A Daddy for Her Daughter

by Tina Beckett

  “Bilateral crackles.”

  “Can you bring the patient in?”

  He hesitated, then forged ahead. “She doesn’t want an ambulance. I told her that I would try to arrange a wheelchair transport.”

  “A wheelchair what?”

  “Are you busy with patients right now?”

  “Not right this second. Do you want me to come over and take a look?”

  Well, at least she didn’t sound irritated. “Would you? It’s the only way I can get her to agree to get checked out.”

  “I’ll be right there.” She paused. “And I’ll bring that wheelchair with me, just in case.”

  * * *

  Maddy arrived at the hotel ten minutes later. When she went into the lobby, the concierge was expecting her. He came right over. “She’s on the tenth floor, room 1021. Do you want me to go up with you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine.”

  Would she? She no longer knew.

  She walked over to the bank of elevators, pushing the wheelchair. It only took a minute until she was headed up to the patient’s floor. She had no idea how she was going to feel when she saw Kaleb’s face. She’d been actively trying to avoid him ever since he’d left her place. Her mom coming to spend the week with her had not only put a crimp in her schedule, but it had also brought a lot of other complications. She’d begun hinting that it was time for Maddy to start looking for love again. Reminders that Matthew had died a little less than a month ago had done nothing to deter her. And Maddy’s attempts to get her mom to change her mind about moving to Seattle had also fallen on deaf ears.

  Did she really want her mom here, messing in her business?

  She closed her eyes. Since when did she consider it messing?

  Since Kaleb?

  Ping!

  The sound came just as she was mulling over the answer to that question.

  She shook her head and pushed the wheelchair out of the elevator. And the man she’d been worried about seeing was in the hallway, waiting for her. The air left her lungs in a rush.

  It was bad. Just as bad as she expected. Her legs trembled and her mouth went completely dry in the space of a few seconds.

  The man did it for her. Really, really did it, in a way that no man ever had, and that included Matthew.

  She swallowed and forced as normal a smile as she could, even though her heart was beating out of her chest. “You called for a chariot?”

  “I did indeed.” He gave her a smile in return that was a lot warmer than hers had been. “Thank you. I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Within two minutes he’d filled her in on the situation. He then introduced her to Gloria and her husband. Kaleb hadn’t been exaggerating. The patient’s breathing sounded labored and there was a definite congested rattle to it. They needed to get her to the hospital. The woman was in no hurry to leave, though, despite how hard it was for her to catch her breath.

  Maddy sat on the bed next to her. “Tell me why you’re afraid to go.”

  Gloria’s eyes tracked away to her husband and then back. “My father went to the hospital. He never came out.”

  That she could understand. When she glanced up at Kaleb, he was standing by the big bank of windows looking out over the city.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “He had a heart attack. I was just a girl. They wouldn’t let me go into the room.” Her chin wobbled a time or two and she took a gasping breath that was half cry, half cough. “I never saw him again.”

  Maddy’s heart ached for the little girl Gloria had once been.

  “Are you worried that will happen to you?”

  “Dr. McBride said that Clyde could stay with me. Is that true?”

  She glanced again at the window, and this time, Kaleb had turned to stare at her. Was he wondering if she was going to contradict him? She would have promised Gloria the very same thing had she been in his position.

  “Yes, you’ll be in my department, so I can let the nurses know. He doesn’t have to leave your side except when they take X-rays, but he’ll be right around the corner behind the screen with the technician. Will that be okay?”

  Her husband laid his hand on her shoulder. “Tell them you’ll go, Gloria.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll go.”

  Within a matter of minutes, they had her loaded up in the wheelchair and Kaleb was pushing her out of the hotel toward the crosswalk. It could have been any family out for a stroll, but it wasn’t. And it was dangerous for Maddy to even allow herself to think along those lines. She had Chloe to think about. Just like Gloria, who had never been able to see her father, her daughter had never seen a real father. Matthew had not wanted to be a father. He’d been an unwilling sperm donor at best. At worst he’d been willing to kill his daughter’s mother, and possibly even Chloe. Who knew what he would have done had he got into her office? Would he have gone to Roxy’s and killed her too, before turning that gun on her daughter and then himself?

  Kaleb is nothing like Matthew.

  No, but, as good as he’d been with Chloe, there had definitely been moments when he’d seemed uncomfortable around her. As if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.

  Thankfully she was soon in the hospital, where she could concentrate on the task at hand: seeing what was going on with Gloria’s breathing. They’d barely got up to the radiology department, though, when Gloria gasped harder, her breathing suddenly going haywire before she slumped over in the wheelchair.

  “She’s in respiratory failure. We need to get her flat.” Kaleb was beside them in an instant, lifting the frail woman out of the wheelchair and bodily carrying her to the nearest curtained-off area, laying her on the bed. Maddy yelled for help and several nurses immediately stepped into the cubicle, going to work to get her stable. Her husband was in the room with her, and Maddy didn’t have the heart to ask him to step out. Not yet. She’d promised Gloria that he could stay, and she didn’t want to go back on that if she didn’t have to.

  “Do you want to intubate her?”

  “Let’s try NPPV, before we do that. She wasn’t febrile?”

  “She was, but she took ibuprofen, so her temperature is artificially lowered at this point.”

  Maddy nodded, her brain taking in that bit of information. “I still want to get an X-ray, but we’ll have to do it in the supine position.”

  They fastened the breathing mask over Gloria’s face, hoping the positive pressure ventilator would help avoid standard intubation. Within a minute, her color looked a little better. “Let’s get her into X-ray and see what’s going on.”

  Once they were in the room, they rolled Gloria to the side in order to put the film plate beneath her. They quickly set up the placement for the X-ray, pulling the tube down over the woman’s chest. They got it done in record time. The results were two nasty areas on her lungs, the right worse than the left.

  Pneumonia. Just as Kaleb suspected.

  “We need to start her on an azithromycin drip stat.” Maddy glanced at Kaleb, who had stayed with the pair throughout everything that had happened. She couldn’t blame him. Gloria had started off as his patient. “Can you get someone to make up a chart on her? Ask them to come up so that Mr. Lowell doesn’t have to leave her side.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Soon they had Gloria in a room and hooked up to an IV that would pump strong antibiotics directly into her veins and hopefully fight off the infection raging in her lungs. If they didn’t see improvement soon, they’d have to culture the bacteria and make some adjustments. Even as she jotted notes in her chart—with Gloria’s husband seated in a chair next to her bed in ICU—the woman’s eyes fluttered open. She immediately searched the room until her gaze fell on her husband’s face. She gave a small nod as
if reassuring herself that he really was there. Maddy wasn’t about to break her promise to the woman.

  She went over to the bed and explained what they’d done and what her treatment would be. Gloria seemed exhausted, but relieved. Maddy patted her hand. “You did the right thing by coming.”

  Gloria nodded again, her eyelids flickering shut.

  “How long will she have to stay here?”

  “Let’s wait and see how those antibiotics do, okay? We don’t want her in here any longer than necessary. But we want to send her home healthy.”

  Clyde wrapped his fingers around his wife’s. “Can I call my children from here or do I need to step outside?”

  “You’re fine. I made a promise to her. Let’s not break it.”

  When Maddy had a moment to look around, she realized that Kaleb was no longer in the room. Her heart squeezed with disappointment. Had she really expected him to stick around indefinitely? He had his own job to do. Still. Something wished he’d at least warned her he was leaving.

  Why? It shouldn’t matter.

  But it did.

  With one last goodbye to the husband, she slipped the chart in the holder and pushed out of ICU.

  “Hey, I thought you could use a coffee. You take it black, right?” The familiar voice startled her and she spun around to see Kaleb walking toward her, holding two paper cups emblazoned with the hospital cafeteria’s emblem.

  He remembered how she liked her coffee? She sighed and took the cup he offered her. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Taking a deep sip and letting the burn of the liquid anchor her back in the here and now, where life wasn’t always as frantic as it had just been for the last hour or so, she said, “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

  “I went to check on our accident victim from the kite festival.”

  That was right. Maddy had been following his progress as well. “Any news?”

  “He’s due to be released tomorrow, actually. The pin in his leg will be there for several more weeks, but he should make a complete recovery.”

  “That’s wonderful news. I’m happy for him. I wish everyone had as good an outcome as he did.”

  “Me too.” Kaleb rubbed the back of his neck. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked. “I know I acted weird the night we were together, and I’d like to explain why.”

  She glanced at her watch, shocked that it wasn’t one hour that had passed but three since she’d first set foot in that hotel room. “I’m due to go off duty, actually, but I want to stick close for the next little while and make sure Gloria is doing okay. But we can go out to the garden, if you want.”

  There were benches there, and, although there was quite a bit of foot traffic, the seating was designed so that families could discuss matters of life and death without being easily overheard by those passing by. It was the perfect place, although she couldn’t imagine what he wanted to say about that night.

  Did she really want to hear his reasons? Yes. Maybe it would make her feel better about the whole thing. And she was somehow glad of the fact that he’d stayed around and bought her coffee.

  He led her to the farthest reaches of the garden and motioned for her to sit, which she did. “First of all, I owe you an apology.”

  There was a pause as she tried to process exactly what he was saying he was sorry about. Spending the night? Or leaving the way he had? “Could you be a little more specific?”

  “My questions about Chloe. It was intrusive. Her...health...is none of my business.”

  It took her a minute to realize what he was talking about. “Her headache? I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Maybe you should.” He leaned hard against the backrest of the bench. He chugged back some of his coffee, throat working in a way that made her wince. Her brew was still boiling hot.

  Touching his arm, she waited until he put his cup back down. “What’s going on, Kaleb? Are you worried I’ll somehow try to pull the daddy card on you?”

  “What? Oh, hell, no.”

  If anything, he looked even more uncomfortable, as if that was exactly what he’d been thinking. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not looking for a serious relationship. I don’t want Chloe growing to love someone who isn’t going to be a permanent part of my life. I thought we’d already settled that?”

  “We had. I mean...I just wanted to explain why I made such a big deal over her headache.”

  Had he? Maddy certainly didn’t remember it that way. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not. But I want you to know why.” He dragged a hand through his hair and then turned back toward her. “My daughter had headaches. Terrible ones.”

  Daughter? Maddy’s mind churned to life at the unexpectedness of his words. She’d guessed that Kaleb had been married at one time, but he’d never once mentioned a child. But some of his behavior at her apartment made sense now. “Does she still have them?” Maybe he was going to suggest Chloe go to his own daughter’s doctor.

  “No, she doesn’t still have them.” His throat moved. “She died.”

  Shock held her immobile for a minute, and she actually had to shift her body a couple of times before she located her voice. “Oh, Kaleb, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “I never said anything, that’s why.” He rubbed a thumb over the rim of his cup. “She had cancer. Only we didn’t know it. I kept...” He stopped. Took a deep breath. “I prescribed painkillers. Took her to a pediatrician while on vacation who assured me that a lot of kids her age get headaches. It was part of her circulatory system growing and changing. She’d grow out of them. Only she didn’t. They just got worse.”

  Maddy’s heart squeezed so tight she feared it would stop beating altogether. The reason for his reaction to Chloe’s headache was horrifyingly clear now. She took a couple of careful breaths, trying to keep them steady. The last thing she needed was for her asthma to act up.

  She tucked her hand inside the crook of his elbow and laid her head on his shoulder, needing to give him comfort and not sure how to. Was there really anything that could ease the pain of losing a child? “Was it very long ago?”

  “Five years.” His bicep tensed beneath her hand. “My wife trusted me. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake. It took a picture snapped at Christmas to raise the alarm. The dreaded red-eye effect. We laughed about it, planning to edit the image. But when I went to do just that a week later, I got to Grace’s eyes and realized one of them glowed white instead of red. I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. And I knew. I knew.” He paused as if gathering his thoughts, or maybe just to gather his courage to finish. “We went back to the doctor—a neurologist here at West Seattle this time. She diagnosed Grace with an aggressive form of retinoblastoma. It had already metastasized to her brain. Within three months she was gone, despite trying every treatment available.”

  The cure rate for retinoblastoma was pretty good, with the removal of the affected eye, but the aggressive types had a dismal prognosis. And those were normally inherited.

  “And your wife?”

  He gave a hard laugh. “She said she didn’t blame me. Which was kind of ludicrous, since I blamed myself. Not only could I not diagnose my own child, I had a grandfather with a prosthetic eye. It should have tipped me off, but it didn’t. I never put two and two together until after she died.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Kaleb. You had your daughter checked out. More than once.”

  “You don’t understand. I gave it to her. Handed it to her on a silver genetic platter.”

  Maddy swallowed, trying to find the right words and failing. “You didn’t. You didn’t even know it was in your family. People aren’t routinely screened unless there’s a reason.”

  What it could me
an, though, was that Kaleb might not be willing to risk having another child. She doubted she would. That made her chest hurt all the more.

  “It could have been prevented, if I’d known.”

  “How? Would you have chosen not to have her?”

  “No. Grace was...” His voice had an ominous wobble to it. “She was my life. Afterward, Janice couldn’t... She never looked at me the same way ever again.”

  Like Matthew, once he’d discovered she was pregnant?

  No, this was nothing like that. But her lungs burned at the thought of Kaleb dealing with the collapse of his marriage even while he mourned his child.

  Maddy set her cup on the bench beside her so she could wrap her other hand around his arm and hug it close. “I’m so, so sorry, Kaleb.”

  “I just wanted you to understand why I butted in the way I did.”

  “What can I do to help?” She wasn’t sure what else to say. She allowed her fingers to stroke up his arm, trying to give whatever comfort she could.

  He turned his head, meeting her eyes. “Somehow, I think you already did. I’ve never told anyone the whole story. Until now.”

  The brown had deepened slightly and his gaze dropped to her lips before coming back up. Her breath stuttered in her chest. He was thinking about kissing her?

  Probably not.

  Or maybe he was.

  Suddenly, it didn’t matter. Because she was going to take matters into her own hands. And right now, it had nothing to do with comforting him, or pitying him. It had everything to do with the way this man made her feel, whether he was happy, angry or mired in a pit of grief. She wanted him. Needed him. And if there was the slightest possibility that he felt the same way about her, she was going to grab it with both hands and hold on.

  With those thoughts running through her head, Maddy slowly stretched up and touched her lips to his.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE DOOR SLAMMED open to her apartment and in an instant Kaleb had her trapped against the foyer wall, his mouth slanting over hers in a kiss that robbed her lungs of breath. Then he was shoving the top to her scrubs up and over her head, letting it fall to the ground. Her bra soon followed.