Following Doctor's Orders

by Caro Carson

  His younger self had been an idiot. He was lucky he hadn’t caught any diseases after they’d ditched the condoms. But when it came to pregnancy, she’d still been on the pill. He was covered there.

  “The baby was born exactly nine months after the wedding. My husband and I hadn’t been planning on children so soon, but it was fun. Lots of baby showers.

  “Then, about a year after she was born, well, our marriage hit a little rough patch. We smoothed things over, but Gary started saying she didn’t look like him. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, told him that children’s looks change a lot at that age, but he was as obstinate as a mule. By the time she was three he demanded a paternity test, can you believe it?”

  How many yoga instructors had he caught you with in those three years?

  Zach said nothing. He was in a state of suspended animation, watching a scene in someone else’s life, waiting to see what would happen next. It was kind of a blessedly numb state to be in.

  “He took her to the lab himself and got the paternity test. As they say on TV, he wasn’t the baby-daddy, after all.” She heaved a great sigh.

  “So then he made a big fuss about it, and I just had to get away for a little while. While I was gone, he took her over to my parents’ house and freaked them out by saying he wasn’t going to care for another man’s child. You can just imagine the scene when I got back from the cruise. Long story short, the divorce became final two weeks ago, right on the baby’s fourth birthday, and I couldn’t be happier. Tony treats me so much better than Gary ever did. Fiji will be a dream come true.

  “But my parents are being so old-fashioned, saying they’ve done their part and the parent should raise the child, not the grandparents. Not even just for one more month. So I thought to myself, I’m not the only parent, am I? Tony helped me track you down. Oh, Zach. It is good to see you.”

  Zach sat down heavily on his couch and shoved his hand through his hair. Fifteen minutes ago, all he’d wanted in life was to design a new bathroom to surprise Brooke. Now he was dealing with more drama than he’d dealt with in the past four years. Four years and nine months, to be precise.

  This is drama, Brooke. Over the weekend, she’d apologized for putting him through drama, when it had only been life. Charisse created drama. She’d been born with every advantage a person could have to succeed in life, but she tossed the good things in her life away, time after time, thoughtlessly.

  And maybe there was something to Charisse’s water theory, because a very tiny part of him pitied her.

  He still wasn’t babysitting her child while she ran off to Fiji. “I’m not buying it, Charisse. Just because your ex-husband wasn’t the father, that doesn’t mean I am, either.”

  “Who else would it be? What kind of woman do you think I am?”

  “The kind who sleeps with one man days before she marries another.” He let that comment sink in. Whether he pitied her or not, he was fed up with her cockeyed view of the world. “It’s entirely possible there is another baby-daddy candidate out there besides me and your ex.”

  “Oh, that’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “There has to be, in fact. You either got pregnant on your honeymoon or within a week or two afterward, but it wasn’t before. You were on the pill when you were with me. It’s very effective, so I doubt I’m the father. You had your fling with me the week before the wedding. What’s to stop you from having a fling the week after?”

  “It’s you, Zach.”

  “I saw you take a pill in the hotel room.”

  “One.” She stared down at him, looking triumphant as she gave him the details with gusto. “I had a lot going on that month. Between the wedding nerves and the beach vacation and the alcohol, I skipped a bunch of pills that month, actually. The OB-GYN said that’s how I got pregnant. You’re it, Zach.”

  It was possible. The room seemed to lose its air. For one stunning moment, he had trouble drawing in a breath, and it had nothing to do with his bruised ribs.

  Charisse was also an accomplished liar. Zach needed proof. “The first thing we’re going to do is a paternity—”

  He cut himself off at the sound of a small thump from the porch, followed by the wail of a child. It was the instantly recognizable true wail, the cry that indicated real pain.

  The kind that made paramedics jump into action.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The child’s cry pierced its way right through the front door.

  Zach was already on his feet, moving Charisse out of his way and yanking open the door. He cleared the porch stairs by jumping down them in one leap.

  The little girl was lying in the grass to the side of the stairs. The natural land tended toward scrub brush and hard dirt, but in the shade of the stairs, the wild grass had grown to a decent height for May. Zach hoped it had cushioned her fall.

  She was unmistakably Charisse’s daughter, from her platinum curls to her white sundress. When she saw Zach, her blue-green eyes opened wide. He knew he looked like a giant stranger to her, which he was. A little gasp of fear choked off her cry of pain.

  Kids were always intimidated when a firefighter suddenly appeared. It took another beat for him to remember he wasn’t in uniform. This wasn’t a regular call.

  He gave her the Friendly Fireman smile, anyway. “Hey, sweetheart. I came to help you. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She nodded despite her now rhythmic sobs. “I—felled—down.”

  “You sure did.”

  “I got hurt.”

  He should have latex gloves and a medical kit. Without a stethoscope, without anything at all, it was just him and the child, and he had one arm in a sling just to make it really difficult.

  Come on, Bishop, you can assess a pediatric patient with one arm tied behind your back.

  He put his hand on her ankle, just above the little white-strapped sandal, a steady touch to establish his friendly presence. Plus, kids had such delicate skin, he could usually feel their pulse anywhere. Her cries were tapering off. Her breathing was less shallow and rapid already. That was good.

  “Where does it hurt the most?”

  Charisse stomped down the stairs as heavily as a dainty woman in white sandals could stomp. “For heaven’s sake, Zoe. What did you do now?” She crouched down, stuck her hands under Zoe’s shoulders, and started hauling her out from under the stairs.

  “Wait.” Zach grabbed Charisse’s arm, but she’d already pulled the little girl out. “You don’t move a patient like that.”

  “Patient? Kids fall down and get hurt all the time. Trust me. It’s no big deal.” She started brushing grass and dirt off the skirts of the girl’s dress with little smacking swipes of her hand. “And they are always getting dirty. Look at you. I wanted you to look so pretty with Mommy.”

  Zach looked around his property, seeing the creek in a whole new light. “She was out here alone this whole time? You left her on the porch?”

  Charisse picked up her daughter and perched her on her hip. With her palm, she wiped the tears off the girl’s cheeks briskly, but in an unmistakably motherly way. Zoe didn’t seem to like the face-wiping, but Zach supposed no kid would. Maybe Charisse was a capable parent, after all.

  “I left her in the car. Somebody was very, very naughty and disobedient and didn’t stay in the car like Mommy told her to.”

  Or not.

  Zach saw red. “You never, ever leave a kid in a car. It’s May. It’s Texas. My fire engine has been called out too many times to break a window in a hot parking lot to free a kid.” He wouldn’t say it in front of Zoe, but twice they’d arrived to find a victim unconscious. They’d called in air transport for those.

  Charisse kept up her fake Mommy voice. “Well, Mr. Zach, if you look at the sky, you’ll see that it’s not too hot today at all. It looks like rain.”
>
  “It’s against the law. Don’t do it again. Ever.”

  Anger mixed with physical pain. He hurt everywhere. Jumping from the height of his porch when half his body was black and blue hadn’t been his smartest move. It hadn’t hurt in the moment, but it did now. That burst of adrenaline must be wearing off. That’s what Brooke would say.

  Brooke. His chest hurt all over again. He wished she were here, assessing the situation in her cool way, keeping them all on point when Charisse went off on her poor-me stories.

  Brooke, who would have run down the stairs and found a little girl lying on the ground, as she’d once seen her sister.

  He remembered the photo of Chelsea Brown in the white bunny costume, gazing up at Brooke so adoringly. He looked at Zoe, her dress as white as the costume, and his vision blurred with sudden emotion. Would Brooke see the resemblance?

  Of course she would have, if she’d been here. She’d said she was fine in the moment when she had to treat a child, but he knew the nightmares were the price she paid. Zach was glad she was at work. It was going to be hard enough tonight to tell her about this day. He’d get Charisse and her daughter on their way, but he’d be following up to get that paternity test.

  And if the test came back the way he was becoming certain it would...

  He reached up to grab the band of his sling, needing to readjust the weight on his neck.

  Charisse had been fussing with her child’s hair. She sighed. “That’s as good as you’re gonna get, Zoe. Ready? Let’s do our special smile.” Then Charisse pressed her cheek against her daughter’s and smiled like a dazzling toothpaste model.

  Little Zoe obediently bared her teeth in a painful grimace.

  “Look, she’s my mini-me. We both have dimples, Mr. Zach.” She reached up and held her daughter’s face in her thumb and finger, giving it a squeeze. “We’re just alike, except she has blue-green eyes, doesn’t she, Mr. Zach? Have you noticed what else you have in common? Have you, have you?”

  Charisse’s baby voice was grating on nerves that had so recently been grated against a cliff.

  “Your names both start with the letter z! Zoe and Zachary. Zzzoe. Zzzachary.”

  “Enough. I get it.”

  “I did that on purpose. When I was pregnant, I had a feeling the baby was yours. You were just so much better in bed than Gary. That honeymoon was such a dud.”

  “Enough.” Children weren’t deaf. Even he knew that.

  Charisse rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t know what I mean.”

  Kids still repeated things. It was damned funny at the firehouse when someone else’s kid did it. He didn’t think Zoe would hear laughter if she said something to her new stepfather about how Zach or Gary performed in bed. Or a yoga instructor.

  He couldn’t keep his eyes off Zoe. Whether it was from a personal or professional compulsion was a toss-up, but as a paramedic, he couldn’t miss how she was holding her arm against her chest. “Zoe, does your arm hurt?”

  She turned her silent gaze on him and nodded, upper lip quivering.

  “Her knee is skinned, too. Come back in the house. I’ll take a look at it. Then, we need to talk privately.”

  Charisse had no first aid skills. Zach lifted Zoe with one arm onto the sink counter in the bathroom that was absolutely, positively going to get remodeled as soon as possible. He was dabbing hydrogen peroxide on Zoe’s knee when Charisse noticed the clock in his bathroom and commented that it was nearly lunchtime.

  If she thought he was going to invite her to stay for a little homemade meal, she was crazy. Or even more crazy than she already was. “You and your daughter will be able to find lots of restaurants on the way back into Austin, but you’re going to need to stop at an urgent care center and get an X-ray first.”

  Zach was sizing a sling from a first aid kit to keep Zoe’s arm immobile when Charisse abruptly decided to get her phone out of her car.

  “I’ll be right back.” She smoothed her daughter’s hair where it had gotten mussed up by the sling. “I want to use the map thingamajig to find out where the nearest urgent care center is, if you really think she needs an X-ray.”

  “I can tell you where,” Zach said in exasperation, but the front door had already slammed shut. He shook his head until he realized Zoe was looking at him. “Can I get you anything, sweetheart?”

  She only stared at him with those blue-green eyes. Zach looked over her head into the mirror. Was his eye color that unique? He looked back down to find her studying him with unwavering intensity.

  “Maybe you’d like a drink? I’ve got milk.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Zach.”

  The sentence was so clear and proper, it startled him. “Just Zach. No mister.”

  “Our arms match.”

  He picked her up, careful to keep both their injured arms immobile. “This is gonna be a challenge, but we can do it.”

  He was carrying her into the kitchen when he heard the sound of a car’s trunk slamming shut. That was an odd place to keep a phone, but perhaps Charisse had wanted to keep it out of reach of Zoe while she’d been left in the car.

  He gave Zoe a bit of a squeeze. Poor thing. Although it wasn’t hot today, she must have felt very lonely in that car, parked at a stranger’s house.

  Zach set her on her feet so he could do the one-armed retrieval of the milk. As he shut the fridge door, he heard the slamming of Charisse’s car door, but it wasn’t until he heard the car’s engine that he suddenly remembered.

  “Fiji.”

  Milk sloshed onto the countertop as he slammed the carton down and sprinted for the door.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t be that bad of a mother. No one left their child with a virtual stranger.

  “Charisse!”

  He skidded to a stop at the top of the stairs. There was no need to jump down them a second time today. Charisse was driving away, fast. The dust which her tires had kicked up in his dirt drive was already settling back down, covering the items she’d left behind.

  The first drops of rain began spattering the tiny princess suitcase that waited next to a child’s car seat. They couldn’t have looked more out of place on his property.

  The rain began pelting Zach, but he didn’t hurry as he walked down the stairs, retrieved the suitcase and seat, and returned to the house where, with a silent audience of one, he began cleaning up the milk he’d so carelessly spilled.

  * * *

  Brooke didn’t want to tempt Murphy’s Law, but things were so slow in the ER, she considered asking Jamie if she could cut her shift short. She didn’t want to jinx everyone by leaving, but even the rainstorm hadn’t picked up the pace. Usually, rain meant car accidents, but not this afternoon. It had only rained hard enough to keep all the people with minor problems like colds from coming into the ER.

  The doctors were assigned patients evenly, but in typical Murphy fashion, hers had happened to all be quick cases. The three treatment rooms on Jamie’s side of the hallway were still occupied, but according to the nurses’ station whiteboard, none of Jamie’s cases were difficult, either. They were just waiting on standard lab work. There was nothing Brooke could jump in and help with, really.

  In short, Brooke was bored, and she missed Zach.

  She took out her cell phone and leaned on the nurses’ station counter. Often, twelve hours at work could go by without a single chance to send a text message. Today wasn’t one of those days for her, but apparently Zach was tied up. He was taking forever to acknowledge her texts.

  Wanna take me out tonite? Heard the Bond movie was good.

  She’d started with that, thinking it would make her guy happy and give him something to do during his medical convalescence that wouldn’t stress the stitches she’d given with such care.

  An hour later, she’d gotten this re
ply: Let’s stay in.

  She wished she could think of something sexy to say. The best she came up with was I like the way you think, followed by a winking smiley face. Oh, so sexy.

  Silence for at least half an hour.

  Great but also need to talk. Want your advice.

  Frowning, she’d immediately typed, Are you ok?

  It seemed like an eternity before he’d responded I’m healthy. Promise.

  That had been an hour ago. She checked her phone again. Still nothing else. She drummed her fingers on the counter. When Jamie came out of his treatment room, jinx or no jinx, she was going to suggest he let her go home—and by home, she meant Zach’s place. Something was off.

  Tom Bamber came sauntering up to the station with a set of X-rays in his hands. A slow day in the ER meant a slow day down in radiology, too.

  “Hi, Tom.”

  He nodded rather formally at her, which was pretty much all he’d done since she’d turned down his invitation to the ballet weeks ago.

  “What’s on the films?” she asked. The day was so slow, she was willing to read an X-ray for fun.

  But Tom had eyes for the single nurse on duty. “These are for MacDowell.” He smiled at the nurse as he caressed the manila jacket that protected the sheets of black film.

  The nurse returned his smile, barely. She was not interested in chatting with Dr. Bamber.

  Brooke pretended to be absorbed by her unchanging text screen. It was a new low in slow days when watching Tom attempt to court a nurse was entertaining.

  The nurse patted the countertop. “If you leave the films here, I’ll be sure to give them to Dr. MacDowell as soon as he gets out of the treatment room.”

  “That’s very, very thoughtful of you, but I can wait right here, at your desk, and give him the report in person. So tell me, what kind of food do you like to eat?”