“Yes,” Diego said, looking me up and down, his gaze darting between me and Terry. “If I can live with that guy, I would much rather do that.”
“You don’t know him,” the social worker said, clearly concerned.
Diego shrugged his shoulders. “He’s already saved my life once,” he said. “What else do I need to know?”
“This could bring you a lot of scrutiny,” the social worker said. “And he’s a young man, he might not be a suitable placement.”
Terry leaned forward. “What about an older retired couple?” she asked. “My parents have been talking about fostering forever…”
I smiled at her, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach.
When we left the social worker’s office, it was clear that the process ahead of us was going to be complex, but that didn’t mean it was insurmountable.
After Diego had to gather the courage to speak to the social worker, they couldn’t deny his claims. We were going to find a way to make life easier for him, before he turned eighteen. And we weren’t going to give in to his parents demands.
I picked up my phone, scrolled down until I saw the lawyer’s number, and called her. “Hello?” She answered, almost immediately.
“Hello,” I replied. “I think you need to set up a meeting with the judge.”
“The judge? We haven’t even gone through depositions yet—”
“Yes,” I replied. “But the kid has spoken to a social worker and it seems like he wants to emancipate so his parents don’t have custody over him, which would make the lawsuit null and void, right? Since it obviously wouldn’t benefit him.”
She thought for a second. “I mean, I suppose,” she said.
“That’s why I said,” I replied. “Get us a meeting with the judge, okay? Then we can decide how to go forward.”
I could hear her thinking over the phone. “How did you do this?”
“Me?” I asked, laughing. “I didn’t do anything. It was all the kid.”
I hung up the phone before she could ask more questions. Diego was running ahead of us, and for the first time since I had met him, he actually looked like he was happy.
Terry looked up at me and smiled. “That was brave,” she said.
I smiled back at her, reaching for her hand. “No,” I said, bringing her hand to my lips and kissing it. “This is brave.”
I looked up to see Diego making a face. “Gross,” he said, sticking his tongue out. “Is one of you giving me a ride?”
I laughed. “Yeah, kid,” I said. “Hop in. I’ll drive you home.”
“Home? I thought we were going for lunch.”
We all laughed, and at that moment, everything felt like it was perfect.
EPILOGUE
2023
TERRY
“Hurry up,” I said to Noah, who was standing behind me, trying to do the zipper of my dress up. “We’re going to be late.”
“What if I don’t want to hurry?” he asked, leaning down and kissing my neck. “You look amazing.”
I giggled. “You always say that,” I said. He kissed down my neck, his kisses soft and steady, as he wrapped his hand around my waist.
He moved his head up and whispered in my ear. “Because you always look amazing,” he said. “Does it matter if we’re a little late? They’re going to celebrate you, right? So…”
“Spoken like someone who is used to having ceremonies to honor him,” I said, turning around and kissing him on the mouth.
“Everyone makes such a big deal of gold medals,” he said. “You’re actually saving lives, babe.”
I shook my head, smiling. I checked the clock on top of our bed and sighed. “I guess we have a little time. But you have to be quick.”
“I have to be quick?” he replied, sounding outraged. He grabbed my legs, and I jumped up so that I was practically wrapped around his waist. He chuckled, moving both of us toward the bed, throwing me down without even looking. He was so good at it, and he had done it so many times, but it always turned me on, no matter what. He always turned me on, just by grabbing, by throwing me around, by making me feel like I was so small and pliable in his arms.
It was super fucking hot.
It was always super fucking hot.
He leaned down and kissed me again. He was careful not to mess up my dress, then moved up and opened my legs by pushing against my knees. “You’re so fucking sexy,” he said. “Can I fuck you?”
“Yes,” I said breathlessly.
Unlike me, he had yet to get dressed, so all he had to do was take off his boxers. He let me look at his naked body for a few seconds, all gorgeous and muscular, and at his large and impressive erection, and he leaned down slightly as I moved my hips up to allow him access. He grabbed my panties and slowly slid them down my legs. I was already soaked for him, and considering the recent changes, I was even more willing to have sex than usual.
He lowered himself down and positioned himself in the right way as I reached to grab his impressive cock, guiding it inside of me and then moaning as he pressed himself into me, throwing my head back and biting down on my lower lip as he fucked me slowly at first.
He knew exactly what to do, he knew exactly how to fuck me to bring me to the edge of pleasure, and he was fucking me hard and fast now, looking right into my eyes, his mouth half-open. I could see beads of sweat on his forehead, and even as he continued to go faster and faster, pinning my hands down at my sides as our fingers intertwined.
“Fuck,” he said. “Can I—”
“Yes,” I said as my toes began to curl, pleasure spreading from the core of my body to the tips of my toes, to the top of my head, making me warm all over, little explosions of pleasure all over my body as we both reached the peak of our orgasms. His grip loosened and then he rolled over off me.
“Fuck,” he said, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “You’re so beautiful.”
I groaned. “My legs are jelly,” I said. “And we definitely don’t have time to shower before we go.”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there on time.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we always are,” he said. “We graduated as foster parents on time, and anyway, your parents are picking us up.”
“What?” I asked as I got to my feet. I looked at my hair in the mirror, which only needed a little fixing. “I thought we were going to—”
“I know,” he said. “But I have something important to talk to you about and I wanted our entire family to be there, you know, other than the whole community also giving you the award.”
“It’s not an award,” I said. He kissed me on the cheek. “It’s for all of us ER doctors, not just me.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to take attention away from the ceremony. I’ll do it later, when we go get food, just the five of us.”
I looked at him, wide-eyed. “Are you going to—”
“I’m not telling you what I’m doing,” he said. “But it will make it a little easier to become foster parents eventually.”
I blushed. “There’s something I need to tell you too,” I said. “But I don’t want to tell you in public.”
His eyes widened. “What?” he asked. “Wait, don’t tell me. I’ve noticed your boobs have gotten bigger.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying my best not to laugh. “That might just have something to do with my cycle,” I said.
“Right,” he said, hugging me close. “Does it?”
“No, Noah,” I said. “You’re going to be a dad.”
“And you’re going to be my wife,” he said as soon as I had finished speaking.
“You could ask,” I replied.
“I will ask,” he said, looking down at my face and kissing me. “But I have a feeling I already know what you’re going to say.”
I sighed, putting my head on his chest. “I love you, Noah.”
“I love you, too,” he said, then I watched him pause as he thoug
ht for a few seconds. “We need to get our kid infant swimming lessons.”
I laughed, kissing him again, and I didn’t care at all that we were going to be late again when he kissed me back even more passionately.
THE END
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CHAPTER ONE
Ari
I knew it was coming. I knew it.
I felt it, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t know if it was because I was living in denial, or just because the idea that it would happen again scared me. But I felt cramping, and then, maybe three minutes later, it had started.
Another period.
Another failure.
I knew that Roger had to be the first person to know. He was invested in this, maybe even more than I was. We had been lucky. It just hadn’t taken. We hadn’t had any losses yet. We had started going to a specialist, but the IVF process was still a way off.
Dr. Zaphyr had said that we were lucky we hadn’t conceived yet. She recommended a therapist to everyone whose pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. After she told us that, she stared. As if she wanted me to ask her to recommend a therapist.
But we weren’t there yet. We were trying, and that was all that we could do.
I went to the bathroom, fixed my tear-stained make-up, and sniffled a little before I went back into our living room. Roger was watching the TV—golf, I think—and he barely looked up at me as I slowly shook my head.
He didn’t say anything.
“Roger,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quivering.
He looked up then, and our gazes met for a long second. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I’d told myself before that I wasn’t going to apologize about this again. “I got my period.”
He looked back at the TV. He muttered something, but I couldn’t hear him.
“What was that?”
He looked up at me again. “Nothing,” he said, then straightened up a little bit. “It’s just, it’s not a fucking surprise, is it? Knowing you.”
I blinked. “You think I made this happen?”
He took too long to answer. By the time I heard his voice, I wasn’t in the living room anymore.
***
The divorce, my lawyer assured me, was going smoothly. I had no point of comparison, nothing to relate it to, and I wasn’t particularly interested in delving into the process.
As long as I got to keep what was mine, he could protest all he wanted. My friends all told me that I should be able to see what had happened between us as a blessing in disguise—you didn’t really want a kid with that guy, did you?—but it didn’t feel like a blessing. It felt like a slap in the face, like I hadn’t even managed to escape our relationship with dignity.
He had been the one to push for the child, and I always wanted to please him, but I had realized that I desperately wanted a baby, too. Divorce, it turned out, was a long, drawn-out process, and while there was a part of me that told myself it was archaic to worry about being past my prime before I got pregnant, I couldn’t afford to just go for it by myself.
And the idea of finding a man… it wasn’t just distasteful. It was as ludicrous as the moon being made of cheese.
I knew what I had to do. I had to keep my head down, keep doing my work, and worry about that, and only that. That was what my therapist had recommended. It was funny, I had ended up asking Dr. Zaphyr for a recommendation after all.
That was why I kept going to work, even though every time I interacted with a child, I felt a very particular and very insidious kind of sadness. I knew it wasn’t going to go away, but if I wasn’t able to bring my own child into this world, then the least I could do was make sure that the children around me were as happy and healthy as they could be.
“Who is coming in next?” I asked my assistant, who was dutifully standing next to me.
“Her name is Tatiana Wilde-Garcia. She’s three and a half.”
“Three and a half? For a well-child?” I asked her.
“The family just moved into the area,” Kelly replied. “They’re a bit—”
“Wait, so this is their first visit?”
“Not to our practice,” Kelly said. “They did request another doctor after seeing Dr. Dayleview for the first time.”
I blinked a little. “Did they say why?”
“They wanted someone a little more, uh, thorough.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Fine, okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to make a big show of it.”
“Yeah. The father is a little… he seems a little health anxious,” Kelly said, her polite way of saying that this father was going to be an off-the-wall level nightmare.
“Got it,” I replied. “Don’t bother going in and taking the history before me, then. I’ll handle that.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you certain, Dr. West?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I don’t want him to have to keep repeating the same stuff, and he’ll get the idea that I’m more attentive than Dr. Dayleview, which we all know is just not true at all. Just stick with me, Kelly, and take detailed notes. He might be one of those people whose anxiety is alleviated by knowledge.”
“Do you think so?”
I smiled at her before I knocked on the door to room five. “I mean, honestly, I can only hope,” I replied quietly before projecting my voice into the room. “We’re coming in!”
I opened the door without much warning. The little girl was walking around, looking at the ceiling, which was painted colorfully, and the dad was sitting on a plastic chair and watching her. I couldn’t see him that well, because his face was turned away from me, and he was slouching. I could tell that he was tall, because his legs were long enough that I almost tripped over him. He took a little while to reposition himself, looking up at me after what felt like forever.
The first thing I noticed about him, other than how tall he was, was how tired he looked. There were dark bags under his light eyes, and while it looked like he had tried to make an effort on his hair, it was clear that it had been middling at best. His clothes were neat, but as I trailed down to his feet, I noticed that his socks didn’t match.
“Dr. West,” he said as he stood up. He extended his hand toward me. “You come very highly recommended.”
I smiled at him as I shook his hand. I noticed how soft his palm was, but the tips of his fingers were calloused, and his nails were a little long. The handshake was just on the short-side of awkward before he stepped away from me.
I started to speak. “So this is your—”
“Yeah, my daughter,” he said. “That’s my daughter, and she’s sick, and I want to know what’s going on with her.”
I observed her for a little bit. She was a quiet little girl, a normal size for her age, with big eyes and a little smile on her face. S
he wasn’t saying anything, which I was a little surprised by, but when she caught my attention, she smiled and waved.
I smiled and waved back, going over to her and kneeling down. “Hi,” I said. “My name is Dr. West. What’s your name?”
“Tati,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Hi, Tati,” I said. “Your daddy tells me you’re feeling a little bad. Can you point to where it hurts?”
She shook her head, and I noticed that her nose was a little stuffed.
“Okay,” I said. “Do me a favor, okay? Your daddy is going to help you get on this table for me, and then I just need you to stay still so that I can help you feel better sooner. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded again. Her dad swept in, picked her up, and she smiled. She was fine before, but she definitely seemed to be doing better in his arms. He smiled back, but there was something about the way he was holding her.
“My assistant here is going to need you to extend your arm,” I said as I indicated Kelly. “And the machine is going to squeeze your arm a little bit. Just stay still so we don’t have to do it again, okay?”
“Heard that, Tati?” Dad said.
She nodded.
“She’s shy,” he said as Kelly got to work.
I turned to look at him. “She has a little sniffle, but she seems okay. Has she had a fever?”
“No,” he replied. “No fever.”
“Any dry cough or sneezing?”
He shook his head.
“What about loss of appetite?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s hard to feed a toddler.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I understand. Is she crankier than usual?”
He shook his head. “No, honestly, she’s always been a really easy-going baby,” he said. “Ever since… for the last few months, she’s been even more quiet than usual.”
“Right,” I said. “So you’re worried her attitude change is linked to her health?”
“Oh, no. Her attitude changed a while ago,” he said, looking up at me and raising his eyebrows when I didn’t say anything. “Her mom died. It’s been an adjustment.”
In Too Deep (Heart Lines) Page 11
