“You should probably get down here.”
“I’m on my way.” Josh hung up the phone and remembered Bailey’s trick. He decided to put in a to-go order for the Impossible Burger before he let Heather know that he had to take off.
He’d deal with his dad, and then he was going to see Bailey. She’d wanted to talk while they were dancing, but he’d been too prideful. Then she’d said they needed to talk when she came to the shop, but he’d been too turned on.
Tonight, he was ready to talk. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
Chapter 14
Bailey stepped into the hallway and her eyes filled with moisture as she exhaled. The surgery had been a success, so the tears filling her eyes had nothing to do with the tiny heart she’d just finished operating on. Nor did it have anything to do with the talk she was about to have with the parents.
There would be no devastating news to deliver today. Everything had been textbook. The infant had been born with two heart diseases. One caused a blocked valve and the other caused him to have two holes in the left side of his heart.
Bailey had gone in and successfully cleared the blocked valve but he’d need to wait until he was older, at least three months, to close up the holes. All indications pointed to a full recovery, which meant that the baby boy should be able to live a long and healthy life.
So why am I crying?
She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, taking a moment to pull herself together. If she had to venture a guess at why she was having a mini-meltdown she’d say there might be a few contributors.
This had been the first surgery that she’d performed since losing a patient and everything had gone well. These tears could be happy ones.
She’d seen Josh kissing someone outside his shop, which in her mind put the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. This could be a delayed response to that.
Or, and more likely, the pool of tears that were threatening to go full waterworks was because she had an extremely personal connection to the surgery that she’d just performed. It was the same one that had inspired her to be a pediatric cardiac surgeon.
A day she never let herself think about came rushing back to her in flashes. The delivery of what appeared to be a healthy baby. A nurse getting a strange expression on her face before calling another nurse into the room. A doctor being called and the three of them huddled together around the tiny newborn’s incubator.
“Hey, you alright?”
Bailey looked up and saw CiCi standing in front of her with concern brimming in her blue eyes. Behind her, the male infant was being wheeled to a recovery room.
“Yeah.” Bailey pushed off the wall and wiped her face when she realized that her cheeks were damp from tears that must’ve fallen. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” CiCi was not convinced. “I can see if Dr. Lee can do the post-op consult.”
“No, I’m good. Just a little tired.” It was a broad excuse that covered all manner of sins. No one questioned when a surgeon said that they were tired.
CiCi stood for just a moment longer, her gaze assessing the situation before she followed behind the incubator taking baby Carter to recovery.
“Jacob and Angie Carter are the parents. They’re kids, but really sweet. They are in the family room,” she said before she walked out the door.
Bailey started walking toward the family waiting room, the larger of the two waiting rooms in the pediatric unit at HCC. Her mind was already planning the rest of her night. She’d be at the hospital for about half an hour more. It was early enough that she could scoop up Felix, go home, and take a nice, hot bubble bath. She might even have a glass (or bottle) of wine and get to that Netflix bingeing she’d fantasized about earlier.
Her mind was already scrolling through what she had in her queue when she noticed an older couple walking toward her. Her lips curled up in an obligatory grin. Bailey didn’t have a problem with the entire hospital staff accusing her of having RBF, but as far as patients, family, and visitors were concerned, she put an effort into having an approachable and kind bedside manner.
Both the gentleman and lady smiled back before they returned to speaking to each other in hushed tones. She did a double take as the duo got closer and passed by her. There was something so familiar about them. Bailey tried to remember how she knew them.
She had no memory of meeting them, but she knew she’d seen them before. Had she seen them in the hospital before today? Were they related to one of the doctors or nurses? There didn’t seem to be any recognition in their faces when they’d seen her.
As she rounded the corner, she was still trying to place the couple when she saw another couple who caused warmth to spread through her like a hot coffee on a cold morning. Through the glass door of the family waiting room, she could see a guy who didn’t look any older than twenty, holding a young woman with long, blonde hair in his arms. The woman’s back was to her and he was cradling her against his chest and kissing the top of her head as if she were the most precious thing in the world to him.
Bailey had witnessed a lot of couples go through some of the worst, most anxiety-inducing moments of their lives. She had a sixth sense about those that had a chance at weathering the storm of having a child in this unit. It was not an easy road for parents to travel. There was no rhyme or reason to how she knew. It was an instinct, and so far in her ten years as a practicing physician, her prediction batting average was high.
These two would make it. She was sure of it. She had that feeling.
Seeing the two of them standing together, comforting one another, made her wonder what she and Josh would’ve been like in their situation. But she knew the answer. If he would’ve been with her, if he would’ve known what was going on, no matter what he’d said when she’d overheard him at the cemetery talking to his mom’s headstone, he would’ve done exactly what this young dad was doing and probably more. He would’ve moved heaven and earth to protect her and their baby girl.
The tears started to form once more when her phone buzzed. She looked down and saw that it was a message from Jamie Sloan. She was the nurse on Josh’s dad’s floor. It was a code white. Stan was throwing a fit about taking a breathing treatment. A breathing treatment she was sure that he desperately needed.
She shot back a message letting her know that she’d be down just as soon as she finished this post-op consult. As she put her phone back in her pocket and pushed open the door to the waiting room, she was calculating the time it would take for her to calm Stan down and how much it would eat into her plans for the evening. She wondered if she should order the burger from The Grill and have it delivered or if she wanted to take the time to go by and pick it up.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Rossum,” she said as she entered the room slightly distracted. “Are you Noah’s parents?”
“Yes, I’m Jacob this is my wife Angie.” Bailey looked up and saw that Jacob’s eyes were red and watery as he asked, “Is he okay…is Noah okay?”
Bailey addressed him as the young mom turned around to face her.
“Yes, he’s fine. The surgery went…” She turned her attention to speak to both of them and when she did her heart lodged in her throat. She was staring at a mirror image of a younger version of herself except instead of her brown eyes, the girl in front of her had blue eyes. Josh’s blue eyes.
Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, she knew exactly who the couple that she’d passed in the hallway were. Their names were Timothy and Gloria Stein. She’d stared at their pictures for months before she’d painstakingly chosen them as the couple that would raise her child. Her and Josh’s child.
Their file was seared into her memory. Gloria, thirty-eight was a social worker and Timothy, forty-one, was a lawyer who worked for a nonprofit that helped low-income families. She remembered at the time thinking they were old, it had been her only reservation about whether or not they’d make good parents. But Gloria had only been a few years older than Bailey was now.
They were high school sweethearts who were married after Gloria earned her master’s and Timothy passed the bar. Their plan had been to start a family after they’d established their careers, only to find out that they faced infertility issues. The letter in the file said that they briefly considered infertility treatments but decided to pursue adoption instead of throwing money at science.
It had been the hardest decision that Bailey had ever made, but she’d had a gut feeling about them. She’d known they were the right people to raise her baby.
“The surgery went…?” Jacob prompted.
“Sorry, yes, the surgery was a success…” Bailey blinked and looked back up at Jacob, but then her eyes shot right back to the girl. Her baby girl. The last time she’d seen her and held her was when she was ten days old before she left the hospital with Timothy and Gloria.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel her limbs. She couldn’t even hear the words she was saying. Thankfully, she’d given this talk so many times that she could operate on auto-pilot even though her entire world felt like it had just been turned upside down. She talked about what the couple could expect over the next week, next month, next year, and then long term. She listed off what procedures the baby might need at what ages and the possible complications from each and the medications that he’d have to be on to treat his condition.
It was the exact same talk that the doctor had given her when she was a terrified sixteen-year-old girl, all alone in a hospital hundreds of miles away from anyone or anything she knew.
As she spoke, she felt like she was floating outside of herself as her entire world disintegrated. She’d seen movies where walls, floors, and everything the actor thinks is real begins to deconstruct around them. She felt like Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange. Her reality, the reality that she’d built, was crumbling to pieces.
Her phone buzzed against her hip and the sensation served to pull her back to herself. She snapped out of the limbo she’d been in and grabbed the phone out of her pocket. It was a code blue from Jamie, which meant that Stan was having cardiac or respiratory arrest.
“I’m sorry. I have to go. CiCi will be in within the next few minutes to bring you to see Noah.”
“Thank you,” Jacob nodded, tears running down his face.
“Thank you so much.” Angie, her daughter, flung herself into Bailey’s arms.
For a moment, she stood perfectly still, unable to move, unable to breathe. But then something happened. That warmth that she’d felt earlier was now spreading through her but was a trillion times stronger than anything she’d ever felt before. Her arms wrapped around her as the young girl repeated, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Her phone went off again, and both women dropped their arms. Bailey took a step back and smiled at both Jacob and Angie before rushing out of the room. As she made her way down the back stairway, Bailey tried to compartmentalize what had just happened.
Her daughter, Josh’s daughter was here, in this hospital. And she would be for at least a week while Noah recovered.
Noah.
It hit Bailey that she’d just operated on her grandson.
She was a grandma.
Chapter 15
A nurse bumped Josh’s arm as she rushed past him into his father’s room. There was a clear bag of liquid in her hand and he watched as she hung the bag on an IV stand before hooking a line into a tube that ran along his dad’s arm.
Josh stood in the hallway, feeling helpless as he watched nurses and doctors work around his father’s bedside. There were a couple of nurses he didn’t recognize, as well as Jamie, Dr. Burns, or Reggie (as his dad referred to him) and Bailey. The room was crowded but what amazed him was that everyone moved around one another and worked together in perfect harmony.
He hadn’t been able to get a clear look at his pop’s face. From where he stood, all he could see was chest down. His gown was open and there were tubes and wires everywhere. He’d arrived at the hospital about ten minutes ago and no one had been able to tell him anything about his father’s condition. Josh had no idea if his pop was even conscious.
When he’d first arrived and tried to walk in, one of the nurses ushered him out and told him to wait in the hall. So there he stood, holding a plastic to-go bag from The Grill. He felt like an idiot for not rushing here as soon as he’d gotten Jamie’s call. It had taken almost half an hour for them to make the hamburger he’d planned on bribing his dad with.
If he’d known that it was serious, he would’ve been here within minutes. He’d just assumed it was one of his outbursts. His pop’s health had been poor for such a long time. As he watched the scene play out in front of him, Josh realized that he’d grown used to his dad being sick. At some point over the past decade, his pop’s hospital visits had become commonplace. He went in, he came out. Josh hadn’t truly contemplated the reality that his condition could be fatal.
Things had been different when his mom had been sick. It had gone fast then. Her illness progressed so rapidly. Every day she looked smaller, frailer. And then she was gone.
His dad hadn’t been well for so long that his illness had become the norm. Even the doctor’s warnings seemed routine now. Josh couldn’t count the number of times he himself had told his pops he needed to change his ways.
The conversations were short and always went the same way. He’d tell his dad he needed to eat better, take his medicine, stop smoking, and exercise.
And his dad always had the same response. “What am I living for? It’s not like I need to be around to see my grandchildren grow up.”
That would bring the conversation to a screeching halt.
The not-so-subtle dig always struck a raw nerve with him. It was so fucking hypocritical.
As a teen, Josh’s dad had threatened his life if he ever “got a girl knocked up.” When Bailey got pregnant, Josh had tried to talk to his dad the night before she went to the clinic. His dad had lost his shit. He’d said horrible things about Josh, about Bailey, and about Bailey’s family. His old man told him that if they kept it, he was going to disown him and kick him out of the house. He told him that having a child when they were that young would be the biggest mistake of his life and he’d fuck the kid up. He said he had no business bringing another life into the world when he couldn’t even support himself.
Hindsight being twenty-twenty, he may not have chosen the best time to give his dad the news, since Stan had already drank his dinner, which at that point in his pop’s life consisted of a twelve-pack and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Sure, it would’ve been better to tell his pops when he was sober, but those moments were so rare they might not be able to talk about it until the kid started kindergarten.
His pop’s reaction had shaken Josh to the core. His dad had always had a temper, but it had never been directed at Josh before that night. With his dad still screaming, he’d left the house and headed to the cemetery to talk to his mom. He’d told her everything his dad had said and explained why he didn’t care about any of it. He told her that if it were up to him, they’d keep the baby.
But the truth was, it wasn’t up to him. Bailey had her life planned out since she was in first grade. She’d wanted to graduate early and she had. She’d already been accepted to Columbia. He knew it wasn’t fair to ask her to keep it.
So he’d done what he thought was the right thing. He’d tried to be as supportive as he could. He’d driven her into the city to a clinic, waited in the car because she’d said she needed to go in by herself, and he’d driven her back home. He’d done his best to make sure that she was okay because that was all he could do. And he’d felt totally helpless the entire time, just like he did now.
He stood in the hallway listening to the beeps of machines around him that were the soundtrack of the hospital. He watched as Bailey moved from one side of his father’s bed to the other, and he couldn’t help but wonder how different both of their lives would’ve been if he’d spoken up. If he’d said what he really felt.
Would she have kept the baby?
Would they still be together?
Would it have ruined their lives?
When the doctor told them that they were going to be parents, she’d panicked. He’d never seen her panic before. Even when she was bleeding all over the rocks by the river, she’d been perfectly calm while he freaked out. But when she looked in his eyes after the doctor told her she was pregnant, he’d seen pure, horrified fear. She’d asked him what they were going to do and he’d told her that they’d figure it out. Then, the entire way home she’d listed all of the reasons that she couldn’t keep the baby. The next morning, as the sun was rising, she showed up at his house and told him that she’d made an appointment in Chicago in two days and could he drive her?
He’d said yes. That was all the conversation they’d had.
A nurse that he wasn’t familiar with stepped out of his dad’s room and he asked, “How is he? Can I see him?”
“Not yet. Dr. Burns will be out to speak with you shortly.” Her response was clipped as she stepped around him and continued down the hallway.
Josh peeked in saw that Dr. Burns was speaking with Jamie and another nurse, but Bailey was walking straight toward him. Her head was down and she looked lost in thought.
“Hey,” he said when she was only about a foot away from him.
She jumped and grasped at her chest. When she saw that it was him, the color in her face drained. It was as if she’d seen a ghost.
Oh shit.
Was his dad going to die?
“Is he…? Is my dad…?” Josh couldn’t say the word.
He watched her blink several times before she gave her head a quick shake. “Um…he’s stable. Dr. Burns will fill you in.”
She began to do what every other staff member had done to him and walk past him but unlike the others, he followed behind her. This wasn’t some nurse he’d spoken to a handful of times. This was Bailey. If his dad’s condition was grave, he hoped that she would tell him.
Just One Night - Josh & Bailey (Crossroads Book 13) Page 12