A Child to Heal Their Hearts

by Drake, Dianne

  Ten minutes later, when the house was quiet again, Keera settled into the chair across from the sofa and simply stared at the child. Lovely little girl. Blonde hair, like Kevin’s. Probably blue eyes like his, too. Sadly, there was so much turmoil for one little life. Poor thing. Her heart did go out to Megan for so many reasons.

  “It’s good that you don’t have to understand any of this,” Keera whispered to the child, while she pulled her feet up under herself, preparing to spend the rest of her night right there, looking after the girl. “But you’re going to be fine. You’re a beautiful little girl, and everything’s going to be fine.”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I really don’t have anything to tell you.” Reid Adams tossed the ball into the grass then stood back to watch the stampede of children go after it. No matter what else was going on in his life, coming to camp was always a highlight. “I’d have to look at her records before I could say anything, but I’m not in my office this week and—”

  “Then find someone who can do it for you,” Keera snapped, then hastily added, “Look, I’m sorry I sound so grumpy, but...”

  “Normally, if someone sounds grumpy, they’re grumpy,” Reid said, stepping behind the large oak tree as two little girls came running in his direction. Black hair, dark eyes, dark skin. Hispanic beauties, and the lights of his life. His reason for existing wrapped up in a couple of very energetic little girls, aged five and seven. “And I think your situation with Megan would make a lot of people grumpy if it happened to them. No relatives turn up yet?”

  “An elderly aunt who refused the child, as well as some male cousins the social worker thought weren’t suitable. Apparently there are other family members being contacted, but I may have the child through the afternoon, and I’d feel better knowing about her health situation.”

  He liked her voice. A little husky, but not so much she sounded like a three-packs-a-day smoker. More like bedroom-sultry husky...an image that caused him to blink hard, clear his throat and, more than anything else, remind him that this was a kids’ camp and he was surrounded by a bunch of kids who didn’t need a distracted counselor.

  “Daddy,” five-year-old Allie squealed, as Reid sidled around the tree, only to be waylaid by seven-year-old Emmie, coming at him from the other side.

  “I found him first,” Emmie shouted.

  “Did not,” Allie argued, latching onto Reid’s leg. “I got him first.”

  “You both got me first,” he declared.

  “Excuse me,” Keera said. “Dr. Adams?”

  “Sorry about that,” he said, chuckling. “But my daughters are persistent, and they won’t take no for an answer when we’re playing. Not that I’d ever want them to. So, getting back to Megan Murphy. I’ve seen her once, I think, and nothing stands out. But it’s a new practice, I’m barely settled in, and I don’t know enough about any of my patients yet to even recognize them, or their parents, on the street. Sorry about that, because I’d like to be more help. But let me call either Beau Alexander or his wife, Deanna. They’re covering my practice this week and they might know something. Or be able to see what’s in the records.” Pause.

  “Girls, girls! Stay away from that fence! That’s the rule. You’ve been told if you go near the fence, you’ll get a time out with your first warning, and broccoli with your dinner with your second warning.”

  “You punish the children by threatening them with broccoli?” Keera asked. “I’d think that would be a healthy choice. Something you’d encourage them to eat.”

  “It is, but most kids come naturally equipped hating broccoli, so I use that to my advantage. Then, by the end of the camp session, we’ll have introduced them to a couple of ways broccoli can taste really yummy... Excuse me, I have the younger group here this week. When I mention broccoli to older kids, I usually use the term delicious. And the thing is, the majority of these children will leave here and ask their parents for broccoli. Just an FYI—raw with dip works great!”

  “Raw or cooked, you’re a magician, Dr. Adams, if you get them liking broccoli.”

  “Nope, just a single dad who’s figured it out. If it works with my two, it’ll work with anybody’s kid. Anyway...Angelica, Rodney! Take off your shoes and your socks before you go wading in the creek! Both socks, Rodney.”

  “Look, I appreciate your time, Dr. Adams, but—”

  “Reid. Call me Reid.”

  “Reid. I’m sorry for sounding so grumpy, or frazzled, or whatever you want to call it, but I’m not good with children, don’t know if I even like them so much, and I really don’t want to be responsible for one, even if it’s only for a few more hours. I was hoping...actually, I don’t know what I was hoping for. But you clearly have your hands full with your camp kids, so I’m going let you go. But before I do, could you answer one more question for me?”

  “Got time for two, if they’re quick.” Truth was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hang up. Keera Murphy sounded nice, except for the part where she wasn’t fond of children. In his life that was definitely a problem. But she wasn’t in his life, so it didn’t matter. “So go ahead.”

  “Megan’s two, and she’s not... She’s still in diapers. I had her in hospital daycare all morning and the ladies working there said she made no attempt to go to the bathroom or even ask someone to take her.”

  “Does she speak?”

  “No, but that could be the trauma.”

  “She’s had a full battery of tests?”

  “Everything we could think of.”

  “Then she’s probably just reacting to her circumstances. Once things are normal around her again I’m sure the diapers can come off. And if she’s not totally trained, it’s perfectly natural for children that age to be a little resistant. But if you have other concerns, please feel free...” He spun around in time to catch Emmie ready to lob him with a big red water balloon. He was fast enough to dodge it, but in trying for the evasive maneuver he dropped his phone. By the time he’d manage to pick it back up, Keera Murphy had hung up.

  * * *

  “Who was that, Daddy?” Allie asked him. Now she was sneaking up, hiding what he guessed was also a filled water balloon behind her back. So, he could take it like a man or, actually, like a daddy, and let his youngest have her turn at dousing Daddy, or he could spin and run like crazy. After all, he was well over six feet tall, considered well muscled by some. Legs that had helped him finish in the pack at a few marathons. So if he couldn’t outrun a little girl... “She was a doctor.”

  “Who takes care of little kids, like you do?” Allie asked. The expression on her face was so determined, he knew what he had to do.

  “No, not that kind of doctor, sweetheart.” He braced himself for the hit. “Remember when we talked about what having surgery means?” OK, so most parents weren’t quite as forthright as he was in his child-rearing ideas, but he didn’t believe in lying, not even when it was about something Allie probably wouldn’t even understand and definitely didn’t need to know.

  “Where they have to make a zipper so they can see your insides?”

  He chuckled. “Actually, yes.” Which meant she did listen to him. Music to the ears of a long-suffering parent. “She’s the kind of doctor who makes the zipper.”

  He thought back to the conversation with Keera. Strained, at best. Maybe more like totally stressed out. Someone he pictured as nervous. Someone he also pictured as... One momentary distraction was all it took, and Reid Adams fell victim to his daughter, who landed the perfectly placed water balloon center chest. “Got me,” he shouted, dropping to the ground, where five or six other children converged on him and bombarded him with water balloons the way his own daughters had done.

  “No fair,” he shouted while laughs and squeals muffled any protest he wanted to make. Not that he really wanted to protest. This was part of his fun. What
meant the most to him now was thinking about how his daughters would be exhilarated, and knowing that his two little conspirators had led a group of normally sedentary kids into an adventure was, probably, the most fun of all.

  Then he wondered about Dr. Keera Murphy. Would she have seen any of this as fun? Or worthless, as she wasn’t a big one for children? More than that, why did it even matter to him? And why did he make a mental note to do a little Internet surfing on her when he had time?

  “No more water balloons,” he shouted, trying to stand up. But to no avail. As he rose to his knees, a whole new group of water ballooners swarmed him, loaded down with filled balloons of every size, color and shape imaginable. He barely had enough time to cover his face before the fun began.

  * * *

  “I know what I said, Dr. Murphy, and I’ve got a line on someone who might take her later tonight or some time tomorrow, if there’s nobody else available. But Mrs. Blanchard prefers her wards to be toilet trained, and as Megan isn’t, I’m not sure she’ll get all the attention she needs.”

  They were sitting in the parents’ waiting room across from the hospital daycare center. A very cheerful place. Lots of bright yellows and oranges, like they were tying the conventional child stimuli colors into their parents. This was only the second time Keera had ever been there. The first had been that morning, when she’d left Megan in the able care of Dolores Anderson, the director. “She could be traumatized.”

  “Maybe, and if that’s the case, I’m wondering if a pediatric hospital ward might be the best place for her temporarily.”

  “Seriously, you want to stick her in a hospital?”

  No, that was not acceptable. While she didn’t have any strong urges toward the child, she wasn’t some cold-hearted dungeon master who wanted to lock all the untrained kiddies away until they potty trained themselves. This was a child who needed attention, not isolation, and so far all of Consuela’s ideas seemed more like isolation.

  “Look, just keep trying with Mrs. Blanchard, OK? If she won’t take Megan, maybe she’ll have a suggestion about who can.”

  “We’ll work it out, Doctor. I promise, that’s all I’ve been doing today.”

  Consuela was deliberately not making eye contact with Keera, trying to keep her gaze focused on anything else, and Keera accepted that. She’d probably do the same thing if she found herself in that same spot. But what Consuela didn’t understand was that so far today childcare had been a breeze because she’d had the help of the whole hospital daycare staff there to get her through it.

  Tomorrow was another story. It was her day off—the start of her week off, in fact. And that’s when the reading commenced with a whole stack of medical journals she’d had for a year or more. Nowhere in those plans was there room for a toddler.

  “I’m not criticizing you, and I hope you don’t think that I was. But I grew up in the foster-care system. A lot of it in institutions, and it’s horrible. Being passed off from one place to another, never knowing where you might end up next. I never got adopted because I was older when I went into the system, so I was in a grand total of nine different homes and three different institutions, all before the age of eighteen. And, no, I wasn’t a good child because of that.” She closed her eyes, fighting back those memories.

  “This child doesn’t need that kind of trauma in her life.” As much as she’d disliked Kevin by the end of their marriage, Keera knew he would have been a very good father. A doting daddy. Megan didn’t deserve to go from that to cold indifference, which was what would happen if she was sent to an institution. Or even the wrong foster-family.

  “It’s not always a traumatic situation, Doctor. We have very good caregivers.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do, and I admire people who would take on the responsibility. Right now, though, Megan needs more that what you’re able to find her, and I know that’s not your fault. But it’s not her fault either. Yet she’s the one who’s going to be bounced around or institutionalized.”

  And she was waging the battle with the wrong person. She knew that. But the right person—the one who should have made arrangements for Megan in the event something like this happened—was dead. True to Kevin’s form, he hadn’t thought about the practical things. Hadn’t when they’d been married, hadn’t after they were divorced, and now his daughter was paying the price.

  “I’m sorry about your childhood, Doctor, and I understand your frustration but, like I said, I’m doing my best. There aren’t any distant relatives suited to take her, or who even want her, for that matter, so I have to come up with another plan. But you’ve got to understand that in the short term Megan might have to go to a hospital pediatric ward, a group home or even the county home. It’s not what I want to do but what I may have to do if you can’t or won’t keep her for a little while longer.”

  “In the meantime...” Resignation crept in a little too quickly, but maybe she saw something of herself in Megan. Abandoned child. It was hard to get past that. “If I keep her a day or two, that doesn’t mean I want to be a temporary guardian or any other kind of custodial figure. It simply means I’ll feed and clothe her while you continue looking for a better situation.”

  “Which I’ll do,” Consuela promised.

  “Good. So now I’ve got to go to the grocery and buy a few things a toddler would eat. Maybe pick up some clothes, toys...” OK, so she was relating to the situation but not to Megan herself. It was the best she could do. Better than most people would do, she thought as she bundled up the child and took her to the car. This was an honest effort, and it kept the child out of all those awful places Keera knew so intimately. Shuddered even thinking about them. Dark places, bad for children...

  While having children had never been part of her plan—past, present or future—there’d been a time when she’d needed what Megan needed now, and no one had reached out to her. So how could she refuse?

  “Megan, did you have a good day today?” she asked as they wended their way through the hospital corridors on her way to her car. “Play with lots of nice toys? Meet new people? Conquer any toddler nations?”

  In response, Megan laid her head against Keera’s shoulder and sighed.

  “You’re congested,” Keera said, listening to the slight rattling she could hear coming from the girl’s lungs. Immediately in doctor mode, she veered off into one of the pediatric exam cubicles, pulled her stethoscope from her pocket and listened. Nothing sounded serious, but the fact remained that the child had something going on that needed to be attended to...sooner, not later. And every thought in her went to Reid Adams.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “IT’S OK, MEGAN,” she said, barely creeping along the mountain highway. “We’ll be there soon, and Dr. Adams will take good care of you.” She hoped so, even though she wasn’t sure the message had gotten through because he hadn’t called her back. Something about mountains and cellphone interference.

  “You’ve seen him before, and he’s very good.” Not that the sleeping child cared. But Keera did. She wanted some familiarity for Megan, and Reid Adams was the closest thing she could think of. And maybe, just maybe, he’d have a solution for the child’s situation. “We’re not far away now, so you just sleep there, and when you wake up things will be better. I promise.”

  What was she promising, though? What, really, could a trip to an isolated camp in the mountains in the middle of the night do for Megan? Nothing. That’s what! But it made Keera feel better. Feel like she was doing something rather than simply sitting around waiting for something to happen or, worse, doing the wrong thing. Reid Adams was all about children, he had children. And for some strange reason, he seemed like her best port in the storm. A beacon of light.

  “He’ll know what to do,” she reassured the sleeping child. “Yes, I’m sure of it.” Because if he didn’t...well, Keera didn’t want to think about the alternat
ive, since it wasn’t acceptable. That was something she knew in profound ways no child should ever have to know. Confusion, fear and long, empty days and nights when the futility threatened to eat you alive. “He’ll fix you up, and he’ll help me help you, too.”

  Those were mighty big expectations for one pediatrician to fulfill, but it’s all Keera had to cling to. Reid Adams had to come through for both their sakes. He just had to!

  * * *

  He wasn’t sure who she was, but for some reason he thought he could wager a pretty good guess. Carrying a child in her arms, she was trying to make her way up the dirt path without stumbling, and she was quite obviously not a woman of the woods. Determined, though. With the scowl of a mighty huntress set across one of the softest, prettiest faces he’d ever seen in his life.

  Which was what had brought Keera Murphy to mind. She’d tracked him down and she was bringing him the child. He wasn’t sure why, wasn’t even sure that he liked the idea that the huntress had set her sights on him. But something about a woman who would trudge all the way out here in the middle of the night just to find him did fascinate him.

  “You would be Dr. Murphy?” he asked, as she approached the porch of his cabin.

  “I would be. And this is Megan Murphy. She’s sick. Since nobody knows her, nobody knows a thing about her, well, with you being her physician and all, I thought you’d be the best one to take a look.”

  “You couldn’t find another physician closer to you? Or even track down one of my colleagues?”

  “You didn’t get my phone call?”

  “Mountains and cellphones aren’t always a good combination, even in this day and age. Reception out here is spotty, which is why we still rely on the landline.”

  “Well, I called because I hoped she’d remember you. With everything she’s gone through, I thought that would be good. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but...” Keera started up the wooden steps and Reid took the child from her arms, immediately seeing how sick she was.