Finally a Mother

by Dana Corbit

  Whether she realized it or not, Blake had been watching her as well ever since she’d returned to the waiting room. He’d turned back to the television when Mark had caught him doing it.

  “Do you want to go back to Hope Haven?” Mark asked her.

  For a few seconds, Shannon said nothing, but then she startled as if she’d only then noticed that someone was speaking to her.

  “What? Uh...maybe we should wait a little longer to see if the doctors can help her.”

  He understood that by “help her” Shannon meant to stop Brooke’s labor. He’d prayed for the same thing. As if it wasn’t difficult enough for a teen having a baby when she was still a kid herself, giving birth to a preemie would make her situation even more challenging.

  “Her mom’s here with her now.”

  “I know. It’s just...” She let her words trail away without ever saying what it just was.

  “You’re going to have to leave here sometime,” he said gently. “You still have all of those people back at Hope Haven.”

  An expression of misery covered her features. “But not yet, okay? I just can’t leave her.”

  “Okay.”

  Just then a group of adults and Hope Haven residents entered through the sliding glass door into the already full emergency waiting room. Other visitors, all with their own holiday crises to contend with, stared at the gaggle of pregnant teens. If the girls were aware that they’d become an object of curiosity, they pretended not to notice.

  A redhead named Holly hurried their way. “Any word?”

  “Only that the doctors are trying to stop her labor,” Shannon answered, shaking her head as she said it.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Holly assured her. “We’ve all been praying.”

  Shannon nodded, her eyes too bright. Obviously, the girl hadn’t lived long enough to know that even God sometimes said no, but Mark had to appreciate the way she’d tried to cheer up Shannon.

  “Is it okay if Blake comes with us to the cafeteria for some ice cream?”

  Holly had addressed the question to Shannon instead of him, which at any other time would have made her happy. But she didn’t notice that the girl had spoken to her, so Mark turned to Blake himself.

  “Hey, would you like to go to the cafeteria with these young ladies?”

  Blake looked up as if surprised to see the girls and their parents there, though he hadn’t turned a page of the Sports Illustrated issue he’d been reading for more than an hour. He scanned the girls’ faces and then looked at the door as if he was disappointed that one of them was missing. Finally, he nodded.

  “Want me to bring you anything?”

  Mark shook his head. “We’ll be fine with vending machine fare.”

  He wasn’t sure why he’d said they would be fine with anything. Shannon didn’t answer at all. She wasn’t fine right now and likely wouldn’t be better after consuming tiny packages of cheese curls or a chocolate bar.

  After they were gone, he turned in his seat so that his right knee came up on the cushion, and he watched her. After what seemed like several minutes, she looked at him. Her gaze narrowed.

  “What?”

  “Let’s take a walk.” Mark indicated the doors that separated the emergency department from the other parts of the hospital.

  “I don’t know.” She was already shaking her head. “I should be here in case they have any news.”

  “We’ll go just here in the hospital. You have your cell. And everyone has your number, right?” He waited for her nod before continuing. “If they don’t see us in here, they’ll call you. Or text. Don’t worry.”

  She glanced with uncertainty toward another set of doors through which they’d taken Brooke when they’d first arrived, but when Mark stood, Shannon came to her feet, as well.

  “Maybe it would do me good to move around and stretch out a bit.”

  She followed a few steps behind as he took several turns through the maze of hospital hallways. He stopped in a narrow hall filled with offices. It appeared to be deserted for the holiday. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, and she did the same, facing him.

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong? I mean, other than what’s happening with Brooke.”

  From her body language—tight and stiff—he was certain that there was something. He had some suspicions about what at least part of it was. He just didn’t know for certain.

  “I should be able to recognize the signs of problems. How could I have missed this?”

  “Brooke told you that she’d tried to cover up her symptoms so she wouldn’t mess up the celebration. She even said her face was swollen this morning, so she stayed in her room until the swelling went down. That’s a huge symptom of preeclampsia, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I just don’t understand it. How could she not know how dangerous that was or that she and her baby are far more important to me than any celebration?”

  “I’m sure she knew that. But whether she’s about to become a mother or not, she’s still just a kid. She probably hadn’t had a lot to look forward to lately, and, as she said, she didn’t want to ruin the party.”

  She accepted his explanation with a nod, but she didn’t seem to believe him. That she’d crossed her arms tightly over her chest as if those were the only things holding her together told him there was more to the story.

  “Come on, Shannon. This isn’t only about you blaming yourself, or even your worries about Brooke.” He paused until she finally looked over at him. “The births are really tough for you, aren’t they?”

  Her eyes widened. Was she really so surprised that he would understand her? That each birth would scratch at old scars, rewounding. He knew as much as anyone about wounds that scabbed over but never really healed.

  A faraway look came into her eyes, and he could only wait through the long pause for her to finally open up to him. “It’s like repeating the most awful day of my life again and again, each time with slightly different details but the same ending. Brooke’s story is especially hard because I had complications with my pregnancy, too, and Blake had to be delivered by emergency C-section.” She blinked her eyes several times, as if to push away images flicking through her thoughts.

  “The stories aren’t all the same, are they?” he asked. “Some of the girls keep their babies.”

  She nodded. “Sure. A few. But the stories are similar in that another child has become a mother, and no matter what she chooses to do from that point on, nothing can change that.”

  “I don’t know how you handled it when the girls didn’t know about Blake. How could you hold your story in like that?” It surprised him now how easily that rolled off his tongue. He’d not only fully accepted that she was Blake’s mother, without proof, but he’d also no longer questioned whether she could commit to a relationship with her son.

  She shrugged, her lips forming a sad smile. “I just tried to share in their joys. Who couldn’t find joy in the birth of a new baby? When there were tears as they said goodbye to their newborns, I could empathize and sympathize more than they knew. Even the ones who had to welcome their babies without the birth fathers, I could relate to that pain, too.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me about him?”

  “Blake’s father?”

  He nodded. She studied him with a narrowed gaze. “I just don’t understand why it matters so much for you to know about him. I get why Blake would want to know. But why you?”

  “Just curious.”

  More curious than he’d had any right to be. He simply had to know. He had no claim to her, but he couldn’t bear the thought of a man who’d touched her and then left her to face the consequence of his child alone. With those feelings so entwined, Mark couldn’t decide whether he was being more protective of her, or just jealous.

 
; She’d demurred again, and he sensed that she would never tell her whole story to him or to Blake. So it surprised him when she started talking again.

  “I used to work so hard to meet my parents’ impossible expectations. I would jump through every hoop they set out for me, and they set out more hoops than circus lion tamers. It was never enough.”

  He opened his mouth to object. He’d heard this part of the story before. Now he wanted to hear the part she didn’t want to tell.

  But she shook her head to stop him. “And then I met Scott. He seemed to accept me just the way I was. Combine that with his irresistible bad-boy image, and I was a goner.”

  “An easy mark?” he couldn’t help asking. That he bristled over his own words was telling. Just the thought of someone taking advantage of her vulnerability infuriated him.

  She lifted a brow, making him worry that she would stop telling her story, but then she nodded. “I guess I was. Do you know how appealing it can be to have someone love you for you, even if that person is only pretending?”

  This time he nodded. As a matter of fact, he did know what that was like. At first, Kim had seemed so impressed with his dedication to his work, with his determination to serve the public with honor, but then she’d used the thing she was supposed to love about him as her excuse to betray him. He blinked, pushing away the memory. This wasn’t the time for his story when Shannon was finally ready to tell hers.

  “I knew my parents would never approve of him, so the only way I could continue seeing him was to keep him a secret. And the only way I could keep Scott, or at least so I thought, was to do things that I knew were wrong.”

  Mark cleared his throat. “You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to.”

  He’d had an almost compulsive need to hear details about the guy who’d left her, and now all he wanted her to do was to stop.

  “And then I told him I was pregnant. At first, I kept it a secret from everyone. Him included. I couldn’t even admit it to myself. When I finally did tell him, I was already having terrible morning sickness, and I’d resorted to stretch pants. And you want to know what he did?”

  No, he didn’t want to know, but like a driver at a grisly accident scene, he couldn’t resist a “look” into her past. He nodded.

  “He left. In every possible way.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, they were damp. “At first, he said the kid probably wasn’t his. Then he said he didn’t care if it was. And, finally, he drove off, leaving me sitting on top of a picnic table at a park about three miles from my house.”

  The fury that filled him was as intense as it was surprising. He had to force his hands not to fist with the need to strike out at her past. Instead, he crossed his arms in front of him. “What did you do?”

  Sometime during her story they must have shifted because now, instead of both of them leaning an arm against the corridor wall as they faced each other, she stood with both shoulder blades on the wall and he stood out in front of her. She stared at the floor, looking as vulnerable as she must have back then.

  “I had to call my parents at one o'clock in the morning. I was crying so hard that they could barely understand me. They were furious that I had sneaked out of the house, but I told them that was the least of their worries.”

  Her story was distressing on so many levels, but one part kept repeating in his thoughts. Festering. The kid had taken her heart, her innocence and her trust in people and tossed them away like fast-food wrappers. And he’d left her to face the consequences of their actions. Alone.

  “He should never have left you.”

  Until she glanced up, he didn’t realize he’d spoken those words aloud. He should have stopped there, could have held on to that final remnant of distance to which he’d been clinging. But he couldn’t. Not this time.

  Before he could stop himself, before sanity and discretion could catch him in their safety net, he spoke the words that would change everything. “I never would have left you.”

  Those lovely eyes widened, as if she knew what he was about to do, even before he did. She froze, appearing unsure, but she didn’t look away. She simply watched him and waited. Her uncertainty was his undoing.

  It wasn’t a huge distance—only a little more than two feet separated them—but he bridged it with one step and then dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers. He’d imagined them more times than he should have, obsessed about them when he should have been strongly rejecting their appeal, but the feel of her lips against his still surprised him. So smooth and pillow soft.

  It was the briefest of kisses, just a breath of a caress, barely long enough for her eyes to flutter closed. Yet Mark recognized his mistake the moment he eased away from her, his sharp intake of breath drawing in her essence. He’d been kissed before. He’d been married before. But this was different. As dangerous as it was warm and comforting. For from the moment her eyes opened and she stared up at him in confusion, all he could think about was kissing her again.

  It was a bad idea, and he knew it. Once was difficult enough to recover from, difficult enough to redirect his thoughts back to Blake, where they belonged. But to kiss her again, to think it through first and still come to the same conclusion? There would be no backtracking from that. Whether he was ready to or not, he would be forced to admit that his feelings for Shannon were very real.

  Even as he reasoned and attempted to dissuade his actions, his head bent to hers again. Just as their lips touched, Shannon’s phone beeped, and they jerked back as if they’d both touched a flame and had been caught with their fingers burning. They had...and they had.

  Shannon rubbed the place where her head had hit the wall and then pulled her phone from the outside compartment of her purse. She fumbled through a few screens and opened the text. Because she held the phone out from her, he was able to read the words from Brooke’s mother as she did.

  Miss Shannon, where are you? Can you return to the waiting room? Carla.

  Without looking at him, Shannon jogged down the hall. Mark hurried after her, his thoughts spinning with the events that had just taken place between them. When she made a quick left turn, he called out to her.

  “Wait. Shannon.”

  She stopped but still didn’t look back at him.

  “It’s the other way.”

  Her shoulders shifted, but she did an about-face and ran right past him, her gaze brushing his as she passed. He continued to follow, matching her pace but purposely staying behind her. When they reached the waiting room, she hurried over to the girl’s mom, who sat with her face buried in her hands. A lump formed in Mark’s throat before Shannon even sat next to the woman and wrapped an arm around her.

  The woman stared straight ahead but appeared to see nothing. “Brooke. She...wants—”

  Her voice broke off then in a sob, but Mark continued to watch her, trying to understand the woman’s message from her few words and her defeated body language. Wants? He tried to decipher the comment. Brooke was at least strong enough to want to something. That was good, right? But what had happened to the baby?

  “What is it, Carla?” Shannon prompted. “Tell us.”

  As the woman turned to face Shannon, her eyes filled again. “She wants...to keep the baby.”

  Shannon let out a long breath. Mark could certainly relate to that. He’d nearly had a heart attack himself as the idea of kids having kids escalated to the prospect of some of them dying in the process. Obviously, Shannon had a lot on her plate right now, beyond attempting to build a relationship with her son, which itself was no small matter.

  He shouldn’t have added to the complicated mix of her life by kissing her, but even now he couldn’t force himself to be sorry. As much as they needed to discuss what had happened tonight, what had been happening between them for days, now wasn’t the time. But they would talk
about it, after this crisis had passed, after some of the details regarding Blake’s future were in place, after Mark had taken the time to sort out his feelings, as well. They needed to talk about it, make sense of it, determine what it meant. Not now. But soon.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shannon rubbed small circles on the back of the overwhelmed mother seated next to her. She could relate to the rush of feelings Brooke’s mother must have been experiencing. She was a bit overwrought herself. All of her senses were on high alert, every sound clanging and harsh, every light glaring. Her lips still tingled even now with what felt like aftershocks of a high-magnitude earthquake though the kiss had been gentle and sweet.

  But she didn’t have the luxury of time for thinking about Mark and the feelings his kiss had awakened. Or even any free time to worry that the thoughts she was having about Mark somehow betrayed Blake.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she crooned, continuing to rub Carla’s back.

  The woman’s shoulders heaved with the violence of her sobs. Shannon was tempted to tell her that the situation could be so much worse than Brooke changing her mind about adoption. That there were health issues and even lives in the balance. But if Brooke’s mother had been thinking clearly, she would have realized that.

  On the opposite side of the room, Shannon caught sight of Mark, where he’d settled after Carla had made her announcement. She appreciated that he was trying to give the two of them space but wondered if he needed a buffer, as well. After a few minutes, the woman’s sobs slowed.

  “Now, can you tell me what the doctor said?”

  Carla squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again. “They’re giving Brooke medication to mature the baby’s lungs because they’re not going to be able to stop her labor. The only way for Brooke to get better is for them to deliver the baby.”