Father Found

by Judith Arnold

  Lifting his gaze from the magazine, he spotted Allison approaching from a hallway, and all his ambivalence evaporated. He must have awakened her when he’d called—if she’d been working a night shift, she wouldn’t have been home to answer her phone—but she seemed as alert and animated as all the other health care professionals bustling through the room. Her hair was pinned back into a ponytail, but stubborn tendrils had escaped the clasp and drizzled about her face, softening the sharp lines of her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were wide and glowing, her lips curved into a smile.

  He wanted to grab hold of her and hug hard. But he restrained himself, burying his hands in the pockets of his jeans and allowing himself a halfhearted smile in response to hers. “How is she?”

  “She has an ear infection and she’s dehydrated. Has she been eating?”

  “No, I couldn’t get anything into her all day.”

  “Sometimes when a baby won’t eat, you have to force her to. You can use a syringe without a needle to squirt fluid down her throat. Fruit juice would be good. She needs the liquid and the sugar and vitamins. Even better, you should try one of those fortified sports drinks.”

  “Really?” When he thought of those beverages, he thought of international soccer stars kicking balls in slo-mo on TV ads. He didn’t think of month-old babies with ear infections.

  “The doctor put her on an antibiotic,” Allison continued. “She’s kind of young to get an infection like that. The bad news is, she may turn out to be one of those babies with chronic ear infections. You’ll just have to monitor it.”

  “So…She gets an antibiotic and what else?”

  “Liquids. We’ve got her temperature down to a shade over a hundred and one. Baby acetaminophen will help with the fever. It comes in a syrup base, like the antibiotic.”

  He nodded mutely. Syrup base. Acetaminophen. It was an awful lot of jargon to absorb this late at night. “So what happens now?”

  “You take Samantha home and she gets better.”

  He almost guffawed. Allison made it sound so simple—just as she made all aspects of child care sound simple. The weirdest part was, gazing into her luminous eyes, he almost felt as if he could handle syrup base and acetaminophen and child care. He could make sure, through sheer force of will, that his little girl got better.

  But the source of his certainty was Allison. It wasn’t an internal, natural part of him, and he knew that the instant he left Allison he would feel utterly helpless.

  “What if she cries?” he asked.

  “You hold her, sing her a lullaby and rock her in your arms.”

  As easy as ABC—or one, two, “fee.” “What if her temperature goes up? How will I even know it’s gone up, anyway? I don’t have a thermometer—”

  “I’ll get you a baby thermometer,” Allison promised. “And if her temperature goes up, you can give her a little more acetaminophen or a cool bath.”

  A cool bath? Now things were getting complicated. “Allison,” he began, then hesitated. He was about to ask her an unfair question, and he searched her face for a clue as to how she would react. “Would you hate me for the rest of your life if I asked you to stay with me tonight? Not for me, but for Sam. Could you…”

  Noticing the shadows falling across her eyes, he drifted off. No, she could not stay with him, not even for Sam. She didn’t trust him enough. She didn’t like him enough. She thought he was evil incarnate because of the circumstances surrounding Sammy’s conception. Allison had judged him and found him worse than wanting.

  She averted her gaze, apparently fascinated with the checkerboard pattern of the floor tiles. “I think you can handle Samantha,” she said in a hushed, husky voice.

  He thought he could handle having Allison in his house much more easily than he could handle giving Samantha cool baths and sports drinks with a syringe. “I swear to God, this isn’t about you and me,” he whispered, wishing he dared to take Allison in his arms. It would only be to reassure her, but he suspected that if he touched her, she would be anything but reassured. “The truth is, I can’t handle Samantha. Not with an ear infection. I’m completely out of my depth with this. What if I do something wrong?”

  “There’s nothing you could do wrong. Just hold her and comfort her and get fluids into her. If she starts getting worse, you can always bring her back here.”

  “Oh, right. That’s exactly what she needs—another Indy 500 speed drive to the hospital emergency room.”

  “You won’t have to come back here,” she told him, refusing to let his sarcasm rile her. “You could take her to your own doctor in the morning if you—”

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do to you?” he erupted.

  He hadn’t thought he was speaking loudly, but the fragrant fellow on the other side of the room quit singing his little aria about a hooker on Canal Street and said in a flimsy Bogey imitation, “Go ahead and kiss her. You know she wants it.”

  “She doesn’t want it,” Jamie shouted over his shoulder. When he turned back to Allison, he found her smiling ruefully. “You don’t, do you?”

  “Right now,” she confessed, “I want some sleep. And I want Samantha to get well. Do you really think you can’t get through the night without me?”

  She couldn’t have meant the question the way it had come out, so he didn’t answer by informing her that the past four nights were proof that he couldn’t get through the night without her. “What I’m worried about is Samantha getting through the night without you,” he rationalized. “She’s just a baby, Allison. What if I did something wrong? What if she choked on the syringe or her eardrum burst or—”

  “All right,” Allison said, sounding more resigned than pleased. “I’ll stay at your house. Just for tonight, to help out.”

  Dropping to his knees in gratitude would have been a tad melodramatic. “Thanks,” he said, which barely began to express how relieved he was. Despite his own selfish desires, having Allison spend the night at his home to oversee Samantha’s convalescence was the most important thing. Allison wasn’t going to abandon him in his time of need. She wasn’t going to leave Samantha at the mercy of his incompetence.

  Allison eyed him dubiously. “I’m doing this for Samantha,” she stressed.

  “Of course.” With Allison monitoring the baby’s recuperation, Jamie might actually relax enough to fall asleep. He was too exhausted to get anything going with Allison, anyway. She would be perfectly safe with him.

  “I’ll have to swing by my house to pick up a few things and leave a note for Grammy so she won’t panic when she wakes up tomorrow and I’m not there.”

  “No problem.”

  She studied him for a moment longer, as if scrutinizing him for a hint of his true intentions. He wanted to hold his hand over his heart and pledge his integrity, but he doubted that would convince her. As far as she was concerned, his integrity was less than one hundred percent reliable. So, for that matter, was any pledge he might make.

  Either she’d found the reassurance she was looking for in his face or she’d given up hope of finding it. She pursed her lips, shrugged and aimed her chin at the corridor leading out of the emergency room. “Well,” she said, “let’s go get your baby signed out.”

  SHE WAS ONLY doing this for Samantha, Allison told herself as she steered up the gravel driveway to Jamie’s rambling house. He had left lights on for her all along the route: post lights along the driveway, porch lights, lights in the wide living room window. He obviously wanted to make her feel welcome.

  Frankly, she would have preferred to feel a little less welcome. She knew Jamie wasn’t going to make a pass at her tonight—he wouldn’t dare. Too much was at risk, starting with his daughter’s health.

  But still, Allison needed to keep her guard up. Her treacherous heart increased the risk many times over.

  She set the parking brake, climbed out of her car and lifted her overnight bag from the back seat. She wasn’t sure she’d get much sleep tonight, but she intended to tr
y—in Samantha’s nursery, or on a couch, or on a chair on the screened porch. She would sleep anywhere but in that decadently broad bed in Jamie’s bedroom, just a hop and a step from the bathroom with the glass wall that had played too prominent a role in her fantasies of late.

  By the time she’d reached the front porch, Jamie had the door open for her. He looked drowsy, his hair tousled, his eyelids at half-mast and his chin stubbled with an overnight growth of beard. His T-shirt was untucked and he had Samantha on his shoulder. She was wide awake and cantankerous. The poor thing. How could an adult explain to an infant that her discomfort wasn’t anything serious, that it would go away, that it would go away even more quickly if she would only go to sleep?

  As Allison crossed the threshold, Jamie fell back a step, giving her a wide berth as if to prove that he intended to stay out of her way. “I stopped at an allnight convenience store on the way home,” he reported, closing the door behind her and beckoning her toward the kitchen. “I bought two bottles of Gatorade, grape and lime. I don’t know which flavor she’ll prefer. I was going to try shooting some down her throat with that syringe thing the hospital gave me, but I was afraid she might throw up.”

  “She’s been known to do that,” Allison remarked wryly, following him into the kitchen. Once there, she dropped her overnight bag and lowered herself onto a chair. “Hand her over. I’ll get some juice into her.”

  Jamie placed Samantha carefully in Allison’s lap, then gave her the two bottles of Gatorade and the wide syringe. He watched attentively as she drew some of the grape-flavored drink into the syringe, glided the tip gently between Samantha’s lips and squirted the juice into her mouth. Some dribbled out and down her chin, but Jamie handed Allison a paper towel before the purple liquid could drip onto her clothes. It wouldn’t be a tragedy if her jeans got Gatorade on them, but she appreciated Jamie’s vigilance. Perhaps he remembered what happened the last time Samantha had made a mess on Allison’s clothes. Like Allison, Jamie was apparently in no rush to relive that night.

  “See how easy it is?” she told him. “Now, you try it.”

  Jamie concentrated hard as he poked the syringe into the bottle of Gatorade and filled the tube. “I’ll have you know,” he muttered, easing the syringe out of the bottle and frowning, “that I never had anything to do with drugs as a kid. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of practice using syringes.”

  “You’re a lucky man. Now just wedge the tip into her mouth, nice and slow…There you go.”

  His face broke into a proud smile as Samantha swallowed his dose of Gatorade. Because Allison was still holding Samantha in her lap, he had to lean against her to squirt the juice into Samantha’s mouth. Allison felt his warmth, his muscular breadth, as his body bowed above her to feed Samantha another dose. She smelled the last, lingering traces of his spicy aftershave and the familiar fragrance of the laundry detergent he’d used to wash his shirt. She’d grown accustomed to that smell. Every time she opened her closet, the green minidress he’d run through his washing machine offered a hint of the same scent.

  “She isn’t going to choke on this, is she?” he asked.

  “No. She’s thirsty, Jamie. She wants the stuff. It’s just that nursing is hard work for a baby, and she’s too weak and tired to go to all the effort of tugging on a nipple. This juice, with all those minerals and electrolytes, ought to get her through the night. Tomorrow, if the antibiotic hasn’t upset her stomach, you can try her on a little formula.”

  For the next twenty minutes he fed his baby, a few cc’s at a time, until she’d consumed half a cup of juice. All the while Allison held Samantha. All the while, Jamie pressed close to her, his attention fully on the baby. There was nothing erotic about his position, no pressure, no insinuation of romance…yet Allison responded to him just as she should have known she would. She was affected not only by his nearness but by the sight of his big hands wielding the tiny syringe, the pinch of his brows as he frowned in concentration, the worry tugging at his mouth. He was trying so hard to do the right thing for his daughter, and his efforts touched Allison.

  She gave herself a stern silent lecture. Merely by running to his side when he’d phoned her, she’d started down the slippery slope of becoming involved with him. She would have to work hard to climb back up that slope.

  “I think she’s had enough,” she said when the baby twisted away from Jamie’s gentle probing with the syringe. “Why don’t we see if we can get her down to sleep.”

  Jamie lifted Samantha from Allison’s lap. Allison was gratified to see how well he’d learned the Daddy School technique, steadying the baby’s head and supporting her with his arms. He trudged off to the nursery, and Allison didn’t follow. She didn’t want to be gratified by anything he did. She didn’t want to think positively about him in any context. She was already too vulnerable to him.

  After a couple of minutes, he returned to the kitchen. “She’s in her crib,” he reported, “but she isn’t asleep. She’s lying there, whining and acting really ticked off.”

  “Give her some time. She may settle down.”

  “God, I hope so.” He raked a hand through his hair and groaned. “I’m so tired, it hurts.”

  “Why don’t you go get some sleep, then?” Allison suggested, thinking that if he was out of sight and unconscious, she might have a chance of surviving the night at his house. “I’ll keep a close watch on her.”

  His eyes, glazed though they were, zeroed in on her. “What if she falls asleep?”

  “Then I’ll take a nap, myself. Just tell me which couch I should use.”

  A flicker of understanding glinted in his eyes. If there had been any doubt in his mind about where she would sleep, her comment clarified the issue.

  “I’ve got a sofa bed in the guest room,” he said evenly. If he was so tired he hurt, he was surely too tired to argue with Allison over the sleeping arrangements—and too tired to care where she wound up spending the night.

  He lifted her small bag and extended his hand to help her off the chair. She took it, accepting the gesture in friendship. He didn’t squeeze her hand, didn’t stroke his thumb over her palm. He was probably too exhausted to remember that she was a woman, let alone a woman he’d once hoped to seduce.

  As they passed the open door to the nursery, Allison heard Samantha sniffling and sobbing in her crib. The guest room was across the hall, a compact square of space with a sofa, a wall of bookcases crammed with books, a dresser and a small television set. “Nothing fancy,” he said apologetically, “but I can open the sofa into a bed. The mattress isn’t bad.”

  “Leave it for now. The way Samantha is carrying on, I may not be needing it.”

  He let go of her hand but remained inside the doorway. “If she keeps you up more than an hour, come get me. We can take turns sitting up with her.”

  “No, that’s all right. You get some sleep now. I can sleep tomorrow.”

  “What about work?”

  “I pulled a Saturday shift last weekend. I’m off this weekend. I’ll catch up on my sleep tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go to bed, Jamie. I’ll take care of Samantha.”

  He was clearly too tired to argue. “Thanks.”

  “Forget it.”

  He hesitated for a moment, leaning slightly toward her, his soul reaching for her even if his arms didn’t. “I won’t,” he warned, at last dropping back a step. His smile was pensive, weighted with unreadable thoughts. “Good night, Allison.”

  She watched him turn and leave the room, then listened to his footsteps as they moved down the hall. She heard the thud of his bedroom door closing, then shut down her imagination before she could start visualizing his bed, his shower, his body. Fortunately, Samantha squelched any libidinous thoughts by bleating her misery loudly enough to echo through the hallway.

  Allison crossed the hall to attend to the distraught baby. This was what she ought to be thinking about, she reminded herself as she leaned over the crib
and massaged Samantha’s warm back through the soft cotton of her one-piece nightie. Here in this nursery, with this sick little girl, was where Allison’s mind needed to be. Nowhere else but here.

  JAMIE FOUND ALLISON on the floor of the nursery at nine-thirty the following morning. She was fast asleep.

  Back in his youth—until he was, oh, about twenty-nine—he wouldn’t have minded sleeping on a floor. He’d done some camping as a teenager, and he’d slept on the floors of dorm rooms during various outings to parties and concerts on other campuses. He recalled a wild weekend in New York City a few years ago when eight guys from school all went down for a classmate’s bachelor party, followed by his wedding at a fancy Park Avenue synagogue. All eight of the guys had crashed at a ninth pal’s studio apartment on the West Side. Not only had they slept on the floor, but they’d had to arrange their sleeping bags to interlock like jigsaw puzzle pieces so they could all fit into the twelve-by-sixteen-foot space. The party and the wedding had been so much fun, he hadn’t even noticed the hardness of the floor.

  But now he was thirty, fast approaching geriatric condition. Floor sleeping was a sport for youngsters. And dedicated nurses, apparently.

  Seeing Allison on the floor caused him a pang of guilt. He felt better rested than he’d been since Samantha first started acting funky a few days ago, and there lay Allison, the person responsible for his renewed energy, lying on her side with her knees drawn up and one arm bent under her head. Her shoes were off, her shirt untucked, and her hair was a luscious mess splayed out across the rug.

  He tiptoed past her to check on Samantha, -who was also sound asleep. He was pleased, for reasons he felt it best not to analyze, that the faint snoring he’d heard from the doorway came from Sam and not Allison.

  He pulled Samantha’s blanket up over her, then crept back out of the room. Across the hall the guest room door stood open. Peeking in, he noticed that the sofa had not been slept in—or on. Allison’s overnight bag lay open on the floor, and a nylon toiletries case sat on top of the suitcase’s few contents. She must have washed up and then returned to the nursery to keep vigil over the baby.