After what felt like an hour, Mason finally relaxed with a whimper and a couple quiet sobs, curling his fingers into the lapel of her robe. This she could handle. This was normal. A baby upset in the night, wanting his mother. She swallowed hard and tried to soothe him with quiet babbling but her tears didn't stop, and then Nate was kneeling in front of the chair, with one big hand on Mason's hair and the other on her hand, meeting her gaze as he squeezed her fingers. Though all she could think about was Mason, she noticed Nate's shirt was on inside out, his hair messed fresh from sleep. Tiny details that didn't matter, but she hung onto them because it was less scary than thinking about the image of Mason struggling.
"Lay, what happened?"
She shook her head as she tried to put it to words. "It was like a seizure. He couldn't breathe. He seems okay now, but…I didn't know what to do."
Nate brushed Mason's hair back off his forehead with a tenderness that made Layla's heart ache. The baby's eyelids drooped and panic made her pull her hand away from Nate's to touch his chest and make sure he was still breathing.
"We're going to go to the hospital. I'll hold onto him and you go put some clothes on."
She blinked slowly, terrified at the idea of handing Mason over. His little body was now heavy and limp, but thankfully breathing, at the very least. It took a minute, but Nate helped her to her feet and gently pried the baby out of her arms, cradling him in the crook of his elbow while he drew her close with a hand on the back of her neck and kissed her forehead; a gentleness she'd didn't expect or deserve.
"I got him, Lay, I promise." The gentle rumble of his tender words brought a new rush of tears and a twist in her heart.
Though she felt like she was moving through glue, Layla propelled herself to her bedroom and dressed. She could hear Nate and Mason moving through the house, the clarity of Nate's voice as he talked to what must have been Nan, on the phone, and then quieter, a deep rumbling of words she couldn't make out. She emerged to find him waiting by the door, murmuring quietly to the baby he'd swaddled protectively against his chest. He met her eyes and she saw a thread of the fear she felt in her heart mirrored in them. He ushered them out to the truck.
"You ride in the back with him, Lay." Nate tipped his head toward the passenger side and she rounded the truck and climbed onto the tiny bench seat while he strapped Mason into the car seat he hadn't removed yet, despite what had happened. When he finished, he made eye contact with her again over the baby, his lips pressed together. "I got you both."
*
Nate guided his pickup through the sleepy streets of Three Rivers to the highway with a confidence he absolutely didn't feel in his heart. He didn't know a whole hell of a lot about babies, but the sleepy, barely-conscious baby he'd just strapped into the back seat and his frenzied mother scared the shit out of him. The unadulterated panic he saw in Layla's eyes had to keep him calm somehow—if he didn't do it, nobody would. Nan's soothing talk had helped, assuring him not to worry, it was something that happened sometimes, and usually there was no damage done, but it was hard to let those words override the concerning things he'd seen.
He caught Layla's eyes in the rear view mirror. She'd been babbling at Mason, talking about him staying awake, promising him he was all right and she was right there.
"How's he doing?"
"I think he's sleeping." Her brow furrowed with what he assumed was a frown, but he couldn't see anything but her frightened eyes in the mirror. He folded down the convertible middle seat and slipped his hand over it to find her knee, giving it a gentle squeeze.
"How about you?"
"I'm scared," she said, her voice cracking. He squeezed again, and then her fingers slid under his. "I'm just glad you're here."
There was a part of him that was angry. He should have been there, with them, not a ten minute drive away. If she'd been honest with him from the beginning, he would have been. But her soft fingers in his grip felt more right than he'd felt in the last seventy two hours or so, so that counted for something.
He couldn't have said no if he'd wanted to. Her panicked voice on the phone, the looming quiet in the background when she'd called. She could have been in Antarctica and he would have gone.
The drive to the regional hospital in Johnston that served the entire area was only twenty-five minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. Nate's attention remained divided between the road and glancing in the rear view mirror at Layla, who had a death grip on him with one hand, and the other on Mason. When he pulled up under the emergency door's covered entrance, he twisted in his seat to make eye contact.
"You go in and get started. I'll park and be right in." She nodded and climbed out the other side while he got out and unbuckled Mason from his seat. He looked like he was sleeping, like he'd seen him a dozen times, carried him in from the truck looking just like this a half dozen times. But this was different. Normally, he would shift, fuss a little. His little body was heavy, dead weight. He stopped for a second while Layla rounded the back of the pickup, watching Mason's chest in the neon light flooding over them, until he was sure he saw it rise and fall, and then handed him over to her. She looked completely and utterly lost as she cradled the baby to her chest and stumbled off toward the sliding double doors.
He climbed back into the truck and quickly parked in the mostly-empty parking lot, making his way back up to the building as fast as his legs could carry him. Layla was watching for him, still clinging to Mason like their lives depended on it. The wild look of panic she'd had in her eyes when he'd found her in Mason's bedroom was back. Fresh tears tracked her cheeks.
"They're just clearing an exam room for us," she said, glancing over her shoulder.
"Hey," he murmured gently, brushing a hand over Mason's hair. "We're really in the best place right now. Nan will be here any minute. Don't worry."
A short, anxious breath huffed out of her and she glanced behind her again. He followed her gaze this time to a sign indicating that outside of mid-day visiting hours, only immediate family was permitted.
"What if they don't let her in?"
"She's his grandmother. They'll let her in."
A nurse poked her head out of a set of doors, gesturing to Layla. "Come on in, mom and dad. We're ready for you."
Dad. Just like that, he'd stepped into a role he had no idea what to do with.
—THIRTY-NINE—
Nate caught his eyes just before they closed. His head jerked up and he glanced at the doorway, expecting to see Nan, but she wasn't there. She'd arrived not ten minutes after they were settled in the exam room, and as soon as she'd sufficiently fussed over first Mason, then Layla, she'd gone in search of coffee for all of them. By his estimation, she'd been gone at least twenty minutes—long enough to give him a chance to talk to Layla now that all of the urgency had drained out of the situation and they'd settled in for the long wait. But they hadn't—instead, Nate had convinced Layla, who was fading quickly as the adrenaline of the night drained out of her, to rest, and she was curled up against his chest as if the last three days hadn't excavated an enormous hole between the two of them. Mason rested in her arms. They were a family. A family. His family.
He barely knew what that was. Of course he called Nan and Banks his family. And even the Baylors and the Andersons were in on the mix. But the nuclear family—dad, mom, baby—that one felt so far out of his wheelhouse he didn't know what to do with it. More than once, he'd wished he'd had a little more time with his parents. Banks had memories, but he didn't have much more than an image in his mind to hold onto—and that he wasn't even sure of—it could have been from the little grainy photos Nan kept around. Not on proud display like the pictures of the boys growing up, of course, but around none the less. Family is family, she said. When he'd been a boy, he'd pressed from time to time but Nan simply said they weren't cut out to be parents and left it at that. Even though they'd burdened her with the raising of two small boys, she still wouldn't say a bad word about them.
And mayb
e being good at being a parent was genetic. Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a father. The urge to run had never been so strong as when Layla had confirmed Mason was his son. Their son. Maybe the only difference between Nate and his own father was he had nowhere to run to.
Layla stirred; her eyes were closed but he wasn't sure she was sleeping. Her soft, coconut-scented hair was so close, it would be just inches to drop his lips to the top of her head, and the temptation was strong. He was angry, had been angry for days, but all of that had paled tonight when he'd heard her panicked voice on the other end of the phone. And sitting here in this hospital room felt like the only place in the world he was supposed to be right now.
Unable to resist any longer, he reached down, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear and sliding his fingertips over the length of it as it fell over her shoulder. Everything inside him was at odds. He wanted this—wanted her, wanted Mason, wanted to be all in—but it scared the living bejesus out of him. As he pondered how he could reconcile his fear with this deep-rooted desire to do the right thing, to do what he wanted to do, he heard a throat clear from the doorway and it shook him from his thoughts.
Nan stood in the door of the room with a magazine tucked under her arm and her hands full of coffee cups. A wide smile crossed her face as she surveyed the trio crammed onto the hospital bed; she looked entirely too pleased with herself. He raised a brow and shook his head. Layla was still quiet, so maybe she'd fallen asleep by now, but his grandmother still wasn't allowed to gloat within earshot. Crossing the floor, she extended one of the two steaming paper cups she carried to him.
"It's just vending machine drivel, but it'll have to do."
"Anything is better than nothing," he said gratefully, freeing one arm to take the cup from her. While he was beginning to fade, the gravity of his duty to keep watch over Layla and Mason kept him awake; the coffee would help.
Nan just got settled into the chair beside the bed when Dr. Fields appeared in the door. Nate had been surprised to find him here on duty, but the doctor explained in a small area like this one, all of the doctors took time away from their individual practices to take rotational shifts at the regional hospital. He couldn't have been happier, because it seemed to settle Layla a good deal. She had a great working relationship with the doctor, and it translated personally, it seemed. He ran his hand down over her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze. He hated to wake her—she had a shift scheduled at Danny's for the afternoon and she'd need all the sleep she could get.
"Lay, the doctor's here."
She shifted, drawing in a deep breath, and then straightened, wiping a hand over her face. He felt how she looked, but the coffee was helping. He offered her his cup, but she shook her head, her eyes snapping to focus on Dr. Fields. She'd been relaxed and loose but her body tensed against his now.
"Mason is going to be fine," he said, clearly and slowly, with eye contact, the same way Nate had been speaking to her most of the evening. The doctor probably had more practice communicating with scared people in emergency situations than he did. "Tests came back suggesting a low grade infection caused the fever. I'll prescribe some antibiotics."
Nate breathed a sigh of relief and he felt Layla's tense body relax just a little.
"And that caused him to have a seizure?"
The doctor nodded, perching near the foot of the bed. "Some children have febrile seizures. They're almost always completely harmless."
"So…will this happen every time?" Layla pushed herself into a sitting position, and Nate felt the coldness in the space her body had occupied.
The doctor shook his head resolutely. "It could happen again, but probably not."
Pressing her lips together, she rose from the bed, lying the still slumbering Mason on the bed beside Nate, who put his hand on the baby's back. Half to stop him from rolling off the bed, half to ensure he was still breathing. He watched Layla straighten her clothes nervously.
"Does it have an effect on him?"
Again, Dr. Fields shook his head. "Seizures because of fever aren't anything to worry about as far as brain or physical damage. If it happens again, keep an eye on him. Call an ambulance if it lasts for more than 5 minutes, and just make sure he can't hurt himself."
Nate cleared his throat then, because Layla's body language suggested she was getting ramped up going through the possibilities of this happening again, and that wasn't in her best interest by any stretch of the imagination. The doctor was being honest with her but with so much adrenaline still in her system and so little sleep, the best thing for her was to get home in her own bed.
"So can we take him home, Doc?" he intercepted, reaching to touch Layla's wrist.
"Yes," the doctor responded, and then turned back to Layla. "Layla—there's nothing in the bloodwork that indicates this is anything but an isolated incident. You can give him Tylenol for the fever and just keep an eye on him. If anything makes you worry, you know you can call me."
*
Layla let out a breath and nodded as she let the doctor's words sink in. She felt comfortable coming to her employer with any fears or concerns, but she didn't figure he'd be interested in getting a call in an hour when she was home alone again, standing over her baby's crib questioning every sleeping twitch or flinch. She had to get a hold on herself. Nan had told her when she'd arrived things like this happened from time to time, it was totally normal, and it didn't mean anything was wrong with Mason. And now the doctor had backed it up, but she still felt like she was bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Nate picked up Mason and touched her waist lightly. Everyone was watching, waiting for her to gather herself and leave. But this felt like the safest place, especially with Nate here.
"O-okay," she stammered, letting Nate guide her out of the exam room.
"Thanks, Doc. We'll call you if we need you."
And then they were walking out through the waiting room, out the sliding doors of emergency, and into the cool night air toward Nate's truck. With Mason's seat in it. The seat he'd bought before he'd known Mason was his son.
He was a good man, and she'd been wrong to keep this secret from him. He was so good, in fact, that even though she was probably the last person in the world he wanted to hear from, he'd dropped everything in the middle of the night when she called, treated Mason with the tenderness of a father who had been present all along, and even been kind and warm to her. The exhaustion, the adrenaline, and the realization all threatened to swamp her in tears.
Nan followed along with them, and reached out to touch her back at the exact moment when Layla needed it the most.
"You want me to come with you, honey?"
"I got this, Nan. We'll call if we need you," Nate said as he pulled the door of the truck open and put Mason in his seat.
Layla turned to Nan while Nate buckled Mason in, a little bit dumfounded by his words, but touched. Nan's eyes asked the right questions—is this okay? Are you all right with this? Even though Nate was her grandson, Nan was still looking out for Layla.
She nodded silently. Even if he was angry, she felt safe with him, like he could protect her from the scary uncertainty motherhood had so suddenly become. It hadn't always been easy, but it had never been as terrifying as tonight.
"Okay, honey. Give me a hug." Nan wrapped Layla up in her arms—a funny sight because as tough as she was, Nan was tiny—and squeezed her hard, the way Layla wished her mom would. She felt tears pricking at her eyes again before the older woman released her, then vised Nate into a hug. This was Layla's family, blood or not. A little patchwork family she'd put together when she could no longer depend on her own. "You two call me if you need anything."
"We will."
Nan headed toward her car—a little slower than necessary, like she had one ear turned back for trouble, but they waited until she was in her car and the engine had roared to life and then Nate helped Layla into the passenger side of the truck for the long ride back to Three Rivers.
; —FORTY—
Layla struggled to keep her eyes open in the dim glow of the radio in the dashboard of Nate's truck as they turned in the driveway. He'd tucked her up under his arm in the girlfriend seat and the hard warmth of his body and the dull roar of the truck's engine were so familiar and comforting, she could have forgotten about everything and drifted off. Except she knew this familiar and comforting thing was also temporary. Nate wasn't going to just slide back into the spot where she'd grown so accustomed to him being just because she'd called him in a panic in the middle of the night. They had to talk. Sooner rather than later. She'd owed that to him even before tonight.
The kitchen and living room lights were still on, Layla noticed as she pulled herself into a sitting position, Nate's headlights swept over the front of the house. No porch light on. She was surprised the door was even closed; they'd taken off so quickly. Nate pulled up beside her car and put his truck in park, killing the engine. The quiet settled between them, and she could feel his eyes on her.
"You okay?" he finally asked into the darkness.
Layla glanced over. She couldn't make out his features. Right now? Sure, she was okay. But a deeply resonating feeling of not okay was just under the skin. Nothing was okay as long as he was going to get in his truck and drive away. That was what she expected—what she'd basically set herself up for from the minute she saw him in the bar that first night. But it wasn't what she wanted, and she'd do anything to change it. And she'd realized it too damn late.
Secret Heart Page 20