by Tracy Wolff
It was a lot to take in.
Her knees trembled and she slowly sank to the edge of the bed, even as her mind raced to figure out all the implications. Her musings were not reassuring.
For her, pregnancy was a disaster of epic proportions.
She traveled regularly and often to some of the most dangerous spots on earth. Spots that were no place for a baby, even if they weren’t being ravaged by disease. She thought back to the discussion she’d had the night before with Julian and suddenly understood where he was coming from a lot more. No, the places she traveled were definitely not meant for children. They really weren’t meant for pregnant women, either, to tell the truth.
If she was pregnant it would mean a huge change in her lifestyle. Her career. Her future. Was she ready for that? And if she wasn’t, did it really matter?
Even worse, Lucas had been clear numerous times in the years she’d known him about not wanting children, not wanting a family. Which she’d always thought was a shame because he would make an absolutely amazing father. But it wasn’t like she didn’t understand. With his mother and sisters, was it any wonder he really didn’t want to take care of anyone else?
Besides, it wasn’t like she could blame any part of this on him. He hadn’t been careless. He had checked, had started to get up to get a condom and she was the one who had said no. Who had told him she was protected…because, at the time, she’d thought that she was. Because of their work, they were both tested for diseases regularly so there had been no reason to be concerned. Except obviously there had been.
Her hand crept over her still-flat stomach, pressed a little, as if she could actually feel the life that might be—that probably was—growing beneath her palm. Yet she’d had blood tests and nothing had come back that said she was pregnant. Could it be that Julian simply hadn’t ordered that test? Sure, it was usually standard, but there’d been no reason for him to think she would be pregnant. Not when she was out here in the middle of the desert fighting one of the most dangerous diseases on earth.
Suddenly, she couldn’t stand the not knowing for one second longer.
Crossing to her personal medical kit—which she usually kept with her when out in the field—she popped it open. Took out one of the pH strips they used to test all sorts of things besides pregnancy, including protein and sugar in a person’s urine.
It only took a minute or so, and then she was staring at the results. The little pregnancy square had turned purple almost the second her urine had touched it. She was going to be a mother.
Deep inside of her a fragile joy began to bloom, one she hadn’t expected and wasn’t sure she was ready for. And yet, it was there all the same. She was going to have a baby. No, correction, she was going to have Lucas’s baby. A little black-haired tyrant who would be brilliant and difficult and beautiful. So beautiful.
Her heart thudded double time in her chest, though from fear or excitement, she wasn’t sure. There were a lot of obstacles in her path, a lot of reasons this was a really bad idea. But there would be time to deal with all that later. For now…her hand crept back over her stomach slowly, oh, so slowly. Almost as if she needed permission to admit its existence—and the emotions it engendered in her.
Which was stupid. She might not know what the future would hold, but for now, she was going to give herself permission to be happy. And excited.
She was bringing another life into the world, something—at thirty-five, with no husband and no long-term romantic prospects—she hadn’t been sure she would ever be able to do. But she was doing it now, she told herself, though she still lacked the husband. And probably the long-term romantic prospect, as well. But that was okay. She was going to be a mother, something she hadn’t realized she wanted so badly until it was a foregone conclusion. She decided to focus on that instead of all the other stuff for a little while. Reality would come crashing in soon enough.
And it did, sooner than she ever would have imagined. Because even while joy was spilling through her, another thought rose up. It overwhelmed her, changed her joy to fear and horror from one second to the next.
She was up and out of her room before she’d even made the conscious decision to move. Was racing down the stairs to the main section of the hospital with only one goal in mind. To get to Julian.
He was with a patient when she found him, finishing up his rounds before she took over for the day, and the five minutes she had to wait to speak with him were among the longest in her life.
As he moved out from behind the curtained cubicle, she basically ran him down, her ice-cold fingers clutching at his arm as article after medical journal article ran through her head.
“Kara?” Julian turned to look at her quizzically, his eyes shadowed with a concern that was nothing compared to the fear sweeping through her. “What’s wrong?”
“I need you to examine me.”
“Okay.” He put his hand on her elbow, guiding her away from the patients. “What’s going on?”
She told him, watching his face grow more and more grim as her words tumbled over each other. His expression told her everything she needed to know. She’d been right to worry. Dengue hemorrhagic fever and pregnancy did not mix well at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“HEY, BOSS.” TAWANDA’S voice came over Lucas’s intercom. “You’ve got a visitor.”
“Who is it?”
“Do I look like I know every damn thing in the world?” she snapped at him. “Why don’t you come out here and see for yourself?”
“Okay, I will,” he said with a grin. Trust Tawanda to put him in his place.
But as he walked toward the front of the clinic, his stomach knotted in trepidation. He had the sick feeling it was his mother and the truth of the matter was, he had absolutely no desire to deal with her.
After the excruciating two hours he’d spent at dinner with her and Jean-Claude the night before—and what Atlanta-born man actually went by the name Jean-Claude—the last thing he wanted to do was talk to her again so soon. There hadn’t been enough distance yet and he knew he was going to end up saying something he wouldn’t regret but that he probably shouldn’t say.
Besides, if he had to listen to any more Jean-Claude stories, he was going to put a bullet in his brain. And he wouldn’t even be sorry about it later.
What was she doing here, anyway? Hadn’t he done his duty last night? What more could the woman want from him barring his firstborn child? He’d already written her a large check last night to tide her over until her monthly allowance came in next week. And if she’d already spent it on Jean-Claude, then he really,
really didn’t want to know about it.
But when he crossed into the waiting room it wasn’t his mother who was standing there. It was Kara, dressed in a sleeveless lavender blouse that accented her curves, gray pants and purple kitten heels that showed off her long, long legs to their best advantage. Her red hair was loose around her shoulders and for a second he flashed back to when they’d made love. To when her hair had been wrapped around his fist and her legs around his waist.
He got hard just thinking about it, which was not a state of events he wanted to encourage. Not now, when he was still so angry with Kara and not when she was inexplicably standing in the middle of his clinic instead of being in Eritrea where she belonged. Something was wrong, obviously, and he needed to know what it was.
“Hi, Lucas,” she said, her smile little more than a tremulous curving of her l
ips.
“Kara. What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
She glanced around and he realized they were standing in the middle of his waiting room, with his patients and staff alike looking on.
“You want to come back to my office?” he asked.
“Sure. Thanks.”
She knew the way—this certainly wasn’t the first time she’d been to the clinic—so he stepped back and let her pass. But as he followed behind her he realized she was a little unsteady on her feet, as if she couldn’t quite find her balance.
Was it an inner-ear imbalance from the flight? he wondered. Or simply the fact that she was wearing heels again after months of shoes designed to traverse desert terrain? He didn’t know, but he had every intention of finding out.
Once they made it to his office, he closed the door behind them and just stood there, looking at her. Admittedly, he couldn’t see much because of the dark, oversize sunglasses she wore, but he could see enough to realize she wasn’t at her best. Her face was thinner, her lush lips pressed together, and when he pulled her into his arms for a hug, he froze at what he found. She was a lot skinnier and a lot more fragile. He could feel her ribs right beneath her skin, as well as the small knobs on her spine that signified each vertebra.
Concerned, he pulled back and studied her face. It was hard to see anything with the sunglasses she wore, though, so he reached up and took them off. Then almost wished he hadn’t. She looked awful. Her skin was pale and sallow while the dark purple circles beneath her eyes were so deep she looked like she was sporting two shiners. Not to mention the fact that her eyes were bloodshot and so weary-looking that he felt a jolt of real fear work its way through him.
He’d seen her in bad shape before, after particularly long assignments when she’d come back exhausted, overworked, angry. But never had he seen her look this bad, as if she was fading away right in front of him.
His anger forgotten in the face of her deterioration, he grabbed her arms. Ducked his head so that she could do nothing but stare into his eyes. “Tell me the truth,” he demanded as fear ricocheted through him. “What happened to you down there?”
The fact that she didn’t immediately answer told him more, much more, than he wanted to know. He gave her a few seconds to get her thoughts together, then said simply, “Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Just tell me, so we can deal with it.”
Again she didn’t answer and he felt frustration growing inside of him as miserable scenario after miserable scenario bombarded him. “Are you sick?” He put a finger under her chin, pressed until she was looking him straight in the eye. “It’s okay, Kara. I’ll take care of you. I promise. Whatever it is—”
She shoved at his hand as anger and an emotion he couldn’t identify flitted across her face. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. Nothing wrong with letting someone help you if they can. If they want to.”
He went to hug her, but she wouldn’t let him. She slapped a hand on his chest, shoved him back. “You don’t understand.”
“Because you won’t talk to me. How am I supposed to fix things if you won’t give me a chance?”
“Don’t you get it? There are some things you can’t fix.”
“Bullshit.” He was starting to get scared now. He didn’t like the hopeless look in her eyes or the way she wrapped her arms around her waist and held on, like they were the only things keeping her from shattering into a million pieces. “Do you hear me? That’s bullshit.”
“It isn’t, Lucas,” she said as her eyes filled with tears. “It really isn’t. Sometimes, things just happen. Sometimes you can’t control them. You just have to accept the inevitable.”
She began sobbing, her whole body shuddering with the strength of the agony inside of her.
He’d gone beyond scared, had shot right up to terrified. He knew she didn’t want him to hold her right now, but he couldn’t help it. If he didn’t touch her, if he couldn’t prove to himself that she was still there, still strong and whole and alive, he would lose his mind.
He strode across the room, wrapped his hands around her upper arms and shook her gently. “Tell me, damn it. Tell me the truth of what’s going on with you, Kara. You owe me that much.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “You’re right. I do.” And then she sagged against him, her arms wrapping around his waist as she pressed her face into his chest and held on tight.
* * *
SHE WAS HANDLING THIS whole thing badly. She knew it, yet could do nothing to change it. Her emotions were out of control, her fear—for her baby, and for her relationship with Lucas—was a living, breathing monster inside of her.
She knew she had to move, had to talk to him, but she stayed pressed up against him as long as she reasonably could, drawing in his forest-and-sandalwood scent. Taking comfort from his familiar strength.
Tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away. The stupid hormones were making her crazy. Lucas’s chest was tense beneath her, his heart beating wildly out of control, and she knew she was just prolonging his agony even as she staved off her own.
But that wasn’t fair to him. Pulling back, she asked, “Can we sit down first?” She had a feeling the kind of news she had to deliver would come better if there was no chance that Lucas might fall down in shock.
“Sit!” he told her, all but shoving her into a chair, though, instead of sitting next to her, he propped himself on the edge of his desk. “Now tell me what the hell is wrong with you. You said you didn’t contract Ebola.”
“I didn’t,” she assured him. “I did, however, come down with dengue hemorrhagic fever.”
“DHF?” He stared at her incredulously. “And you survived?”
“Obviously.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just a little worn down.”
He snorted at that, but she didn’t take offense. After all, she knew better than most just how bad she looked. No matter how much time she’d spent with her makeup this morning—and she had spent a considerable amount of time—she hadn’t been able to do away with the sick green tinge the pregnancy, and her never-ending nausea, had given her. The magic three-month mark had come and gone and still she felt so sick that it had been all she could do to roll out of bed that morning.
Julian had told her it was a by-product of her high-risk pregnancy, a sign—unlike most normal morning sickness—that her body was fighting the presence of the baby as it continued to struggle to mend itself from the dengue hemorrhagic fever. His prognosis had sent her scurrying back to the States weeks ahead of schedule, hoping for a second opinion. Well, she’d gotten it. The gynecologist she had seen just that morning, a top-rated specialist in high-risk cases, had told her essentially the same thing, though even more bluntly.
A fetus surviving dengue fever intact and with no physical or neurological damage was not uncommon. A fetus surviving dengue hemorrhagic fever in the same condition was another thing entirely. And with a case as severe as hers had been, the baby had an even smaller chance of surviving the pregnancy, let alone the birth.
The doctor had, in fact, expressed shock that she was still pregnant at all. Had even gone so far as to tell her that she should prepare herself to lose the baby at any time. It was nothing Kara hadn’t already suspected—she’d seen a lot of cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever in her time, including ones that had transcended the placenta and caused massive blee
ding in the baby—but hearing the diagnosis in reference to the baby she and Lucas had made was a shock. Or, more accurately, a nightmare.
Though she’d tried to be analytical about the whole thing, had tried to fall back on her medical training, she’d ended up begging the doctor for some thread of hope. She hadn’t planned on this baby, and it in fact was a huge inconvenience, but that didn’t matter. From the moment she’d really wrapped her head around the fact that she was pregnant, she had wanted the baby desperately. Had wanted this small part of Lucas more than she would ever have imagined possible.
The doctor had been discouraging, as she’d ordered a comprehensive ultrasound, an amniocentesis and enough blood work to keep a vampire happy for quite some time, but she had finally relented a little. She had told Kara that there were no guarantees in this business, especially since she hadn’t seen the test results yet. Maybe, just maybe, if Kara did everything right, got plenty of rest and found a way to keep as much food down as possible—all while taking a massive daily vitamin cocktail the doctor had assembled just for her. If she was the picture of perfect pregnancy behavior, she would probably still lose the baby. But maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t.
It was a slim hope, and Kara knew it, but it was also the only thing she had to hang on to at the moment. She’d hitched her wagon up to it and planned on riding that slim chance as far as she could.
But first she had to tell Lucas. She hadn’t exactly been looking forward to it before she showed up at his office, but now, with him staring at her like she was a particularly unattractive bug under a microscope, she was even less enthusiastic.
He was more worried than angry, but that didn’t make her feel any better. Telling him about the baby was going to be hard enough. Telling him when he was hovering over her like she was going to die at any second seemed unbearable. Not to mention what would happen after he knew. She had a feeling he would have her home and in bed before she could so much as say the word pregnant.