by Dianne Drake
“I couldn’t sedate him since I didn’t have anything with me. Couldn’t do anything except talk to him, and that didn’t work out so well because he got to the point where he was past the ability to comprehend.
“Anyway, at the end of the first day he just got up and ran out in the open, right into the gunfire. Took a bad hit to his back, which nicked his right kidney. He was lying out there, screaming. I went after him, dragged him back to the rocks, hoping that we hadn’t been spotted. But my buddy was literally dying in my arms, and there was nothing I could do except talk. Which was what I did until we were evacuated, because I was scared that if I quit talking, he’d die.
“And I felt so isolated. Nothing was right. Nothing was happening the way it should have. We had been going out for what was little more than some routine medical care, then to have all that happen... So I know where you are, Ellie, because I’ve been there. I was in that daze—in a situation there was no way for me to fix. And I was used to fixing things, the way you are.
“But you’re wounded right now. Not like Carter was but in a sense it’s the same. And the only thing I can do to help you is talk to you and take care of you the only way I know how. And listen, if you want to talk. Neither of us is in an easy place and, to be honest, all we have is each other. So don’t shut me out. I’m going to get you through this the way I got Carter through it.”
“He survived?” she asked.
Matt swiped at the tears that had run down his cheeks. He’d been scared in that cave, but not nearly as scared as he was now. Because this baby—it had to live. It was his child. A child he loved the way he’d never been loved. And it was Ellie, too.
“He did, but he struggles. The thing is, we all do, and we all need someone there to help us through it. Carter has a fiancée who’s strong and loves him unconditionally. You and I, well, that’s what it is. The two of us.”
“Is this about me, Matt?” she asked. “Or only about the baby?”
“Both. But you shouldn’t be alone. You need to be here, Ellie. Where I can take care of you. You need the support as much as I need to support you.”
Still, he couldn’t tell her that he loved her, that he might have even fallen a little in love with her in Reno, because the solution to that love wasn’t easy, and it would put more stress on her than she already had. This wasn’t about their jobs anymore. It was about them. With Ellie and the baby at risk, all he could think to do was support her and keep everything else away from her. Then later, after the baby was here, who knew what would happen? He sure as hell didn’t.
But right now she wasn’t making herself available. Even with her head on his shoulder, she was rigid. Reserved. Distant. Sighing, Matt leaned his head back against the seat, closed his eyes, then said, “I want you to stay, but the choice is up to you. If you go to Reno, so will I.”
Those were the last words spoken until they reached the landing field. Then Ellie finally spoke. “I do want to stay. I think I did even before I got here.”
But that still didn’t solve the problem, because staying for a few months was one thing and what to do about their son was another.
* * *
Ellie was relieved, exhausted and now worried. She’d taken a big step, and it wasn’t because she couldn’t manage her pregnancy, even with its complication, back home. She simply didn’t want to. Didn’t want to be the one who didn’t need anybody to lean on. She did need someone.
And that someone was Matt. He made her feel secure, made her believe that, with his help, everything would turn out all right. She’d never had that before and it was nice having someone else to go through this with her. Someone who could be strong when she wasn’t. Or caring when she needed it. And she did need it, especially now that she understood what it was.
Because she loved him? Ellie was pretty sure she did. It hadn’t taken long to fall, but she had. And, of course, it was an almost impossible situation. She had some time to figure it out, though, now that she was going to stay. Would that time do her any good? She didn’t know. In fact, she didn’t know his true feelings for her. Matt showed affection, said the right words, did the right things, but was that more out of his sense of duty, or was it genuine? Because if it was genuine...
“What about going back to active duty?” she asked him a few minutes later as she lowered herself onto the bed in the casita. “Have you worked that out?”
“That’s not for you to worry about. I’m in good standing with the army, so I’m not going to have any problems making some changes.”
“But I don’t want to be the one to hold you back from your career.” She lifted her feet onto the bed and dropped back into the pillows.
“You’re not,” Matt said, as he sat down on the edge of the bed next to her, then took her hand in his and stroked it gently. “And the only thing you have to worry about is taking care of yourself.”
“But I worry about you, too, Matt. I put you on a detour you didn’t expect. When the army told me you’d gone home, I thought... If I’d known you were still active in the military, I would have handled everything differently, without asking you to raise the baby. Being practical, the way I usually have been until now, I would have seen that you couldn’t.”
“Our son, Ellie. The baby is our son.”
She was aware of that, but saying it out loud nearly broke her heart because the moment she’d heard it was a boy, she’d given him a name. Matthew. After his father. And she’d pictured little Matthew growing up with Lucas as brothers. The four of them together, as a family. “I know we need to talk about that, but I’m so tired. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Works for me, since I’ve got to get Lucas. I need some time with him. Especially since...” He swallowed hard.
“Since he called you Daddy?”
Matt shook his head. “Don’t know what to do about that.”
“Maybe you don’t do anything and let it work itself out on its own.” And again the image of a family of four popped into her mind.
“Well, however it works out, Lucas needs to be home. So...” He leaned over and brushed a light kiss to her forehead. But she snaked her arm around his neck and pulled him to her mouth.
She wanted that kiss. It wasn’t right. It wouldn’t lead to anything. But it was the only thing on her mind and she was, if nothing else, a decisive person. This was what she wanted. The kiss. To see his reaction. To go to sleep with Matt on her mind, and not all her worries.
But he pulled away before they’d really started. “That part of us is easy,” he said. “Too easy. Which is why we shouldn’t...” He shook his head and backed away. “Look, I’ll be back in a while. Is there anything you need before I go?”
There was. But unlike the easy part of them, it was hard. Too hard.
* * *
“It should be a short day,” Matt told Ellie the next morning as he came down for breakfast. She was already sitting at the kitchen table, helping Lucas eat his breakfast. Or more like playing with him as he did. “No one on a ranch, and only a handful of scheduled appointments. If any tourists come in, or I get an emergency call, that could delay me, but as it is right now I should be home shortly after lunchtime.”
It was difficult facing her, after rejecting her last night. But he’d done what he’d had to do because both of them were playing volleyball with their emotions, and it wasn’t getting them anywhere. He was especially worried about Ellie. She didn’t need that kind of tension, which meant he was the one who would have to make sure things were slow and easy with them. For her good and, in a way, his own good as well.
“And you’re taking Lucas with you?’
Matt chuckled, and patted Lucas on the head. “Us men need some bonding time. And Betty went to see her sister, so...”
“I could watch him.”
“Or you could rest. Besides, he’s too heavy for you to pick up, so for now this hombre
is with me.”
“You’re probably right but, still, if you get in a bind, we could work something out.”
“I appreciate that,” he said. “But it’s going to be tough enough on him when he leaves, being bonded to me. I don’t want him to have to go through the same thing with you as well.” Even as he said the words, Matt hated them. But Ellie offered no stability on which to pin any hopes, dreams or expectations. And he couldn’t allow that to enter Lucas’s life. So, for now, he had to take care that he would be the only one to break the little boy’s heart. Which broke his own heart.
“Anyway...” He scooped Lucas into his arms and headed for the front door, glad the pain from his injury had substantially subsided. “If you’re up to it when we get through, I’ll take you to lunch at the new resort a few miles from here. I want to get acquainted with the manager since I’ll be on call for them. If you want to go.”
“I might,” she said, her voice unusually emotionless. “Call me before you make the drive back, so you won’t make a wasted trip if I’m not up to it.”
He didn’t want to leave it like that, but he had to. Right now, he had everybody’s best interests to juggle, and the most he could do was just separate them and see what happened. And pray something better would happen.
Opening her laptop and fighting back tears at the same time, Ellie wanted to attribute the tears to hormones, but she couldn’t. Matt had hurt her, not letting her watch Lucas. She understood why, but that didn’t make her pain any less. And that after his rejection the night before, which she also understood. Another thing she understood was that because of both rejections he was, most likely, planning on getting out from under all of it. Of course, that’s what he’d said from the beginning.
Still, as her feelings about their baby had been changing, Ellie had hoped his were changing as well. But they weren’t. She’d been hopeful, though. Not fully confident but hopeful. Yet here she was, stuck with new feelings and a different vision than she’d ever planned for herself. She wanted to keep her baby—a thought that had been running in and out of her mind since she’d learned she was pregnant, but wasn’t brave enough to admit.
She wanted to raise him, see him grow up to be just like his father. And she would. She wasn’t her mother. She could give her baby everything he needed and still do her job. It would be tough, doing it alone. But after she’d felt that first kick, and Matt had felt it, she’d known what she would do, even if her stubborn self wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet.
Ellie loved this child with all her heart. Which was why she’d never considered abortion, and why she was so very careful in her choices now that she was high-risk. She thought Matt did, too. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was simply what she wanted to see in him when he couldn’t see it in himself.
Whatever the case, no one was going to adopt this baby. In fact, she had a mind to adopt one more. Maybe they wouldn’t be a family of four, but a family of three would be good. Her, baby Matthew and Lucas. Then Matt could have his life back without worries.
“Guess what, Matthew?” she said as she laid her hand across her belly. “We’re going to be together, forever, just the three of us.” Words that should have cheered her but somehow even made her sadder. Because she still pictured Matt there. He was in her mental image of a perfect family, and also in her heart. But he wasn’t going to be in her real family, and that hurt her more than anything ever had.
CHAPTER NINE
DAMN, HE HATED THIS. Not the job. Not even Forgeburn so much anymore. Being away from it for so long had changed Matt’s perspective, and while he still didn’t have that coming-home feeling, he was remembering how much he’d liked the area.
What he hated, though, was how he was going back and forth. He wanted to raise his son, and Lucas, yet he wasn’t sure he was good enough. There was always that deep-seated fear of becoming his father in the back of his mind. And while it was never very prominent, he saw how Ellie struggled with the same thing, trying not to be her mother.
Neither one of them had been raised by good parents, and while he thought that should have forged a strong bond between them, he didn’t feel that it had. The struggle was real, and ongoing. And there were now two babies in the balance.
“OK, Mr. Albright, let’s have a listen to your chest.” He placed a stethoscope on the elderly man’s chest and heard bilateral wheezing, which was what he’d expected to hear from a three-pack-a-day smoker. “It’s still emphysema,” he said. “And like the last doctor said, you need to give up smoking.”
“I need a tank of oxygen like you see all them people in the city toting around.”
“Can’t prescribe you oxygen while you’re still smoking. Oxygen supports combustion, and if you decide to smoke while you’re wearing your cannula, you could set yourself on fire. Give up the cigarettes and you’ll get your oxygen.”
It was a terrible solution, but the man had palsied hands, and that added to the recipe for disaster. If he missed his aim when going to light his cigarette, and he was wearing his oxygen cannula, well—Matt didn’t even want to think about that. He’d treated too many burns on the battlefield. They were hideous and, in Mr. Albright’s feeble condition, he wouldn’t survive them.
“Take your aerosol treatments the way you’ve always done, and cut back the smokes. If you can’t do that, and your breathing gets worse, we may have to talk about sending you to a rehab facility where they won’t allow you to smoke, and they’ll give you the oxygen you’ll need.”
“Not going there, Doc. You can’t force me. And those aerosol treatments—haven’t done one of them in months. They’re worthless.” He drew in a deep breath, wheezed out a cough, then scooted to the edge of the exam table. “As worthless as you are.”
Matt didn’t respond. Instead, he opened the exam-room door and watched Mr. Albright make his way out of the clinic. Some people simply wouldn’t be helped, he thought as he returned to his cubby-hole office to make his notes.
James Albright, advanced emphysema. Heavy smoker—three packs per day. Bilateral sonorous wheezing. Clubbed fingers. Slight cyanosis both fingernails and lips. At risk: cardiac complications, pneumothorax, bullae. Possible signs of mental confusion. Refuses aerosol treatments, refuses to quit smoking. Doctor refuses oxygen due to feebleness and high burn risk. Recommendation: long-term care facility. Patient refuses to go.
“Stubborn old coot,” Matt said to himself as he closed the Albright file then took a peek in at Lucas, who was playing a toddler video game. “I’ll be right back,” he told the boy. “Just going next door to check supplies before we leave.” Which took all of five minutes.
“It’s not right,” James Albright shouted from Matt’s office as he emerged from the supply room several minutes later.
He’d come back, and Matt was so not in the mood to argue with him. “What’s not right?” Matt asked him as he entered the office, only to find that Albright had made himself at home and was sitting behind his desk, not in front of it as patients were supposed to do. “And why is the door open?” he choked, referring to the Dutch door.
“To let the kiddie in there out. He was calling for Daddy, so I let him out to go find his daddy.”
Matt’s heart skipped a beat. “Did you see where he went?”
“Why would I care? He’s not my kid.”
“Lucas,” Matt called, running out of his office and starting his search in the exam room. Then the public toilet. Then the waiting area. But there was no sign of him. “Lucas,” he called over and over, rechecking the same areas, as Mr. Albright stood and watched. “Are you sure you didn’t see where he went?” Matt cried desperately one last time.
But all Albright did was shrug.
“When did you come back in?” he asked, trying to control his temper.
“Turned around as soon as I got outside and came right back to tell you you’re worthless.”
Which meant Lucas had been gone at least five minutes or more. But where was he? Was there someplace to hide in the clinic he didn’t know about? Someplace only a toddler could fit? Had he looked under the desk in the waiting room? Or in the cabinets in the exam room? That’s where he had to be. One of those places. Matt chose the waiting room to begin another search, and this time he saw it.
The clinic door was standing wide open. Which meant—Dear God! He’d gone outside. That could be a good thing, though, Matt said to himself as he ran out the door. A child his size couldn’t have gone far in that short amount of time. So, with a little hope returning, Matt ran to the parking lot, shouted Lucas’s name, then turned in one direction after another, expecting to see him. But he didn’t. So he ran to the other side of the building and did the same. Then to the road. And back to the clinic. By now, his panic had become so overwhelming he was shaking. Sweating. Nauseous.
“Lucas,” he kept calling as Albright got into his truck and pulled out of the parking lot, not even offering to help.
And the clock ticked off another five minutes, which meant Lucas had been gone for ten.
Where could a toddler go in ten minutes? And where should he look? If he went in one direction but Lucas was wandering off in the opposite direction... Standing in the middle of the parking lot, Matt turned around in a circle one last time, looking everywhere. But saw nothing. He needed help. But he also needed to get out there and look. Maybe Ellie—she could call people.
“Ellie,” he choked into the phone when she picked up. “Lucas is missing. I need help.”
“When? How?”
“Sometime in the last ten minutes. One of my patients let him out of the playroom, and he wandered out the door.”
“You’ve checked everywhere in the clinic?” she asked.
