by Janice Lynn
Please let me be wrong. Please.
He didn’t want his son ill. He didn’t want to explain to Chrissie how he’d misread everything their son had done that morning and ignored that Joss had appendicitis.
Dear God, please don’t let someone else he loved die on his watch.
* * *
“You thought I wouldn’t stop by the hospital when you’re finally not with him so we can talk?” Savannah gave Chrissie a duh look.
Chrissie blinked at her best friend. She’d clocked out and gone on break after her friend had shown up in the CVICU. They’d gone down to the hospital cafeteria. It was early, but Chrissie had grabbed a yogurt as she’d take this as her break. Thank goodness the unit was slow that morning so she could escape for a little while with Savannah.
Or maybe not so good as her friend’s expression warned she wanted every minute detail of the previous four days. She’d already called her mother, who was running a little late as Chrissie had caught her on her way out of her house, and given her the five-minute study-guide version.
“Um...no, I didn’t think you’d show up at work today. Would serve you right if I had you clock in and work the rest of the day,” she half teased. Part of her would like to beg her friend to cover the rest of her shift so Chrissie could leave and check on Trace and Joss. They were fine, of course. She was just being an overprotective mom. Besides, her mother would be with them soon. “Does Charlie have Amelia?”
Savannah nodded. “He’s watching her while I go to the grocery store and run errands. He says I need to be sure to take ‘me’ time.”
See—Savannah trusted Charlie with Amelia. A dad watching their child was perfectly normal. So why had Chrissie’s gut been cramping all morning?
“Confronting me at work falls under the category of ‘me’ time?”
Savannah shrugged. “Better than me showing up at your house with him there and wanting to know all the juicy details.”
“Agreed. Then again, if you wanted to pop by unexpectedly and check on him and Joss after you leave here, that would be fine by me.”
Not that she didn’t think they’d be fine. They would be. So why was she so nervous?
“You have to give him credit for being willing to watch Joss. Not all men would have volunteered for that so soon. That he wants to be an active part of Joss’s life is a good thing.”
“Joss isn’t used to him, though.”
“Joss is going to have to spend time with him to get used to him, Chrissie. Maybe it’s better if you aren’t there to run interference so they can get to know each other on their own terms. I hope your mom gives them some space.”
“He’s leaving the country in a matter of days.” Chrissie frowned. “Besides, whose side are you on?”
Savannah’s brow rose. “Is this a matter of choosing sides? You should want Joss to be close to his dad.”
A dart of guilt pierced her. “He’ll be leaving again soon,” she repeated. “But, you’re right. They need to spend as much time together as possible. I do want that, but...”
She did.
“But you’re scared and feel your relationship with your son is threatened by his very presence?”
“If I agreed, that would make me a terrible person and mother, wouldn’t it?”
“Or maybe it just means you’re human with normal fears and worries?”
Chrissie’s head felt heavy and she let her chin fall toward her chest. “He hates me.”
“Trace?”
She nodded, wishing she hadn’t eaten the yogurt as it felt thick and putrid in her stomach.
“He told you that?”
“No, but I see it in how he looks at me sometimes.” How he’d teased her that morning flashed through her mind and her cheeks flushed. That hadn’t been hate, but the chemistry between them didn’t make anything better. If anything it just added to the confusion.
“That blush tells me that’s not the only way he looks at you.”
“We have always had phenomenal chemistry,” she admitted, not for the first time.
“You’re sleeping with him?” Savannah sounded hopeful.
Chrissie shook her head. “He’s not so much as kissed me since showing up at my house.”
“But you want him to do much more than that?”
She sighed. “It’s no secret I find him attractive.” Remembering how he’d looked stretching that morning without his shirt made her think she was way underplaying how Trace affected her. She’d not been able to look at him because looking made her want.
“Then why aren’t you kissing him?”
Chrissie met her friend’s gaze. “What?”
“You said he hadn’t so much as kissed you. What about you? Have you kissed him?”
“No, of course not.”
Savannah’s gaze was piercing. “My question is why not?”
“Everything is so complicated. Sex would just make it more so.”
“How?”
“I’d think that was obvious.”
“Well, it’s not. How would sex make things more complicated? If you ask me, sex might make things better.”
“That’s because the man you have sex with loves you,” she pointed out.
“Trace doesn’t love you?”
“No,” she answered, but clamped her mouth shut before her next thought came rolling off her tongue, because it couldn’t be true.
She didn’t wish Trace loved her.
To wish that would make her have to question why she’d wish for such a silly thing. Especially when she knew he hated her for what she’d done. And that he was leaving. Last time four years had passed before he’d returned to the States.
She was saved from Savannah probing deeper by her cell phone going off. Something was probably going on in the CVICU where they needed her to return to the floor. She grabbed her phone, readying to head back to the unit.
“Hey, Mom, how are things there?” she said instead when it was her mother’s voice she heard.
“They aren’t here.”
Chrissie’s heart shriveled up in her chest. “What do you mean?”
“Joss isn’t here. Trace isn’t here. There’s not a car here. He’s taken him, Chrissie. He’s taken Joss!”
Her mother’s panic matched her own.
Trace had taken Joss. She’d only left him alone with their son for a few hours and he’d done the unthinkable. He’d taken Joss.
All the blood in Chrissie’s body migrated to pound in her temples.
What did she do? Call the police and report that her son had been kidnapped?
No. First thing she needed to do was call Trace. To see if there was a perfectly logical explanation for why he and Joss weren’t at the house, why he hadn’t let her know they were leaving.
“I’ve got to go, Mom. I’m going to call Trace to see why they aren’t there.”
At her comment, Savannah’s eyes widened.
“I’ll let you know what I find out,” Chrissie promised her mother, hanging up the phone, then meeting her friend’s eyes. “He’s not there. He and Joss are gone. Oh, God. They’re not there.”
Her insides were crumbling and Savannah moved to put her arm around her shoulder as Chrissie’s hand shook. Tears blinded her as she went to type in Trace’s number.
But before she could get the first number punched in, her phone rang again.
“Trace! Where are you?” she demanded when she saw who the caller was.
“He’s going to be okay.”
His first words didn’t reassure her. Nor did the loud whine of the siren coming over the phone.
“What’s wrong with Joss? Where are you? Why aren’t you at the house? My mom just called to say no one was at the house. What have you done?” Chrissie�
�s legs went weak and she grabbed hold of the table to keep from falling from her chair as she demanded, “I knew I shouldn’t have left him with you. What did you let happen to my baby?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TRACE WINCED AT Chrissie’s question. Not that he didn’t deserve her accusation and so much more.
How could he have been so blind to what was happening? He was a doctor and he’d missed all the signs. Had ignored what his son had told him because he’d thought Joss just didn’t want to go with him.
Then again, Kerry had died on his watch too. If he’d been paying closer attention, maybe he’d have noticed she was slipping, maybe her doctors could have bought her more time before the cancer stole her last breath.
With Joss’s not feeling well and lack of cooperation, texting Chrissie’s mom had completely slipped Trace’s mind. Which meant Chrissie had likely been in a panic before he’d said the first word. What he had to tell her wasn’t going to help matters.
“We’re on our way to your hospital by ambulance. We think Joss has appendicitis.” We being him and the paramedics who’d been waiting where the train had made an emergency stop. “I wanted to spend time with him and took him to ride the trains. We were going to ride, have lunch, and then be home long before you got off work. But things didn’t go as planned and Joss got sick,” he rushed out. “We should be there in—” he glanced at the paramedic monitoring Joss “—four minutes max.”
Once Trace had realized what was going on, his brain had finally kicked into gear and he’d called 911 as he’d stripped Joss’s dirty T-shirt and shorts off him. He hadn’t bothered to redress him, not with his temperature spiked so high.
A couple on the train with their older boys had moved up and offered to help clean up, as had the conductor, who’d radioed the engineer to alert him as to what was happening in one of his passenger cars. Trace hadn’t cared about the mess. All he’d cared about was the little boy who’d been sobbing in pain, asking over and over for his mother as the train had rushed forward to where Joss could be transferred to an ambulance.
While Trace held his hand, the paramedics had started an intravenous line and given Joss something to ease his discomfort as they rushed him toward the emergency room.
Chrissie chewed his ear some more and Trace let her for a moment, knowing he deserved her wrath. Then, he cut the call short so he could focus on his son, whose hand he still held.
“Mommy,” Joss mumbled in his sedated state.
“I called her, buddy. She’ll be waiting for you in the emergency room.”
She was.
The moment the back of the ambulance opened, Chrissie came rushing out of the hospital.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, her gaze assessing Joss on the stretcher as the paramedics unloaded him from the ambulance. “Joss, Mommy’s here,” she told him, rushing alongside the stretcher as they wheeled Joss into the hospital.
Trace kept up with the stretcher as well.
“Mommy’s here,” she told Joss over and over until the emergency-room nurse hugged Chrissie, pulling her back from the stretcher. “No,” she protested.
“They need to do imaging. You can’t be in the room. I’m sorry.”
Trace wanted to argue, wanted to say he and Chrissie could go in with their son, but he knew to do so would slow down everything.
“Come on, Chrissie. Let them do their job so Joss can get the best care as quickly as possible.”
Never had Trace felt a bigger failure than when Chrissie turned to him.
“Don’t you tell me what to do when it comes to my son,” she hissed at him. “I never should have left him with you. Never.”
* * *
Chrissie felt Trace’s flinch all the way to her core, but she couldn’t retract her words. Just as she couldn’t retract the things she’d said to him when he’d called her.
Seemed she was always saying something she wished she could take back when it came to Trace.
But the sound of the siren, knowing her baby was hurt, the sight of Joss’s little body lying on that stretcher, had undone her.
She liked to think of herself as an empathetic, compassionate nurse, but never had she experienced anything to prepare her for the pain and fear of seeing her child like that.
She’d lashed out at Trace.
Maybe because she’d already been in a panic, thinking Trace had taken her son, just as her father had run with her.
He hadn’t. He’d wanted to take Joss for a train ride. He’d wanted to give their son a fun day and had had no intentions of kidnapping him.
But Chrissie couldn’t erase the devastation she’d felt at her mother’s words that no one was at her house and she’d taken all her emotions out on Trace.
That had been an hour ago. Or a day ago. Or a week ago. Time had no meaning to Chrissie and with the way each second dragged by she’d believe years had passed since her son had been taken for emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.
She, Trace, her mother, and Savannah had been left in a surgery waiting area where the walls kept closing in around Chrissie. She had cried so many tears on Savannah’s shoulder that no doubt Charlie would think his wife had been caught in a downpour by the time she finally made it home.
Her poor mother was almost as big a mess as she was that she hadn’t gotten to Chrissie’s house earlier, that somehow this was all her fault for having run late.
Her mother had avoided Trace, other than to glare at him as if he were the devil, but Savannah had introduced herself, had hugged him, too, trying to ease his distress.
But not Chrissie.
Chrissie couldn’t bring herself to even look at him.
Because looking at him hurt.
Hurt because Joss looked like him.
Hurt because she’d verbally attacked him.
Hurt because she wanted so much more than what they had.
Hurt because he’d allowed this to happen to their son.
Logically, she knew he hadn’t allowed Joss to get sick, that appendicitis could just as easily have happened while he’d been in her care, while he’d been in Trace and her mother’s care at her house. But it hadn’t. It had happened while he’d been in Trace’s care away from their house when Trace shouldn’t have taken him anywhere.
How long had Joss’s belly hurt? Had he been trying to be brave in front of his father? Had he cried and Trace ignored him? Had the pain and rupture hit suddenly?
How much longer was this surgery going to take?
She prayed and prayed. Over and over. Please, please, please, let Joss be okay.
When she and Trace were called to a consult room, Chrissie could barely walk, but she refused his offered hand.
She couldn’t touch him, couldn’t feel, could only focus on Joss.
“How is he?” she asked the nurse showing them to the room.
“I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know any news on your son. I was buzzed and asked to put you in the consult room for Dr. Rodriguez.”
If something bad had happened, the nurse would know, right?
Then again, why wouldn’t they have told a patient’s family straight away that all was okay so they could quit worrying?
“Joss needs a blood transfusion,” the doctor said immediately upon entering the consult room. “He has a rare blood type and we, unfortunately, have had a run on that type today. I need to type and cross you both for a match.”
“I’m B positive,” Chrissie said, knowing her type from having donated at multiple blood drives over the years.
* * *
“It’s me,” Trace said, fighting the guilt inside him that he’d allowed this to happen to his son, that even now his blood was delaying his son’s care. “I’m O Rh negative.”
He was a much sought-after donor as any blo
od type could receive his blood, but when it came to him receiving blood his options were limited to only someone who was an exact match. Something that had been problematic and almost cost him his life in Yemen after his injuries. Apparently, he’d passed that along to his son.
“Take whatever you need from me,” he offered. He’d give every drop to save his son. Anything to help Joss. Anything to wipe the agony from Chrissie’s face.
Seeing her pain, hearing her sobs, as they’d waited on news of their son had torn his insides to bits. Had brought memories of Kerry and when she’d passed to the forefront of his mind. Memories of Bud and Agnes mourning their daughter. Memories of Trace’s own heart breaking at the loss of the first girl he’d loved. Guilt that he’d been there when she’d passed, and that he’d felt a failure ever since, that he should have been able to do something to save her.
Wasn’t that why he’d become a doctor? So he could save people? Yet no matter how many he saved, there were so many more he couldn’t.
He’d not even been able to spend a day alone with his son without something happening to him.
His gaze cut to Chrissie’s red-rimmed eyes, her swollen face, and emotion swamped him. If Joss didn’t pull through, she would never forgive him.
If Joss didn’t pull through, Trace would never forgive himself.
* * *
Once Joss was in recovery, the hospital staff allowed Chrissie and Trace back to see him.
Trace felt the curious stares. No wonder. Chrissie worked here. Anyone who knew her knew she was a single mom, yet here he was, claiming to be Joss’s father, giving blood.
Claiming to be Joss’s father.
He was his father.
He hadn’t needed a DNA test. Joss’s eyes had been enough to convince him. If he had needed more proof, Joss’s blood type would have been all he’d have needed.
“Joss, baby, Mommy is here,” Chrissie cooed over and over in a soft voice as she held Joss’s hand and waited for him to fully wake up.
His lashes fluttered.
“Mommy’s here,” she repeated.
“Mommy?” Joss said, his voice hoarse and weak. “My belly hurts.”
