by Caro Carson
Amina.
He’d thought he’d marry Amina. Instead, he’d returned to the States with her child. Their child. Now he had to figure out how to ask a near stranger named Kendry to marry him, because Amina’s child loved her, even if Jamie never would.
Chapter Six
“You are my favorite guy in the whole, wide world.”
Kendry sat on the playroom floor and crooned sweet nothings to Sammy as he lay on his back on a blanket. Holding his little baby feet in her hands, she moved his legs like he was riding a bike.
“Where’s that big, baby laugh?” She wiggled his feet. “I wanna hear that baby laugh.”
Sam gifted her with his wide-open, mostly toothless smile.
“That’s my guy!”
She loved this kind of day, when she was the only adult in the playroom and could lavish her attention on the children without feeling self-conscious. Sammy made her feel like a superstar. Everything she said was apparently what his little baby ears wanted to hear.
She stretched out on her side next to Sammy, propping her head up with one hand and tickling the baby’s belly with her other. “Let’s do this for a living. Forget all this bill-paying college stuff. We’ll lie on a beach all day in Guatemala, like my parents.”
Sammy cooed at her and grabbed his own toes.
“You’re right. You need to live here. Stay in school, kid. It’s harder than it looks to make ends meet without a degree.”
She’d done some hard labor after work the previous evening, swinging at waist-high weeds with a machete, of all things. The house across the street from her rented room had been foreclosed on, and the bank was trying to clean up the yard a bit before its auction. She’d earned twenty dollars, cash, by helping the yard crew for only two hours, sneezing all the way.
Now, however, she was paying a price in aching arm muscles. She flopped onto her belly on the cushy mat. She was horizontal, the playroom was quiet, and the cutest baby in town was lying safely next to her, as content and happy as he could be. If she wasn’t careful, she would drift off to sleep.
Sam grabbed a fistful of her ponytail and yanked.
“Ow! I’m awake, Sammy. I swear.”
“That’s not how it looked to me,” his father drawled.
“Eek!” Kendry pressed her hand on her chest as her heart skipped a beat.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. Sam saw me coming and tried to warn you.”
Kendry gave Sammy’s belly a jiggle. “That’s ’cause you’re on my team, aren’t you?”
When she moved to get to her feet, she nearly collided with Jamie, who was hunkering down on his heels to greet his son. The man was just so big. Not only tall, but wide in the shoulders, like he’d played football or something. This close, she could feel the warmth of him, smell his skin, and—
“Ah-choo!” Kendry barely turned her head in time to sneeze into her elbow.
“Did you get that antihistamine prescription filled yesterday?”
“Not yet.” Not ever.
“You’d feel a lot better.”
Not if Mrs. Haines kicked me out of her garage for not paying this week’s rent, I wouldn’t. I’m not going back to the homeless scene, not even for you.
Dr. MacDowell stood and looked down at her, frowning. “It’s been a week since Sam broke those glasses.”
Kendry picked up Sam and stood, too. “They’re still wearable. Why get new ones if a toddler’s going to whack them?” She grabbed the earpiece—the one without the bandage tape—and wiggled the glasses up and down, doing her eyebrows, too, like Groucho Marx. “These are now my special Sammy glasses.”
Usually, Dr. MacDowell laughed at the jokes she made. They were the best way to deflect any comments that might lead to a more revealing conversation than she was willing to have. This time, he only smiled faintly. “But you did get new glasses? My offer to pay for them stands. My son broke them, so it seems only fair.”
She waved a hand in the air breezily and hiked Sam up a little higher on her hip. “I’ll get new ones. I’ve been busy. These aren’t dead yet, anyway.” It was time for a change of subject. “I’ve been reading up on cleft-palate repairs, so I’ll know what to expect when Sam is with me afterward.”
She had a hard time remembering the questions she’d wanted to ask about the surgery’s recovery stages, because while she held Sam on her hip, Jamie started patting him on his back. The move made the three of them seem connected. It was intimate. It was unnerving.
As Kendry stumbled over her question, Sam squealed and grabbed her glasses. Thankful for the excuse to break the moment, Kendry laughed. “See? Sammy glasses.”
“I see.” He righted the glasses on her nose, and then Jamie MacDowell, M.D., the most eligible bachelor at West Central Hospital—the most eligible bachelor in Texas, she’d bet—smoothed a piece of her hair behind her ear, let his hand drift to her shoulder, and looked deeply into her eyes.
For that moment, the fantasy was real. Jamie was interested in her. Interested in that way.
Kendry dropped her gaze. Too, too real.
He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Some parents don’t pay as much attention to their own children as you do to Sam.”
This brought her gaze back to him. So that’s what this was all about. He was warning her that she was too attached to a child that wasn’t hers. She’d dealt with this kind of parent before.
“You’re number one in Sam’s world,” she said. “Just because he likes me, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”
The playroom door opened and her replacement came in, a CMA named Bailey who was wonderfully friendly to all—even orderlies. “Good evening, Dr. MacDowell. Hi, Kendry.”
Kendry pushed Sam into Jamie’s arms, turned away and sneezed. “Excuse me.” She put a lot of distance between them, walking to the hand sanitizer dispenser and squirting the cold foam into her hand.
Jamie followed her, standing a tiny bit too close. “I meant that as a compliment. If I have to be at work, then I want Sam to be with someone he likes.” His words were quiet and low, meant for her ears only.
She tried not to shiver at the goose bumps he raised. “Some parents don’t feel that way. I’ve had at least one staff member who was jealous that her daughter would cling to me when she came to pick her up in the afternoons. That little girl doesn’t come to the hospital’s day-care center anymore.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s tough, sometimes. I thought that baby was a real sweetie, and now I’ll never see her again.”
“You’d rather stay with the same kid, year after year?”
There it was again, that intense look in his eyes. Kendry tried to deflect the question away from herself.
“Not just any kid,” she said. Hoping to lighten the mood, she threw a comically exaggerated look over her shoulder, as if Bailey might hear something scandalous. “Let’s be honest. Some of them can be a real pain. Not everyone was born as charming as your Sam.”
“Our Sam.”
“What?”
Jamie looked away. She watched him swallow nervously. Nervously?
“I meant,” he began, speaking carefully, “that Sam seems to be as happy with you as he is with me.” With a glance in Bailey’s direction, he leaned near to Kendry’s ear. “And I think that’s very, very important.”
Kendry had stopped rubbing the foam into her hands. That low voice drawling in her ear was...upsetting.
She tried to rub the sticky remains briskly into her palms as she headed for the crib where Sam had taken his nap. She picked up the denim diaper bag and turned toward Jamie, sticking her arm straight out to hand it to him from the great distance of her arm’s length. Her tired muscles protested.
“Will you be back tomorrow?” Kendry asked.
As he left with Sammy, Bailey whistled quietly. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get dreamy Dr. MacDowell interested in you.”
“In me? You must be crazy.”
“Did you not see the way that man smiled at you? I didn’t know he had a dimple. Ye gods, if that man smiled more often, every woman in this town would come up with some reason to go to the emergency room.”
Kendry hadn’t known he had a dimple, either. But, oh my, he most certainly did, on the right side.
“Sit down here and tell me everything.” Bailey settled into one of the two rocking chairs.
Kendry needed to sit down. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Has he asked you out?”
“Be serious. Look at him. Look at me.”
“Well...I don’t know...” Bailey’s certainty faded.
Kendry’s certainty grew, the certainty that reading anything more into Jamie’s smile tonight was foolish.
“He’s happy that Sam is doing so well now that he’s eating sitting up.”
Bailey accepted her explanation, but as Kendry closed her eyes and rocked, she saw Jamie MacDowell’s smile.
I wish we were more than friends.
She stopped rocking. The truth of that wish was powerful. Dangerous.
It was better to have Jamie MacDowell as a friend than nothing at all, just as it was better to be an orderly in a hospital than not work in medicine at all. Just as it was better to live in a converted garage than in a homeless shelter. Just as—
When had her life become a series of compromises?
When you wished for more than you had, and you ended up with nothing.
Wishes could be dangerous, indeed. If she wished for more than she had with Jamie MacDowell, she’d only raise hopes that would be dashed. She would end up not just broke, but brokenhearted.
That was too high a price to pay for any wish.
Chapter Seven
“Damn it, get me a nurse!”
Jamie had thought his wish for a boring job had been granted, but it was one of those days in the E.R., the kind when a multicar accident and staffing cuts combined to make every moment a crisis.
“There are no more nurses, Dr. MacDowell. Everyone’s tied up.” His nurse sounded frantic, lying as she was on the patient’s legs, trying to keep the half-conscious man from doing greater harm to himself.
Jamie kept his eyes on the gash in the patient’s side, his hand pressing the severed vein shut, his other hand keeping the retractor in place. “An MA, then. An orderly. Anyone with two hands.”
“How can I help?”
He recognized Kendry’s voice immediately.
“They sent me down from peds,” she said breathlessly, as if she’d been running, “and another orderly is on his way from ortho. I’m supposed to tell you the on-call doctor will be here in thirty.”
Jamie didn’t take his eyes off the vein. “Get this patient’s oxygen back in place.”
“Okay, it’s on.”
“Switch places with the nurse. Don’t let those legs move.” To the nurse, he gave orders for deeper sedation. He and Kendry held their positions until the patient went under. “Kendry, turn that suction on and get me a second laceration tray.”
The tension in the back of Jamie’s neck lessoned a fraction. He could work with Kendry—and work they did. He barked orders, and she responded quickly. The nurse assisted him with the emergency surgery, but it was Kendry who made that possible by knowing where to find everything he needed, from surgical instruments to saline. When the patient was stabilized, it was Kendry who hand-carried Jamie’s notes as she rolled the patient’s bed to the regular operating room, where surgeons had been called in to take over the rest of the patient’s care.
Hours passed as patient after patient made their way through the emergency room. Sometimes Kendry was with him, sometimes a different member of the staff. Every bed in the E.R. was full, from the privately walled cubicles to the spillover area, where beds were only separated by curtains. The waiting room was packed, several nurses had told him.
Jamie had signed a half-dozen discharge orders, but patients still occupied beds, waiting for their transportation either to regular hospital rooms or to the exit, whichever Jamie had decided was appropriate.
“Orderly!” Jamie barked at a very young man who was standing still in the middle of the rush. “I’m waiting on these beds to open up. Where’s the wheelchair I asked for?”
“There aren’t any more around.” He fluttered his hands, helpless.
“Then go find one. Now. I want these rooms turned over.”
Kendry passed Jamie at a half-jog, snagging the orderly’s arm as she went. “Come on. You have to go to the parking lot and get the wheelchairs.” Jamie caught her eye, and she made a face that clearly said, Where do they hire these people?
Jamie smiled to himself as he entered the next cubicle. Kendry could read his mind. Being married to her would be easy.
* * *
The rain that had caused the night’s car accidents hadn’t let up. Neither had the volume of patients. Kendry had learned more during this shift than she’d dreamed possible. No wonder nurses and doctors had extensive internships. There was nothing like being on the scene, and tonight, the E.R. was like a scene from a TV show, intense and dramatic. Every time the glass double doors to the ambulance ramp slid open, the damp night air whooshed in with another patient.
One stretcher had been wheeled into a cubicle by two paramedics while a third paramedic straddled the patient, pumping hard with two hands on the prone man’s chest. While Kendry had replenished oxygen masks and blankets across the hall, she’d heard Jamie’s calm command, “Clear,” before the unmistakable sound of defibrillator paddles. It was dizzying to realize that a life was being saved just feet away from her.
She often heard Jamie call her by name. “Kendry, grab a lumbar-puncture tray and meet me in room three.” She’d learned about the importance of the bevel on the needle and how the manometer worked, even as she’d smiled for the woman getting the spinal tap and tucked a warm blanket over her shoulders to counter the cold of her exposed lower back.
She’d had to gown up in protective gear in order to peel the mask, gown and gloves off Jamie after he’d stabilized a bloody patient. “You keep that gear on while you clean this room,” Jamie had said to her sternly as he’d left her for the next patient, instructions that weren’t necessary, but that made her feel like he was watching out for her.
Always, when a child was involved, his tone was softer. She learned that he called the little girls “princess,” every one of them. “Okay, princess, I brought you someone special. This is Kendry, and she’s going to take you and your mommy to get a picture of your arm. Your mom can climb on board and Kendry will push your whole bed. You have to be in a hospital to get a cool ride like that.”
Then suddenly, the pace slowed. Kendry stood near the central nurses’ station and checked off each room in her mind. Each one was occupied, but not one case was critical. Most patients were in a holding pattern until test results came in. Jamie was standing at the nurses’ station, updating chart after chart. If she had been half in love with him before, she was a goner now. The man was the real deal: handsome, skilled, calm in a storm.
Kendry glanced at the clock. Six hours. She hadn’t stopped running for six hours. She’d been called down from the pediatric ward only after the E.R. had been swamped for some time. That meant Jamie had been running even longer than she had. The decisions he’d been making, the responsibility on his shoulders—shoulders which, even now, looked strong enough to carry them and more—
Yes, she w
as a goner.
Who watched out for him? Shouldn’t the leader be taken care of, so he could take care of everything else? With that thought in mind, she took a Popsicle and a carton of milk from the supply kept for patients, then returned to the nurses’ station. She waited patiently while Jamie dictated notes into the hospital phone.
He noticed her immediately, finished speaking into the phone while he kept his eyes on her, and hung up. “What’s up?”
She held up the Popsicle and the milk carton. “Which do you need more? Sugar or protein?”
He shook his head and smiled with that one-sided dimple. “I’ll take both. You are my favorite person in this entire hospital.”
She nearly blushed. “Nah. Sam’s upstairs, remember? He’s sleeping. I peeked in on my way back down from ortho.”
“Did you?” His smile started to fade, although he didn’t look angry or upset. Just...intense. Again. He told the nurses he was going on break. “Take a walk with me?” he asked Kendry.
“Sure.”
He led the way outside the sliding glass doors to the ambulance ramp, where an admin clerk was startled in the middle of a forbidden cigarette. The entire hospital grounds were designated as a no-smoking area, but with the pouring rain, no one wanted to cross the street for their smoke break. The covered portico had sheltered more than a few smokers tonight.
“Sorry, Dr. MacDowell,” the clerk said, quickly crushing out her cigarette. She narrowed her eyes at Kendry, looked between her and Jamie, and shook her head slightly. “See you inside in a few.”
Jamie sat on a metal bench and gestured for Kendry to sit beside him. “Tired?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I will be if I stop moving. This has been crazy, but time sure flies when it’s this busy. Getting six hours of overtime isn’t bad, either.”
“It isn’t always this busy. It’s amazing how a hard rain guarantees a car accident or two, every time.”
“Do you like it when it’s busy?”
“That’s a trick question. How can I say I enjoy seeing people in pain and need?” Jamie crunched the last mouthful of Popsicle off the wooden stick. “I’ll tell you the truth. If the intensity of the rush didn’t make me feel alive, then I wouldn’t be an emergency physician. People either welcome that adrenaline, or they don’t. The ones that don’t shouldn’t choose this specialty.”