The Nurse's Baby Secret

by Janice Lynn

  Oh, God. Please don’t let something be wrong with Charlie. Please, no.

  Not now. Not ever.

  “I’m leaving.”

  His two simple words echoed around the room, not registering in Savannah’s mind.

  “What?” Her chest muscles contracted tightly around her ribcage as she tried to process what he was saying, her brain still going to something possibly being wrong with him. “What do you mean that you’re leaving?”

  His expression guarded, he shrugged. “I’m leaving Chattanooga. I’ve taken a cardiology position at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville on the heart failure team and I’m moving there as soon as I can get everything arranged. I turned my notice in at the hospital today.”

  Her ears roared. What he was saying didn’t make sense. “You’re leaving the hospital?”

  He nodded. “I’m working out a two months’ notice, during which time I’ll be relocating to Nashville.”

  “But...your house.” The house she’d imagined them raising their child in. The big backyard. The nice neighborhood close to good schools. The large rooms. Perfect for a family.

  “I’ll put it up for sale. I only bought it because I knew I could turn it for a profit. I never meant to stay there. It’s way too big for my needs.”

  Never meant to stay. Too big for his needs. Savannah’s head spun.

  He’d never meant to stay.

  Nothing he said made sense. Not to her way of thinking. Not to the promises she’d seen in his eyes, felt in his touch.

  “You’ve always known you’d leave Chattanooga?”

  She liked Chattanooga. The mountains. The river. The nightlife. The people. The town. She liked it. Chattanooga was home, where she wanted to be.

  “I’ve never stayed in one place more than a few years and even once I’m in Nashville, if the opportunity comes along to further my career elsewhere, I’ll move.”

  Her brain didn’t seem to be processing anything correctly. Perhaps it was baby brain. Perhaps it was that he’d dropped the bottom out of her world.

  “This is about your career?” she asked slowly, trying to make sure she understood what he was saying.

  Because she didn’t understand anything he was saying.

  He was happy in Chattanooga. Why would he willingly leave? Why hadn’t she known he planned to leave some day?

  “I’ve taken a teaching and research position at the university and a prestigious position at the hospital. It’s a great opportunity.”

  What he said registered. Sort of. “You’re moving to Nashville?”

  He nodded. “The hospital is offering a relocation package. Hopefully, I’ll find something to buy or rent within the next few weeks so I can be settled in prior to starting.”

  “Hopefully,” she mumbled a little sarcastically.

  He was leaving. Not once had he said a word to her about the possibility that he might leave. Not once had he mentioned that he was looking for another job. That he’d consider another job even if it was handed to him on a silver platter.

  He’d made the decision without even discussing it with her. Her mother, family, and friends were here. She didn’t want to move to Nashville. Upset didn’t begin to cover it.

  “I don’t want to live two hours away from the man I’m dating,” she pointed out what she thought should be obvious. “I like that I see you every morning, that we work out together, that I get to see you from time to time at work, that I get to grab dinner with you, that you get to kiss me goodnight almost every single night.” Did she sound whiny? If so, too bad. She felt whiny. And angry. How could he take a job in Nashville? “That’s not going to happen if you’re in Nashville and I’m in Chattanooga. Do you expect me to just sit around waiting for you to have time to come home or that I’m going to be commuting back and forth to Nashville between shifts?”

  He regarded her for long moments, his expression guarded. “I don’t expect you to do either.”

  What he was saying hit her.

  A knife twisted in her heart and she instantly rejected the idea.

  That couldn’t be what he meant.

  Of course that was what he was saying. That he’d not even mentioned he was thinking about moving, about taking a different job, that she hadn’t warranted that tidbit of information, spoke volumes. He was breaking up with her.

  “You’ve never mentioned that you planned to move.” Her words sounded lame even to herself. So what? She was reeling.

  Reeling.

  Maybe he meant for her to go with him. Maybe he wasn’t ending things. Maybe she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions when he’d said he was leaving. Maybe he looked so stressed because he was worried she wouldn’t go with him.

  The reality was she didn’t want to move to Nashville. She loved her job and coworkers at Chattanooga Memorial Hospital. She wanted to stay in her hometown, to be near her family, her friends, all the things that were familiar. She wanted to raise her baby near her home, where her child would grow up knowing her family and being surrounded by their love.

  Her baby.

  She was pregnant.

  Charlie was leaving.

  With obvious annoyance, he crossed his arms. “I never mentioned that I planned to stay, either.”

  Ouch. Had she seen blood oozing from her chest, she wouldn’t have been surprised. His comment wounded that much.

  “No,” she began, wondering how she could have been so terribly wrong about his feelings.

  His eyes were narrowed, his tone almost accusing. “Nor have I ever implied that I would stay.”

  He was right. He hadn’t. She’d been the one to make assumptions. Very wrong assumptions.

  Her silence must have gotten to him because he paced across the room, then turned to her with a reproving look.

  “Good grief, Savannah. I’ve taken a job that’s a wonderful opportunity. Be happy for me.”

  Tears burned her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Instead of telling him what he wanted to hear, she shook her head. “No, I’m not going to say I’m happy for you. Not when this news came about the way it did. We’ve been involved for months. You should have told me you planned to move. I deserved a warning about something so big. For that matter, we should have discussed this before you made that decision.”

  His jaw worked back and forth. “I don’t have to have your permission to move or take a different job, Savannah.”

  If she weren’t sitting on the sofa, she’d likely have staggered back from his verbal blow. Truly, there must be a gaping hole in her chest because her very heart had been yanked from her body. “Agreed. You don’t.”

  “I never meant for you to think I’d stay in Chattanooga, or that I wanted to stay.”

  She interpreted that as he’d never meant for her to assume he was going to stay, or want to stay, with her.

  She’d been such a fool. She’d believed he loved her, had believed the light in his eyes when he looked at her was love, the real deal. She’d just seen what she’d wanted to see. Whatever that look had been, she’d never seen or felt it with past boyfriends. Maybe she’d mistaken phenomenal sexual chemistry with love. She wouldn’t be the first woman to have done so in the history of the world.

  Devastation and anger competed for priority in her betrayed head.

  She met his gaze and refused to look away, despite how much staring into his dark eyes hurt. They were ending. She’d thought everything had been so perfect and he’d been planning their end. “I think you should leave,” she began, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to hold her grief in much longer and not wanting him to witness her emotional breakdown.

  She was going to break down. Majorly.

  He started to say something but, shoulders straight, chin tilted upward, she stopped him.

 
“That you made this decision without involving me tells me everything I need to know about our relationship, Charlie. We aren’t on the same page and apparently never were. My bad. Now that I know we don’t want the same things from our relationship, there is no relationship. I want you to leave. We’re through.”

  There. She’d been the first one to say the words out loud. Sure, he’d been dancing all around the truth of it, but she’d put them out there.

  Not once since she’d seen that little blue line appear had she considered that he wouldn’t be happy about the news...that he wouldn’t be there for their child.

  That he wouldn’t be there, period.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHARLIE SMILED AT the petite lady he’d grown quite fond of over the past couple of years he’d been her cardiologist. “Now, now, Mrs. Evans. You’ll be just fine under Dr. Flowers’ care. He’s an excellent cardiologist.”

  “But you know me,” the woman explained, not happy about his announcement that he was relocating. “If it wasn’t for having to cross that mountain halfway in between, I’d follow you to Nashville.”

  “I’m flattered that you’d even consider doing so, but you don’t need a cardiologist who is two hours away. Mountain or no mountain, that’s not a good plan.”

  “Then I guess you should change your mind and stay.”

  If ever there was a time he considered changing his mind about his move it would have been the night before at Savannah’s apartment. The betrayed look on her face had gutted him, but he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.

  He’d set Savannah free and let her keep her pride by her being the one to say the words. He’d needed to let her out, but he hadn’t wanted to break her spirit.

  Things were as they should be.

  He was single, free to make the decisions for his life without her or any woman’s interference, and she was free of him and his baggage.

  His father’s dying words had been pleas to Charlie never to be controlled by what was in his pants, and a declaration that no woman was worth giving up one’s dreams.

  “Marriage and kids suck the life right out of you, son,” his father had told him. “You go after your dreams and you make them happen. You be the best doctor this country has ever seen and don’t you let a woman stand in your way, no matter how pretty she is. In the long run, she will eat at your soul until you despise her for taking away your dreams.”

  Those had been the exact words from his last conversation with his father. He’d heard similar all his life, had known that was how his father felt about his mother, him.

  Although he’d become way too involved with Savannah for far too long, Charlie wouldn’t let any woman tie him down.

  Not because of his father, but because of not wanting to relive the hell of what he’d grown up with. He’d been a burden to his parents, had ruined their lives; he’d been unable to protect his mother from his father’s abuse, unable to protect her from the misery he’d caused. Charlie would never marry nor have children. Never.

  He’d ruined enough lives during his lifetime already.

  “You hear something different, doc?”

  Charlie blinked at the elderly woman he’d been checking and instantly felt remorse at his mental slip into the past. Crazy that this move had him thinking so much about his parents, his failure of a family, his past. All things he did his best to keep buried. Maybe that had been the problem over the past year. He’d kept his past so deeply buried that he’d forgotten all the reasons why he shouldn’t have gotten so involved with Savannah. No more.

  “No,” he told the woman with a forced smile. “Just listening to your heart sounds. Your heart is in rhythm today.”

  “My heart is in rhythm every day. Just some days that rhythm isn’t such a good one.”

  He finished examining her, then saw the rest of his morning patients. Typically, this was the time he’d go to the cardiovascular intensive care unit, see his inpatients, see if his favorite CVICU nurse could sneak away to grab a bite of lunch.

  He’d gotten too attached to Savannah.

  For both their sakes, he’d been right to take the job in Nashville. She might not realize it yet, but he’d done her the greatest favor of her life.

  * * *

  “You don’t seem yourself today.”

  Savannah glanced up at her nurse supervisor, who also happened to be one of her dearest friends. Should she tell Chrissie the truth?

  If so, how much of the truth?

  The man I thought I was spending the rest of my life with told me last night that he’s moving two hours away? Or, I’m pregnant by a man I was crazy about but currently just want to strangle?

  Neither seemed the right thing to say at work, where she had to hold it together and not cry out her frustrations.

  “I’m okay.”

  Chrissie’s brow lifted. “You usually walk around as if your feet aren’t affected by gravity. I’ve not seen you smile all day. So I’m not buying ‘okay’.”

  Savannah gave a semblance of a smile that was mostly bared teeth.

  Chrissie winced. “That bad?”

  Savannah nodded. “Worse.”

  “You and Charlie have an argument?”

  Had they argued? Not really. More like he’d told her he was moving and she’d verbalized that they were through.

  “I heard he turned his notice in yesterday. I wasn’t going to say anything until you did, but you’ve looked so miserable today that I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

  There it was. Confirmation that he was leaving. Everyone knew. Charlie was leaving her.

  “I’m not sure what to say. My boyfriend—former boyfriend,” she corrected, “is moving out of town. I was shocked by the news and haven’t quite recovered.”

  Chrissie’s expression pinched. “You didn’t know?”

  “You probably knew before I did.”

  Her friend’s eyes widened. “He hadn’t mentioned he was considering a move to Nashville?”

  Savannah shook her head. “Not even a peep.”

  Chrissie looked blown away. “What was he thinking? He should have talked such a big decision over with you.”

  Maybe her expectations hadn’t been unfounded if Chrissie thought the same thing as she had. What was she thinking? Of course he should have mentioned the possibility of a move. They’d been inseparable for months. Her anger was well founded.

  “Apparently not.”

  “You said ‘former boyfriend’,” Chrissie pointed out. “You two are finished, then?”

  Savannah had to fight to keep her hand from covering her lower abdomen. She and Charlie would never be finished. There would always be a tie that bound them.

  A child that bound them.

  Still, she didn’t need him, would not allow herself to need him. Some fools never learned, but she wasn’t going to fall into that category.

  Toying with her stethoscope, she shrugged and told the truth. “Yeah, as a couple, we’re finished.”

  * * *

  Wincing, Charlie paused in the hallway. Neither woman had noticed him walking up behind them. Neither one knew he was overhearing their conversation.

  Should he clear his throat or something?

  He shouldn’t feel guilty for eavesdropping. If they didn’t want someone to overhear their conversation they shouldn’t be having it in the middle of the CVICU hallway.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Chrissie told Savannah, giving her a quick hug. “I thought you two were perfect together.”

  Perfect together.

  They had been perfect together, but wasn’t that the way most relationships started? All happy faces and rainbows? It was what came along after the happy faces and rainbows faded that was the problem.

  He was just lea
ving before the bright and shiny faded, before hell set in and people died.

  Charlie absolutely was not going to be like his father.

  If Rupert had been miserable at giving up his dream of a career in medicine, then he’d made Charlie’s mother doubly so until her death in a car accident when Charlie had been fifteen. That had been after a particularly gruesome argument that Charlie had tried to stop. He’d never forgiven himself that he hadn’t been able to protect her from his father. He’d tried, failed, and look what had happened, at what she’d done to escape his father—to escape him?

  Guilt slammed him and he refused to let the memory take hold, instead focusing on events before that dreadful night. Why his parents had stayed together was beyond Charlie. They should have divorced.

  They should never have married.

  No doubt his mother would have been a hundred times better off if Rupert had walked away instead of marrying her and making her pay for her pregnancy every day for the rest of her life.

  Regardless, Rupert had stayed with his wife and had instilled in Charlie the knowledge that giving up one’s dreams for another person ultimately led to misery for all involved. His mother had seconded that motion, and when she’d died it had confirmed that her son was not worth living for. Charlie wasn’t able to make another person happy, nor was he able to protect anyone from life’s harsher realities. Those were lessons he’d learned well.

  Thank goodness he was leaving before he’d sunk so far into his relationship with Savannah that he couldn’t resurface.

  That she couldn’t resurface.

  The next two months couldn’t pass soon enough.

  * * *

  Savannah didn’t have to turn to know that Charlie was behind her. Something inside always went a little haywire when he was near and, whatever that something was, it was sending out crazy signals.

  “All good things must come to an end,” she told her friend, not going into anything more specific, wishing she wasn’t so aware of the man behind her.

  With time, she wouldn’t even remember who he was, she lied to herself, trying to balm the raw ache in her heart, trying to cling to her anger. Anger was easier than pain.