A Family For Keeps

by Rheland Richmond

  But he was denied those things. The man must have had the same thought as he did getting there early. Because as he stepped out of the elevator and was met by a member of the hospital’s legal team, he was told Mr. Callahan had already arrived. The level Nathaniel was on looked nothing like a hospital. This level had nothing of the chaos of the ER or the constant coming and going of the wards where babies were born and patients were treated. That part he had become familiar with.

  If he could be anywhere but here in this moment, he would be, but the knowledge that this stranger, this man he had never met, could save his child was the only thing that stopped him from leaving the state. Hell, the country, if he was being honest with himself.

  As he approached the conference room, his chest got tighter. It was a feeling he hadn’t had in a long time. He felt the way he did walking up to each new foster home not knowing what was waiting for him, which was nonsense. He was successful. No one could push him around or throw him away like last night’s garbage or return him like faulty electronics, he reminded himself.

  He braced himself and walked into the conference room. His first thought was that Tristan Callahan was taller than he expected, and he had to admit the man had an amazing body. Not that it mattered, he castigated mentally. He was the enemy. He shouldn’t be scoping out the enemy unless he was looking for his weaknesses.

  Dammit! He should have postponed this meeting till he received the full background check on the man; all he knew so far was his name and occupation. His security team was still doing the in-depth background checks.

  Nathaniel couldn’t even lie to himself; he was going into the room fully prepared to despise the guy. He’d come in prepared to do battle.

  He finally opened the glass doors and cleared his throat to make his presence known. Immediately he mentally breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but in front of him was a parent as anxiety-ridden as he was.

  He couldn’t help but notice that the man had his Em’s hair and eyes though. It was almost like a punch to the gut because he had always assumed that she got her features from the egg donor.

  Sure, the man before him wasn’t the spitting image of his daughter, but they had enough similar features that you could tell they were related.

  He hadn’t realized he had been staring at the man silently and rather intently until he heard, “I know she’s Shay’s biological child, but I am not just going to switch them. I’m not handing my child over to you,” the dark-haired man before him said vehemently.

  5

  Tristan

  Holy hell! The man was beautiful was his first thought. The second was he could tell he was determined with one look at his face. The man looked like he was on a mission.

  Tristan had no intention of being steamrolled by this man. He may have absolutely stunning features, with the straight nose and high cheekbones, but there was a hardness to him you couldn’t miss. Whether it was the situation or just a total mistrust of the world, he couldn’t tell.

  From the moment he’d walked in, Tristan felt the hostility, and then he’d had the audacity to look at him like he was a specimen under a microscope. Like he was deciding if Tristan was worthy!

  Well, screw him!

  Hell no! Tristan wouldn't play that game! Not with anyone! Not anymore!

  He heard him say in a husky voice, “Well, okay then, no introductions. Straight down to business I see.”

  “This is not business,” he snapped. “It’s very personal to me, Mr. Alexander.”

  He had read about the man. Unless you were living under a rock, you had read something about the man. He was referred to as persistent, resilient, and competitive in business. He would have had to be. From what was reported about the man, he had built his empire from nothing.

  Why hadn’t anyone told him, it was this Nathaniel Alexander?

  The man had the audacity to chuckle before saying, “Good to see my reputation precedes me and introductions aren’t necessary.”

  “Let us be very clear,” Tristan said. “I could have gone my whole life never meeting you. I want this situation to have never happened, and I want to relegate you to nightmares no longer remembered. But since that’s not the case, here we are. Know this. I am not going hand over my child to you. That is never happening! If you think that’s going to happen, get that out of your head here and now.”

  Fuck, he thought, was this me playing nice? Fuckity! Fuck! Fuck!

  He was thinking of a way to backtrack until he heard an altogether too-smug voice.

  “Nice speech,” the man replied condescendingly. “Did you practice that in the mirror?”

  Tristan breathed in and out, trying to think of all the yoga and Zen calming techniques he knew, but all he could feel towards the smirking man was anger. Tristan had never wanted to punch someone so much in his life.

  He was not an angry guy, and he was most definitely not a violent person; in fact, he liked to think of himself as a pretty chill sort of guy.

  “Be rational. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you,” he chanted silently.

  “Look,” Mr. Cool-as-Ice started, “we are the only ones that can decide how this plays out, and we can play nice now or…”

  “Or what?” he interrupted roughly, dragging his hands through his hair.

  “Why did you start this? What did you think you would achieve getting this ball rolling? This is not a genie that can be put back in the bottle.

  “Oh my God! Please don’t tell me you want to switch them back now that you know she’s not your biological child.” He grimaced at the thought.

  “You started this.” He felt tears building but quickly swallowed them down. “How did you think this would play out? Do you suddenly want to trade children? Is that what this is about?” he said, sounding borderline hysterical.

  “What made you think she wasn’t even yours?

  “Did your wife cheat on you or something?”

  He didn’t even dignify his rant with a reply. “Her name is Emma Violet Alexander, and make no mistake, she’s mine, in every way that counts, and there is no wife, Mr. Callahan. Even if there was, it would be a husband,” he added.

  Tristan couldn’t figure out why the man had told him it would be a husband, but at least it was good to know his sexuality wasn’t something that would be raised as an issue. It had occurred to him that it was something some bigoted people could use against him. At least the man was family in that sense.

  “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone.” Tristan sighed wearily.

  Honestly, he’d thought he had gotten to acceptance, but sitting in this sterile colorless room, with the lawyers hovering outside trying to pretend they weren’t listening in on their conversation, he felt a little lost.

  He wanted to cry for Shay because usually when his life was going to shit, she was there to talk him out of his freak-out and help him with big decisions. If there was one decision he could not mess up, it was this one. But how could he honor Shay without losing his baby girl? But also, how could he leave the only part of Shay left in this world with a complete and utter stranger.

  Emma Violet. Shay would have liked that name, he knew. He wanted to see her, meet her, find out if she was anything like Shay. His baby girl definitely wasn’t. He finally figured out where she got those violet-blue eyes from. He’d always chalked them up to her unknown sperm donor. He refused to call the unknown man her father.

  He actually snorted out loud. Any more fathers in the mix and the hospital would have a King Solomon moment on their hands. They already did if he was being honest because taking a surreptitious look at Nathaniel Alexander, the man looked like the definition of an immovable mountain.

  His internal battle was interrupted abruptly. When he looked up at the man speaking in front of him, he finally saw the pain Nathaniel had been keeping under wraps until this very moment.

  “Do you know how it feels to want to protect your child from everything evil in the world? Do
you know what it’s like to feel like you had the perfect plan and have it go to shit?” Nathaniel asked, talking to him but at the same time not really!

  “Emma is a happy child, she doesn’t fuss, and she’s even-tempered and smart as a whip, so very friendly and outgoing. So when she started crying a lot, couldn’t sleep, and was getting listless, I just chalked it up to some bug that would pass. I wasn’t too worried. I thought maybe she just had the flu, so I pushed fluids and watched her, but she wasn’t getting any better.”

  “What do you do when you take your child to the doctors, and while getting what you think is the worst possible news that your baby is very sick, they go on to tell you that she’s not your baby at all.” He directed at him, not really expecting an answer.

  “But you see, she is because I was the one with her all those nights she was colicky and couldn’t sleep. I was the one that froze so many towels and followed every teething remedy I could find on the internet. I’m the one she reaches for when she wants her daddy. I read to her, sang her to sleep, and watched her while she slept because she was my dream beautifully come to life in that precious little girl. She was everything I ever wanted. For all intents and purposes, she’s my child. But I couldn’t protect her from the disease that coursed through her blood, because I don’t even have her blood, but she’s mine in every way that matters. And I can’t protect her from you either, because according to the law you have more right to her than I do, and I hate you for it.

  “It’s not your fault, but I hate you for it. I really do,” the man finished heatedly.

  Tristan had not been expecting that. He hadn’t expected the man to show that many emotions. He didn’t even know what to say.

  “Is she… she’s sick?” Tristan croaked.

  His mouth was drier than stale bread. His insides tossed and turned as though he was on a roller coaster. The strength went out of his knees. Gripping the edge of the table, he held himself upright but finally gave up and fell into a chair.

  “Shay, Shannon’s baby is sick,” he stammered.

  Nathaniel flinched at Emma being called Shay’s baby. It was almost imperceptible, but he caught it.

  6

  Nathaniel

  Nathaniel hated being here. He hated that he had to handle Tristan Callahan when all he wanted to do was return to Emma and Wyatt. He would rather sit with her and listen to her read them stories. His little girl was whip-smart, reading way beyond her grade level.

  He couldn’t say he was embarrassed by his emotional outburst, but he couldn’t figure out why he’d disclosed that It would be a husband and not a wife. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why he had dropped that little tidbit. Sure, he wasn’t in the closet, but it wasn’t pertinent to the current situation.

  He looked over and saw that Tristan had slumped into a chair looking lost and haunted. The man looked completely devastated.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Tristan asked again.

  “She has what they call Adenoviral Hepatitis,” Nathaniel replied. “Apparently, it is very rare in an immunocompetent child. At least, so they tell me.”

  That was the only way he could deliver the news, matter-of-factly. He refused to cry in front of this man, but he couldn’t help but rage at the unfairness of it all. The unfairness of his child getting sick.

  “What does that mean?” Tristan asked, waving an arm around. “I know what hepatitis is, but… but what is that?” Nathaniel could tell by the gesturing and the baffled look that Tristan really didn’t understand what the rest meant. Then again, neither had he until his daughter had it, so he couldn’t blame the man for being completely unaware.

  “I was just like you,” he told Tristan. “I had never heard of it until the doctors broke the news after diagnosing Emma.

  “I had to rush Emma to the hospital when her fever had spiked way too high. She was a previously healthy child before that horrible day. I took her to the ER with a runny nose and cough that had started a week earlier. She just had a fever. Sure, she was really warm, and she wasn’t eating as she usually did for like two to three days before, but I just thought she picked up a bug at playgroup or something, plus she was super fussy and irritable.

  “But then she spiked a fever of 102.3 and started crying inconsolably. By the time she got to the hospital, she had a febrile seizure. They gave her so many drugs, more than you’d imagine for her tiny little body.

  “At first, they thought it was meningitis. My little girl had to go through a large fucking needle getting stuck in her spinal cord.

  “Now how I wish it was meningitis. When that test came back negative, I was relieved. Actually relieved!

  “They decided to just run a bunch of tests, and the test for liver function came back with an enlarged liver.”

  He looked at Tristan and added, “Till that moment I fucking thought that only happened to alcoholics or something!”

  Nathaniel scrubbed his hands over his face, pressing on his eyes to stop tears from falling at the unfairness of it all.

  “They used words like ultrasonography, acetaminophen levels, and hepatitis panels, which apparently all came back normal. But then, before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, they told me results of an immunochromatography test for adenoviral antigen were positive.

  “Say that five times fast,” he said derisively.

  “I didn’t know what the fuck that meant.

  “Can’t say I had ever heard of the adenovirus. They told me it was nothing to worry about at first, that they could treat it, but then she wasn’t responding to the treatment, and her liver cells started dying faster than they could regenerate.

  “I felt so fucking helpless. So damn useless.

  “How the fuck did she go from the flu to fucking liver failure? But apparently it wasn’t just the flu; it was a respiratory tract infection caused by the adenovirus.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything about that day. The terror, the sense of failing my child, wanting to believe the doctors had made a mistake and that someone else’s baby was sick and not mine. And then feeling so guilty for wishing that on some other innocent child.”

  Tristan was looking at him like he was speaking a foreign language.

  He couldn’t blame him. It was the same way he felt when all this was happening, and he had just dumped a shit ton of information on him.

  “So, so.” Tristan coughed. “What does that mean? I know you think you’re explaining things to me, but what does that mean for her?”

  “Emma,” he said, “her name is Emma!”

  He flinched like he had slapped him and cleared his throat. “I know what her name is.”

  “So then why won’t you use it?”

  Tristan ignored him and said, “What does it mean?”

  Nathaniel sighed.

  “When they told me, I didn’t want to believe it either.” Even he could hear how raw his voice sounded.

  It was all too much. He tried to breathe and struggled. He strode across the room and back, swallowed the lump blocking his throat, and wrestled for control.

  He slumped and said, “It means that her liver is failing, usually.” He scrubbed his face and sighed and began again, “Usually, once they cure the virus, everything is fine, but … her liver cells are dying, and they can’t reverse it. It’s supposed to get better, not worse, you know.” He sighed.

  “She’s going to need a transplant for some reason. They can’t reverse it. Her liver just isn’t regenerating fast enough, and the cells are dying. She’s on meds right now, but she needs a transplant. Without it, she’ll go into liver failure.”

  “She’ll die?” Tristan croaked.

  “They said it was rare in an immunocompetent child, but it does happen sometimes. Guess she was that one in a million.” He laughed hysterically.

  “I was going to donate,” he told Tristan. “She’s my baby; I didn’t even think twice about donating.

  “So I got tested, did the entire battery of tests. I had already me
ntally organized for the nanny to stay with Wyatt. That’s my son. I even started looking into home care, for my recovery.

  “But guess what, the test came back saying I couldn’t donate because there was no familial match. My doctor told me, I should have told them that Emma was adopted.”

  “I thought he was crazy, of course. I knew she wasn’t adopted. I guess you know how the story goes from there.”

  Nathaniel realized the room had been quiet a little too long. Admittedly, he too was lost in thought. Just telling Tristan all that had drained him emotionally.

  He would be a liar though if he didn’t admit to himself; he was curious, curious about the other child.

  It took him a second to note that he had missed a question from Tristan.

  “I’m sorry. What was it you asked?”

  “So is that all you want? For me to get tested and maybe donate my liver if I’m a match?”

  Nathaniel stared intently at Tristan. He could see the man’s feelings in his eyes whether or not he was aware of it.

  He was hoping that he would say yes, say that all he wanted was for him to donate and go away. But there was also a part of him hoping he would say no because from the very little he had said, he could tell that Shay, his sister had meant the world to him, and he couldn’t just not know her child.

  “I thought that was all I wanted at first. For you to donate and disappear, and everything goes back to normal. Easy, right?

  “I thought we could do this without disrupting each other’s lives,” he said, even though his inner voice called him a liar for that.

  “I wasn’t going to tell anybody, you know.”

  “I thought about it.” Tristan looked at him expectantly, not saying anything.

  “I mean, at first, I just thought, hey, the hospital labs made a mistake, so I told them to run the bloodwork again. When it came back the same, I thought about all the possibilities, a mistake during implantation. I even called my surrogacy agency to find out if maybe there was a problem on that end.”