by Melinda Minx
The screen then shows the small outline of a fetus.
“Our baby,” I say in complete disbelief.
“It’s a boy,” she says, and a rush of warmth and happiness rushes over me.
“It’s too early to tell,” the ultrasound operator says. “We won’t know until—”
“I know it,” Rose says. “It’s a boy. I dreamt it.”
Dylan pulls me aside as they run more tests on Rose.
“You didn’t waste any time,” he says, smirking.
“You’re going to be an uncle,” I say.
“I know this is bad timing,” Dylan says. “But I found out what the deal with Dr. Meiner is.”
I frown. While I’ve been building the lab, Dylan has been trying to dig up info on Dr. Meiner’s past. He said that if I’m going to hire the man to lead research, I should know what his motivations are.
“What is it?” I ask.
I’m wondering if it even matters now. If Rose is awake, I don’t need the lab, or Meiner.
Dylan pulls a photo out of his bag. It’s of a young woman. The photo is old, and the colors are faded. Based on the woman’s hoop earrings and hairstyle, the photo looks like it was taken in the seventies.
“Do you know who this is?” Dylan asks.
I shake my head.
“Claudia Stiller,” he says. “One of the first documented cases of a person with Rose’s condition. She fell asleep in ‘76, and then she disappeared.
“Disappeared?” I ask.
Dylan nods. “Her husband disappeared, too.”
Everything starts clicking. “Her husband is Dr. Meiner.”
Dylan holds up a new photo. “His real name is Dr. Sheldon Stiller. This photo was taken by the PI I hired.”
I study it. Meiner—Stiller—is eating at a sidewalk cafe somewhere downtown, and he’s with a woman who is smiling and laughing. It’s hard to place her age: she could be anywhere from her late forties to mid-sixties.
“Since she slept so long,” Dylan says, “she didn’t age so visibly. But it’s her. Claudia Stiller.”
“When did she wake up then?” I ask.
“This photo was taken a week or so after Meiner got you to remove the device from Rose’s brain.”
“Fuck,” I whisper. “You think…”
Dylan nods, and taps on Cynthia’s head in the photo. “It’s in her head now.”
“Shit,” I whisper. “So...he must have made a deal with Dr. Bell. He gets the device for his wife, and then he has to work for her on whatever she wants.”
“I just don’t understand,” Dylan says. “Why he let you use it on Rose at all. Why not just use it on his wife straight away?”
I start to think it through, and I shudder when I realize the answer. “He wasn’t sure if it would work. He had to test it…”
“Jesus,” Dylan says.
“Dr. Prince,” one of the nurses says, stepping out into the hallway.
“Yeah?” I ask. “Dr. Kahn is ready for you and Dylan.”
We go back into the room with Rose. I kiss her lightly on the lips. Every time I see her awake again, it’s like a dream come true. I haven’t gotten my hopes up yet, though, not until we can figure out what is going on.
“So,” Dr. Kahn says. “Here’s what we think happened.”
She pulls out a sheet of paper and holds it up. “These are results from your bloodwork, Rose.”
She look at it and shrugs. “What does it mean?” She hands it to me.
I study it. “Shifts in hormone levels…” I say. “A lot of changes. Normal for pregnancy.”
Kahn nods. “Normal for pregnancy, yes, but a huge shock to the body. Your body is going through a lot of changes, Rose, and as far as I can tell, the hormones and other changes have effectively done what the device did—it reset the area in your brain that was misfiring.”
“The device,” I say, “needed to work constantly. What if the hormones change again, and—”
Kahn shrugs. “What if you get the same condition as Rose, Dr. Prince, and you fall asleep? We don’t know enough about how this works to make any predictions, but most of the changes that occur during pregnancy stick with a woman, and I’m feeling optimistic about this.”
“Wait,” Rose says. “I thought you got the device back in my head? Isn’t that why I woke up?”
Dylan and I eye each other. “It, uh,” I stammer, “ended up being a lot more complicated than that.”
“So the baby woke me up?” Rose asks, beaming. “I don’t even have some machine in my brain?”
“It looks that way,” I say.
“You woke me up, Kaden.”
“I didn’t,” I say. “I failed you.”
“No!” she says, grabbing my hand. “Don’t you see? You kissed me awake last time, and this time you, uh—”
Dylan coughs loudly.
“Let’s just say it was a lot more than a kiss that woke me up this time,” Rose says, grinning.
20
Rose
Epilogue
Even though the press mostly lost interest in our story, waking up again gave us an extra two minutes or so of fame on top of the previous fifteen.
I’m able to get a full semester of school in before I have the baby, and Kaden is hard at work with his lab.
He got Dr. Meiner to work for him rather than turning him in. That left Dr. Bell off the hook, but poaching Dr. Meiner from Bell’s operation was a huge setback. And Kaden is fairly certain that once his lab goes operational, it will put Bell out of business.
“Of course we’re going to work on Alzheimer’s,” Kaden says, breaking apart a fresh loaf of bread. “But we have a whole division dedicated to tweaking the formula for more rare conditions and diseases. There are all kinds of things out there that we can help treat or cure, and just because only a few people suffer from them doesn’t mean they don’t deserve attention.”
“You really want me to be like, your mascot?” I ask.
“Not mascot,” he says. “Spokesperson.”
I bite my lip.
“It’s not like it’s a full-time job,” Dylan says. “You just have to show up and do the Sleeping Beauty story. Right?”
“I guess so,” I say. “As long as I don’t have to miss class.”
“You really want to code?” Dylan asks me. “Seems kind of an odd choice.”
“Why?” I snap. “Because I’m a woman? Women can’t code?”
“Uh,” he says, “I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking more since you were asleep for so long, you’ll be behind the curve.”
“I’m behind the curve on everything, Dylan,” I say. “Come on.”
“But technology advances faster than, say, uh—”
“You were going to name some ‘girl job’ weren’t you?”
“Uh,” he stammers. “Kaden, I need some help here, man.”
“Coding is good,” Kaden says, grinning. “Whatever she wants to do. Hell, if you get really good, we can put you to work at the lab.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’d like to try to get a job on my own, rather than having my billionaire husband hand me one on a platter.”
“Who said anything about handing it to you?” Kaden says. “Did you miss the part where I said, ‘if you get really good?’ That implies you have to pass a rigorous interview procedure, and—”
“Really, Kaden?” I ask. “You’d make me do all that?”
He laughs, and drops his bread onto his plate. “Seriously? You were mad at me for ‘handing you a job,’ and now you’re mad at me for making you work for it? Which is it that you want?”
I grin. I realize I’m being ridiculous. “I guess it’s the hormones, sorry. But seriously, I’d rather do my own thing, Kaden.”
We get too busy to have the wedding right away. Kaden decides to give up being a doctor to run the lab. Even though he’ll miss working one-on-one with patients, he wants to be able to do as much good as he can for the world with his money. I fully support him
on it, as anyone with a condition like mine deserves having an advocate who will fight for them.
Thomas, our son, is born late in the summer after my second semester of school. I take a full semester off to be with him, and once I start class again, Dylan and Kaden help to take care of him while I’m at class.
Dylan and I end up being classmates at Carnegie Mellon, but we try to get our schedules arranged so that we’re rarely in class at the same time. Dylan doesn’t want Thomas to have a babysitter who isn’t family.
I moved in with Kaden during my second semester. Dylan didn’t take it too hard, as he met a hot girl in one of his classes, and having me clear out meant she could sleep over--and they could be as loud as they wanted to be together.
Not that I’m asking for any details.
When Christmas time rolls around, I have two weeks off from class, and Kaden takes his first vacation ever since opening the lab.
My best friend Kayla is back in Pittsburgh from D.C., and we host a big dinner with friends and family on Christmas Eve.
Almost everyone is there. We didn’t invite Dr. Meiner--Dr. Stiller. Even though he works with Kaden, they still don’t really get along. Neither has ever actually forgiven the other--Kaden can’t forgive Stiller for what he did to me, and Stiller can’t forgive Kaden for breaking his initial promise. Still, the two manage to work together and create miracle cures. Each sees the partnership as a necessary deal with the devil.
“What do you think his first word will be?” Kayla asks me, wiping some food off Thomas’s mouth.
“Uncle,” Dylan says, grinning.
“Come on,” I snap. “Seriously? No way.”
Kaden grins.
“What do you think, Kaden?” Kayla asks.
“Mama and Dada are tailor-made to be easy to pronounce. It gives a nice and unfair advantage to the parents that they will be the first words. Think how much easier it is to say ‘mama’ than ‘uncle.’ That hard ‘k’ sound is going to come a lot later than an ‘m’ sound.”
Dylan sighs. “Maybe I’ll get Thomas to just call me ‘uh-uh’ then?”
“You’d seriously go your whole life with Thomas having to call you ‘uh-uh’ just so you could steal the first word from me?” I ask, smiling.
“Yeah,” Dylan says. “I guess I would.”
“Thomas is lucky,” Kayla says. “He has so many people competing for his affection. You guys all really want to be his favorite.”
Kaden leans back. “His first word is probably going to disappoint all of us. It will be ‘cup’ or something lame.”
“No word that comes out of our baby’s mouth will be lame,” I say, crossing my arms.
“What if it’s ‘poop?’” Dylan says, laughing.
Thomas slams his hand into his highchair tray, and he bobs up and down, making loud noises.
“He’s about to talk, see?” Dylan says. He leans in toward Thomas and says, “You gonna say ‘poop’ big guy? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Kaden laughs.
“Don’t encourage him!” I say, jabbing a finger at Dylan. “Dylan is being a bad ‘uh-uh.’”
“What’s an ‘uh-uh?’” he asks.
“That’s what you said he’s going to call you!” I sigh. “You forgot already?”
“Oh,” he says. “I was joking about that. But I’m serious about the poop thing.”
“Poo!” Thomas squeals.
We all look up in stunned silence. Thomas’s eyes widen, and he looks right at me. He seems to realize that he’s gotten as much attention as possible.
“Poo! Poo! Poo!” he gurgles.
He starts slamming his hand down on the high chair tray and laughing. “Poo! Pooooo!” He giggles uncontrollably.
My jaw drops open. My baby’s first word was seriously ‘poo,’ and it’s all Dylan’s fault.
Dylan looks at me with a red face, looking very embarrassed and apologetic. “Uh, sorry, Rose.”
I smile. It doesn’t matter what his first word is. What matters Is that I have a child with Kaden. What matters is that despite everything that happened, and the unlikelihood of us ever being together—we’re together.
Thomas is a miracle. He’s the end result of every unlikely and lucky thing that happened to Kaden and me along the way, and even if his first word is “poo,” he’ll have a lot more to say throughout the rest of our long lives together.
21
Extended Epilogue
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Stay: A Second Chance Romance by Melinda Minx
1
Mason
I pop the bottle and take a long swig. The cold German beer flows down my throat like a fucking elixir. All the sand from Syria is washed away by the Bavarian brew. I down nearly the whole bottle before I slam it down onto the bar.
“Shit,” I whisper. “Almost home…”
“How long has it been?” the guy across from me asks. He looks fresh. He’s got that soft baby face of a man who’s never had to kill. This German army base is a staging area for war. It’s a place where people who have never fought touch shoulders with guys like me. I’m on the way out, he’s on the way in.
“Fifteen years since I stepped foot on U.S. soil,” I say.
I rotate the beer in my hands, looking it over. It’s so cold it doesn’t feel real.
“Shit, man,” he hisses. “Fifteen years? You didn’t get to take any leave?”
I let out a dry laugh and shake my head.
I look up at him, and I lock eyes with him. “You got something to keep you anchored?”
“My wife,” he says,
“You getting shipped off?”
He nods. “Yeah, Syria.”
“You always think you’ll want to go back as soon as you get the chance,” I say. “But sometimes the things that you most wanted to see again keep you away. Don’t be a dipshit like me. Don’t be a fucking coward, remember why you want to go home, and go home. Fight for it.”
He looks at me and holds his glass out to me. I clank my bottle against his glass. “Prost.”
“Prost, man,” he says. “I’ll listen to your advice. It sounds like it’s coming from real experience.”
I nod and chug down the rest of my beer.
The only reason I’m going home now is because they’re making me. Each time I decided not to go back, it felt like “one more time,” but then each time it got harder to go back, until it was fucking impossible.
I couldn’t protect Eric. It wasn’t like an IED snatched him away from me, it was my own fucking fault. He got cut down right beside me. If I had kept a better lookout, if I had been more on point, I could have saved him. I’d have brought him home to Mom and Dad.
He got shot right next to me—the bullet could just as easily have hit me—and I dragged him to cover, then watched him bleed out in my arms. I couldn’t even stop the blood flow. I was fucking worthless.
I pop open another bottle and stare into it before taking a swig.
And then I stopped writing to Sophie. I stopped even opening her fucking letters. If I couldn’t protect Eric, then what good was I to her? I shake my head. Bullshit logic. Coward logic. Maybe I was punishing myself, or maybe I felt that I just didn’t deserve anything good after fucking up everything so bad.
All I know is I threw it away. I threw my life away. I traded the woman of my dreams away for a decade and a half of scars and ink. I was strong before, but now I’m hard. Each scar is an experience, a trial, and I passed all of them.
I’ve been stabbed half a dozen times, I’ve been shot, I’ve taken shrapnel in my shin—but still I’ve been too fucking chicken-shit to go back home? To visit my parents’ graves? What am I really afraid of?
“Nothing,” I mutter to myself.
“What’s that?”
the bartender asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I didn’t say anything.”
He walks off.
I’m not afraid of anything now. I’ve been through enough shit, it’s time to grab life by the balls. To go for what I want, even if I don’t deserve it anymore. Even if I don’t deserve her anymore.
I’m tired of running.
I’m tired of hiding.
After fighting in three wars in three countries, I never would have thought the hardest battle I’d fight would be back in Tuckett Bay.
2
Sophie
“Sophie,” Dad says. “Did you see Pfizer is opening a new lab in Boston?”
I let out a deep sigh. “No, Dad, I didn’t see that.”
He sips his coffee and folds the newspaper over. “Just saying.”
“You’re not just saying,” I say. “You’re telling me I should apply for a job there. You’re telling me to get my ass out of Tuckett Bay.”
He gets a pen out and starts on the crossword puzzle, annoyingly not responding to me. Because he knows I’m right.
I flip the eggs over before they overcook. “Where’s the salt?”
“It’s not in the thing?” Dad mumbles, not looking up.
I look over and see the saltshaker sitting on the table, right in front of him. I grab it and shake a stingy pinch onto the eggs.
“More,” Dad says.
“Oh, now you can talk?”
He laughs. “Eggs have no taste without salt. Salt is the whole reason you eat an egg!”
“The cholesterol is bad enough, Dad, I’m not going to spike your sodium, too.”
“You treat me like an old man, Sophie.”
I shrug. He is an old man. It’s about time he realized that.
“They’re hiring for over two hundred research positions,” Dad says, “and if you’ve got a lot of good publications, they’ve got openings for project leads.”