Deliver Me (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 1)

by Aiden Bates

  "Oh, that's right. That's coming up soon, isn't it?" Finn bit his lip. "Are you nervous?"

  "Nah. I speak at conferences all the time, you know? And I'm excited. Dr. Sibley's been a good friend to me for a while, and it'll be good to see him. And I'll be real honest here. It'll do me some good to get away for a little bit."

  Finn tilted his head. "Get away from what?"

  "Syracuse. The house." Carter straightened up a little bit to crack his back. "I'm still kind of… I mean, I'm still grieving. I don't blame anyone, I'm not looking to take it out on anyone or anything like that, but it's still hard, you know? I think the change in scenery will do me some good. And then…"

  Finn could see his omega's distress. He could almost feel it. "And then?"

  Carter sighed. "Someone offered to bring me into their family." He cleared his throat. "As a kind of second husband, I guess. Not legal, but whatever."

  Finn grabbed onto the table and took a deep breath. "Really? I had no idea you were seeing anyone."

  Carter scoffed and went back to his meal. "I wouldn't have slept with you if I were. The someone is Tom Geary."

  Finn scratched the side of his head. He couldn't quite make the pieces line up in his head. "But he's got a husband. A very pregnant husband, if I remember correctly."

  "He wants a polyamorous family. Usually the second omega is younger, but it's not entirely unheard of." Carter shrugged, eyes on the table. "He offered—they offered, technically, although I think Paul was gnawing on his own liver the whole time—because I'm too old to be alone and they felt sorry for me." Carter rolled his shoulders once. "And I think Paul needs help with the kids, especially with another one on the way."

  "Okay." Finn's pulse raced in his ears. "So when will this take place?" His chest was too tight to draw breath, but he couldn't let Carter see that.

  "About two months past never." Carter glared at him. "I wouldn't do that to Paul. He might say that he's open to this, but it doesn't take eyes to see that he's not. He's trying to please his husband, and it's not right."

  Finn made himself relax. "That's very modern of you." He reached out and ate again. "I know you and Tom were together for a long time." He couldn't ask. He couldn't make himself ask Carter if he'd had anything to do with his refusal. He wanted to think that he had, but he knew that probably wasn't the case. The dinner and wine said one thing, but nothing about his behavior today was that of an omega wooing an alpha.

  "We were." Carter lifted his glass. "I don't know. Maybe it's just because of the miscarriage, I don't know, but I wasn't even tempted to accept. Is that weird?"

  "No." Finn reached across the table, pulse thundering in his neck, and took Carter's hand. "No, I don't think it's weird at all. You feel how you feel and you don't need to answer to anyone else about it."

  Carter smiled, and a hint of pink came into his cheeks.

  Finn stayed for a few hours, long enough to enjoy some ice cream for dessert and to spend a couple of hours just shooting the breeze with Carter. Apparently Carter had drawn up a plan to reduce the number of C-sections at Silver Oak yesterday, just while he was sitting there contemplating the scenery or whatever. "It won't reduce them by a huge amount," he cautioned, "and some of these measures might require an initial outlay. I think it might play into your plan to move some care centers out further into our service area, though."

  Finn's jaw dropped. "This is amazing. I mean you're right, it won't drop them by the number I initially wanted, but that wasn't realistic. Thank you. I'll go over this with my boss and see what we can do about getting that initial outlay. You'll get full credit, of course."

  Carter blushed. "Ah, don't worry about that. It helps patients. That's all I care about."

  Finn went home wondering if Carter could possibly be any more perfect.

  The next day, he sailed through his morning meetings and sat down to crunch numbers on the satellite care centers that he wanted. Robert Gerig, the CFO, stopped by his office at around two. "Hey, Riley, are you doing anything over the long weekend?"

  Oh, it was Labor Day. Finn had forgotten. "I hadn't thought about it. Why?"

  "You might want to think about telling the auditors to take it easy. They're starting to look a little gray in the face there. I mean, I get that there's a lot of waste to audit and trim. This place is going to have a lot of weird procedures that we're going to have to put the brakes on. I mean for crying out loud, a TB ward? In the twenty-first century?" Gerig snorted, putting his hands on his paunch.

  Finn smirked. "Right?" Maybe Gerig was one of four suspects, but that didn't mean that Finn couldn't enjoy a good laugh with him. They'd known one another for years, for crying out loud. "I guess that there are a few cases in Onondaga County every year, but not enough to justify having a ward at every hospital. We can care for any TB patients that come into the ER on the regular floor, or in regular quarantine, until we can get them across the street to University. If things get bad enough in Syracuse that University's program can't take them, then I don't think a program the size of ours would have been all that useful anyway."

  "Seriously." Gerig sat down in one of Finn's chairs. "What do you say you and I hit the links this weekend? Might as well get our kicks in while we can, right? The nasty weather will be here soon enough."

  "True. Yeah, let's make a plan." Finn opened up his calendar. "Does ten work for you? I'll be done with my workout by then."

  Gerig nodded. "That sounds good for me." Gerig beamed. "It's good to do business with such a familiar face, isn't it?" He sauntered happily away.

  Finn watched him go, stroking his beard.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Carter received the formal contract from Tom and Paul on Friday. He thought that he might have gotten it sooner, but then again, why would they send it any earlier than they absolutely had to? Tom obviously believed that he was doing Carter a favor. There was no reason to be any more accommodating than that.

  Carter didn't care, beyond shaking his head in astonishment at the rudeness of it all. He had a formal rejection ready to go, saved in the same folder on his hard drive that he used for his taxes.

  He gave the excuse that he didn't want to make things "weird," and he wasn't entirely lying. He didn't want to make things any more uncomfortable than they already were. The kids deserved better than that, and maybe once Paul realized that Carter really wasn't going to steal his man he'd loosen up and stop kicking down at him.

  The fact of the matter was that Carter no longer wanted Tom. He wanted someone else, someone that he could never truly have, and that was almost as bad as accepting Tom would have been.

  Finn seemed to get it, at least as much as he could be expected to. He understood that Carter just couldn't go and let himself get involved with someone who'd rejected him five years ago, anyway. That was all Carter needed him to get. Finn turned out to be shockingly supportive about the whole thing, considering that they weren't dating, and even came to bed with Carter the day that he got the document to take his mind off of it.

  Well, Carter was reasonably sure that Finn got something out of the deal too.

  Finn, shockingly enough, even offered to give Carter a ride to the airport when it came time for him to go to San Antonio. "I don't want to be overbearing or overwhelming or anything, but if you'd rather not have to leave your car in the garage I can bring you there."

  Carter blinked at that. He hadn't expected even that minor accommodation from Finn, but he wouldn't say no. "Thanks," he said. "I'll take you up on that. It'll be a load off my mind." He couldn't admit that he just wanted to spend a little more time with Finn, and bring the memory of his leathery scent with him on the plane.

  There were no direct flights, so he had to take one with a stopover in Atlanta. That made for a very long trip, longer than he wanted, but that was the way things worked. He sat in his seat and tolerated the chatty management consultant sitting next to him and focused on his speech.

  He had a room at a historic hotel just s
teps from the convention center, not that he had time to appreciate the restoration work or the decor when he finally checked in. Carter collapsed into a heap onto the fabulously appointed king-sized bed in his fabulously appointed suite and passed out. He didn't even bother getting undressed.

  His clothes still carried traces of Finn's scent, after all.

  Once his alarm went off in the morning, he could roll his eyes at himself and pull himself together. Sleeping in his clothes, on top of the covers, wouldn't make Finn love him. He didn't even know why he wanted Finn to love him. He hadn't come all the way to San Antonio to moon around over an alpha. He'd come here to learn, and to meet other professionals with an interest in alpha and omega medicine. He'd come here to get a change of scenery. He needed to do exactly that.

  He went for a run, carefully mapping his route with an app to keep himself from getting lost. He got a great view of the city this way, or at least of the part of the city nearest to him. He got to see the Alamo, which wasn't far from his hotel, and some of the historic buildings around it. San Antonio was a pretty place to be, he decided as his feet pounded into the pavement. He liked the feeling of the sun on his skin.

  Once he cleaned up, he got dressed and headed over to the convention. He had to check in first, of course, and he had to get his name badge. Within five minutes of him walking into the dining area for the Day One Breakfast, Carter was stopped by three fellow doctors, two professors, and four midwives who wanted to talk to him about his work.

  It was going to be a long, but probably productive, day.

  He helped himself to the buffet line and coffee, and let himself be carried along to one of the tables. People were here to network, after all, and Carter knew that they would have good feedback on his work. He got some excellent advice about delivering babies whose parents were addicted to meth, for example, and one of the midwives gave him some fantastic pointers on helping omegas prepare for birth.

  By the time that the dishes were cleared away Carter had exchanged cards with everyone at his ten-person table, and he knew he'd keep in touch with all of them. Most of them were betas, but some of them were omegas like himself. It felt incredible to be among omega professionals. There were other omega physicians at Silver Oak, of course, and nurse practitioners, but there weren't many.

  Everyone here had been forced to make the same kinds of decisions that Carter had. They'd made the same sacrifices that he had, too, or at least faced them down. He wasn't alone at one of these conventions. His spirits rose before he even set foot in his first workshop.

  He gave his speech just after lunch. He'd only told part of the truth when he told Finn that he wasn't nervous. He'd spoken to crowds several times in the past, and he'd presented at workshops and conferences just like this. Being the keynote speaker, though—that was kind of a big deal, and that sent a little extra adrenaline pumping through his veins. He couldn't help it; he was only human, after all. Still, he sailed through his speech with an apparent ease that belied the butterflies in his gut and earned a standing ovation out of the deal.

  Dr. Sibley met him at the foot of the stage. He'd gone a little grayer over the past few years, and the lines on his face had gotten a little more pronounced, but that was only natural. He hugged Carter when he stepped down from the last step, his smile as big as his face. "That was a fantastic address, Carter. I'm so proud of you right now I could just explode."

  Carter didn't bother to hide his pleasure in that statement. His parents were always proud of him, and Carter appreciated that, but Dr. Sibley was different. Dr. Sibley was a brilliant obstetrician. For Carter, it was like Superman being proud of him. "Thank you, sir. I'm glad I didn't embarrass you."

  "Not by a long shot, Carter. Not by a long shot." Sibley put an arm around Carter's shoulders and guided him out of the hall. "You know what? I don't think I've seen you since I took the job here at Mercy Medical. Come on, let me give you the tour, show the place off a little."

  Carter couldn't say no to that. He'd heard Dr. Sibley wax poetic about this place so often over the years that he'd built up an image of the place in his head. He couldn't wait to see if reality matched up to the pictures.

  The whole hospital had been done up in Southwestern colors, a welcome change from some of the garish yellows and pea-soup greens of Silver Oak's less recent updates. "Well, we definitely do things a little differently here in Texas," Sibley laughed when Carter commented. "When we underwent renovations a few years ago, the design team that we brought in consulted with the physicians. We found that patients experienced significantly less anxiety in environments that bore at least a superficial resemblance to their own homes."

  "Well that just makes good sense." Carter followed Sibley into an elevator. "I mean, at least you're in a place that seems familiar. When it's a place that just looks like a hospital, or is decorated with colors just one consonant off from puke, then you're going to be uncomfortable. You'll be fighting yourself, and your reactions, instead of whatever you went in for in the first place."

  "Right?" The elevator let them out on the floor Carter most wanted to see, the Obstetrics department. Sibley gestured around them. "Here we are. I'm actually pretty proud of this place, Carter. I did a lot of work here during my term. We were near the bottom when I took over as Obstetrics Chief. Now we're number one."

  Carter followed Sibley past some of the labor and deliver rooms and into the office area. "That's a lot to be proud of. I know you too well to think you're going to rest on your laurels, though."

  Sibley chuckled. "No. You're right. We have one area that I still want to improve. I've actually been looking at Silver Oak for inspiration on this. We do great when it comes to delivering babies from women. When it comes to omegas, our track record isn't great. We don't have any red flags or anything like that, but we don't have any omega-certified obstetricians and definitely no one who's specifically studied how to perform a C-section on an omega."

  "Besides you." Carter chuckled and steepled his fingers.

  "Well, yes, there's me, but I'm not certified for C-sections on omegas. I haven't had any losses yet, thank God, but we've had some near misses." Sibley bowed his head and looked away. "Believe it or not, Silver Oak has turned into a kind of hub of omega obstetric care since you showed up. I'm not the only one who's been looking at Silver Oak as a kind of guiding light."

  Carter squirmed. "That's very flattering, but we're not all that special. We do what we can."

  Sibley scoffed. "You don't check your results versus other hospitals. You weren't ever competitive in that way. You never cared about being better than this guy or that guy, you only cared about being the best—getting it right, every time. I could wish that Silver Oak were affiliated with a major university." He looked up into Carter's eyes. "I mean, yeah, I know you take on interns and residents, but I'd like to see you taking on students too—up in front of at least one class of medical students a year."

  Carter leaned back in his chair and laughed. "That would be hilarious, considering that I'm barely older than they are!"

  "So what?" Sibley spread his hands wide. "I think it would be good for you. Your books and papers spread a lot of information and have done a lot of good; think of how much good you could do if you were there in person. You could do it there in Syracuse; I know the dean. I could say something to him since you're right there." Sibley paused. "Of course, there's no reason you need to stay in Syracuse, is there?"

  Carter bit his lip. "I love Silver Oak. All my friends are there. I had a—I got sick recently, and you should have seen how supportive everyone was." He shrunk down in his seat. "It was a little embarrassing, really."

  Sibley made a face. "I can believe it. When I need a doctor, I only go to doctors affiliated with a hospital in Austin. I know it's a long drive, but at least then I don't have people I see every day all in my business." He folded his hands on his desk. "If you're happy in Syracuse, by all means, stay there. You've done a lot of good there, and I know that you're kind
of the darling of the news media there."

  Carter ducked his head and blushed. "Is that never going to go away? I'm never leaving the house without a full suit, lab coat, and tie again!"

  "Nonsense!" Sibley chuckled. "And you'd better believe that someone forwarded that stuff to me. But I have to wonder, Carter, if you're actually happy there. I know there was a guy, all those years ago, but that didn't pan out."

  Carter let out a mirthless little laugh. "No. Although he did offer to let me become his secondary omega, just last week."

  "Good Lord." Sibley shook his head. "They try to tell you that Texans are backward but that New Yorker pops up with something ridiculous like that. Keep an open mind, that's all I'm saying. You never know when opportunity is going to knock."

  The speaker on Sibley's phone crackled to life, making both men jump a little. "Code pink," the announcer's calm, feminine voice declared. "I repeat, code pink."

  Carter glanced at his mentor. "I take it your codes are the same as ours?" At Silver Oak, pink was the code for an abduction from the neonatal ward.