Irresistible Daddies Series Box Set

by Katy Kaylee

  Sure enough, I began cramping about an hour later. I gave it some time, making sure this wasn’t a false alarm. It wasn’t. I use the rest of my money to call an Uber and it dropped me off at the emergency entrance to Memorial Hospital. They took me in a wheelchair and put me to bed for the 10 most hellish hours I’d ever known in my young life.

  15

  Nathan

  They say you should go to Switzerland to ski and friends to eat. You should drink wine from the vineyards of Italy and dance and lederhosen at the German Oktoberfest. They suggest deep-sea fishing among the sharks off Australia’s southern coast and to watch Finland’s volcanoes feed the ocean floors with its molten blackness. For me, it was one long hell and none of those things helped in any way.

  I tried the restaurants but eating alone was tiresome and conspicuous. I made a few friends here and there and was invited to parties where women would throw themselves at my feet. I was both an American, and a doctor — a very desirable combination as far as they were concerned. As for me, I found them to liberated, lacking in personal hygiene and obvious in their intentions. They wanted to come to America and I was their ticket, first class. One by one they presented themselves and one by one I pushed them away.

  I was riding a camel doing a tour to the pyramids when I realized there was only one cure for my sadness. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to Christina and tie up the loose ends we left littered around us. I wanted to start over, just she and I without Macon, without sex therapy and without interference from any direction. If she wanted to, I turn right around and go back to Europe, bringing her with me. Maybe she’d like that. If she didn’t, though, it could be just that many more weeks of hell. It was up to her, not to me. I had no doubt in my mind that I was in love with her and that I couldn’t be happy with anyone else. She and I had history, in a strange and almost sick sense, and yet it held us together as though Macon had been our child. Macon was gone. I had accepted that. I was going through the stages of grieving and I knew them well. I had explained them hundreds of times to my own patients. Now was my turn, unexpectedly so.

  So, when the tour finally ended and the pyramids were yet one more wonder of the world behind my back, I found a taxi and then the airport. It took me home. I climbed off the plane in O’Hare and wondered what it was that I saw in the place. The traffic was abominable as was the personalities of the people that live there. In fact, that whole region wasn’t younger but dirtier version of the Europe that I’d left behind. Its only salvation was that Christina was there. I thought about taking a bus to Milwaukee, but my stomach was bothering me, and I preferred to have my own transportation, so I rented a car. I got to the northern suburbs of Chicago and had to pull over quickly, vomiting onto the pavement beneath the car. At first it was every couple minutes, and then it became nonstop. I pulled my shaving kit from my bag on the back seat and held it under my chin, using it as a basin as I searched for signs of a hospital. Intuitively I knew something was very wrong. It wasn’t long before I saw the signs mentioning Milwaukee. I had to hang on. I knew better than to try to go to the house, there was no one there to look after me. I rationalized that I must’ve been contaminated by something on my trip back. It was coming on quickly and hard. There was a rest area I headed to and as I turned on the blinker to pull in, I felt another wave coming over me and jammed the car into park as I stumbled out of it onto the grass, a stream of vomit and my bowels emptying themselves around me. I remembered voices and then I remembered nothing.

  16

  Christina

  When it was finally over, they put a baby boy into my arms. I named him Michael, not after anyone in particular but just because I liked the name. It was a solid, respectable name and a man with a name like that could go as far as he wanted to go. My labor had been hard and although Michael was almost term, he had a bit of jaundice and they wanted to keep him in the hospital for an extra day until his bilirubin level rose to normal. They let me stay even though they didn’t have to. I told them I had nowhere to go because my house had just burned down.

  I visited Michael in the nursery and they assured me he was doing very well and would be able to go home the next day. That didn’t give me much time to make a plan of action and when I went back to my room I began to cry. It was a very kind young nurse who had been with me through Michael’s birth. Her name was Penny and I laughed because she had copper colored hair. I had cursed wildly during labor and she took it all in stride, smiling and asking if that was the best I could do. We’d hit it off from the beginning and even after her shift was done, she came to my room and found me crying.

  “Are you okay?” She asked me.

  “If you mean do I hurt anywhere, no, not really. And Michael is fine, I just visited him in the nursery. But as for the rest of me, no, I’m not fine.”

  Penny pulled a chair closer to the side of the bed and opened her purse pulling out a skein of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. She unwound a few feet of the yarn and they lay the skein back in her purse to hold it as she pulled at it and knitted.

  I was curious. “What are you making?”

  “A baby blanket,” she answered.

  “Are you going to have the baby?” I was smiling, the irony of having your baby at work.

  She shook her head calmly. “No, I not able to have any children. I had a little run in with some cancer a few years ago and they had to do hysterectomy. I’m not married, so you can see the odds are very slim that I’m going to have children. But that doesn’t stop me from making blankets. I see lots of babies go through here who don’t have enough.”

  “Gee, it’s very generous of you.”

  “No, not at all. He gives me something useful to do so I don’t think too much. Everyone needs a break when they work at a hospital, it’s the only way you stay sane.”

  “I could see how that would be true.”

  “I’ve got a few hours here on this game. Once you tell me a little about your life and why you’re crying?”

  That is how I spent 2 ½ hours telling a perfect stranger the story of my life. It was a total confession. I talked about my childhood, about going to college and about Macon. I talked about Nathan and how he was wandering Europe and I’d probably never see him again. She asked me if I was in love with him and I nodded. “It won’t do me much good, though. He’s not here to be loved.”

  Penny shared some of her own story and it brought a bond between the two of us. I found myself wishing that I lived near her so that we could see one another regularly. I knew we become close friends. When the next day came for discharge, Penny was there. She brought a baby blanket she’d made some time before. It was blue and white and had a ruffled edge. She wrapped Michael and it and handed him to me. “There’s a little card inside with my phone number. I got yours off the records, but don’t tell anyone because I could lose my job for that. Anyway, I think you could use a friend and I know I can. Let’s keep in touch, shall we?”

  I hugged her and promised I would and then Michael and I were on our own. On our out and with nowhere to go. I had one option and so Michael and I walked. When he cried, I found somewhere private to sit and nursed him. We walked the miles until we came to Nathan’s house. The key was where I remembered it would be and we let ourselves in. I knew that legally, I was trespassing, but I doubted Nathan would have me locked up. He was obviously still in Europe and wouldn’t even know the difference. We’d only stay a few days until I could figure out a plan. In the meantime, Michael and I set up a rhythm for our days. I ate from the food stored in Nathan’s cupboards and Michael feasted on mother’s milk and love. He wore dishtowels and hand towels, carefully laundered by me in the bathroom sink and I borrowed a couple of Nathan’s T-shirts and with a untalented hand, I used needle and thread to alter the fabric until Michael had a handful of strange fitting onesies. The weather was warm enough and he was fine. I, on the other hand, was not. I was literally scared out of my mind.

  17

  Nathan


  The light was dim at first, blurry and quick flashes from time to time. It slowly improved and I could hear voices, but I was intubated and miserable. I tried to pull it out, but they had my hands lashed to the size of the bed. Finally, I managed to kick the covers enough to get their attention and a few minutes later the tube was pulled out.

  “Dr. Abernathy, you’re at Memorial Hospital in Milwaukee. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nodded my head and blinked. He seems satisfied.

  “Dr. Abernathy, it took us some time to isolate what brought you to us. You are otherwise a very healthy man. We did manage to find some bacteria in your gut, most likely from tainted food. Have you been eating from any unusual sources lately?”

  “Plane,” I managed to whisper.

  “Well, that could answer it. Sometimes those flights sit for long periods on the tarmac and they’re not terribly picky about preserving the food they serve to the passengers. One of those out of sight out of mind things. You are lucky. If you would have come in much later, I’m not sure we could have revived you. You were seriously dehydrated, had a raging fever and we feared brain damage if not a stroke. Now that you are back with us, were going to run some tests on you. I know you don’t feel up to it yet, but we’ll get you into physical therapy and you should be released in a couple of weeks. I just lie back and sleep naturally.”

  I nodded and did as he suggested. I closed my eyes and I went to sleep. I dreamed of Christina. I saw her in my house, the borough she called it. She was wearing an apron like Samantha in the TV show, “Bewitched.” She was the perfect wife and there were children running around her feet and I knew somehow they were mine. Was the best dream I had for a very long time and I didn’t want to wake from it.

  Each day I felt a little better and soon they took me out of intensive care and put me into a private room. I had a day nurse whose name was Penny, just like the color of her hair. She was sweet natured and talkative, but not unpleasantly so. It had been a long time since I’d had a decent conversation and I enjoy the opportunity. We became friends, so much so that even after her shift was done, she would stop by and we’d share a snack on trays as we watched television and challenged each other with the answers to “Jeopardy.” It was strange, but she became my confessor. She was easy to talk to and I guess I felt I needed to do it. So, I told her the story, the whole story, of Christina and Macon in my past. She listened quietly and without judgment, a fact which I greatly appreciated. From time to time she would ask me to repeat a detail here and there that I thought that a little strange. I wondered if she were taking notes for a book she was writing. It was that invasive of a question. She wasn’t being rude, though, and so in the spirit of friendship I answered her questions. I credit her with helping me recover quickly. She helped me to practice walking in my room, one arm around my waist and my arm over her shoulders. The bacteria had destroyed muscle tone and it would take some time before I would be back to normal. She was patient and helpful and I let her. I missed Christina. I think in my mind, I let myself believe that Penny was Christina.

  You get a lot of time to think when you’re laid up in the bed. Sometimes I think the healing process acts as a governor on a motor, preventing you from going any faster. It’s a snap back to reality and you begin to be grateful for the things you took for granted before you were sick. My thoughts centered on Macon, naturally. I thought back through the years as he was growing up and I saw that I was an absentee father. I loved learning. No, to be more precise, I needed to learn. It was how my brain worked, always needy. I was newly licensed when Macon was born. I suppose it was somewhat like a 16-year-old who gets their drivers license and the keys to a new car. They go wild and all the warnings and rules have flown out the window. There was no feeling of consequences for what I was doing. Macon was a baby. His mother looked after him and did a great job. He didn’t need me, not as a day-to-day parent. I felt what Macon needed for me was an income earner and a father who was gaining wisdom and would be there for him down the road. So that’s what I became. I was wrong.

  I wasn’t there when Macon took his first steps. I wasn’t there to pick him up when he learned to ride a bicycle and toppled over onto the concrete, scraping his knees and elbows. His Little League games were boring to me and when it came time for parent teacher conferences, I asked the teacher to email me a summary. I was too busy to take the time to visit the school or I might have seen the pictures he colored that hung on the inside of his first-grade cubby.

  Somewhere along the way, Macon passed from being a child into being a young man and instead of finding it more interesting, I felt as though my job was three quarters done. I could set aside the guilt of not being there for him. He was on his own then. When his mother died and I was the only parent, I use that to rationalize that he would prosper despite his loss. He had been raised to take care of himself. Yes, I told myself, I had done the right thing.

  So there I lay in bed, in the true reality of what I’d accomplished in my life surrounded me. Yes, I could pay for the best medical care and I was getting it. Yes, I knew a few of the doctors and nurses from having worked with them to treat patients. There was no family, however. No one dropped by to play a hand or two of cards or to talk about the news of the day. No one brought flowers and now, no one was there to say that it was okay. I had done what I thought was right. Now came the time for paying pennants and there was no one who could do that but me.

  If only I could begin again. If only I had used my years of academic training to rationalize that Christina’s relationship with Macon was perfectly natural. It was normal, in fact more normal than her being with me, a man old enough to be her father. What had I robbed her of? Had I tainted her youth? Had I plugged her into the role of my late wife and expected her to magically absorb the memories, the family stories and all my preferences I demanded? Had I spent any time looking into her life to see what would make her happy? Had she succumbed to my sexual advances in order to please me? Had I taken advantage of the fact that she was starting out and had yet to build a career or to have enough money to not worry month-to-month? I had dumped Macon into that world without a second thought. I told myself it was okay because he had to learn to be a man. I was so wrong with Macon, was I compounding the same mistakes by expecting maturity in support from a girl who was my son’s age?

  Neither of them had lied to me. The relationship was just one of many that people have throughout their life. It pre-dated mind with her and she had no idea that the Macon I referred to was the same as the one she’d just tossed out of the door. Odd, but I should’ve recognized the descriptions she shared. Maybe subconsciously, I did, but I didn’t want to, so I never let it come to the surface. I was beginning to see that the problem had not been with Macon and was not with Christina. My problem with relationships stemmed from me and my inability to have empathy for other human beings. Perhaps my profession had made me hard. I sought every day and other physicians. It was considered survival mode. That was fine, but not when it took place within your own four walls.

  These were things I shared with Penny. She was an enormously empathetic human being who sat near my bed and knitted. She didn’t judge or second-guess. She just let me pour it all out like lancing a boil. There was something to be said for people like Penny. You ran into them along the way but they never stayed in your life. Perhaps they were a message from God. The longer I stayed, the stronger I grew. My muscles responded and my mind was cleansed. I had one goal now and that was to find Christina and to apologize. Just maybe, if I was lucky, she’d give me a second chance.

  18

  Christina

  Nathan’s house had been a godsend, something approximating a rest area alongside the highway when you were too tired to go on. I listened for him to come home constantly. I even had the words prepared. They went like this. “Nathan, I’m sorry, but I had nowhere else to go. I wasn’t able to reach you and I know it was a lousy thing I did, leaving you without explanation. B
ut you see, there’s a baby now. His name is Michael and he’s your son.”

  Would that make the difference? I wanted to be wanted for me, not for the small child we had created. The question was, did I deserve that? After all, it was me who had lied. I wish I could undo that without undoing Michael. The child shouldn’t live under the onus of having been created in the midst of a lie. He wasn’t responsible.

  Despite my listening, Nathan did not come home. The lights continued to work, as did the heat and someone came once a week and mowed the lawn. I found the signs encouraging because they said to me that Nathan intended to come home again. Or did they? I wondered whether he would just call a realtor in one day I would come back to find a sign in the front yard. I had to move on. I had to find a place for Michael and me.

  The answer came quickly and from a surprising source. I was using Nathan’s computer to conduct job searches and when the overwhelm was too much for me, I would take a few minutes and enjoy social media. It was there, in a Facebook group that I saw the ad. There was a woman looking for a companion. Room and board were included as well as a small allowance. I jumped on it.

  Her name was Ellen Roberts and she was 85 years young. She would have made someone the perfect grandmother with her twinkling blue eyes, snow white hair and the attitude of a 20-year-old. Ellen welcomed Michael and I immediately and we were given two small bedrooms to the back of her house. Ellen had no family. She’d lost a son in the Gulf War and her husband had died a decade earlier. She had a small, but adequate income and it seemed her only sorrow in life was the fact that a degenerative arthritis prevented her from enjoying life on the outside. My job was to look after her although a nurse visited regularly to take care of her medical needs. Michael and I became her companions.