The Prodigal M.D. Returns

by Marie Ferrarella

  Shayne was picking up the slack wherever he could. This frenetic pace brought back memories.

  "Seems like old times, doesn't it?" Alison commented as she crossed another name off the schedule. Marianne Anderson was just exiting through the outer door, a supply of allergy medication in her purse.

  Shayne made a last notation in Marianne's chart, then set it down. All their exam rooms were filled. "Reminds me that the 'old' days were not always so good," he responded.

  He'd been running on empty for a while now.

  There'd been no time for lunch and, more important, no time to talk to Ben the way he wanted to. When Ben wasn't busy with the patients in the waiting room, he was looking in on Hannah. By Shayne's count—and it could have been more—Ben did that on the average of five times an hour.

  He'd heard Heather tell his brother, "If you charged by the hospital visit, I wouldn't be able to afford you." There had been gratitude shimmering along with the tears in her eyes.

  "Don't worry about the costs," Ben had told her.

  At least his brother was no longer in it for the money, Shayne thought, picking up the chart that went with room two. That was something. As for himself, much to his late ex-wife's anger, he had never been in it for the money. It had always been, first and foremost, about the patients.

  But Ben's philosophy had been to become a doctor and advance himself first. That didn't detract from his skill as a doctor, but it did take away from the kind of person he was. Or had been.

  With all his heart, Shayne wanted to believe that Ben had had some kind of epiphany while in Seattle. That his brother had suddenly discovered that life needed more substance to have real meaning. But he just didn't know if that was true. And the information he'd found out this morning just pushed the question of his brother's character further into the undefined, gray area.

  Suppressing a sigh, Ben made his way to room two.

  * * *

  Finally the last patient had left.

  Shayne had let Jimmy go home to his wife over an hour ago. He made April leave shortly thereafter. He carried on without them. The doors of the clinic were never locked while he was there. He never turned anyone away, so the Closed at 5 O'Clock sign rarely saw any real use. With luck, they finished by six o'clock. Usually later.

  It was after seven-thirty.

  He knew Sydney would be forgiving as she told him that he worked too hard. He could always depend on Sydney. If there'd been a life before her, he couldn't remember it. After wearily stripping off the white lab coat he wore, Shayne hung it on the other side of his door, then went to find Ben. As anticipated, his little brother was in the operating room with Hannah. The little girl had been floating in and out of consciousness all afternoon. He and Ben both felt it was better that way for the time being. It allowed her to heal without being subjected to the pain that accompanied recovery from a surgery.

  Shayne noted Heather had hardly moved since she'd positioned herself beside Hannah's bed shortly after the operation had been completed. She just sat there, holding Hannah's hand in both of hers. And praying.

  Ben glanced up at him as he entered.

  "Can I have a word with you?" Shayne asked softly.

  Ben nodded, slowly withdrawing from the room, as if moving any faster would have some sort of disruptive effect on Hannah and her mother. Easing the door shut, he turned toward his brother. It had been touch-and-go for a while. Tension still danced through him, but to the casual observer, he made himself seem calm and at ease.

  "I'm going to stay here tonight," he told Shayne. "Watch Hannah to make sure everything's going well. I was going to have her transferred to Anchorage General in the morning but Heather insists she doesn't want any other doctor attending Hannah except for me." A rueful expression came over his features. "I don't have privileges at Anchorage General yet." Signing up with the hospital hadn't been a priority. Now he wished he had.

  Privileges meant that a physician was allowed to use a hospital's facilities whenever he needed to have his patients stay there overnight. Both Jimmy's and Shayne's names were on the hospital roster, allowing them access to Anchorage General's state-of-the-art equipment.

  "I can fly her in for an MRI tomorrow to make sure nothing was missed," Shayne offered. His small Cessna was always gassed up and ready to take off for just such emergencies. "You and Jimmy can double up on patients until I get back." They could discuss that further tomorrow, as the need arose. Right now he had something more pressing to address. "Listen, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

  Ben stiffened. He knew that tone. Something was in the offing that, more than likely, he wasn't going to like. He stopped walking and crossed his arms. Whatever it was, he wanted to take it standing up. "Go ahead."

  "Before you left town the last time—" Shayne began.

  Ben anticipated what was coming next. Exhaustion and extreme concern turned his patience into a sopping-wet tissue, easily torn.

  "Damn it, Shay, what do I have to do to prove to you that I'm here for good?" he demanded, struggling to keep his voice low. "That I'm not the same person I was seven years ago?"

  Shayne's expression never changed. It was unreadable. "Well, for one thing, you might try letting me finish my sentences."

  Ben blew out an angry breath, getting himself under control. "All right, go ahead."

  "Before you left town the last time," Shayne began again, "was Heather one of your conquests?"

  Ordinarily Ben had never been quick to anger. But after the day he'd had, his patience was in short supply. He didn't like being judged and didn't care for any disrespect given to the women he'd been with at the time. On their behalf more than his, he took offense.

  "None of them were 'conquests,' Shayne," he informed his brother, his voice low and steely. "That's not how it was, and if you thought that something so low drove me, that all I wanted was to 'conquer' women, to put notches on a headboard or a belt, then I guess you never really knew me at all."

  Shayne frowned. "You're not answering my question, Ben. I'll rephrase it," he said tersely. "Were you and Heather intimate just before you left Hades with Lila?"

  He had never been in the habit of kissing and telling. Not even to the brother he'd once adored and whose respect he desperately wanted to win back. "That's none of your business."

  "No," Shayne agreed, "it's not." His next words set the wheels in motion to rock Ben's world. "But it might be Hannah's business."

  Looking over his shoulder toward the door of the room where the little girl lay, Ben decided to take this conversation farther away from possible exposure. He moved down the corridor and lowered his voice. But not his irritation. It had been a very long, emotional day and he felt about as close to the breaking point as he ever had professionally.

  "What the hell are you talking about, Shayne?"

  "Your blood type is B."

  He already knew that, having donated more than his share of blood over the years. "So?"

  "Hannah's is AB positive." Shayne watched his eyes for a reaction as he spoke. "Her mother's A positive."

  Ben banked down a wave of irritation. "Joe was her—"

  Shayne cut in. "Joe's blood was O. I typed him when I was trying to save his life after they dug him out of the cave-in." He enunciated every word carefully. "There's no way he was the father of that little girl. And Heather was as shy as they came." He got to his point. "But she did light up like a Christmas tree every time you were anywhere in the vicinity.

  "Did you sleep with her around the time that you left?" Shayne repeated. He saw the color drain out of his brother's face at the same time the confusion came into it. He had his answer. "You did." Another piece fell into place. "And you didn't know?" It wasn't quite a question. Ben looked too stunned by the news to have known that Hannah was his daughter.

  Shayne's words echoed in Ben's head as he tried to make sense of what he was being told. Of what had to have happened seven years ago. "You think I would have left Heather like t
hat if I'd known?"

  "I think that Lila had you so tied up in knots and so crazy about her that there was no telling what you were capable of back then." His eyes held Ben's. "Question is, what are you going to do now?"

  Stunned, reeling, Ben didn't know the answer. But he did know that the right thing would be to ask Heather to marry him.

  The funny thing was, until just now, he kind of thought that was the path he was on. Making his way toward asking Heather to marry him. Because he'd found himself falling in love with the woman and her daughters. Found himself wanting the kind of life Heather would give him.

  The kind of life his brother had.

  Home, family, love. Having space taken up in his bed by someone he wanted to see the moment he opened his eyes in the morning.

  But now everything was different. Not because a sense of responsibility had brought along a sense of confinement, of being hemmed in, but because Heather had lied to him. She had lied to him with her silence. He'd had a right to know that Hannah was his. Right from the beginning, he'd had a right to know.

  And he didn't believe for one minute that Heather had ever thought the little girl was actually Joe's. There was absolutely no resemblance. Hannah was delicate, like fine china. Joe had been a large, lumbering man with reddish hair. Hair like Hayley's.

  She'd been pregnant when he'd left town. That would explain why she had married the miner so quickly. A lot of things made sense now.

  And more didn't.

  Ben glanced back at Shayne and realized that his brother was silent, still waiting for an answer to the question he'd thrown out. "I'm going to talk to her."

  "Maybe now's not the best time."

  Cynicism washed over Ben. "There is no 'best' time to talk about something like this."

  "She's been through a lot, Ben."

  "And I haven't?"

  "Heather almost lost her daughter today. She did lose a husband several years back. She's worked herself to a frazzle, taking care of those girls and her mother. You've just had your ego bruised. I know it's a completely new sensation for someone like you, but now you're part of a fellowship in a very big club." The teasing note left Shayne's voice. "Go easy on her."

  Ben laughed shortly. The sound rang of irony, not humor. "This is something new, you giving me advice about women."

  "Not women," Shayne corrected. "A woman. You're smooth and suave and women have always lined up six deep to be with you, but you've never really had a relationship that had deep roots, Ben. That mattered. So, yes, I'm giving you advice because I'm lucky enough to have that kind of relationship in my life."

  Ben had no comeback to that. For a second he merely stood there, absorbing what he'd just heard. Shayne was right. His relationship, or whatever there was between him and Lila, had not prepared him for this. It had been based on mutual gratification, on grabbing everything they could from life and from each other. But in the end nothing had been forged, nothing had been built. And what there was, dissolved like a sugar castle in the rain. After a long moment Ben nodded. And then he went back into the room where Hannah was.

  Pausing at the door, he took a breath, then turned the knob and walked in.

  She was awake.

  Hannah's eyes were open. She had green eyes. Green, like his. Why hadn't he seen that before? Why hadn't he seen that when Hannah smiled, as she was trying to do now, she had a dimple in her left cheek, just like he had? Or that her expression, when she was thinking, reminded him of the photograph of him when he'd been a kid, sitting beside Shayne in their parents' living room?

  Hannah was his daughter. There was no doubt in his heart. She was his.

  A barrage of questions rose up in his mind, on his tongue. He wanted to hurl them all at Heather like rapid gunfire. He wanted to demand why she hadn't told him. If not then, why not now?

  But he couldn't ask any of those questions without upsetting Hannah. And first and foremost, the little girl was his patient. Even if she hadn't won his heart.

  Even if she hadn't been his daughter.

  After sitting close to the hospital bed, he swept away her hair from her forehead, smiling down at her. It would take a while before the color would return to her cheeks.

  "Hi," he greeted Hannah softly. "Welcome back. You gave us quite a scare."

  The smile on Hannah's lips quivered. She lacked the strength to sustain it. "Hi," she murmured.

  She could have died, he thought. Died before he'd ever known that she was his. He felt angry at almost being cheated. And angrier at himself that he hadn't instinctively known right from the start that Hannah was his daughter.

  "What made you think you were a bird?" he asked.

  The corners of Hannah's mouth drooped. She held on to her mother's hand. "I'm sorry."

  He didn't want her to think he was chastising her. He didn't want her to be afraid of him.

  "Not as sorry as we would have been if something had happened to you." He leaned in closer over the railing that kept her from falling out. "We all love you, Hannah. Your mom, your sister, your grandmother. And me," he added with a warm smile.

  Small, perfect eyebrows rose high on her forehead. "You, too?"

  "Me, too," he assured her, giving her other hand a squeeze. "So, I want your promise. No more flying off rooftops." And then he remembered what he'd been like as a boy. A broader range was needed. "Or off anything else for that matter. Deal?"

  "Deal," Hannah promised him. The very effort of saying the word ushered in exhaustion. Her eyes began to drift shut again.

  Very slowly Heather disengaged her hand from Hannah's. She gently tugged the blanket into place over her daughter. She was far from calm. Calm would take time. But her relief was beyond measure. When she looked over toward Ben, fresh tears sprang into her eyes. "I don't know how to thank you."

  "You could start with the truth." He'd decided not to say anything for the time being. But his hurt and anger over the deception had forced out the words.

  Heather stared at him as if he'd just lapsed into a foreign tongue. His words made no sense to her. She had been through an entire gamut of emotions today, and fear had yet to recede from her heart. The powerful emotion had had her in a death grip for the better part of the day. Hannah dying was unthinkable. She didn't know what she would do, how she would recover, if she lost Hannah.

  Now she wasn't going to. Thanks to Ben, that danger had mercifully passed. But now there was a new threat, a momentarily nameless threat forming right in front of her.

  Looking into his eyes, she felt the old dread return. The fear she had always lived with but had managed to bury somewhere beyond reach. A fear that, despite everything, despite the years, was never all that far out of range. The fear that Hannah's true paternity would come out.

  "The truth?" she echoed, stalling for time, praying she was just being overwrought and paranoid and that he was referring to something entirely different.

  "Why didn't you tell me Hannah was mine?"

  She was right. He'd found out somehow. She squared her shoulders as she raised her head defiantly. The time for silence was over. "You were gone. By the time I knew I was pregnant, you'd left town with Lila."

  And that was his fault. On so many levels. But that didn't negate that she'd continued to keep the fact from him after he'd returned to Hades.

  "But I'm back now," he pointed out. "And I've been back for two months now. Two months," he emphasized. "And during the last month, we've been seeing each other pretty much on a daily basis." A bolt of anger came out of nowhere and he struggled to control it. He didn't want to frighten her, he just wanted answers. Answers he could live with. "You slept with me, Heather, and you still didn't tell me?"

  "One doesn't have anything to do with the other."

  "Doesn't it?" he demanded, his voice rising. Ben paused to get it under control. He didn't want Hannah to hear them arguing. "I thought honesty was part of the equation."

  A defiance he'd never associated with her before rose into her eyes. "I did
n't lie to you."

  "No," he agreed, his voice mocking her, "you didn't come out and say Hannah was Joe's daughter, but you lied to me when you didn't say it. When you didn't tell me she was mine," he said.

  He wasn't going to make her feel guilty about that, he wasn't, she thought fiercely. She had her reasons. Reasons that put Hannah before her own desires. "I didn't want to ruin what there was."

  He narrowed his eyes, trying to understand. "Between us?"

  She shook her head. "No. What there was—is—between you and Hannah."

  "How could telling me that Hannah was my daughter ruin something?"

  "Because once you knew that she was, you would have felt guilty, or obligated, or wanted to leave town again because you felt hemmed in." She tried her best to make him understand. "You're like the wind, Ben. You come in, rustle leaves, stir things up and then you disappear. And that's okay, because that's you. But I didn't want Hannah ever to think that you were running out on her, that you didn't want to stay to be her father. It would have been hard enough for her to lose you when she just thinks of you as my friend. She's gotten very attached to you. Both the girls have."

  And so have I. Me maybe most of all.

  "And you're that sure I would run once I knew?"

  She chose her words carefully, not wanting to insult him, but not wanting to lie. Especially not now. "Not a hundred percent, no. But I didn't want you 'doing the right thing,' either."

  He could only shake his head, bewildered. "I don't understand."

  She smiled for the first time. A small, sad smile that went straight to his core. And made him feel like a heel, even though he didn't know why. "No, I don't suppose you do. Most women want to get married for the right reasons."

  "The right reasons," he repeated. "Enlighten me. What are the 'right' reasons?"

  "Because someone loves you. Because they can't exist a day without you there, sharing a name, a house, a love with them. You don't like being tied down, Ben. Being a father would tie you down." And he would grow to hate her. And perhaps even hate the girls. She couldn't bear that.