specialised trolleys were available, including the equipment for a FAST scan to look for internal bleeding following abdominal or chest trauma. Dom being here was unexpected given that Emilia knew today was the day his father was facing the challenge of the surgery to remove his brain tumour. She’d been to see the King more than once in the last two days to confirm that she was happy with the stability of his healing femoral fracture but this was the first time she’d seen Dom since she’d left his apartment on the morning after the gala ball.

The usual heightened senses of the adrenaline rush of a trauma team code made Emilia’s response to seeing Dom so acute it felt more physical than emotional. And there were far deeper layers than mere surprise. There was delight to be found but apprehension as well. And hope...? She’d been fine with not having heard anything from him in the last forty-eight hours because she’d told herself that he had too much going on with his family and she hadn’t wanted to intrude by contacting him for the same reason.

She knew she was staring as she stepped into the resuscitation area and she knew that Dom was aware that she was here. The moment of truth came in the split second before Emilia turned to reach for a pair of gloves from the wall dispenser and Dom looked up and directly at her. Again, it was only for a blink of time but it was long enough for Emilia to feel a shiver run down her spine. The clock really had rewound and her apprehension had not been misplaced. This was purely professional. She had reverted to being nothing more than a colleague. A rival. Whatever barriers had been there before any of this had started were back in place and the connection that had been so powerful such a short time ago was nowhere to be seen or felt.

And it hurt, dammit...

It was far more than a slap in the face. It was devastating. Even though Emilia had known that there was never going to be anything more than that one night together, she would have expected there to be an acknowledgment that that private connection would always be there. That it was now rather more significant than it ever had been, in fact.

It would be totally unprofessional to let a personal emotional issue distract her right before the arrival of a probably critically injured patient. It was not something that had ever threatened Emilia’s focus before and she wasn’t about to let it happen now. Maybe she was actually wrong and Dom was only as focussed as he ever was when he was leading the trauma team with the added tension of his family worries in the background. They’d always had their own way of dealing with tension and old habits often became an automatic response.

‘You’ve been busy,’ Emilia said lightly. ‘I love what you’ve done to the place.’

He was frowning at her in bemusement. Emilia tilted her head towards the fat string of red tinsel that was wound around an IV pole and the bunches of fake holly that adorned the twelve-lead ECG trolley.

Dom’s frown became a scowl as he turned to snap at a nurse. ‘Who did this? It’s totally inappropriate to have Christmas decorations in an area where we bring critically ill patients. Get rid of them. Stat.’

With her arms full of tinsel and holly, the nurse crossed paths with the stretcher that was rushed in moments later so Emilia had no time to dwell on a side of Dom she’d never seen before and wonder just how much stress he was under to have reacted like that. Worse, to feel that, despite feeling so hurt herself, she wanted to help him. Just to touch his arm, perhaps, and catch his gaze for long enough to somehow let him know that she was here if he needed her. That she understood...

Perhaps it was just as well that the familiar chaos of an incoming patient required the absolute attention of every member of the medical team ready to treat them. And this patient, Simon, a thirty-five-year-old man most definitely needed a lot of help if he was going to survive. Paramedics had applied a pelvic binder because they suspected Simon had a fractured pelvis and everyone here knew that the force needed to cause a significant injury to this solid bony structure made it very likely that he would have other significant injuries. Like chest trauma. Broken bones. A ruptured spleen could explain why Simon’s blood pressure was dropping to an alarming level if there were no major vessels damaged as a result of the blunt force of a car hitting his pelvis.

Everybody was flat out from the moment Simon was brought in.

‘Let’s get another large bore IV in, stat, please.’ Dom was watching the readings on the monitors coming into focus. ‘And get some fluids up. Simon, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?’

The response was no more than an agonised groan.

‘We need some more analgesia on board. Have we got some fentanyl drawn up yet? Ketamine?’

Technicians, interns and nurses were working around each other in a familiar, well-rehearsed dance as soon as Simon had been transferred from the ambulance gurney. Clothing was being removed. Blood taken. Electrodes attached for monitoring.

‘I want a chest X-ray,’ Dom ordered. ‘A FAST scan. Pelvic X-ray.’ His instructions were crisp and clear. ‘What’s the blood pressure now?’

‘Systolic ninety.’

‘Type and cross match. We’re going to need some blood. Don’t rock the pelvis. And no log roll, please. We don’t want any unnecessary movement.’

It was Dom who placed his gloved hands gently under Simon’s back to palpate for any major wounds or bone deformity.

‘It’s clear,’ he said, standing back as the overhead X-ray machines were rolled in to take images. ‘Okay...anyone without a lead apron step outside, please.’

Emilia had been close enough to examine Simon’s chest and found some probably broken lower ribs which could well have lacerated his spleen or liver but she was holding her breath to see what the X-rays would reveal was going on much lower in his abdomen. Despite the aggressive fluid resuscitation this young man was receiving, his blood pressure indicated that he was in hypovolaemic shock which could rapidly prove fatal if they couldn’t find and stop whatever internal bleeding was going on.

‘Look. There and there...’ Dom had come to look over Emilia’s shoulder as soon as she had the image up on the computer screen. ‘Nasty pelvic ring fracture. Clearly unstable with that anteroposterior displacement of at least a centimetre. Maybe one point five.’

‘We need to get him to Theatre for a laparotomy. There might not be enough blood to be showing up on the FAST scan but I’d put money on his spleen being ruptured thanks to those rib fractures. I’m going to aspirate next but his BP’s already so low it’s not safe to wait for a CT scan.’

‘He needs external fixation to stabilise his pelvis before anyone goes near his spleen. The pelvic binder has to come off to allow access and if you open up the abdomen and start shifting organs around without fixation, it could disrupt the pelvic fractures and he could lose his entire blood volume into the pelvic cavity before anyone gets near his spleen.’

‘You want to do that here?’

‘Can do, if he’s haemodynamically stable enough. It’ll take me ten to fifteen minutes once we’re set up and I can do it without X-ray.’

Emilia could actually feel Dom’s focus. Could feel the way they were welded together as a team with a single focus and the absolute determination that they were going to win this battle. It didn’t occur to her until later that this might well be the last time they could work together like this but it wouldn’t have made any difference at the time, anyway. They always worked together like this.

Dom scrubbed in to help her. Simon was unconscious and oblivious to the preparations around him as staff numbers were reduced to a minimum, his body was draped and the skin of his lower abdomen prepped for the surgical procedure. The sterile packs had been rolled open on the top of a trolley, with an impressive array of steel pins and bars and a drill along with scalpels and sutures but it was a felt pen marker that Emilia reached for first.

‘I’m marking the anterior superior iliac spine with an X,’ she told Dom. ‘And the inferior with a circle. I’ll do that on both sides before I make my first incision.’

It took fifteen minutes to construct a frame that would make it possible to move Simon and perform the open surgery he was going to need without exacerbating an injury that could easily prove fatal. It was a challenging fifteen minutes that had trickles of sweat dampening the back of Emilia’s tunic and she blew out a relieved breath as she tightened the last bolt.

‘You can let go now, thanks, Dom. We should be completely stable now.’ Grasping the top of the triangular frame, she tipped it carefully a little to one side. The whole of Simon’s pelvis moved as one piece. This frame would not only keep his bones in position until they healed, it meant it was safe to shift him to Theatre and tackle any other sources of blood loss.

‘Let’s get him up to Theatre,’ Dom instructed, stepping back. But then he turned, with a smile and spoke quietly. ‘Good job. Thanks, Emmy.’

The glow of that praise stayed with Emilia as she followed her patient to the theatre suite. Or maybe it was because the adrenaline rush of this case still had her senses heightened and she wasn’t walking alone. Dom was staying with Simon until he could be handed over to the general surgeon who was waiting in an operating theatre for their arrival.

It wasn’t as though it meant anything, though. Dom had always acknowledged the skills of anyone he worked with and a dramatic case like this was exactly what they both loved so much about their work. This was no more than the old dynamic between them but Emilia had new insight about why it had worked so well. They’d always competed so fiercely and baited each other so mercilessly because that kind of a relationship could actually be passionate but still completely safe. Had they both instinctively known how painful it would be to take those protective barriers away only to have to rebuild them?

There was a new team to take over the management of the next stage of Simon’s treatment but Emilia was going to stay in Theatre. It was quite possible that this pelvic injury would need internal fixation and, while she would normally want to wait a few days for bleeding and swelling to be under control, if the patient was having abdominal surgery for other reasons, it might be preferable to take the opportunity for any further orthopaedic work.

‘I might stay for a while, too,’ Dom said. ‘I’ve got cover in the ER anyway, because I knew I’d have to leave at some point today.’

‘Is your...? I mean, has the surgery started?’

A single nod. ‘It’s been going for some time already. I get progress reports and pass them on to Giada. They’ll tell me when it’s over but, until then, I really need to keep busy.’

Emilia’s lips curved gently in sympathy. ‘It helps, doesn’t it?’

Another nod. A flash of something in his eyes that told her he was still feeling their connection but it was drowned instantly by something that looked a lot like sadness.

‘I don’t need to scrub in so I’ll leave you to get on with it.’

He turned away but Emilia paused before entering the theatre’s anteroom. She wanted to call softly to Dom. To make him turn around again so that she could get another glimpse of what she knew was still there.

She wanted to whisper something.

I love you...

I miss you already...

But what did she expect to happen? That he would reject what his family—his whole country probably—wanted? Or that she would decide she could walk away from what had been the total focus of her life for as long as she wanted to remember? Her dedication to her career had already destroyed a relationship. She’d spent too long putting herself and her ambitions above everything else. Prince Domenico Baresi deserved far more than that in a partner.

She might be doing them both a favour by letting him go.

Figuratively and literally. At least for now, when he was clearly struggling to cope with everything life was throwing at him. It wasn’t as if she had a choice, anyway, because a nurse was coming along the corridor towards Dom.

‘Dr di Rossi? I was just coming down to the ER to find you. Your patient that you asked to be informed about—Mr Baresi? He’s out of Theatre and has been taken through to Recovery.’

Dom walked away from Emilia without a backward glance.

And she turned to walk away as well. Into Theatre. A place that felt like a sanctuary right now. Like home. But then, this was the place where she really belonged, after all.

Perhaps it was destined to be the only place that would ever feel like home.