“Sort of because my best friend Cherise is a bartender here. I sit at the bar, and we talk when we can. But it’s packed tonight with the leftover Downtown Alive crowd, so, yeah. Sort of. But it’s cool.”
“So, when she’s busy, are you… just… alone?”
Wren laughed across the line. “Relax, doc, I’m not that pathetic. I used to work here, so I know practically everybody — all the staff, all the regulars. I’m pretty much at home.”
He could well-imagine that Wren wouldn’t want for company, especially male company. He pictured her indigo T-shirt with the quarter sleeves showing off her bougainvillea and hummingbirds. And the curve of her hips in that clinging gray skirt. The sight of her bottom perched on a barstool probably drew men in off the street.
“And the regulars at Agave have to be, what, like fifty and bald with excessive ear hair, right?” he asked hopefully.
Her laughter lit up his brain’s pleasure center. It was worth hearing, even if it meant he was dead wrong about the clientele.
“No ear hair in sight,” she said, sounding highly amused.
“Damn,” he muttered, trying to picture where she was. Agave usually had live music, and it had sounded like a band playing in the background when she answered. The bandstand was on the patio outside the bar. Between it and the outdoor tables, there was a small dance floor. Guys would see her sitting alone at the bar and ask her to dance. “Do you dance?”
“Sorry?” Only then did he realize how random his question sounded. Lee tried to recover.
“Do you like to dance?”
Wren paused. “Um… yeah, sometimes.”
“I love to dance,” Lee told her honestly.
“Really?” He could hear the smile in her voice, and it felt like victory.
“Yeah. Every chance I get. Live music, dancing — it’s the best.” Lee could easily imagine dancing with Wren. She was small, light, and she looked at home in her body. “We should do that. Soon.”
Wren laughed again, but it sounded skeptical.
“What?” he questioned. “You don’t think it’d be fun?”
“Hmm,” she hedged. “I just have a hard time picturing us together. On the dance floor.”
Lee frowned. He heard more beneath her words, and Lee sensed that whatever it was, he wouldn’t like it.
“I can totally picture us together.” He knew she couldn’t miss the conviction in his voice. And, she didn’t either, because she was silent for a moment.
“Yeah, but…” Her voice dropped away. “…people like you… and people like me…”
He was right. He didn’t like it. “What?” he pressed, frowning. “What about people like you and me?”
He heard her sigh over the phone. “They don’t really go together… I mean—” she stammered “—they don’t really work together.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, willfully playing dumb. “We’re two people. Just people. Why can’t we dance together?”
“Not just dance,” she corrected. “I mean anything.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So, you tell me,” she began, a challenge in her tone. “What would people think if they saw someone like you and someone like me out together? At a restaurant or on a dance floor? They would totally fuckin’ stare.”
“Well, yeah,” Lee said as though it were obvious. “They’d be thinking, ‘Look at that lucky bastard with that hot girl. Damn, I wish I was him.’”
Wren gasped. It was quiet over the phone, but he heard it. Even though he was pissed and battling her resistance, the sound of her gasp felt good. A moment passed.
“I should probably get back…” Her voice had lost some of its fight, but that didn’t mean Lee was winning, not if she was walking away. He certainly wasn’t ready to let her go.
“Where are you right now? Exactly?” Lee shut his eyes and waited.
“I told you,” she started. “I’m at Agave.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But where? Humor me.”
“Man, you’re weird,” she muttered, but he could hear the smile return to her voice. “Okay… um… I’m inside now. I came in from the patio to get away from the band. So now I’m standing sort of by the hostess station near the front entrance.”
Lee could picture it: the yellow and orange doors, the blue walls, the hostess stand to the left, the dry-erase menu board on the right.
“In the entryway, there’s a step that separates the foyer from the dining room,” he said, his eyes still shut. “Are you up or down?”
“Wow. Do you have a photographic memory? Down. By the front doors.”
Wren was still smiling, he knew, but her voice had softened. It pulled him closer. He wanted to be there with her then, and he couldn’t. But he liked knowing exactly where she was.
“Where are you?” she asked.
In his head, Lee was standing in the foyer at Agave, smiling at the girl covered in birds and flowers.
“I’m…” He opened his eyes to a near-empty cafeteria. Only a few of the other tables had patrons, and Lee had chosen one in the corner facing the lobby. “…I’m in the caf. At a table by myself. Eating a turkey avocado wrap that needs more avocado.”
Wren giggled across the line. “Okay, that cheered me up. At least I’m surrounded by old friends. And no shortage of avocados here.”
This made him laugh. “Have you eaten? Working nights always makes me hungry,” he said, taking another bite of his wrap.
“I just ordered some roasted corn grits and guac. It’s too late for much more than that, and I don’t plan on hanging out.”
Early night. That was good. Less time for her to dance with one of the many regulars who could see her in that skirt.
“Would you call me when you get home?” he asked, pushing his luck.
“No,” she said, but he could tell that she was trying not to laugh.
“Why not?” he teased. “I called you.”
“Big deal. You want a prize?”
“Yes, actually,” he said, matching her snark. “I’d like you to call me when you get home.”
He heard her breath let go, and a murmur followed. “Walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
“Yes, so that settles it,” he declared. He was teasing her, but Lee realized he wasn’t kidding at all. Over the course of about ten seconds, it had become of the utmost importance that she called him when she got home.
His reasons were both selfish and pure. He’d know she was alone. He’d know she was safe. He’d get to talk to her again.
Lee was about to repeat his plea when his phone chimed. But it wasn’t a simple ping or trill. It was Labor and Delivery. Lee knew this because of his selected ringtone for that department.
“Hey Ba-baby. La La La La La La La…”
“What. The hell. Was that?” Wren asked, shock and amusement clear in her voice.
Lee was glad she couldn’t see him blush. “Um… Pitbull? ‘Hey Baby?’” He went on through her laughter, trying to make the best of it, because if she hadn’t been laughing at him before, she was now. “‘Drop it to the Floor’? Featuring T-Pain?”
His absurd answer apparently sent her over the edge. “Oh, my,” she said with no small amount of irony. “If this is a sign of your taste in music, I think our chances of going dancing just vanished.”
“What’s wrong with Pitbull? Scratch that. We’ll argue about music later,” he said, cradling his phone between his ear and his shoulder and picking up his dinner tray. “Pitbull means I have a patient who’s ready to deliver.”
“What?!” Her shriek dissolved in laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.” He snagged the rest of his wrap and the unopened bag of chips before dumping the contents of his tray in the garbage. “Which means I have to get back upstairs. But this changes nothing.”
“What do you mean?” she said, still giggling.
&n
bsp; “I mean, you still need to call me when you get home.” Lee left the cafeteria and headed for the elevators.
“But—”
“Wren. Call me.” He reached the elevators as one was closing. He stuck his hand between the doors just in time. “Gotta go. Call me.”
But he didn’t hang up. Lee stepped in the elevator and waited.
“But you’ll be delivering a baby.”
“It’s faster than you think,” he told her, watching the doors close. “If Pitbull is paging me, Mama is ready to push. Depending on the nurse, she may have started pushing already.”
“Okay. I don’t want to hear anymore,” Wren said, sounding squeamish.
“Say you’ll call me.”
“Fine, I’ll call you.”
Lee smiled in triumph. “Bye, Wren. Go enjoy your corn grits and guac.”
“Bye. Go… be a doctor,” she said, clearly flustered.
He waited again, and this time she hung up. Lee stuffed the last of his wrap into his mouth and headed for LDR No. 5.
Ella Rose Knight was born thirty-two minutes later, and as soon as Lee got cleaned up from her delivery, he was called to LDR No. 2 with a patient he’d never met.
She looked like she was twelve.
“Meredith Ryan. Age eighteen. Thirty-eight weeks. Ten centimeters. One-hundred percent effaced,” Bev told him as he entered the room. Lynne, another nurse, finished breaking down the bed while Ashley, his OB tech, moved the instrument tray in place.
An older woman was at the head of her bed, but instead of holding the young mother’s hand, she stood with her arms folded.
Lee brought his eyes back to his patient and extended his hand. “Hi, Ms. Ryan. I’m Dr. Hawthorne.” He watched as her eyes drifted to his, and she raised her hand. Her look was empty, her hand clammy and limp. She had to be scared out of her mind.
“Meredith,” she managed.
“How are you feeling, Meredith?”
Her mouth opened just before her eyes cut to the fetal monitor, which signaled a contraction. “Numb…” she said.
Lee didn’t like the lost look in her eyes. He shifted his grip to her wrist to take her pulse. “Vitals okay, Bev?” he asked softly.
“All normal, doc.”
When he was satisfied with the strength of her pulse, Lee set her hand down on the bed and turned to the woman behind his patient. “Are you Meredith’s mother?”
The woman raised an offended brow. “I most certainly am not.”
Uh oh.
Lee cut his glance to Bev, who gave him a barely perceptible eye roll. “A relation, then?”’
“To the child,” she said, glaring down at Meredith’s belly, disregarding the girl completely.
Oh, crap.
A hostile force in the delivery room always spelled trouble. Labor usually stalled, and Lee wondered how long Meredith’s had taken so far and why he hadn’t seen her already tonight. Bev spoke up as if she read his mind.
“She was just admitted about an hour ago. Dr. Faulk had just enough time to administer the epidural.” She gave him a meaningful look. “Things progressed rather quickly after that.”
Lee understood immediately. Mercer had sent the unpleasant woman out while he’d performed the epidural, and he’d probably taken his time letting her back in.
“What’s your name?” he asked the woman.
“I’m Mrs. James McCormick,” she said with a sneer.
Lee ignored her ugly look and turned back to Meredith. “Is it your wish to have Mrs. McCormick in the delivery room?”
The girl’s eyes went round at his question, but it was Mrs. James McCormick who responded.
“My Jamie said I could be here, so I’m damn well staying,” she hissed. “Who do you think is going to be raising this child, anyway?”
One look at Meredith’s miserable face, and Lee felt his jaw set.
“Dr. Hawthorne, perhaps you should check her progress,” Bev suggested, her usual sass gone. “She was at station one two contractions ago.”
“Right,” Lee muttered. He crossed the small room to put on a gown and gloves before returning to his patient. The bed had been broken down, and a stool was positioned between the young mother’s legs. When he approached her, fear and helplessness crimped her brows.
“I’m just going to check you, just like at your prenatal appointments.”
Bev cleared her throat, meaningfully.
Okay, so no prenatal care.
“Just like Bev checked you before,” he added quickly. The girl’s eyes went wide. “It won’t hurt. I promise. You just might feel some pressure.”
Mrs. James McCormick made a sound of derision as he lowered to the stool. “You’d think she’d never had a man between her legs,” she muttered.
Lee shot back up. “Okay, that’s enough from you,” he said firmly. “Mrs. McCormick, I’m going to have to ask you to go to the waiting room.”
Mrs. James McCormick’s jaw dropped, and she took a step back as if she’d been struck. “That’s my grandchild in there. I’m feeding and housing this girl. I’m staying right here,” she said, her voice climbing with each word.
“We’ll let you know when the baby is safely delivered,” Lee responded, not bothering to hide his disdain. “Go. Now.”
“You listen to me—”
The monitor started beeping at that moment, signaling fetal distress. Lee’s eyes locked on the display and saw that Meredith was contracting again, but the baby wasn’t tolerating it as well this time.
“Ashley, call security. Have them escort Mrs. McCormick from the hospital—” Her gasp punctuated his words. Lee continued issuing orders. “Bev, Lynne, on the next contraction, help Meredith to push. We need to get this little one out.”
Ashley was on the phone before he’d finished, and Mrs. James McCormick was backing toward the door as the nurse started speaking.
“This is outrageous!” the woman roared, but she backed further out of the room.
“Ma’am, come with me please.” Lee knew this was Clifton from security. At the sound of his voice, Meredith’s water broke.
“Aw, yeah,” Lee muttered, smiling up at Meredith. “Babies don’t like stress. Take the stress away, and things right themselves.”
Another contraction started, and Lee watched the fetal heartbeat drop, but not enough to worry him. The nurses encouraged Meredith to push.
“It’s weird,” she moaned. “I can’t feel anything.”
“That’ll be the epidural,” Bev explained, helping Meredith to hinge forward and push.
On the next contraction, the baby’s head began to crown, but the fetal-monitor alarm went off again. At the same moment, Lee’s phone began to buzz in his pocket.
Wren. Lee smiled.
“Come on, Meredith, make it count,” he urged. “Your baby needs you to be strong.”
With the next push, the baby’s head was out, and Meredith was panting with exertion. Ashley suctioned the baby’s nose and mouth while Lee swept a finger around his neck. No cord.
His phone stopped buzzing.
“Okay, one more push, Meredith, and he’ll be born.”
Meredith was young. She was tired. And she was alone, but Lee could see that she was made of stronger stuff than she realized. She pushed once more, and the baby — a boy — slipped into his hands.
“Excellent. Just wonderful, Meredi—” The child’s hearty cry interrupted him, and Ashley wrapped him in a towel and carried him to his now weeping mother. Ashley was showing Meredith how to rub the baby to keep him warm and dry him at the same time when Lee felt a lone buzz from his phone — he guessed it was a voicemail — and his smile grew wider.
“What are you going to name him?” Lee asked as he cut the umbilical cord.
Meredith never took her eyes from her son. “Oscar,” she answered, beaming.
“I like it,” Lee said. “Strong name.”
Meredith just nodded, a look of wonder transforming her face.
After
Lee delivered the placenta and stitched the small tear Oscar had given his mother, Lee divested his gloves and gown and cleaned up. He congratulated Meredith again before ducking into the hall and reaching for his phone.
Indeed, his missed call and voicemail were from Wren. Lee tapped her name and ran his fingers over the hidden tattoo as he listened.
“So, I’m calling you,” she complained into his ear, “just like you asked me to — no, scratch that — just like you told me to… repeatedly. And just as I suspected, you’re busy. But fine. Whatever… I’m home. It’s about eleven o’clock, and I’m going to bed.”
She went silent for a few seconds.
“That means I don’t want you to call me back… So. Do. Not. Call. Back.”
She went silent again, and Lee thought she was about to hang up.
“And keep all staph and especially MRSA away from my tattoo. Goodnight.” And then she hung up.
Lee grinned. He loved how she called it her tattoo. As far as he was concerned, it was hers. And he wanted her to lay claim to a lot more.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AGNES WAS BREATHING in her face, asleep. And sunlight was only just soaking through her bedroom curtains. Her bed was warm, her sheets soft… and her body wanted slumber.
So why was she awake?
Buzz… Buzz… Buzz
Wren rolled over and grabbed her phone from the nightstand. She’d silenced the ringer the night before, but — unlike normal — she hadn’t put it on airplane-mode. Frowning at this break in her habit and still muddled with sleep, Wren squinted at the phone’s screen.
Dr. Leland Hawthorne
After he called her at Agave, Wren had added his number as a contact, but she’d put his whole name and title on purpose. Dr. Leland Hawthorne was way out of her league, and she needed to remember that fact.
Ignoring the flutter in her tummy at the sight of his name, she swiped the screen.
“Hello?” Her voice, husky with sleep, sounded strange to her own ears.
“Wren.” His voice, deep and rich, sounded tired, but happy.
“What time is it?” she complained, trying not to think about how nice her name sounded on his tongue. She heard him draw in a breath and yawn before he answered. She yawned, too.
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