The Baby Doctor

by Bobby Hutchinson

  “Yes, I understand. Tessa was exactly the same.” From the pain in his eyes, Morgan guessed that the suggestion and the resulting discussion hadn’t been as rational as the tone in which Luke recounted it. She felt terrible for him, and she also felt helpless.

  She reached out to touch his strong hand with her fingers. “I believe it’s a decision a girl must make herself, no matter how young she is, even though it impacts the lives of those around her. As I said, Tessa was absolutely determined to have this baby. And to keep it, raise it.” Morgan’s voice wobbled and broke as tears once again trickled from her eyes. “And I wanted that so much, as well, I wanted to help her. I love babies. I was looking forward to watching her grow, being sort of an auntie,” she added, once again absently wiping her eyes and nose with Luke’s crumpled handkerchief. She regained control of herself and blew her nose fiercely. It was sore and undoubtedly fiery red, but that didn’t matter.

  When she was done, Luke reached over and covered her hand with his, his voice filled with misery.

  “In my mind, I’ve gone over and over every part of this delivery, trying to think what else I might have done, whether there was anything I didn’t do that I should have.”

  Morgan was appalled. “Don’t. Oh, please, Luke, don’t second-guess this. Don’t do that to yourself.” She was all too familiar with the feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt an obstetrician suffered when a tragedy occurred in the delivery room. “You did everything humanly possible. We all did. You know as well as I do that some babies just aren’t meant to live.”

  He was silent for a long time, still holding her hand, smoothing his thumb slowly across her knuckles, back and forth. At last, in a quiet voice, he said, “Someone hit Tessa, didn’t they? It was obvious to me that she’d beat punched in the eye.”

  “Dylan.” Morgan spat out the name. “The father of her baby.” She was suddenly breathing hard, her anger and outrage making her tremble all over again. “From what Tessa said, I gather there was a fight. He punched her, and she fell down a flight of stairs.”

  Suddenly Morgan bent over, gasping, as though she felt the blow herself.

  Luke’s grip tightened painfully on her hand, and he cursed, a string of words Morgan would never have imagined him using. “Can you convince her to press charges?”

  Morgan hadn’t asked Tessa. There was no need. She already knew the answer and she shook her head.

  “She won’t. I know that without asking. She believes she loves him. He’ll convince her it was really her fault, not his.”

  “Familiar story.” Luke sighed, and Morgan nodded. Both of them, during their years as physicians, had all too often treated women who were abused, and they knew the pattern, the denial, the subtle shifting of blame to the victim.

  “You’ll make certain she doesn’t see him again, however.” It wasn’t a question. His voice was filled with conviction. “She’s only fifteen, so as her foster parent you can do that, can’t you?”

  “Nope.” Morgan shook her head and sighed. “It doesn’t work like that. I’d like to murder Dylan, and at this moment, I feel capable of it. I’ll certainly tell him exactly what I think of him, but whether she sees him or not is entirely Tessa’s decision.”

  Luke released her hand and gave her a surprised and decidedly judgmental look. “That’s certainly a liberal view.”

  Morgan gave a tired shrug. “It’s the way things are. I knew how it was with Dylan before Tessa came to live with me. I don’t like it, but I can’t change it at the moment, so I have to accept what is.”

  He scowled. “Well, I wish I saw things as clearly as you do, Morgan. With Sophie, it seems I react first and reason later.”

  Once again, compassion for him filled her, and she wanted to comfort him. “It’s different for you, you’ve been with Sophie since she was born. You’re her father, so naturally you can’t be objective. I’m not Tessa’s natural parent, and it’s really too late for me to be her foster mother.” Her tone was wistful. “All I can try to do is be her friend.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across his features. “She’s a very fortunate girl, then, because it seems to me you have a rare and particular gift for friendship, Morgan.”

  The unexpected compliment, the first he’d ever paid her, sent a wave of warmth right through her, and she flushed and couldn’t look at him. It felt as if he’d given her something precious just when she needed it most, and his words eased some of her pain.

  Chapter Seven

  “The staff here at St. Joe’s will do anything for you,” Luke told Morgan. “And I’ve learned to my chagrin that almost every single one of your patients regards you as her close personal friend. They tolerate me when you’re not around, but it’s quite clear that they prefer you.”

  Morgan was flustered and then defensive. “I know you probably feel I’m not professional enough, that I don’t maintain the proper distance between physician and patient.” It was a familiar criticism, one she’d weathered throughout her internship and residency.

  “I thought so at first. Now I only envy your easy manner, your knack for making friends.” He got to his feet, his hands thrust in the pockets of his pants, and started pacing up and down the room. “God knows I could use some of your charm myself. I can’t even talk to my own daughter.”

  Again the raw pain in his voice touched Morgan’s heart. She got up and put her hand on his arm, forcing him to stop and look at her as she searched for something to say that wouldn’t sound like empty platitudes or gratuitous advice.

  She looked up at him, straight into the eyes she’d always thought were hard and green and cold. Now she saw the vulnerability and desolation there.

  “Luke, you love her. I’m certain she knows that. When you care about someone, there’s always a way to work things through.” Morgan’s mind was racing, searching for a practical suggestion. “Look, there’s a counselor here at St. Joe’s Tessa likes. Frannie Myles. Maybe you know her?”

  “I’ve met her, yes.”

  “Well, Frannie’s great with kids. She’s young and she likes teenagers. She seems to have a real rapport with them. Maybe it would help if you and Sophie talked to her?” she added before she could think better of it.

  “I think not.” The refusal was immediate. “Frankly, the hospital gossip mill scares the hell out of me. I despise the thought of everyone discussing my daughter and her personal problems. I’ve overheard enough intimate conversations in the cafeteria to know it happens.”

  Morgan knew he was right about gossip. She felt heat flush her chest and neck and stain her cheeks. She remembered all too well how many times she herself had listened avidly to some tidbit of information about him, and again, she felt ashamed of herself.

  “Frannie would never betray a confidence,” she insisted. “And,” she added stiffly, “I hope you realize everything we’ve said here is confidential. I certainly won’t breathe a word. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  He shocked her by reaching out and gripping her shoulders. He gave her a tiny shake. “Don’t go all huffy on me again, Morgan, all right? I like it much better when you’re not glaring and hollering and making well-deserved remarks about my bedside manner.”

  Morgan looked up at him in amazement. Unless she really had her wires crossed, he was actually teasing her! He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was humor in his tone and gentle amusement in his green eyes. For the first time in hours, she tried to smile, and though her face felt stiff from tears, it felt wonderful.

  Luke still had hold of her shoulders and didn’t seem about to let go. He was staring down into her eyes, and the intensity of his gaze mesmerized her.

  She’d really been mistaken about his eyes. There was nothing cool about them. At this moment, they seemed to bum, and the heat seared her soul.

  He knew he ought to let her go, but Luke couldn’t seem to release her. He held her lightly, aware of the fragility of her small bones and the contrasting strength of her nature. A warmth radiated from her tha
t he couldn’t resist, a warmth both physical and emotional, and with shocking suddenness his sexuality, dormant for so long, reared to life with a ferocity that rocked him to his very depths.

  This tiny woman with the riotous red curls and shiny tear streaks all over her smooth cheeks, this stubborn person with the melting chocolate brown gaze and full lips devoid of any lipstick—this wasn’t at all the sort of woman that he ought to be attracted to, a small, puzzled voice in his brain reminded him.

  He’d always liked statuesque, serene women, quiet spoken and self-possessed, with an aura of dignity and a quality of mystery about them.

  This little spitfire who opened her mouth square and wide and howled her grief out like an injured child, who took offense between one breath and the next...this person wasn’t any of the things he’d always thought he wanted in a woman.

  Soft, warm, small. Drawn by something he couldn’t name and didn’t recognize, driven by a need more powerful than even his need for self-control, he slowly bent over her, moving his hands upward from her shoulders and cupping her face between his palms, delighted by the satiny smoothness of her skin. He liked the way she smelled, a natural scent entirely her own.

  She gulped and drew in a ragged breath through opened lips, and before she could expel it, he bent his head and kissed her, noting that she didn’t close her eyes the way he’d expected. Instead, they remained wide open, alarmed, huge, until her features blurred in his vision. He closed his own eyes, and a shock of intense feeling replaced sight.

  Her lips were full and soft and startled. She tasted a little salty, of tears and stale coffee, and also of something wild and bittersweet, like berries ripened in sunshine. Her hands came up and rested on his chest, not pushing him away, and he fought the impulse to lift her small body from the floor and crush her tight against him. Her mouth was lush, and he explored it with tongue and teeth and urgent hunger.

  She made a sound in her throat of pleasure and need, and slowly her arms encircled him until she was holding him, pressing against him, making him painfully aware of full, soft breasts and a small but well-shaped body.

  When at last he forced himself to draw away, his trembling hands slid down the sides of her head to her throat. She had a lovely throat, slender, smooth, long. He put a thumb on each side, over the arteries, and at first all he could feel was his own blood hammering through his veins, but then Morgan’s heartbeat drummed a vibrant, visible echo.

  Now her eyes were closed, and they stayed closed as each of them struggled to control their breathing. She swayed and he steadied her, and at last she opened her eyes and looked up at his face, shell-shocked and dazed.

  “Holy toot," she drawled in her deep, resonant voice. “What was that all about?”

  It was so typically Morgan, so irreverent and unexpected and honest, that it made him grin. “I’m not quite sure. Call it an irresistible impulse.”

  She frowned up at him as if she’d never really seen him before. “But why did you kiss me?” She made it sound as if the room was full of other women, all ready and willing, and her ingenuous query startled him.

  He found himself telling her the truth. “It suddenly dawned on me that you’re a very lovely woman, Morgan.”

  To his amazement, she was instantly angry. She twisted away from his hands, her face flushed. She scowled up at him, hands on her hips, husky voice hard edged. “That’s a load of crap and you know it. You...you just felt sorry for me, didn’t you?”

  He gaped down at her, and it occurred to him that she was insecure about herself as a woman, unaware of her appeal, her sexuality. The realization stunned him. She’d always seemed so confident, so self-assured. Her vulnerability touched him, and instead of withdrawing, as his instincts prompted when this volatile woman was in one of her tempers, he stepped toward her and caught both her hands in a firm grip.

  She struggled for a moment and then was still, but she wouldn’t look at him. Her cheeks were hot and her hands were cold and trembling.

  “Listen to me, Morgan. I don’t go around kissing my co-workers because I feel sorry for them.” He put all the intensity he was feeling into his words. “I don’t kiss anyone unless I very much want to, and I suspect that’s true for you, as well.” He looked down into a tumble of curly red hair, which was all he could see of her because she was staring at her feet like a stubborn child.

  Amusement tinged his voice. “Besides, I think you’d probably have given me a bloody nose if I tried kissing you against your will. You’re not exactly a shrinking...sunflower.” No one in their right mind would compare Morgan to a violet.

  The door to the lounge burst open and two physicians came in, their voices raised in a heated discussion about someone’s intestines.

  Luke let her go, and the moment he did, Morgan spun on her heel and hurried out of the room without another word.

  Feeling both excited and drained, Luke went into the washroom and splashed his face with cold water. He had a locker where he kept a clean shirt, and he retrieved it and put it on, along with his tweed sport jacket. He had patients to see, charts to sign, and after that, office hours at the clinic. But as the morning progressed, he realized his attention wasn’t on the job.

  He’d always been adept at putting his personal life on hold, shoving disturbing issues into another part of his mind and locking the door so he could get on with his work. Countless times, he’d used the technique to keep himself from feeling things he didn’t want to feel.

  This morning, however, the door to that locked room in his head refused to stay closed, and tactile images of Morgan flashed through his consciousness, memories of how she’d felt in his arms and how urgently his body had reacted.

  He stared down unseeingly at the chart the charge nurse on maternity handed him.

  “Dr. Gilbert?”

  Luke looked at her, realizing that she’d said something to him, and he didn’t have any idea what it was.

  “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m just fine. Now, what were you saying about Mrs. Ellington?”

  “She has a slightly elevated temp and some discharge and cramping.”

  He couldn’t make sense of the ordinary words. He wasn’t fine at all, and he knew it. It felt to Luke as if still another portion of his life had broken away from the well-ordered pattern he’d always struggled to maintain. It had gone sailing off into unknown and frightening territory. Morgan Jacobsen’s volatile and disorganized territory, to be exact.

  And that scared him to death.

  Chapter Eight

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  The minute white coffin with its blanket of pink rosebuds was lowered into the wet earth, and Morgan scrubbed away the steady tears that mingled with the raindrops this wet early morning.

  Kyla Jean Hargraves was being laid to rest in the old cemetery situated only a few short blocks from Morgan’s house. Tessa had requested that her daughter be buried there. “I feel closer to her that way. I can walk over sometimes and say ‘Hi baby,’” Tessa declared, and Morgan felt as if her heart were breaking.

  But she also felt supported in that heartbreak. When she’d arranged with the pastor for this early morning service, she’d thought that she and Tessa and Frannie Myles and perhaps one or two friends would be the only ones there, but she was deeply touched and grateful to find that most of the nurses not on duty at St Joe’s came, as well as several of the people who worked at Women’s Place. Floral tributes abounded, and Morgan felt humbled by the evidence of friendship and caring.

  In spite of her sadness, her heart had skipped a beat when she walked into the chapel and saw that Luke was there, his dark head towering over the women seated around him.

  Morgan hadn’t seen him since their encounter in the hospital lounge. She’d relived the kiss they’d shared time and again, trying to make sense of it, waking at night with the feel of it on her lips, her body burning with sexual reaction.

  It was both comforti
ng and disturbing to have him in the chapel, and she’d felt disappointment as well as relief when his beeper sounded halfway through the service. He’d slipped out the door, catching her eye for an instant and giving her an apologetic shake of his head and a tiny salute.

  Dylan Vogler, on the other hand, was conspicuous by his absence. Morgan didn’t think there’d been any contact between Tessa and him since the baby’s birth. She’d seen Tessa’s desperate gaze sweep over the small assembly in the tiny chapel, obviously searching for her baby’s father and not finding him. Her face had crumpled for a moment, but she hadn’t cried. She was pale and shaky, but composed and strangely dignified as the painful service began.

  Tessa seemed to have grown years older in the five days since her baby’s birth and death, and Morgan felt an overwhelming surge of compassion, love and protectiveness for this fragile girl-woman in her care.

  Morgan tracked Dylan down herself late that evening. She caught up with him in a pool hall, where he was surrounded by leering, foul-mouthed friends. She had to exert monumental control to stop herself from physically attacking him. She told him in vivid detail about his baby’s untimely birth and death, and she made it clear she held him fully accountable.

  “If Tessa would agree, I’d have you charged with assault, as well as the murder of your daughter,” she spat at him, ignoring the jeering of his pals.

  “Yeah? Well, Doc, it ain’t none of your business, is it, what goes on between my lady and me.” But for a moment, Morgan saw fear in his eyes, and she was glad.

  “You gonna go around making threats, maybe you better watch your back, bitch,” Dylan snarled, and her hand ached to slap his leering face.

  Morgan turned then and walked out, trembling so hard she could barely even drive home.

  She could only hope that the baby’s death at least meant that Dylan was gone from Tessa’s life for good.

  Tessa insisted on returning to school just two days after the funeral. Morgan was worried about her. Tessa was remote and quiet, and she wasn’t eating.