Thinking of Barbara, of the mother she’d lost too soon, Lisa felt the familiar pangs of loss and regret. And she knew her father felt them, too. He might be young enough to begin a relationship with another woman, but Lisa knew he wouldn’t. He’d already had the best.
SARA BARBARA CARTWRIGHT was one day short of five weeks old when she finally opened her eyes for the first time. Marcus heard all about it the minute he got to the hospital that night. Regina rushed over to him as soon as she spotted him outside the nursery window.
“Dr. Cartwright was here when it happened,” she said, grinning as she recounted the joyous moment
“Lisa was in the nursery with her?” he asked, wishing he could have been there to see Lisa’s face. To share her elation with her, just as, together, they’d shared so much sorrow.
“Yep.” Regina nodded. “From what I heard, she was standing there talking to her like she usually does, and suddenly the wee one just opened her eyes and stared straight at her.”
Looking at Lisa’s baby through the window, Marcus could feel Lisa’s excitement almost as if it had happened to him. “Was she awake long?”
“I guess it was only for a minute or two, but Dr. Cartwright carried on like her kid had just graduated from Harvard. Not that I blame her, of course. I’d have done the same thing, and the mite isn’t even mine.” She leaned her head a little farther out the nursery door. “I’ve been watching her ever since I came on shift, hoping to catch a glimpse of it myself. But so far she’s sleeping tight. My luck, she’ll wake up when I’m at dinner.”
Marcus chuckled, but his eyes never left the baby in her funny little bed. He, too, had a surprisingly strong urge to witness the phenomenon. To look into the child’s eyes, to see the little person who’d been living so silently in a world of her own.
He stayed an extra half hour that night, on the off chance the child would wake up. He knew he should go, that Lisa would be waiting at home for him, but like a gambler mesmerized by the gaming table, Marcus couldn’t seem to tear himself away. He kept thinking that the next minute would be the one.
He took one final look as he was turning to leave, and as if she’d known this was her last chance, the baby opened her eyes. Just like that. With no warning, no fanfare, her little head turned, and she was staring right at him. His breath caught in his throat as he re-. turned her stare, feeling exposed, as if she was taking stock of him, maybe finding him wanting, even though he knew she couldn’t be, that she probably couldn’t even focus yet.
She was more beautiful than he’d even imagined. But there was something odd about her eyes. Marcus continued to stare at her, unable to put his finger on what was wrong. Their shape was perfectly normal, amazingly normal considering the circumstances, nice and round and big. But something wasn’t right.
He felt sick to his stomach when he realized what it was. All along, he’d assumed that Lisa’s baby would one day look at him with Lisa’s warm brown eyes. But Sara didn’t have brown eyes at all. Hers were clear blue, like a bright summer sky. They were someone else’s eyes. Another man’s eyes. Because she was another man’s child.
Marcus turned and left.
AT LISA’S SIX-WEEK checkup, Debbie pronounced her well, even going so far as to say she didn’t expect there to be any problem if Lisa ever wanted to have a second child. Nevertheless, Lisa left the doctor’s office feeling vaguely out of sorts.
Debbie had suggested again that Lisa allow her milk to dry up. And she was beginning to wonder if maybe the doctor was right. Sara was six weeks old and still not taking any nourishment other than the glucose they continued to shoot into her veins. Lisa was throwing away more milk than she was keeping. And while she’d known all along that Sara’s good days would be mixed with bad ones, the ups and downs were getting harder and harder to take.
Debbie also told Lisa that she and Marcus could make love again. Lisa couldn’t believe how much she missed the intimacy with Marcus. Not just, physically, though she was certainly hungry for her husband’s body, but she missed the emotional connection their lovemaking provided. She missed that feeling of oneness, a togetherness so intense it seemed nothing could come between them. A time when only the two of them existed.
A time she knew was slipping away.
Needing a pick-me-up, she detoured from the route between Debbie’s office and her own for a quick stop at the nursery. She’d already spent her hour with Sara earlier that morning, but another dose of her darling baby was just what she needed.
“Dr. Cartwright, we were just calling your office,” one of Sara’s day nurses said when she arrived at the nursery door.
Lisa’s stomach dropped. “What’s wrong?” She knew they’d been toying with the idea of removing the baby’s ventilator for a trial period, but surely they wouldn’t have done it without notifying her.
The nurse grinned at her. “Nothing’s wrong, Doctor. They’re about to take Sara off the ventilator, and Dr. Cunningham said to get you up here.”
“He’ll let me be there?” Randal was a tyrant when it came to playing things his way. And having a mother standing next to him when he was facing a life-and-death situation with a child was something he never allowed. Not even if the mother in question was a damn good pediatrician in her own right.
“Just as soon as you’re scrubbed,” the nurse confirmed, standing aside as Lisa rushed by her.
Lisa’s hands were shaking as she scrubbed them, and she had to accept the help of one of the aides to get into sanitary garb. She’d never been more nervous in her life.
She approached the familiar crib on rubbery legs, for once wishing she could make use of the rocking chair that was kept beside Sara’s bed. Standing where Randal instructed, she watched as a technician pulled the cellophane away from Sara’s body and carefully, slowly, removed the tape holding the tube to the baby’s mouth.
Lisa held her breath, her gaze glued on her daughter, waiting to see if the infant lungs would take over for the respirator. The air surrounding the warming bed was filled with tension as the seven adults watched that tiny body, waiting…
Sara shuddered, her muscles protesting against the hands holding her down. Her big blue eyes were wide open at first, and then they scrunched closed as she objected, silently, to the attention she was receiving.
The tube was taken away, and the machine wheeled backwards. At the sudden silence, Sara opened her eyes again and uttered a small sound. Sara’s muscles twitched, as if she’d surprised herself, and the sound came again. A little louder. A thin wail of disapproval, followed by a sigh.
Sara was breathing on her own.
A nurse slipped a rocker behind Lisa, and she sank onto it, tears blinding her to the smiles on the faces of the other adults. But she heard the relieved sighs of all of them.
Wiping her tears, Lisa looked around her at the staff of medical professionals that had been helping her daughter to sustain life for these six long weeks. There wasn’t a dry eye among them.
“Well, Mama, you ready to hold her?” Randal asked, wiping his arm suspiciously across his own face.
Lisa’s heart thumped heavily. “You’ll let me hold her?”
Her stern colleague actually smiled. “Her temperature’s been steady all week. I think it’s safe.” He reached into the bed, careful of the catheter in the baby’s foot, slid his large hands beneath her and gently lifted her.
With quivery arms, Lisa reached for her baby, her heart soaring with a joy she’d never known before, in spite of the danger she knew Sara still faced.
The little girl weighed less than four pounds and was more a warmth than a weight against Lisa’s breast as, six weeks after she’d given birth to her, she held her baby for the first time. The baby snuggled against her, her little chest shuddering again with the unfamiliar burden of breathing. And then, tired out by her new chore, she fell promptly asleep.
THE NURSERY WAS STILL buzzing when Marcus arrived before dinnertime that night. Regina was just coming on shift, and she me
t him at the viewing-room door.
His glance shot immediately to the box that served as a crib for Lisa’s baby.
“Where’s the ventila—She’s breathing?” He stared in astonishment at the almost steady rise and fall of the tiny chest.
“Yep. Has been all afternoon. You can come on in and hold her, but the doctor says only for ten minutes at a time until he’s more confident that she’s maintaining her body temperature on her own.”
Marcus felt something closing in on him. He could hold her. He could take that little body into his arms and make certain that nothing ever harmed it again. Regina said he could.
“Come on, Mr. Cartwright. You’ll do fine. Fathers are always a little timid at first. Especially with the preemies.”
Fathers. He wasn’t one of those.
“I’ll pass.”
“Okay, but I’ll leave the door unlatched in case you change your mind,” she said, turning to go.
He’d disappointed her. “Regina?” he called.
“Yeah?”
“Has Dr. Cartwright held her?” Suddenly it was very important that she had. That the child know she had a parent who loved her unconditionally.
“Yep. She was here when they removed the respirator. They said she just broke down and sobbed, poor thing.”
Marcus stared at the baby, concentrating on containing the emotions that threatened the control he’d been maintaining so carefully since he’d recommitted himself to Lisa and their marriage. “Thanks, Regina,” he said. The nurse nodded and left.
The baby moved her head, looking in the direction of the door as it closed behind Regina. He wished he’d been there that morning, sharing those first moments with Lisa. He wished they were his moments to share. And he was angry with himself for doing what he’d promised himself he’d never do again. Wishing.
The baby moved again, flinging her unobstructed arm up, and Marcus found himself moving to the window for a closer look. He couldn’t tell if she had fingernails yet. He looked at the nursery door. The unlatched nursery door. And looked away. Why did he have to torture himself with what could never be? Was this his fate, to be always on the outside looking in?
Cursing at himself, or the fates who’d played such a cruel joke on him, he yanked open the nursery door, strode to the nurses’ station and asked for instructions on how to sanitize himself enough to be near Lisa’s baby. He didn’t yet look at the child. He didn’t ever intend to touch her. But he wasn’t going to be afraid of her, either. She was going to be living in his home.
He had to know whether or not she had fingernails.
Regina appeared from a small room off the nurses’ station. “Here, put this on—” she handed him a gown “—and come with me.”
She led Marcus over to the sink he’d seen Lisa use the day after the baby was born, waited while he washed his hands, then showed him how to apply the elastic gloves that covered not only his hands, but his wrists. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” she said now, leading him to the baby’s part of the nursery. “It’s really not so bad once you get used to it. Holding her isn’t that much different from holding a football. Did you ever play football, Mr. Cartwright?”
Marcus nodded, though he wasn’t sure what she’d asked. His attention was on the impossibly small body squirming around not six feet in front of him. He couldn’t believe she was that small.
“How on earth does she stay alive?” he asked Regina as they drew nearer to the baby’s box.
The nurse shrugged. “That’s for God to determine. Medical science has no explanation for how she’s managed to accomplish as much as she has so far.”
“Does this mean she’s out of the woods?” Marcus asked. Was this it, then? Had they really made it?
Regina shook her head. “I wish I could say it did, Mr. Cartwright, but there’s still so much that can go wrong. She’s not even eating yet.”
“What’s that she’s listening to?” They’d reached the crib. “That sounds like my wife,” he said, recognizing the soft soothing voice. “Where’s it coming from?”
“Here.” Regina showed him a small tape recorder tucked in among the baby’s other technical paraphernalia. “Shortly after the baby was born, Dr. Cartwright recorded stories and songs on cassettes, and we play them for Sara twelve hours a day. We use it to help set her biological clock so she’ll know the difference between night and day, but more importantly, so that she’ll learn to recognize her mother’s voice first and foremost, and to bond with it.”
Marcus nodded, his gloved hands stiff at his sides.
“Would you like to hold her now?” Regina reached for the baby.
“No! I’d rather not, no,” Marcus said. “I’d just like to stand here a few minutes, if I may.”
“Certainly, Mr. Cartwright. You can stay an hour if you’d like,” she said, pushing a rocking chair closer to the bed before she moved away.
Marcus ignored the chair. He ignored his own longings. He ignored everything but the baby girl lying stark naked in front of him. She’d been alive six weeks and still hadn’t had so much as a diaper around her bottom.
“You just wait, little one,” he said softly, leaning over just enough to be sure she could hear him. “Your mother is a clotheshorse, and she’s already got a closet full of designer duds for you. Just as soon as you split this joint, she’ll be changing you so often you’ll wish you could go around naked as a jaybird again. Don’t worry, though. She’s got great fashion sense. You’ll be the prettiest little girl on the block.”
At some point over the next half hour he pulled up a stool, which allowed him to sit very close to the baby. She’d fallen asleep in the middle of his recitation, but he kept talking to her, anyway.
“You have to be strong. Your mama needs you so much. More than she needs me, I think.” He stopped, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard him make such an asinine comment. It probably wasn’t something a grown man should say to a kid. Even if it was true.
To his relief, the nurses were all keeping a respectable distance.
“I know this is all kinda rough right now. I know you must really hurt sometimes. But your mama will make it up to you. No little girl will ever be loved more than you are. But your mama won’t smother you with it. Not her. Nope. She’s really good about that. She’ll be there for you, supporting you, always trying to understand, doing what she can to make your dreams come true. But she won’t be one of those parents who try to live their own lives vicariously through their children’s. She’ll let you have your own. ‘Cause she has her own, too, you know. She’s a doctor. A fantastic one. She takes care of sick kids, too. And she’s also my wife. But don’t let that bother you any. We’ve got that all worked out.”
Marcus continued to prattle on to the baby, unconsciously relieving his mind of things that had been running around inside it for months, until a full hour had passed and he knew it was time to go. Pushing the stool back into the corner where he’d found it, he stood over the crib one more time to say goodbye, then dropped his hospital attire in the basket Regina had shown him earlier and let himself out the door.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I DON’T THINK this is going to work.”
Beth’s heart froze. She’d been a fool to believe that anyone as experienced, as distinguished, as Oliver Webster would take more than a passing interest in her. A fool to think she could find love more than once in a lifetime. “Why not?” she said anyway.
They were sitting outside on his patio, barely finished dressing from the latest of their afternoon rendezvous. Oliver leaned forward in the lawn chair he’d pulled up close to hers and took her hand in both of his.
“Because, my dear, it’s getting harder and harder to let you go each day. I don’t just want stolen moments with you. I want to share dinner with you every night, to see your face next to mine when I wake up in the morning.”
“And that’s bad?”
“I find myself wanting more than I can have, and I th
ink we should stop before things get out of hand.”
They’d been lovers for weeks. Wasn’t it already out of hand?
“So you want us to stop seeing each other.” She’d been prepared for this from the beginning, hadn’t she? Oliver was endearingly old-fashioned, and they had too many strikes against them.
He nodded. “It might be for the best.”
“Do I get any say in this?”
He looked at her, his eyes sad. “Of course.”
“Well, good,” Beth said, something deeper than reason driving her on. “Because I think we’d be fools to walk away from the happiness we’ve found. I know you feel guilty about Barbara sometimes. I feel guilty about John, too, but do you really think either one of them would begrudge us a little more happiness and love? Are we supposed to walk around half-dead because they’re no longer with us?”
Oliver frowned, deepening the lines around his eyes. “Of course not, but—”
“I’m not ever going to take anything away from Barbara, Oliver. The part of you that she has she’ll always have, just as the part of me that I gave to John will always be his. But I have other parts of me, some I’m only just discovering. I’d like to give them to you, if you want them.”
“Oh, I want them, honey. Don’t ever doubt that.” His eyes were fierce now with self-condemnation. “I want them so much I’ve acted like a dirty old man.”
Beth smiled in spite of the tears forming in her eyes. “You aren’t old, Oliver. You’re twenty years younger than Ronald Reagan was when he ran for his first term as president. And what about Charlie Chaplin? He was fathering children in his seventies.”
“But that’s just it, my dear. I’ve fathered my children. I’ve raised my family. You haven’t even started yours.”
“I raised my family when I was still a child, Oliver. My mother died when I was eight, leaving me five younger brothers and sisters to care for. When the last one finally made it into college, I knew I’d be hardpressed to give up my freedom again. I figured out a long time ago that I’m much happier being an aunt than I would be being a mother.”
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