I dip my fingers in the water and lightly splash him.
He holds his hands up and laughs as he says, “Fine. I’ll ask someone else, though I’d feel creepy, doing all that in a little girl’s pink hotel suite. And who said I needed a backup?”
I grin. “I forgot. You have some many women; you have backups for your backups.”
“How did our conversation veer this way?”
“You stalked me,” I say pointedly and with humor in my voice.
“That’s right. Because you were avoiding me.”
Again, I lie, “I wasn’t avoiding you!”
The sound of a wailing child interrupts our conversation. It’s not that a child crying should cause any reason for us to stop what we’re doing, but this cry differs from the usual. It’s sharp and loud and sent out like a siren.
There’s a little girl lying on the ground on the edge of the crowd of children playing with the bubbles. Her body is on its side as she holds her head up off the pavement. The angelic face of the girl is bright red, and as my eyes travel down her body, I can see her tiny arm is bent into an unnatural position. Her mother rushes to her side.
I stand up and jog over to the mother and child. I lay my hand on the mother’s shoulder, and then my eyes take in the break. “It looks like a fracture.”
The little girl is screaming. The pain is evident as the tears stream down her face.
The mother appears frantic. Her hands shake as her head spins around the crowded plaza. “I need an ambulance!”
Christian kneels and assesses the injury. His gaze meets mine, and we both know it’s a bad break that needs immediate treatment. He places a hand under the little girl’s head and helps her sit up.
“What are you doing?” the woman shrieks in concern.
“He’s a doctor,” I say to the woman. “And I’m a nurse.”
The little girl’s sobs are loud as snot bubbles appear in her nose. I reach into my bag and offer her mom a tissue to clean her daughter’s face.
The mother’s tone has now switched from concern at the two strangers who appeared out of nowhere to total focus on her child. “It’s okay, Annabelle. We’re gonna get you to the hospital.” She pulls out her cell phone.
Christian looks down at Annabelle. Her tight blonde ringlets stick to her face from a mixture of sweat and tears.
“It’s faster if we walk,” he says. His hand travels down Annabelle’s back and under her knees.
“Walk?” the mother asks, mortified.
His stern gaze hits the woman and morphs into a serious one. “If you call an ambulance, I can’t guarantee it’ll take you to St. Xavier where I can get her seen by the best orthopedics. If you go somewhere else, there’s no telling how long you’ll sit in the ER.”
The mother’s eyes are roaming back and forth between Christian and Annabelle, probably wondering if she should let this strange man walk with her child in his arms. “I’ll get a Lyft.”
“Terrace Drive is closed to traffic, so we’re gonna have to walk her out of the park anyway. St. Xavier is under a half-mile away. I’ll carry her.”
“Are you sure?” Her face is laced with confusion, and right now, I think she’s mostly confused as to why this strange man is being so kind.
Christian smiles at her, calmly and assuredly, and then looks down at the little girl. “Annabelle, I’m Dr. Christian Gallagher, and I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the hospital.”
The daughter’s words are muffled. “It’s gonna hurt.”
“Only a little, but then it will feel like magic. Do you believe in magic?”
Annabelle nods as she inhales shakily. “Like Elsa in Frozen?”
He nods down at her. “Do you see that big building over there?” He nudges his shoulder toward a skyscraper that is a few blocks away from St. Xavier but in the general direction. “I happen to be friends with Elsa, and she has all of her ice magic up in that tower with her. I’m going to walk you over there, where her magical doctors will make you feel better. But we can’t do that without me carrying you.”
“What about a sled?” she asks with staggered breaths from trying not to cry. “Kristoff has a sled.”
“A sled?” He grimaces and looks at me, baffled. I’m about to tell the little girl that there are no sleds in the park when I see Christian’s face illuminate. His brows rise as if he’s come up with the most amazing idea. “I have a sled, but I still have to carry you to it. Are you ready?”
Her little eyes close, and she bites down. He looks up at the mother, silently asking permission. When she nods her approval, he lifts the little girl into his arms, and I secure her broken arm into a comfortable yet stable position on her stomach.
In his tailored suit of designer threads and Ferragamo shoes, Dr. Christian Gallagher carries a little girl he’s never met toward Terrace Drive. The mother and I are walking behind him while his steps are quick and determined.
A horse is clopping down the road when Christian whistles the buggy over. The driver seems perplexed but stops anyway. There’s a couple in the carriage, tourists enjoying a scenic tour of the park.
“We need a ride to St. Xavier,” Christian shouts to the driver.
“I have a fare.” The driver points to the couple seated on the velvet bench of his carriage.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars,” Christian calls out.
The driver looks surprised. Happy but surprised. “What about them?” He thumbs to the couple.
“Same,” Christian offers the couple.
The man of the couple looks down at Christian, insulted by his offer. “This ride cost a hundred and twenty bucks.”
Christian’s head sways side to side. “So, you lose twenty bucks and know you did the right thing by helping an injured little girl get to the hospital.” I know him enough to know how hard it was to hold back the profanity he wanted to lace through that sentence.
The man and woman look at each other and shrug their shoulders before climbing down. I dip my hand in Christian’s pocket, take out his wallet, and pay the couple.
Annabelle’s mother protests about the money he is handing over, but he insists she get in the carriage. Behind her, Christian climbs in with Annabelle. I step back onto the blacktop after making sure Annabelle’s injury is still in a stable position.
“Call ahead and have them page the pediatric orthopedist and put in an order for full scans,” Christian says as he’s wrapping Annabelle in an afghan despite it being a warm day. “Tell them she’s my niece.”
“Is this Kristoff’s sleigh?” Annabelle peeks up from the orange-and-olive blanket.
Christian looks down at her. “Even better. This is Dr. Gallagher’s superhero sleigh of adventure.”
I watch as the horse and buggy clip-clops down the road, followed by a swarm of bikers and joggers. Then, I take out my cell phone and make the call to the hospital.
It’s so Christian to distract me when I need it most. Not that he was planning on a little girl breaking her arm, but it got me away from pondering his proposition. Although he never did say if he still wanted to go through with it.
He was right; I was avoiding him and for good reason. Deep down, I want to do this with him. I’m just scared. I don’t know how to tell him how I feel, so I do what I do best. I ignore my feelings.
I make myself dinner and then take a hot bath. It’s nearly nine o’clock by the time my phone rings, Christian’s face illuminating my screen.
“How’s Dr. Superhero doing?”
He laughs, not expecting my joke as a greeting. “Just hung up my cape about twenty minutes ago. I got a page, so I went up to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. A pre-op isn’t going so well.”
“Everything okay?” I curl my legs up to my chest and lay the book I was reading facedown on my kneecaps.
“The patient is rapidly filling up with fluid. We had to tap the lung and move the surgery date. I went back to the ER on my way out. Annabelle is sporting a light-green cast. She
had me sign it,” he says with a rather proud tone.
“Look at you. A superhero and a celebrity in one day.” I play with the edges of the pages, picking at the corners. “You cashing in for the night?”
“I’m reading about transcatheter mitral-valve replacement in a patient with myelofibrosis. You?”
I lift my book and scan the cover of a half-naked man with abs like speed bumps. “Same.”
His laugh radiates through the phone like a bedtime story. “Reading one of your tawdry novels, aren’t you? Make sure you take notes. The love scenes in those are pretty racy.”
“Like you’ve ever read one of my romances.”
“Remember when I spent a week on your couch? I might have flipped open a page or two while you locked yourself in your room.”
I smile to myself as my head falls back on the headboard. That’s Christian. The man who came here and nursed me back to sanity after my marriage fell apart. Just like the man who carried a little girl and paid an absurd amount of money to get her to the hospital in the magical fashion she desired.
He’s a caregiver. A provider. A man who makes magic with his hands, healing you from the inside out, and ensures your safe recovery. It’s why he became a heart surgeon—to heal. Christian Gallagher can take a life on the brink of destruction and make it whole again.
He made me whole again.
“You’re awfully quiet,” he whispers. “What are you thinking about?”
“That was a great thing you did today,” I sweetly tell him. “You even went back to check on her.”
“Would it make me a total sap if I said I went to the gift shop and got her a bubble wand and a candy bar?”
I laugh out loud and smash my lips together with a grin. “No. It makes you, you.”
The line goes silent again. I want to ask him a million things. I want to explain a hundred more. What exactly, I’m not sure, so I say nothing. The pages of my book are bending permanently.
He eventually fills the silence. “Have you thought about it?”
“Thought about what?” I grip my book and close my eyes, half-praying he says what I want him to say and half-dreading it.
“You and me?”
I gasp in relief. “A little.”
“I gave you time to think this week because I also needed time to think. I made a promise that night I wasn’t sure I could keep. And do you know what happened?”
“What?” I ask, my heart stalling in my chest, the air not wanting to escape.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Playing around every scenario. Do you want to hear them?”
“Sure.”
“You and I have the baby, but I have this fellowship at the hospital, and we’re on a breakthrough on a new procedure. I’m traveling a lot—sometimes to learn new techniques and test out equipment, other times to teach. I can’t be there for you like I promised, and I become one of those dads who’s in the kid’s life, but he doesn’t really know who I am because my work always comes first,” he declares, and I can picture him running his hand through his hair. “Or you meet someone in a year from now, and he’s perfect for you, but he hates the fact that you have a baby with some other guy, so you cut me out of your life to make him happy.”
I’ve played many scenarios out in my head, but I didn’t think of that one because it’s ridiculous. “Christian, I’d never let a man cut you out of my life. Baby or no baby. I never have and never will.”
“You kind of did. I wasn’t in your life the way I should have been when you were with Brock.”
“You were in San Francisco.”
“He was jealous of me,” he states, and he’s right. “And we were just friends. Now, we’d have a child. Men fall in love with women with children every day. But having a best friend who also fathered your kid? It would intimidate most men.”
Most men are already intimidated by Christian. I mean, he’s a gorgeous, successful heart surgeon with an awesome personality. He’s hard to compete with.
He continues, “You could resent me because, even though you were content to do this on your own, you did it with me, and I’m not around like you need me. I won’t be your husband or your boyfriend. Hell, I’m a second-rate dad who gets the kid every other weekend and gives you money for school. I’ll be like a bad ex-husband you can’t stand.”
I’m taken aback by these terrible scenarios he’s declaring. “I might have thought about the negatives, but the demise of our friendship because I’m pushing you away wasn’t one,” I say.
“What is the worst thing you can think of? If you and I had a baby?” he asks, his voice riddled with interest.
“The worst?” I pull at a thread on the comforter. “That you wake up one day and realize too late that this was a bad idea. If you were to regret me, I could probably recover. To regret our child …”
He laughs lightly. I don’t know why he’s laughing, but he is, so I let it go. “Can I tell you something else?”
“We’re being all kinds of honest tonight, so why not add one more?”
“With all the bad scenarios that came into my head, there is one I can’t shake.” He takes a brief pause, and the air ignites in anticipation as I listen for him to speak. When he does, he whispers, “We have a baby, and it’s amazing. You want to be a mother, Meadow, and I want to give that to you. I know it won’t be easy. We’ll get a nanny for the first year. I was talking to the nurses in the heart center, and they said the daycare at the hospital is superb and that we could visit him during our breaks. Our moms will be over the moon. We can even do joint holidays since we’re practically family already. Vacations, too. And this person we create will be fucking awesome because he’s ours. You’ll teach him how to play tennis and listen to cheesy pop music, and I’ll have a little Yankees fan and show him how to drive. I know, someday, you’ll meet someone, but we’ll worry about that down the road. I know this is really fucking crazy, but let’s do it. I want to do this with you.”
A tear runs down my cheek. It’s hot from the burning desire of everything he’s offering. I grip my stomach and quell the nerves radiating through my entire body. “I’m confused. So damn confused. How do you throw down every reason we shouldn’t do something and then follow it up with that?”
“Because life isn’t perfect, and neither are we.”
“Our baby might not be. Have you thought of that? What if we have a child who you can’t throw a ball with in the yard or groom to be a doctor just like you?” I feel terrible mentioning it, but it’s the truth. Not all babies are born healthy.
He doesn’t take more than a second to answer. “That doesn’t make a difference. No matter who my son or daughter is, I’d love him or her more than anything else in this world.”
And, just like that, I shatter.
The air explodes.
That stifling heaviness I’ve been feeling for a week dissipates, and in its place is the purest oxygen I’ve ever inhaled. I take a deep, shaky breath and let my chest rise and fall as it fills up with the idea.
It’s a bad idea. A terrible idea. There are so many things that could go wrong, but there is one I can’t deny that would be right. Christian will be an amazing father. No matter who this child grows to be, he or she will be perfect because it’s a part of him.
“If we do this now, our kid will be six by the time you make director. Do you think you’ll still have time to throw that ball around?” I ask.
He laughs. It’s bright and beautiful, just like the man it’s coming out of. “I can fit in a few curveballs after work.”
I smash my lips as I bury my head into my knees and then declare, “Let’s do this.”
“Really? Say it again.”
I lift my head up from where it was buried in my book and say, “Let’s do this!”
“You mean it?” His tone radiates surprise and elation.
“Yes? Yes! Oh my God, this is crazy, but yes. Let’s do this.” I run my hand over my ponytail and pause in realization. “Wait, how
are we doing this?”
He chuckles. “Do I need to explain how babies are made?”
“Kinda. I mean, are we doing this with Dr. Abbot, or do you want to …” I’m so lame; I can’t just come out and ask.
“Let’s save the ten grand and have fun while we try to make a baby.”
Heart? Racing like a freight train.
Brain? Swizzled like a Twizzler.
Nerves? Running rampant, straight down to my core.
“Seriously?” I know I shouldn’t sound so surprised, but, “So, we should just have sex?”
“Yes.”
I try to ignore how my body tingles with anticipation of being naked … with Christian. I need wine. The cheap kind.
“It could take a while. Getting pregnant, I mean. Not the sex. I’m sure you will take an ample amount of time. I mean … never mind.”
That soft chuckle pours through the phone again, and it does nothing to soothe my nerves. “Then, it takes a few tries. How about this? We give it a go the old-fashioned way for six months, and if it doesn’t work, then it wasn’t meant to be.”
I rub my eyes and then bury my head in my hand. “This won’t be awkward at all.” My sarcastic tone is used with amusement. “Okay, so when and where shall we meet?”
“Come again?”
“To have sex. Where are we doing this?”
“Excuse me, Miss Duvane, but I am not some cheap slut you can just schedule sex with,” he states, half-joking, half-serious. “I have rules.”
My head pops up. “Rules?”
“One, no planning sex around your ovulation calendar. That causes stress, and stress can lead to infertility.”
I nod my head like a soldier. “Yes, sir. I’ll leave the thermometer at home. What else?”
“No sex with anyone else while we do this. We don’t want a Maury Povich situation.”
“Same goes for you. No sex with other women while we’re creating a life. You might want to clear that social calendar.”
“Already clear. That brings me to my final rule.” He takes a beat before speaking his last amendment. It’s probably only a second, but it feels like an eternity as I wait for the final stipulation to our baby-making plan. “Three dates.”
A Really Bad Idea Page 9
