A White Knight in ER

by Jessica Matthews

  ‘Did you lose your ring, Mommy?’ Angela asked Megan as she fed Trevor his dinner. Although he preferred to hold the spoon himself, tonight he was tired and let Megan do the work.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she answered, still unused to being called ‘Mommy’. When the pair had first moved in with her, she had been ‘Aunt Megan’ and then Angie had decided that since Megan was now acting as her mother, she was ‘Mommy Megan’ as opposed to her ‘real’ mommy. Two weeks ago, she’d dropped Megan’s name and now simply called her ‘Mommy’.

  ‘I gave it back to Dwight,’ she added.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because we decided not to get married.’ Megan spoke nonchalantly, as if it had been as simple as choosing not to go to the park.

  ‘Oh. Does that mean he won’t be our daddy?’

  Megan studied her niece’s reaction, wondering how Dwight could possibly be fearful of raising these two sweet children. She leaned across the table and ran her hand over Angie’s soft reddish-gold curls. ‘Yes, sweetie, it does.’

  Angie drew her eyebrows together. ‘How come? Doesn’t he like us?’

  Out of the mouths of babes…‘It’s not that he doesn’t like you,’ she tried to explain. ‘He just doesn’t want to get married. Some men don’t.’

  Immediately, a picture of Jonas popped into her head, although why it had when she hadn’t been thinking of him was a mystery. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so mysterious after all. He was the Casanova of the ER, Dr-Footloose-and-Fancy-Free, the only man she knew who considered marriage akin to a case of encephalitis—something to be avoided.

  Yet no matter how she tried to focus on his flaws, one simple fact remained. Although he bore some culpability, she’d treated him poorly, taking her anger out on him rather than on the jerk who deserved it.

  ‘You’ll still be our mommy, though, won’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely. We’re family and that makes us a set. Everyone knows you don’t break a set.’

  Even as she gave that explanation, a fresh feeling of anxiety washed over her. If she became HIV positive, then her reassurances would mean absolutely nothing and once again these two would lose someone close to them. Surely fate wouldn’t be that cruel, but she knew there were no guarantees.

  Swallowing hard as she pasted a serene look on her face which was purely for the children’s benefit, she held the last spoonful of macaroni and cheese to Trevor’s mouth. Fortunately he was too busy clamping his lips together and shaking his head to notice how her hand shook slightly.

  With dinner over, she wiped his small face, which was almost a carbon copy of his sister’s right down to his pert little nose. Personality-wise, they were very different. Angie led and Trevor followed, although Megan suspected that would change when their interests developed in other directions.

  Vowing to fight a potentially grim fate with every fiber of her being, she smiled at him. ‘Have you had enough, young man?’

  In reply, he pointed to the back yard visible through the glass patio doors and arched his back, as if trying to slide out of his high chair.

  ‘He wants to play in the sandbox,’ Angie interpreted.

  ‘Really. I didn’t hear him say that.’

  Angie shrugged her shoulders. ‘He does.’

  ‘He’ll never learn to talk if you speak for him.’

  ‘But I know what he wants.’

  ‘Yes, and when you’re at preschool, he’ll be in trouble because no one else will understand.’

  ‘Oh. OK. I’ll try to be quiet.’

  Megan knew that Angie had good intentions, but she also understood the close bond between brother and sister. After losing the two most important people in their lives, it wasn’t any wonder they’d become inseparable.

  ‘Let me clean Trevor up a bit and then you can play outside.’ Her yard was fenced and anything that could cause harm had been relegated to the garage long ago. The window over the sink allowed her to see every inch of their play area, so she didn’t mind leaving the two on their own for a few minutes while she washed the dinner dishes.

  She carried Trevor to the sandbox and left him happily digging with his shovel while Angie started forming a mound.

  ‘I’ll be back out as soon as I’m finished to see what you’ve built,’ she instructed the two. ‘Remember. No throwing sand.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Angie promised.

  Megan hurried inside and began running water into the sink. The doorbell rang and, because she wasn’t expecting anyone, she dried her hands and went to the front door filled with curiosity.

  To her surprise, Jonas stood on the porch. Immediately, the anxiety over her needlestick injury returned with a vengeance and she thought the worst as she opened the glass storm door.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ She heard the panicky note in her voice and winced at the sound.

  He smiled, appearing far too mouth-watering in the jeans that molded every inch of his lower body. His red polo shirt with a logo of a country club on his left breast pocket appeared uncommonly soft and far too touchable for her peace of mind.

  He held up a familiar-looking notebook. ‘Nothing’s wrong. You left this at the hospital and I volunteered to deliver it.’

  ‘You could have called. I was going to run some errands tonight and I could have stopped by the hospital for it.’

  ‘Yeah, but this way you didn’t have to.’

  Megan stepped aside to allow him in, grateful that for once her living-room floor wasn’t completely covered with toys. ‘Thanks,’ she said as she accepted her property. ‘Without this, I’d be lost.’

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t gone the way of technology and bought one of those electronic gadgets.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m old-fashioned, I guess. Seeing my schedule on paper is easier.’ Realizing she looked a fright, with purple soft-drink stains on her ragged T-shirt, her hair uncombed and a wet spot on her jeans from washing dishes, she wondered what to do next.

  ‘Am I keeping you from dinner?’ he asked.

  ‘No. We just finished. The kids are outside and I don’t want to leave them unsupervised for long.’

  ‘Then I’ll be brief. For what it’s worth, I’m truly sorry about how things worked out with you and Dwight.’

  Her gaze instantly traveled to the cardboard box filled with Dwight’s possessions. Two bestselling hardcover adventure novels, an electric razor, several mugs, a toothbrush and his chess set. Now that she thought about it, she hated chess and had only learned because he’d insisted. She’d also packed every photo she could find, including the frames. It seemed pointless to keep them when she couldn’t look back on their time together with fond memories.

  All in all, it wasn’t much to show for a thirteen-month engagement, but she knew that once his things were out of her house, she’d feel free to move on with her life.

  ‘I didn’t put ideas in Dwight’s head.’

  She moved to the dining-room table where she could talk to Jonas and still keep an eye on Angie and Trevor, still happily playing in the sand.

  ‘You could have encouraged him to work things out. Instead, you persuaded him to call off our engagement.’

  ‘He’s been struggling with this for a long time,’ he pointed out. ‘If he hadn’t adjusted to the idea by now, he never would. As for persuading him to call things off, I only convinced him of the timing. For your sake, I thought he should tell you how he felt now, rather than later.’

  Megan brushed a lock of hair off her forehead, hating to admit what she suspected in her heart—that Dwight would have ended things with or without Jonas’s intervention. She wanted to blame Jonas, because it took some of the guilt for their failed relationship off her shoulders, even though he truly wasn’t at fault.

  Now that it was all said and done, perhaps things had worked out for the best. If Dwight couldn’t accept the children, then she didn’t want to marry him either. Other women handled being single parents, so could she. In essence, she’d been one for the last ye
ar and had managed just fine. More or less.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said slowly. ‘If he’d been having doubts for this long, he always would.’ Now that she looked at her circumstances more objectively, she mourned the loss of her dreams far more than she mourned Dwight’s absence. Clearly, she didn’t love Dwight as much as she thought she did.

  ‘Then you don’t think of me as the bad guy?’ he teased, but she sensed his underlying earnestness.

  ‘Not really. No.’ As she spoke the words, she realized that she meant every one. ‘Would you care if I did?’

  He paused, as if he hadn’t quite worked out the reasons for himself. ‘To be effective in the ER,’ he said slowly, ‘we need to function as a team. We can’t be at each other’s throats, finding fault and arguing.’

  He had a point, although she didn’t think it would have come to that. If she did hold a grudge, she would have ignored him, but since she didn’t, she wouldn’t.

  ‘There won’t be any problems on my end,’ she reassured him.

  ‘I’m glad.’ He flashed one of his megawatt smiles and something stirred deep inside her—something that she refused to name because it would only leave her with heartache. She’d be foolish to let those feelings blossom. Being tired and with her emotions in an uproar, it wasn’t any wonder that she was yearning for things she shouldn’t.

  ‘I just wish I’d acknowledged the signs,’ she said. Talking about Dwight would keep her mind off the spark that had ignited at the most inopportune time. ‘I’ve been thinking about our relationship all afternoon and I can’t believe I was so blind. He was so supportive throughout the funeral and afterwards when I brought Trevor and Angie home with me, but once I refused to follow his suggestion and make them wards of the state, he started pulling back.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but I still should have seen this coming,’ she insisted. ‘I feel as if I didn’t know him at all.’

  Jonas shrugged. ‘Some people are easier to read than others.’

  A howl of dismay interrupted the conversation. ‘Excuse me,’ she said as she flew through the patio doors into the back yard.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked Angie, at the same time hauling Trevor out of the sand and cuddling him against her.

  ‘I didn’t do nothing,’ she protested. ‘He hit himself with his shovel.’

  Jonas watched Megan run one hand over the little boy’s head, clearly inspecting for damage. He didn’t see any blood, which was a good sign. The toddler had probably scared himself more than anything.

  He knew he should go but the sight of Megan comforting the toddler against her breast drew his gaze like flower pollen drew bees. He could deny it all he wanted, but it didn’t alter the truth. He was attracted to this woman in a way that he’d never dreamed possible.

  He had no business thinking like this. Megan wasn’t the live-for-the-moment type that he normally associated with, but his hormones weren’t paying attention to his head. He wanted her in a most elemental way and the blood rushing to a certain portion of his anatomy proved it.

  After a few minutes of watching her dry Trevor’s tears and kiss the top of his head, he was in pain and thoroughly disgusted with himself. He needed to run, not walk, out of this house.

  By the time he reached the front door, Megan had reappeared in the dining room. ‘Leaving so soon?’

  ‘Yeah. I, um, don’t want to keep you away from the kids. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not on duty. I worked last weekend so I get the day off.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you on Thursday.’

  ‘OK.’ She followed him to the door. ‘Could you do a favor for me?’

  Inwardly he groaned. He could think of one very special favor she could do for him. ‘Sure. What is it?’

  ‘Drop this box off at Dwight’s house.’ She gave his address and directions. ‘He won’t be home—it’s his racquetball night—so leave it on his driveway.’

  ‘The weatherman predicted rain,’ he cautioned. ‘The clouds were rolling in when I came over. His things could get wet.’

  Megan’s face became a picture of innocence. ‘Life is just full of little trials, isn’t it?’

  Jonas chuckled. He didn’t blame her for wanting to rid her house of anything pertaining to Dwight. As far as he could tell, Dwight might have been willing to put a ring on Megan’s finger, but he certainly hadn’t given her the love or support she’d so desperately needed.

  Although Jonas had trouble in the commitment department—thanks to being shuffled from one home to another while his father had been deployed—the women he dated always knew they could count on him for emotional support, day or night. He suspected that right now Megan needed the latter more than she needed the former, and he was more than happy to oblige.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘HAS anyone seen any notices about a lost golden retriever?’ Jonas asked the staff congregated around the nurses’ station first thing on Friday morning. After three days of camping in his yard, the dog clearly wasn’t ready to find his way home.

  ‘I haven’t,’ Louise, the thirty-ish, divorced ward clerk replied.

  ‘Neither have I.’ Bonnie Reynolds, the other RN in the department, shook her blonde tresses. As far as Jonas could tell, she was good at her job, but at twenty-three she didn’t have Megan’s experience. Then again, Megan had at least six extra years under her belt.

  Megan crossed her arms as she leaned back in her chair. Idly, he wondered if anyone else had noticed her pallor, or if it was a trick of the lighting. ‘I take it you’ve found a dog?’ she asked.

  The strained note in her voice suggested that her washed-out appearance wasn’t due to the fluorescent bulbs.

  ‘Actually, the dog found me. It’s a female.’

  ‘Lucky dog.’ Bonnie sighed before she winked at him, her invitation obvious.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Gene asked.

  Jonas shrugged. ‘I was hoping to find its owner and tell him to pick up his pet. The poor thing is half-starved. It’s probably been gone for a long time.’

  Louise restocked the slots with all the appropriate forms. ‘Is it wearing a collar?’

  ‘No, and that’s something else I intend to have a few words with his owner about.’

  ‘Uh-oh.’ Louise glanced up at him.

  ‘Uh-oh, what?’

  ‘No collar. Half-starved. I doubt if you’re going to find anyone to claim him. People dump dogs in the country all the time, or let them off on the interstate.’

  Jonas had heard the stories, which only confirmed his own convictions about not keeping an animal. ‘That’s pretty irresponsible. The least he or she could have done was find a home for it.’ Once every single one of his fellow interns had decided to get rid of their pets, they’d each found a family who’d wanted them.

  ‘You’d think so,’ Gene agreed. ‘But it doesn’t always happen.’

  ‘The question is, do you want to keep her?’ Louise asked.

  Jonas shrugged. It gave him a sense of homecoming when he arrived each evening and found the retriever waiting patiently on his porch, its tail thumping as if it was glad to see him. Yet, like his friend, Joey, he had no business owning a pet. Between his twelve-hour shifts, four to five days a week, and moving around the country, he simply couldn’t take on the responsibility.

  ‘To be honest,’ he admitted, ‘I was hoping she’d leave on her own.’

  ‘Have you fed and watered her?’ Bonnie asked.

  He already knew what the group would say. ‘I had to,’ he defended himself. ‘She was dehydrated and I could count every rib.’

  Louise shook her head dramatically. ‘Oh, Dr Taylor, you’ve gone and done it. She’ll never leave on her own now.’

  ‘I’ve only given her a few leftovers.’

  ‘Food is food,’ she said practically. ‘I’d say you’ve made a friend for life. Unless you stop feeding her.’

  He’d tried to on Wednesday night, but as du
sk had fallen and he’d seen the dog still waiting patiently by the water dish, he’d surrendered and doled out a few slices of bread along with the contents of his last can of tuna. Then, trying to be firm, he’d left for work on Thursday morning, again without providing breakfast, but the animal’s hopeful gaze had lingered in his mind.

  Knowing he’d feel guilty all day if he didn’t do something, he’d dashed to the hospital cafeteria, bought a mound of eggs, sausage and hash browns and coaxed one of the night shift ER nurses to drop it by his house on her way home.

  ‘I tried, but I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘There’s always the Humane Society,’ Gene suggested. ‘They’ll pick her up, have a vet check her out and make her available for adoption.’

  ‘Don’t people usually want puppies instead of adults?’

  ‘That’s a risk you take,’ Gene pointed out. ‘If no one wants her or claims her…’ He shrugged again.

  Although Jonas knew what happened to those animals, it didn’t mean he had to like that scenario. ‘What she needs is a good home.’

  Megan finally joined in the conversation, still looking pale as every movement she made seemed slow and deliberate. ‘So give her one.’

  ‘She needs a place with kids who’ll give her attention and love her within an inch of her life. You wouldn’t want her, would you?’ he asked. ‘For your two munchkins?’

  ‘Sorry. No can do. You’ll have to find another adoptive family. Or call the Humane Society.’

  Bonnie laid a hand on his forearm and smiled a beguiling smile. ‘I’ll help you look for a good home. No matter how long it takes.’

  He grinned, well aware that her invitation included other things than the task she’d volunteered to undertake. She was the sort of woman who didn’t ask for more than he was willing to give, the kind who was interested in having a good time until he either left or the next exciting fellow came into her sights. He didn’t have any doubts that she could make his stay in Stanton quite interesting.