Rock the Cradle: An Mpreg Romance (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 6)

by Aiden Bates

  Alex wasn't that much of a ghoul. He didn't delight in the pain of other people, even the kind of terrible people who hurt the people he loved. The additional complication, the minutia of the surgery, would give Alex something to focus on other than whatever might be happening with Derek.

  He explained the injury to Greer, and explained his treatment options to him. "Basically, I can remove the bullet and you'll be almost as good as new. The bone will always be a little iffy on rainy days, and there could be some complicating nerve damage due to the location of the shot. But you'll walk. Or, you can go without it. We'll slap some stitches on there, monitor for infection, and hope for the best. You'll be in pain for the rest of your life, but whatever, right?"

  Greer curled his lip. "Ain't you just a sweet talker? Pull it out. I don't want to be walking down the street with a bullet in my leg."

  The cop cleared his throat. "You just knifed a man, a pregnant man, in broad daylight. You think you're ever going to see the sun again?"

  Greer gave him the thumbs up. "Oh, I know I am. That guy? He's just some dumb omega no one wanted. No jury's going to give even half a crap what happens to him."

  Alex’s grip tightened on his tablet, but he said nothing. He couldn't, not if he didn't want to raise an ethics complaint. "Let's get him prepped for surgery." He looked over at the nurses standing by.

  "Can't we do this under a local?" Greer asked, drawing his brows together.

  "Nope." They might have been able to do it under a local, if Alex were willing. He simply didn't trust himself to operate if Greer's mouth was still running.

  The surgery lasted for about three hours. There were delicate structures in the leg, tendons and blood vessels that had to be put back together in exactly the right way. He supposed he could, technically, hurry. He could have rushed through the surgery and gone out to a bar to drown his sorrows. His own pride wouldn't let him.

  Also, it would have disappointed Derek.

  He didn't think Derek would want him to forgive Greer. Far from it. Derek still hadn't forgiven his own father. He wasn't going to waste forgiveness on a rapist monster like Martin Greer. Derek wouldn't want Alex to hurt Greer. That was the difference.

  After the surgery, he cleaned up and headed back out to work. It wasn't up to Alex to make sure the patient was secure. That was a job for the Sheriff's Department and for Security. He treated a few more patients, because there were other incidents across Upstate New York besides a near-riot at the courthouse.

  Before he could leave for the day, one of the nurses approached him. "I had a call from Amadi Brown, that DJ from the R&B channel. He'd like you to stop in on the Obstetrics floor, if you wouldn't mind." She smiled, slow and sexy. "I could go for you, if you think he'll be there."

  Alex grimaced. Amadi asking to see him couldn't mean anything good. "I'm pretty sure he will be," he told the woman. Her name tag gave her name as Mercedes Wilson. "The thing is, I'm like ninety percent sure he's engaged."

  She pouted for a second, and then she perked up. "You know him, then?"

  Alex nodded. "We've met a few times."

  "What's he like?"

  "Right now? Probably very, very angry." He headed the other way, back into the hospital. "Have a good evening, Nurse Wilson."

  Alex’s hands might as well have been dripping with sweat by the time he got to the obstetrics wing. Amadi waited for him in a little waiting area near the reception desk. His dark eyes were flat and cold. "Alex."

  Alex shoved his hands into his pockets. "Amadi." He took a deep breath and tried to push away all of the negativity rolling off of Amadi. "Since you're here, in this wing, I can only guess that he's okay."

  Amadi stood. "He is most definitely not okay. They took out his damn kidney, Alex. They reached up in him and took out his damn kidney."

  Alex covered his mouth with one hand. People lived with one kidney all the time, but all of that trauma wasn't good for Derek right now. "How's he coping? Has he woken up yet?"

  "No." Amadi crossed his arms over his chest. "No, he has not. He is out cold. They're keeping him under, actually, which he's going to be pissed about when he wakes up. I authorized the decision. They pulled out a kidney, the dude is pregnant which was news to me until I showed up here, and he's got a big hole in his side. Yeah, I let them sedate him."

  Alex let out a sigh of relief. "Is pregnant," he repeated. "So the baby is okay too."

  Amadi scoffed. "Oh okay, now you're interested in the baby."

  Alex stepped back and looked at Amadi out of the side of his eye. "The hell is that supposed to mean?" He kept his voice down, because he knew people were sleeping, but he wanted to shout. He wanted to scream. He wanted to grab Amadi by the collar and shake. "That's my baby!"

  "Really? Because from what I heard you haven't asked about the baby once." Amadi just gave him a flat, unimpressed look. "Sure, you donated the DNA, but Derek's been dealing with it all on his own."

  "Because he didn't tell me until two days ago." Alex pinched the bridge of his nose. "How am I supposed to have shown interest in a baby I didn't know was coming?"

  Amadi shook his head. "Well for starters, you could have been the kind of guy that he could have gone to and told he was pregnant, instead of hiding out and keeping that secret from everyone in the world. I told him to leave you alone. I did." Amadi sat down again. "And this is where we wind up."

  "Why is it that no one else sees a baby as something to celebrate?" Alex sat down beside him.

  "Oh, you want to celebrate. That's why you were going to bring Alex over to your parents' place and say, 'Mom, Dad, you're going to be grandparents and this guy right here is the one making it happen.' That's why you were going to give your name to that baby. That's why you were going to help provide for that baby, and acknowledge that baby in public." Amadi side-eyed him again.

  Alex slouched down in his seat. "It's more complicated than that. I want all of those things, I do. It took a little discussion for me to realize that, but I do. The thing is, I just… well, with everything going on with my dad, medically, this isn't the right time to spring a shock like that on them, you know?"

  "A shock. The father of your grandchildren is a hero, several times over, but we have to insulate you from that knowledge." Amadi turned away with a disgusted little sound. "Spare me. Again, I told him. I said, 'He's never going to be there for you. He's not going to help you or take care of you. He's going to let you twist.'"

  "I'm not letting him twist. I'm asking for time." Alex clenched his hands into fists. "You guys who don't have families, you don't get how families work. And that's not your fault, I'm not judging, but you really just don't understand how it works when you're part of something bigger than yourself. You don't get to just choose what benefits you, what makes you happy. You have to do what's right for the whole family, what has the most benefit for the most people.

  "So yeah. I might want to go in there and wrap my arms around him, hear the baby's heartbeat for myself, and start looking at real estate listings so we can have that picket-fence lifestyle that he deserves. But I do have to stop and think, 'How will this affect my father's treatment?' I'm the one coordinating all of the care for my dad, who's got a seriously life-altering illness that's affecting his brain. Is it right for me to distract myself from taking care of the man who's always taken care of me, to go make sheep's eyes at someone else? My mother, too, needs help right now. She's strong, but this is a drain on her and she doesn't get along great with my dad's family. Is it right to focus on what I want at her expense?

  "And while we're on the subject let's talk about my dad's family, shall we? Because frankly they suck." Alex was just starting to get warmed up. He knew people were staring. "They'll eat Derek alive. They'll do it for fun.

  "I'm not saying we can't be together. I'm just saying I need time. I've got a lot of balls in the air. Think of them more like eggs. I need to figure out a way to make them land without breaking."

  Alex thought the speech wa
s pretty good, if he did say so himself. He'd never been the speech making type, but in this case he'd just let it all out and had done with it.

  Amadi was much less impressed. "Are you kidding me? You think we—Derek and me—don't know how to be part of something bigger than ourselves?

  "Let me tell you something, Family Man. Me and Derek had fantastic job offers in other markets. I could've made a killing down in Atlanta. And Derek had a jaw dropping offer up in Seattle. He wouldn't be working three jobs if he was up there in Flannel Land, let me tell you that right now. You think we don't know about sacrifice? You think we don't know about doing the right thing for one another?

  "You think Derek hasn't sacrificed for you? He's kept quiet about what's going on with him, and his needs, just to support you and yours. You can go on and on about your duty to your family and whatever blithering nonsense you want, but do it where I can't hear you.

  "Derek took a bullet for a stranger, and when he did he helped to liberate nineteen girls from slavery. Today Derek pushed a girl into a cop's arms and sent her off so the cop could get her to safety. It exposed him to danger, but he did not care as long as it kept that girl safe. All so he can go home to a guy who uses him for sex, and thinks he doesn't understand sacrifice. Think he doesn't know how to be part of anything bigger than himself." Amadi got up. "I'm heading back inside. I'm just—I don't understand you, man. And I'm pretty sure I don't want to."

  Amadi left. Alex watched him go, frustration roiling under his skin.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dr. Idoni was the kind of guy that would look hot in a sackcloth dress. He looked like a damn model, even though he'd barely come back from parental leave, and his face could have launched a thousand ships. If he hadn't been Derek's obstetrician, and sitting there beside him in a hospital room, Derek wouldn't have minded looking at him all day.

  "How are you feeling, Derek?" Idoni had a southern accent, but it wasn't the same accent Dr. Wade had. If Derek had to guess, he'd say Tennessee or maybe Kentucky.

  Derek bit back a groan and used the bed controls to prop himself up into a sitting position. "Hurts," he said. "Fuzzy."

  "You've been sedated for a day or two. Your foster brother explained your reluctance, but we needed to keep you absolutely quiet to let those stitches do their work. You're pretty badly hurt."

  "I figured." Derek grimaced. "The knife went in pretty deep."

  "Yes it did. Yes it did. It went right into your kidney, in fact." Idoni nodded his head. "You might have been able to heal from that, but then your attacker decided to twist the knife."

  Derek cringed and reached for his side. "I remember."

  "Yikes. I bet you wish you couldn't." He leaned forward. "So, the good news is that you're still pregnant. We had a little bit of concern about the possibility that you might have lost too much blood, but we got a transfusion into you in time and you were able to keep the baby."

  Derek tried to summon a smile. The baby was pretty low on his list of priorities at the moment. He wasn't keeping it. He guessed he'd have been a little sad if he'd lost it, but as it was he was just grateful he was still alive.

  "The bad news, Mr. Brown, is that you've had a serious shock to your system. You lost a lot of blood, and you lost a kidney."

  Derek almost choked. "Wait, I lost it?"

  "There was no way we could have repaired the damage. Now, you're young, and you were pretty healthy going into this all things considered. Pregnancy, though, is a time when your kidneys are already under a lot of stress. That's on top of the near miscarriage." Idoni looked down for a moment.

  Derek bit the inside of his cheek. "What are you trying to say, Doc?"

  "You're going to be resting for a little while, Mr. Brown. Derek. I don't know how long, but you're going to be out of that DJ booth for a few long weeks. I'm reluctant to put you on bed rest for the entire pregnancy, because most people tell me that's a special kind of hell and I hate giving that order. But I'm afraid your days of working three jobs are over." He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure you'll be able to go back until after the baby's born. We'll have to see how things look in a few weeks, but you're going to be monitored throughout this pregnancy."

  Derek closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "Okay. There's nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?"

  "Not really." Idoni leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "It was a close call, Derek. You almost lost your baby."

  Derek ground his teeth. "And myself."

  Idoni chuckled. "Sorry. I just had my daughter a few weeks ago. I've still got this baby fever thing going on. And Derek, I've miscarried. It's a terrible feeling. I wanted to spare you that, at least."

  Derek looked down. "I'm not keeping it."

  Idoni's eyes widened. "You're not?"

  Derek shook his head. "I can't. I don't have any family, not who can help out with things like child care. I don't know much about raising kids. And if I can't work, especially if I can't work the number of jobs I need to work, then money's going to be pretty tight. I don't know if I'll be able to afford child care. I might, but maybe not so much with insurance."

  "Oh." Idoni nodded slowly. "Well, you're not going to find any judgment from me. Do you want to keep it?"

  "Doesn't matter. It's not even on the radar right now. I don't even know if there are day care option for second shift guys."

  Idoni nodded again. "Can I ask about the father?"

  "Not interested. It was just a fling." Derek straightened up. "It's okay. I'm kind of over it. If I'm going to lose my job, that makes it an even more sensible option, right?"

  Idoni bowed his head. "It seems like a terrible reason to have to make it, but I can see where you're coming from. I'll write up some instructions, regarding your pregnancy. Rick Wade pulled your kidney. You do have a nephrologist. He'll be by to talk to you in a few days, when you've had time to adjust." He put his hand over Derek's. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

  Derek didn't have to fake his smile this time. "It could always be worse. How long have I been here, anyway?"

  "Three days. You've had a good stream of visitors, too. A girl by the name of Carmela, along with her parents. There was a lawyer type named Ayla and her sister Ivy—I think their brother works here. A handful of cops stopped by, state troopers. Your foster brother and his fiancée. Dr. Wade's been in a few times. You haven't been alone."

  The missing name from that list echoed louder in that list than any of the names he included. "Thanks, Doctor."

  "I'll let you rest. You'll need it." Idoni left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Derek's room felt almost silent without anyone else in it.

  He drifted back off to sleep for a little while. He didn't wake up until the door opened again, flooding the room with light. He couldn't move fast enough to sit upright in bed, but he reached into the bedside table and rummaged in the drawer. "They gave me a gun, you know," he warned the silhouette in the doorway. He wrapped one hand around the remote and reached for the nurse's call button.

  "They didn't give you a gun, Derek." Alex’s voice was tinged with amusement. "Can I turn the lights on low, just a little?"

  Derek relaxed. "What time is it?" He put the remote back down. Even moving that much had exhausted him.

  "Around midnight. I signed out and sneaked back in." Alex waggled his eyebrows, like sneaking back into the hospital to see Derek was somehow a good thing.

  Derek brought himself up short. Maybe Alex was just being playful. Derek wasn't able to see playful right now. All he could see was terrible, wrong, and painful, but he'd get over that eventually. He didn't want to start a fight because it felt like he had a giant hole in his side. "How's it going?"

  "I've been worried about you." He took Derek's hand. "I thought Amadi might actually kill me the day it happened."

  "That sounds about right for Amadi." Derek had to chuckle, even if it sounded weak. "He's probably out of his skin worrying about me."

  "Yeah, well, I
know how close you guys are. Did you really pass up an opportunity in Seattle just to come here? It's a much bigger market."

  Derek relaxed against the pillows. "Yeah, well. I'd have been alone in a strange city, and so would he. Neither one of us wanted that. We've spent enough of our lives adrift."

  "Do you like his fiancée?"

  "Rashida? Yeah, she's awesome. Talented, too. She's a great musician." Derek traced a line on the bedding. "Did you sneak back into the hospital at midnight to talk to me about Rashida?"

  "No." Alex shook his head. "I've been worried sick about you. I couldn't come up and check, because there was no obvious reason to as far as the rest of the world knew, but God, Derek, I've hardly been able to work I've been so worried."