by Tracy Wolff
Even when they were in different med schools or different countries, he had never been more than a phone call or email away. It had taken losing that, losing him, to make her understand just how much of a role he’d played in her life, whether she’d understood it or not.
Tuesday morning bloomed clear and bright, with the birds tweeting and the sun shining and the flowers blooming all around her. If she hadn’t rolled out of bed and thrown up first thing, the day’s beauty would have driven her to it.
She got dressed slowly, pressing her hand against her stomach more than once as she imagined what her baby was doing inside of her. Today was the day she would find out what kind of genetic abnormalities the virus might have engendered in her child. The
day she might find out whether or not she would ever be able to hold him or her in her arms, or if her body was going to destroy that dream once and for all.
She’d never been very religious, had always been something of an agnostic when it came to considering a higher power. She’d seen way too much suffering in her day, way too much violence and pain, not to wonder sometimes whether a benign God really existed. But today, for the first time in her adult life, she felt the urge to pray. Not for herself, but so that—whatever happened—her baby wouldn’t suffer.
Kara closed her eyes and made a silent appeal. She didn’t get an answer, but then she hadn’t really expected one.
She made the short trip to Dr. Beaumont’s office without the radio on. She couldn’t handle the cheerful lilt of the D.J.’s voice, not when her whole world was falling in around her.
She’d timed things just right so that she wouldn’t get to the office until exactly nine-thirty. She didn’t think she could handle sitting around the waiting room for very long while Lucas ignored her. With any luck, he’d have gotten stuck at the clinic and be running late.
But Lucas wasn’t the most responsible person she’d ever met for no reason. When she opened the door to the doctor’s office, he was sitting right there in the middle of the waiting room, a magazine about parenting on his lap and a totally blank look on his face. The only emotion he showed at all, in fact, was in the way his right index finger tapped against his leg. It was the one poker tell he’d never been able to break.
The door closed behind her with a thump and he glanced up at the sound. Their eyes met and for long seconds she forgot how to breathe. His were ablaze with so much emotion that she almost got lost in them. And then, very deliberately, he turned away.
She checked in with the receptionist and then went to choose a seat. Which brought on a whole new agony of indecision. All the other women in the room whose husbands had accompanied them were sitting right up next to them. But she was afraid if she got that close to Lucas he’d make a point of getting up and moving away from her. Besides, with as churlish as he was being, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be anywhere near him, anyway.
Finally, she decided on the chair that was kitty-corner to him. Close enough that it was obvious they were sitting together, but not so close she actually had to look at him or feel his thigh rub against hers.
All her worry ended up being for naught, anyway, because as she sat, the nurse called her to the back. Lucas waited for her to pass before he got up and followed her. It was strange having him there, would have been weird even if they had been getting along. He stood to the side while they weighed her and the nurse made a disapproving sound because she’d actually lost two pounds since her visit the week before.
“Still nauseous, even with the medicine?” she asked as she wrote Kara’s name on a cup and handed it to her.
“Pretty much all the time.”
She shook her head. “These babies sure do take a lot out of their mamas, don’t they?” She addressed the question to Lucas because Kara was already heading into the bathroom to pee in the cup. But she couldn’t help herself. She held her breath, lingering by door as she waited for his answer.
“I don’t know how she does it,” he finally told the nurse, who nodded.
She let her breath out slowly, took care of what she had to, and then hurried out. Lucas was in exam room two and Dr. Beaumont was inside, already chatting with him.
“I didn’t realize Lucas was your baby’s father,” she said as soon as Kara came in the room. Which, judging by the way Lucas stiffened, was pretty much the worst thing she could have said.
Not that Kara particularly cared at that moment. Her eyes were fixated on the folder the obstetrician held in her hands. The results of the amnio were in there.
“So, what did the tests say?” she asked abruptly, absolutely unable to make small talk until she knew if her child was going to survive.
Mary Beaumont smiled in understanding. “Actually, they came back much better than I anticipated. I was going to start by examining you, but let’s get this part out of the way before we get to the fun stuff.”
She opened the folder, handed a copy of the amnio results to both Kara and Lucas. “I don’t normally do this, but will since you’re both doctors. As you can see, the main area of concern is the thrombocytopenia, which, I have to admit, I’ve been expecting. Low platelet counts in the fetus of a mother who has had dengue hemorrhagic fever are not uncommon. There are a couple of different treatments for it and I’ll talk you both about them, as well as which course I think we should follow. But the other test results are excellent, really.”
“Thrombocytopenia can be treated by giving Kara a platelet transfusion once a week,” Lucas commented.
“Yes. And that’s what I’d like to try first. There are no guarantees this early in the game, but on the plus side, we’ve caught it in plenty of time to do something about it. This will, of course, necessitate a C-section, as we don’t want to risk brain damage as the baby goes through the birth canal with low platelets. But this is cause for definite optimism.” She smiled at Kara. “You were right all along.”
Kara’s relief was so acute that the room began to spin around her. She listed to the side, probably would have passed out if Lucas hadn’t grabbed her and shoved her head between her legs.
Mary gave her a few seconds to stop seeing gray and then said, “Okay, you. Up on the table. At the moment, I’m a lot more concerned about your health than I am the baby’s. She’s doing fine—”
“She?” Lucas interrupted.
“Didn’t see that on the amnio result sheet, hmm? Yes, Kara is very definitely carrying a little girl.”
* * *
THE NEXT FEW MINUTES PASSED in a blur for Lucas as he tried to assimilate the fact that he was going to be a father—of a little girl—while also trying to catch everything Mary had to say about Kara’s health which, as he’d feared all along, was quite precarious.
“We’ve got to get you eating,” Mary said severely as she scribbled on her prescription pad. “You are now fifteen pounds under minimum weight for your height.”
“I am eating. Like six times a day.”
“Yes, but you’re throwing up five times a day and that is not conducive to fetal or maternal health.” She handed her the sheet of paper. “Here’s a prescription for metoclopramide. Let’s try this since the other medicine isn’t working. It’s a little stronger but still safe for the baby—certainly safer than having a mother who can’t nourish her. And before you start in on me, yes, there’s only been one definitive study done on metoclopramide, but it was a huge one and the results were very positive. Besides, the baby is at a lot more risk if you starve to death than if y
ou take this medication.”
She kept writing. “I want you to double your iron intake, which I know, is a lot with what you’re on already, but there’s some research that claims it will help with the fetal platelets. I’ll set up the first transfusion and call you with all the information. It will be in the dialysis center upstairs and it will take about five and a half hours each time, so be prepared for that when you come.
“I’d like to see you back in one week and if you have no other questions, then you are free to go.” She looked at them both, eyebrows raised in silent inquiry.
“If we can get Kara eating, she’s going to be okay?”
Mary nodded. “The baby—”
“Not the baby,” he interrupted. “Kara. Kara is going to be all right?”
The other doctor smiled then, reached over and squeezed his hand. “She’s strong and she was healthy when all this started. The ultrasounds of her organs look good. If we can get her on track with the nausea, she should be just fine.”
Relief overwhelmed him, so acute that he suddenly understood why Kara had nearly passed out when she’d heard about the baby. His legs felt like they had turned to rubber.
As Kara went to check out and make her next appointment, he muttered, “I’ll meet you in front.” And then he dashed for the door, not stopping until he was outside in the late-summer sunlight.
Bracing his hands on his thighs, he bent over, drew in a series of long, shallow breaths as he tried to come to terms with everything that Mary Beaumont had said. The baby—his daughter—was probably going to be okay and Kara, thank God, Kara was fine. She was fine.
A sob welled up, deep in his chest and he tried to cough it out. Bad enough that he felt like a total louse for how he’d treated Kara Thursday night. The last thing he needed was to feel like a wimp, as well. But the second the first sob dissolved another rose up and took its place. He leaned back against the building and gave himself a minute, just a minute, to sob out his relief.
“Lucas?”
He stiffened when Kara called his name, turned his head and wiped away the tears he hadn’t been strong enough to stop.
“Are you all right?” She crept closer, put a tentative hand on his shoulder, as if she was afraid of being rejected.
He was an even bigger ass than he thought, spouting all that shit at her because he couldn’t deal with the fact that he’d failed her. That all these years she hadn’t felt comfortable enough with him to come to him when she needed someone. That wasn’t her fault. It was his, and he’d been too big of a moron to realize it until it was too late.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He straightened up and she let her hand drop back down to her side. He felt the loss keenly.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it, that the baby’s going to be okay?”
“Yeah, really wonderful.” And it was. But it wasn’t worry for the baby that had kept him up the past few weeks. It was worry for the baby’s mother.
“Well, I should get going,” she said. “You probably have to get back to the clinic and—”
“Don’t go.” The words tumbled out at the exact same second he grabbed on to her hand in a near bone-crushing grip, and he didn’t even bother trying to stop them.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I said all that crap the other night. It was mean and ugly and wrong—”
“No.” She pulled his hand up—the one that was still entwined with hers, and pressed it to her heart. “You were right. I didn’t trust you to choose me because no one ever had before. Not my mom, not my dad. But that’s my baggage. It has nothing to do with you and I should have known—”
“I should have asked more, if you needed anything. If I could help with something. You just always seemed so self-sufficient—”
“I am self-sufficient.”
“I know. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met and I love you, so much more than I know how to show you.”
“I love you, too, Lucas. I think I always have, from that first moment you grinned at me after bonking me on the head with that stupid volleyball.”
He grinned. “It got your attention, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, right. You don’t actually expect me to believe you threw that serve, game point, just to get my attention.”
“Damn straight I did. Up until then, you’d been eyeing my roommate. I didn’t like it.”
“You had a girlfriend.”
“I still didn’t like it.”
“How very dog in the manger of you.”
“Yeah, well, it might have taken me seventeen years, but I finally figured out what I should have known all along. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He grinned. He couldn’t hear those three words enough. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“Me? Why is it up to me?”
He grinned. “Because it’s always been up to you. But, because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll give you a hint.”
“Oh, yeah?” She pursed her lips in that way she had that used to make him wonder what it would be like to kiss her. Now he knew. And he still wanted to feel it again. And again.
“Yeah.” He bent down, kissed her soundly, reveling in the response she no longer bothered trying to hide. “If you ask nicely enough, I’ll even let you make an honest man of me.”
Her eyes grew wide. “That’s my hint?”
“That’s your hint?”
“You want me to ask you…”
“I do.” He grinned, kissed her again. “See, there’s another hint.”
“I think you should ask me.”
“Why? You’re a self-sufficient woman. You can handle it.”
She cupped his face in her hands, looked deep into his eyes. “You mean I can handle you.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“All right, then. But you’re buying the ring.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, blue box. “I already did.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Road to Bayou Bridge by Liz Talley!
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CHAPTER ONE
August 2012
Naval Station, Rota, Spain
THE PAPER ACTUALLY SHOOK in Darby Dufrene’s hand—that’s how shocked he was by the document he’d discovered in a box of old papers. He’d been looking for the grief book he’d made as a small child and instead had found something that made his gut lurch against his ribs.
“Dude, come on. The driver needs to go.” Hal Severson’s voice echoed in the half-full moving truck parked below the flat Darby had shared with the rotund navy chaplain for the past several years. His roommate had waited semi-good-naturedly while Darby climbed inside to grab the book before it was shipped to Seattle, but good humor had limits.
; “Just a sec,” Darby called, his eyes refusing to leave the elaborate font of the certificate he’d pulled from a clasped envelope trapped in the back of his Bayou Bridge Reveille yearbook. How in the hell had this escaped his attention? Albeit it had been buried in with some old school papers he’d tossed aside over ten years ago and vowed never to look at again, surely the state of Louisiana seal would have permeated his brain and screamed, Open me!
Yet, back then he’d been in a funk—a childish, rebellious huff of craptastic proportions. He probably hadn’t thought about much else except the pity party he’d been throwing himself.
The moving truck’s engine fired and a loud roar rumbled through the trailer, vibrating the wood floor. The driver was eager to pick up the rest of his load, presumably a navy family heading back to the States, and his patience with Darby climbing up and digging through boxes already packed was also at an end. Darby slid the certificate back into its manila envelope, tucked it into his jacket and emerged from the back end of the truck.
Hal’s red hair glinted in the sunlight spilling over the tiled roof, and his expression had evoled to exasperation. The man was hungry. Had been hungry for hours while the movers slowly packed up Darby’s personal effects and scant pieces of furniture, and no one stood between Hal and his last chance to dine in El Puerto de Santa Maria, the city near the Rota Naval Base, with his best comrade. “Let’s go already. Saucy Terese and her crustacean friends await us.”
“Not Il Caffe di Roma, Hal. I don’t want to look into that woman’s eyes and wonder if she might greet me with a filet knife.”
“You ain’t that good, brother,” Hal said in a slow Oklahoma drawl. “She’ll find someone else on which to ply her wiles when the new guy arrives.”
“You mean the new guy whose name is Angela Dillard?”