The Surgeon's Baby Bombshell

by Deanne Anders

  “She was,” she said.

  He went to hand her another board, then stopped when she didn’t reach for it. She was staring off into the warehouse as if she could see her mother as they placed the crown on her head. Then she blinked and turned back to him, taking the board from his hands.

  “What about you? Can you see your parents dressing up and riding on a float through town?” she asked.

  “My parents?” he said. “They were shocked when I told them I was moving to New Orleans. The only thing this city is known for in my part of Georgia is Bourbon Street and getting drunk.”

  “I hope you’ve told them about all the other things we have to offer. Have they visited?” she asked. “I’m sure they’d love it if they did.”

  “They’ve visited a couple times. Last time I took my dad to a Saints game, and my mother browbeat one of the chefs at the hotel where they were staying into giving her his French toast recipe, so I figure they had a good time,” he said.

  He turned to the last board.

  “What about siblings? I’m an only child myself. What about you?” she asked.

  “I have a brother. He visits when he can,” he said.

  He looked down at his watch as he noticed the other volunteers starting to pack up their tools and was surprised to see how fast the time had passed. He’d been dreading tonight since the day Dr. Guidry had sentenced him to working on the float project, but he’d actually enjoyed helping to tear down the old float, and was looking forward now to helping put together the new one.

  More surprising to him was the fact that he’d enjoyed the time he’d spent with Frannie. There’d been no disagreements about a patient’s care, no arguing over the right path to take to help a patient. They’d actually been able to hold a pleasant conversation for more than a couple minutes. But now she was starting to ask too many questions. She didn’t need to know about his parents or any of his family. That would just lead to other questions that he didn’t want to answer.

  It was time to go.

  He looked over to where she stood now, handing the used boards to someone on the ground, and moved to help her. They quickly had the stack moved down.

  They both stood then, and looked around at the warehouse. Everyone seemed to be getting ready to leave. Then he turned and looked back at the trailer bed, now bare of crazy-colored dogs and oversized flowers. They’d accomplished a lot in one night.

  “Not so bad for your first time,” Frannie said as she too looked over to the portion of the trailer they had stripped.

  They headed down the ladder, then walked over to Mrs. Guidry, who was standing by the entrance as she thanked everyone for coming. They stopped and said their goodbyes, then stepped outside.

  “So, are you coming back next week?” Frannie asked.

  “Do I have a choice?” he said, and then regretted it when the smile on her face disappeared.

  It wasn’t her fault—at least not solely. He’d had as much to do with drawing the attention of Dr. Guidry as she had.

  “Yes, I’ll be back,” he said. “And thanks for your help.”

  “I didn’t do anything except stack some boards,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t have had a clue about what was happening if you hadn’t been there to explain things. The only part of Mardi Gras I’ve ever seen has been in the ER, when some overly brave teenager decided to climb a tree to get a better view of the parade. It’s interesting to see what happens behind the scenes. It’s a lot more work than people think.”

  “It is. So, I’m sure I’ll see you around the hospital, but if not I’ll see you here next week,” she said, and she walked out into the parking lot opposite the one where he had parked.

  * * *

  Frannie welcomed the warm September air as she headed for her car. While others complained about the heat, she loved it.

  The years she had spent in Boston during her residency had been miserable. She had learned early that she wasn’t a fan of freezing temperatures and, while she had enjoyed looking out of her small apartment windows and watching the snowflakes fall, driving in it had been a nightmare. She had been thrilled when she’d been able to leave the cold winters behind her and return to the balmy fall temperatures of her home town.

  New Orleans was a town like no other, with its Deep South history and a hospitality that rivaled that of anywhere else in the world. She had sworn she would never leave again.

  Her outpatient practice was slowly building up as she earned a reputation in the community, but her heart was still in helping those children who needed acute care in the hospital. She’d managed to pair the two of them together well, and being able to follow her young patients after they’d been discharged from the hospital gave a continuity of care that they needed.

  She had long-term plans for working with children coming into the hospital after suffering adverse events, and she knew a good relationship with Ian and the other doctors on the pediatric floor was necessary for her to give her patients the best care available.

  She had seen the logic in Dr. Guidry’s insistence that she and Ian worked together. They needed to work better as a team, and tonight had been a good start to that. She hadn’t made a lot of leeway with getting him to talk about himself, but it had been a start.

  Her shoe hit a rock and she stumbled and fell. The asphalt bit into her hands and pain tore through her knee, the sting of it bringing tears to her eyes as she worked to get up off the ground.

  A set of headlights illuminated her and a large truck—one she recognized from the doctors’ parking lot—stopped beside her.

  “Are you okay?”

  The deep voice came from behind her.

  “I’m fine,” she said as she stood, forcing her good leg to take her weight and keep her upright.

  She felt the sticky wetness of blood seeping through her jeans and for a minute thought she might be ill. No. She would not do anything as embarrassing as throw up in front of Ian.

  “Let me see,” he ordered, and he took out his phone and hit the flashlight app, then ran the light down her body.

  A quarter-sized hole cut across one knee of her jeans and a dark spot that seemed to be growing spread across the area. Bending down, Ian started to roll her jeans up over her injured knee.

  “Ouch,” she said as the rough material was peeled away from her skin.

  “You’re going to need to get this cleaned out. It probably needs stitches, but I need to see better.”

  The thought of a needle and sutures being pulled through her skin made her knees feel even weaker. Her father would be ashamed if he could see her now.

  “Come on,” he said. “I have some supplies at my house.”

  “Your house? Why would I go to your house?”

  “Do you have anything at home to close that with?” he asked as he pointed the light from his phone toward her knee.

  “No,” she said.

  Of course she didn’t have anything to close up a cut—and even if she did she wouldn’t be able to do it without looking at the blood seeping from it.

  “Unless you want to go sit in the ER all night—or ask your father to fix it,” he said.

  And have her father rub her nose in the fact that if she had become a surgeon she could have taken care of it herself? Though, really, how could anyone stitch up their own knee?

  “No. If you don’t mind taking care of it I’d appreciate it. I can follow you to your house,” she said, and she tried to put pressure on her knee.

  A hiss escaped her lips as the pain increased as she tried to take a step. It was only a cut. She needed to get a grip. She straightened, then started limping to her car.

  “You’ll have to ride with me,” he said. “You need that closed before you try driving with it.”

  Ian motioned toward his truck, then lifted her up in his arms as she held her knee out
straight.

  “Put me down. It’s just a cut. I can walk,” she said.

  “You weren’t doing such a good job of that. You need it sutured and wrapped before you walk on it or it’s just going to bleed more,” he said.

  The thought of blood running down her leg quieted her—but could anything be as awkward as having someone carry you around as if you were helpless? And, having never been carried before, she had no idea what to do with her arms. Put them down by her sides? Hold them up out of the way?

  Of course in the movies she would wrap her arms around his neck, but this was definitely not the movies, and her arms weren’t going anywhere near his neck. Even though it was a muscular neck, attached to even more muscular shoulders, and a hard chest that she wanted to lay her spinning head against.

  She gave herself a shake and made herself concentrate on the pain in the knee—which was much safer than thinking about Ian’s body, though not nearly as stimulating.

  He carried her around to the passenger side of his truck, then put her down and opened the door, and waited till she’d climbed inside before going around to the driver’s side.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHILE THE DRIVE to Ian’s house was quiet, it was also short, with the majority of people now home in their beds. An awkwardness seemed to hang between them that hadn’t been there while they had been working together in the warehouse.

  When he stopped in front of a two-story row house, just outside of the garden district, she opened the door and slid out of the truck, hobbling to the sidewalk before he could get around to her.

  It was too dark to see much of the outside of the house, but when he opened the front door the inside was a total surprise. Stacks of Sheetrock and lumber lined the walls of the entrance, and sawhorses sat in the middle of what must be the living room. The walls were open to the studs, and a coat of dust covered the old wood floors.

  A high-pitched screech came from the stairs, where a cat sat amongst pails of paint. Black and white, with patches of hair missing all over its body, it glared down at them with its one eye.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s the ugliest cat I have ever seen,” she said.

  “He came with the house,” Ian said as he walked up the steps and bent down to give the pitiful-looking creature a scratch behind its ear.

  “He looks really angry,” she said.

  “I had him fixed,” he said, a slight smile tugging at his lips.

  She couldn’t help but laugh as she looked at the man in front of her and the angry cat. A match made in heaven, she was sure.

  “What’s his name?” she asked as she limped across the dusty floor.

  “Church,” he said, and he disappeared into an upstairs room before returning holding a denim button-down shirt.

  He handed her the shirt, then pointed toward a small door at the bottom of the stairs. “You need to take off those pants. You can change in there.”

  “But...” He wanted her to take off her pants? “Why...?”

  “I can’t work on that cut with those jeans clinging to your legs,” he said.

  Holding the shirt, she limped into a small powder room and shut the door. While the shirt he’d given her would barely cover her thighs, she had to admit that it would be better than the fitted tee shirt she wore, which barely came to her hips.

  Maybe she should have gone to the ER. Surely one of the doctors there would have taken care of her cut without her having to wait, and at least then she could have changed into a hospital gown. She held the shirt up in the mirror. At least it didn’t open in the back.

  She looked down at her jeans for the first time since they’d come inside and groaned. A dark stain of dirt and blood now covered her right knee. Thankful that the cut seemed to have quit bleeding, she toed her sneakers off onto the black and white tiled floor and then pulled the jeans off, being careful not to let them rub against the cut and managing to keep her eyes off the blood she knew would outline it.

  She saw a bloodstain on her tee shirt. How had that happened?

  She pulled it over her head and set it aside with her other clothes.

  She stood in the bathroom and looked into the gilded mirror hanging over the small sink. She had dresses that covered less than the shirt she now wore, but still she felt uncomfortable, standing there in Ian’s bathroom dressed in his shirt.

  “Are you coming out?”

  The man she was hoping had forgotten about her was calling from the other side of the door.

  “Do you need help?”

  She stepped out into the living room, then looked down at her bare toes.

  “Going barefoot on a construction site isn’t very smart,” he said.

  She went back in and slipped her sneakers on.

  “Come on,” he said, and he led her through a door covered with a plastic tarp hanging over an arched entrance.

  If the front room of the house had been a shock, the next room was a pleasant surprise. Behind the tarp separating the rooms was the most amazing kitchen she had ever seen. Dark mahogany cabinets lined the white walls and white marble covered the counters. The room was furnished with large stainless steel appliances and white subway tile had been used as a backsplash against the walls. A large white island sat in the center, and the whole room was immaculately clean—something she couldn’t understand with the combination of sawdust and Sheetrock dust she had seen in the other room.

  Before she could get over the shock of seeing the room, Ian leaned down, picked her up and sat her on the island.

  “I’m not one of your patients, Ian. You don’t have to pick me up,” she said.

  Not that it had seemed like a strain for the man to lift her. It had been more of a strain on her as she’d tried to keep her heart from thundering out of her chest when she had felt his hands on her waist, his body close to hers. He’d lifted her as if she weighed almost nothing, and her scale told her every morning that wasn’t true.

  “It’s a nice house,” she said.

  Maybe if they could talk like they had earlier, while working on the float, she would be able to relax.

  “It will be when I finish with it,” he said.

  He held her leg out while he examined her knee, bending it back and forth. She pretended to be fascinated by his kitchen as she looked everywhere except at the dark head bent above her knee.

  “You’re doing the work yourself?” she asked.

  She had heard nothing but good things about Ian’s surgical skills, and she knew she could trust him to take care of a little cut. Still, it was a cut which meant the possibility of more blood. Which meant the possibility of making a fool of herself—as if tripping and busting open her knee hadn’t.

  “Yeah... Hold on, I’ll be right back,” he said, and then walked to the back of the kitchen and opened a large door.

  She glanced around the kitchen again, then looked down at the classic black and white pattern on the floor. It went perfectly with the remodeled room, and she wondered if it was original to the home. As she looked back up she glanced at her knee, where the gash lay open and covered with mostly dried blood.

  The checkerboard tiles began to spin. No. Not now. Not in front of Ian. She couldn’t do this in front of him. It’s only a little blood, she told herself. You aren’t going to pass out over a little blood.

  She rested her head on her hands and pinched her eyes closed. Maybe if she ignored both the blood and Ian they would both go away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She jumped and looked down to where he bent his head once more, examining her knee.

  “I looked at it,” she said, her words muffled as she laid her head back down in her hands.

  “At what?” he said.

  She pointed down at her knee without lifting her head.

  “It’s not that bad,” Ian said. “I can p
ut a few stitches in it. I have some suture and some sterile needles.”

  “Stitches...? Needles...?” she said as she looked up at him. She felt the blood once more rush to her toes and her stomach turn queasy.

  He grabbed a metal trash can and pulled it close by. Smart man.

  “Or I could use some liquid stitches on it,” he said.

  “I like the sound of that. I mean, that would be easier for you, right?” she said as she forced herself to sit up straighter. She was acting worse than one of his pediatric patients. He must think she was crazy. “I mean, I’m okay with whatever you want, but it sounds like liquid stitches would be best.”

  Her words came out firm and confident, but she couldn’t help but eye the trash can. She watched him move it closer. She wasn’t fooling him.

  “Liquid stitches it is, then,” he said.

  She watched him as he began opening packages and bottles.

  “So, how did the daughter of one of the nation’s leading cardiovascular surgeons end up in psychiatry?” he asked. “I would have thought you would follow in your father’s footsteps.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke? I would have made the worst surgeon ever!” she said. “I don’t like blood, needles—none of it. No, wait—that’s not true,” Frannie said. He might as well know the worst of it. “I absolutely hate the sight of any of those things. I’m sure you’ve heard about the time my father brought me into the operating room in my junior year of pre-med.”

  “No, I haven’t.” he said.

  She watched as he picked up a bottle of saline from beside her, then felt the cool flow of it over her knee and the scratch of a sterile four-by-four pad as he cleaned the cut.

  “I’m surprised. It was the talk of the hospital for months. It was awful. I didn’t last fifteen minutes in the OR before I got sick. My dad tried to keep it quiet, but you know how things get around that place.”

  Her knee jerked at the sting of the antiseptic, but she refused to pull away.