Small-Town Dad

by Jean C. Gordon

  Anne turned from the bed and Neal took her hand and squeezed. They were in this together.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as the doctor reached for the cubical curtain.

  “It may be pneumonia. The X-rays will tell. I’ll be back to talk with you after the report. We’ll probably admit him.”

  Anne gripped Neal’s hand. “Okay. Thank you.” She sank into the molded plastic chair next to the bed.

  Neal rubbed his thumb against the top of her hand. “Pneumonia. Poor little guy.”

  “I should have—”

  He released her hand and pressed his index finger to her lips. “You did fine. You got him here and they’ll take care of him. Everything will be all right.”

  “Ian McCabe?” The transportation aide pulled the curtains back.

  “Yes,” Anne answered in a rusty voice.

  The man checked his clipboard against the wristband the nurse had put on Ian and asked for his date of birth. He positioned a stretcher next to the bed and lifted Ian onto it.

  Anne shot out of the chair to stand at the end of the bed next to the stretcher.

  Ian made only a feeble protest as the aide gently strapped the belts over him.

  “You can put his things in this bag.” The aide handed Anne a plastic bag with a tag that matched Ian’s wristband.

  Neal took it from her and packed Ian’s snowsuit, hat and mittens. He handed it back and the aide placed it on the bottom of the stretcher.

  “Follow me.” The aide pushed the stretcher out of the cubicle and emergency room with Anne right behind.

  Neal gathered her and his coats and quickly caught up. As they walked in silence to the X-ray department, Neal prayed that the words he’d spoken to Anne in the emergency room had been the truth. Ian was so little. Autumn had had all of the usual childhood diseases and mishaps, but he’d never had to take her to the hospital. He gazed at Anne’s pale profile. Ian had to be all right.

  * * *

  Neal paced behind her in Ian’s hospital room in the children’s unit. Poor baby. He looked so small against the stark white sheets of the hospital bed with the IV bag looming over him.

  “Where’s the doctor?” Neal stopped behind Anne’s chair and dropped his hands to her shoulders.

  She glanced up at the clock. They’d been in here seven minutes. It seemed like an hour. Before she could say anything to him, a nurse wheeled in a small table with some sort of device on it.

  “I’m Tammy. I’ll be Ian’s nurse tonight. This is a nebulizer.” She motioned to the device. “Dr. Carson prescribed it to help open Ian’s airways.”

  “Then he has pneumonia,” Neal said.

  “The doctor will be in shortly to talk with you.”

  Neal squeezed her shoulders, an action Anne figured was as much to reassure himself as to reassure her. She didn’t know how she’d ever be able to thank him enough for being here. He hadn’t had to come or stay. She looked up over her shoulder at him and glimpsed a momentary expression of helplessness before he regained control of his features.

  The floodgates of her heart opened. She loved him, and he cared for her on some level. She knew he did. She returned her gaze to Ian. Maybe they had a chance for something together after all, even if it were only friendship. She could live with that—for now.

  The nurse unwrapped a face mask from the tubing attached to the nebulizer. She placed the mask over the sleeping child’s nose and mouth and turned it on. The machine’s whirring sound woke Ian and he pulled at the mask.

  “Whoa, buddy. You need to leave that on.” Neal strode over to the bed. “It’s medicine to make you better.”

  Ian pawed at it again.

  “You should see yourself. All the puffy white smoke you’re making. You look like the dragon in your storybook.”

  Ian stopped pulling at the mask and raised his eyes to view the smoke drifting up.

  “Aunt Annie, why don’t you take a picture of Ian with your phone so he can see tomorrow after the medicine has made him feel all better?”

  Anne blinked the moisture from her eyes and retrieved her phone from her coat pocket. “Is it okay?” she asked the nurse, remembering the many signs posted on the hospital walls saying to turn off cell phones.

  “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  Anne clicked a couple of photos of Ian, along with one of Neal leaning over and chucking Ian under the chin.

  The nurse checked the settings on the nebulizer. “Like I said, the doctor will be in soon. If you’re going to stay, the chair folds out to a cot and I can bring in another one from another room.”

  “We’re going to stay,” Neal said.

  “I’ll go get the chair.” The nurse left.

  “Ian has pneumonia. How could she think we wouldn’t stay? He’s hardly more than a baby.”

  Anne bit back a smile at Neal’s indignation and the fact that he’d once thought worse of her.

  * * *

  After a fitful night punctuated by the nurse’s periodic checks of Ian’s vital signs, Anne woke to the hum of Neal’s gentle snoring from the other side of Ian’s bed, but no sound from Ian. Her heart stopped until she saw the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. She stood and touched his forehead. It was cool.

  “How is he?” Neal whispered, running his hand through his sleep-tousled hair.

  “He feels much cooler.”

  “I’m so glad.” Neal moved around the bed and took her in his arms. She leaned her head on his chest and listened to the thumping of his heart.

  A knock at the door pulled them apart.

  An older man with a round face and twinkling eyes smiled from the doorway. “I’m Dr. Klein. Looks like you already know my good news.”

  The doctor’s voice woke Ian. He looked around and blinked in confusion until he saw Anne.

  “Why don’t you introduce me to this young man and I’ll check him out to see if he’s ready to go home.”

  The doctor finished his examination. “I’m going to release him to recuperate at home. The nurse will come in and go over my instructions with you. You’ll need to schedule a follow-up with your doctor next week.” He smiled down at Ian. “Ready to go home with Mom and Dad?”

  Anne’s muscles froze. Of course the doctor didn’t know. She braced herself for Ian’s and Neal’s reactions.

  Ian tilted his head and nodded. “Daddy Neal.”

  Her tension increased until a chuckle from Neal melted it.

  “Daddy Neal. I like it.”

  “Sorry,” Dr. Klein said. “I assumed. I hope I haven’t caused a problem.” He glanced over at Ian. “My office staff is always after me to be more careful about things like that.”

  “No problem,” Neal said. “It’s nothing we can’t fix.”

  Was he talking about him and her? Anne gripped the bed rail to steady herself.

  Dr. Klein left, but before she could say anything to Neal, an aide came in with Ian’s breakfast, followed shortly by the nurse with Dr. Klein’s instructions and the transportation aide with a wheelchair for Ian.

  “I’ll go down and bring the car around to the front door,” Neal said.

  Anne nodded and settled Ian in the chair.

  “Like Gammy’s,” he said.

  “Right,” she said, her thoughts circling back to Neal’s cryptic statement. For once, she’d been able to hold her tongue with him and not blurt out her questions. They should talk in private when Ian wasn’t with them. He was such a smart inquisitive child. And her interpretation of Neal’s words might simply be wishful thinking.

  * * *

  Neal backed his mother’s car out of the parking space and pulled around the corner of the hospital. Mom and Dad had taken his truck and left the car for him and Anne to bring Ian home. His heart warmed. He l
iked the sound of that. He and Anne bringing Ian home. Neal knew now that he wanted Anne and Ian and everything being a family brought with it. And he prayed that he could convince Anne that she did, too.

  He knew he was different than Anne’s first husband and probably from any of the men she’d dated before or since. He believed in his heart that he was the right man for her.

  Neal tapped the top of the steering wheel. He’d take things slow, woo her. Once Ian was better, he’d ask Autumn to babysit and take Anne to a movie in Schroon Lake, out to dinner locally a few times. He could invite her and Ian and Margaret to share Christmas with his folks and Emily and Drew. Then, for New Year’s, he’d take her somewhere special, maybe down to Lake George for a fancy dinner at the Sagamore Resort. And tell her he loved her and wanted to make his life with her. Yep, that’s what he’d do. Take things nice and slow.

  He stopped the car in front of the hospital and hopped out. His pulse quickened when he saw Anne with Ian waiting for him behind the glass doors. He strode over and took Ian from her arms.

  “Everybody ready?”

  “More than ready,” Anne said, clutching the doctor’s instructions in her hand. The tinge of blue below her eyes spoke how hard the past few days had been on her.

  “Come on.” He squeezed her to his side with his free hand and helped her and Ian into the car.

  Obviously feeling better, Ian chattered nonstop for about twenty minutes into the drive home and then dropped off to sleep in the middle of a sentence.

  Neal looked over at Anne. “I’m okay if you want to rest, too.”

  She gave him a wan smile. “I’m afraid I’m too tired to sleep.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you and your family have done for Ian and me.”

  He concentrated on navigating the winding road. “That’s what fam—friends—are for.”

  “No. You didn’t have to drive all the way to Saranac and stay with me until Ian was out of danger. Especially after Thanksgiving.”

  “I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do for anyone I love.” Neal clenched the steering wheel. He didn’t say that aloud, did he?

  “You love me?”

  Anne’s soft response confirmed his fear. So much for his plan to take things slow. He kept his eyes focused on the road. Might as well lay it all out. The worst that could happen is she could smash his heart to smithereens.

  “Yes, I love you,” he managed to say. “And I love Ian and I want to make a life with you.”

  “But you don’t want kids. You’ve said that, several times.”

  He jerked his head to the right. It wasn’t like Anne to throw his words back at him.

  The corners of her mouth tipped up. “Better keep your eyes on the road.”

  He relaxed. She was teasing.

  “And you don’t want a husband who doesn’t have a college degree.”

  “I never said that.”

  He swallowed. He might as well go for the goal. “Nor have you said you love me.”

  Neal watched her out of the corner of his eye. She raised her chin and closed her eyes as if thinking hard. Apprehension sucked all of the air out of the car.

  “Yes,” she finally said. “That’s the plan. You love me. I love you.”

  All right! If he weren’t driving, he’d grab Anne and kiss her senseless.

  “Still planning, are you?” He couldn’t resist teasing her back.

  She bit her lip and nodded. “But now I’m planning with my heart.”

  Neal pressed the brake and turned onto an old dirt logging trail cut into the pines.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice rose.

  “Something I haven’t done in a long time.”

  She cocked her head to the side.

  “Parking in the woods with my best girl.” He stopped the car, pulled Anne into his arms and kissed her, a kiss that promised a lifetime of love—and much, much more.

  Epilogue

  Eighteen months later

  “Hello.” Anne knocked and called through the screen door of the Sonrise Camp Lodge. She rubbed her lower back while she waited for a response. She’d thought a stroll down Hazard Cove Road from the log home she and Neal had built between his parents’ house and the lodge would relieve the off and on ache she’d had since last night.

  “Hi, come in.” Emily opened the door wide for her very pregnant sister-in-law. “What’s up?”

  “With classes out for the semester, I’m bored. Ian’s at preschool, and Neal’s still out of town finishing that solar job south of Albany. So I thought I’d bake chocolate chip cookies for my guys when they get home. But I’m out of baking powder. Do you have any I could borrow?”

  “Sure do. And how are the little Hazards?” Emily pointed at Anne’s distended belly.

  “Right now, they seem to be having a competition to see who can kick me hardest in the back.” Anne bent over and hugged herself. “They’ve moved the competition to the front.”

  Emily helped her to a chair. “How long have you been having contractions?”

  “What?” Anne rubbed her belly. “These are Braxton-Hicks contractions, false labor. I’ve been having them for the past couple of weeks.”

  “How often?”

  Anne hesitated. She didn’t want to be in labor, not until Neal got back from Albany. She was hoping if she ignored the pain and kept busy, they’d go away like they had before.

  “A couple, three times an hour.”

  “Since when?”

  “Yesterday.” She hadn’t said anything to Neal when he’d called last night. She didn’t want him rushing home for nothing.

  “Call Kelly and tell her I’m bringing you to the birthing center.”

  “But I’m not due until next month.”

  “You’re having twins. Call her.”

  “You know, you can be very bossy,” Anne shot back, glad Emily had made the decision for her. She’d almost called her midwife, Kelly, last night and again earlier this morning. But she’d checked her pregnancy and childbirth guide and convinced herself it was false labor.

  “So I’ve been told. I’ll call Drew while you’re calling Kelly. He took Isabelle with him to hang the trail markers for the first camp session next week. We can leave as soon as he gets back here to stay with Sam. Mom or Drew will pick Ian up from school.”

  Anne smiled. She loved being a part of the Hazard family and that her and Neal’s twins would have a built-in playmate in their six-week-old cousin Sam.

  “And get ahold of my big brother and tell him to get himself back here pronto. I know what it’s like to be in labor and not have my husband beside me.”

  Drew and Isabelle trooped in as Anne hung up from calling Neal. When he hadn’t picked up, she’d left a message. Then, she’d texted just in case, praying he hadn’t left his phone in the truck.

  “Let’s go. We’ve still got to stop by your house for your hospital bag.”

  Anne plodded out behind Emily as if postponing her arrival at the birthing center would give Neal more time to retrieve her message and get back here.

  * * *

  Neal flew into the birthing center. How could he have left his phone in the truck? If he hadn’t gone back to get his tester... He didn’t want to think about it. When he’d called Drew, his brother-in-law said Anne and Emily had just left. He’d driven as fast as he dared.

  “Dad. You made it. Come on. Anne sent me out to check again whether you’d arrived. I think she’s been willing the babies to wait until you got here.”

  He smiled at his daughter in her maternity nurse scrubs. “That’s my Annie.”

  An hour later, he was the proud father of Sophia Mary and Alexander James Hazard. He couldn’t take his eyes off them or his beautiful wife w
ith her mussed hair and streaked makeup. She’d never looked lovelier to him.

  “Mommy, Daddy. Are those our babies?” Five-year-old Ian raced into the room. “They’re better than Sam. We got two!” He climbed up next to Anne.

  Autumn patted him on the shoulder. “Way to go, Dad.”

  Neal’s heart swelled until he thought it would burst. What man could ask for anything more?

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story by Jean C. Gordon,

  be sure to check out the other books

  this month from Love Inspired!

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Reunited for the Holidays by Jillian Hart!

  Dear Reader,

  I’m excited about being able to take you back to Paradox Lake in the Adirondack Mountains for Neal Hazard and Anne Howard’s story. (You may have met Neal in Small-Town Sweethearts.)

  We may know God has a plan for us, but we don’t always like it or readily accept it. In Neal’s case, he thinks he knows and is following God’s plan for him. Anne is so uncertain about knowing His plan for her that she’s taken things into her own hands. As you may guess, both are in for some surprises.

  I hope you enjoy their discoveries about themselves, each other and their faith.

  Please feel free to email me at JeanCGordon@yahoo.com or find me on Facebook.

  Blessings,

  Jean C. Gordon

  Questions for Discussion

  Neal raised his daughter, Autumn, on his own, and now that she’s all grown up, he wants to take time out for himself. What do you think of this?

  Were you surprised that a man like Neal was somewhat intimidated about going back to school? Why? What would your reaction have been?

  Did you have any experiences—good or bad—as a child that had as great an impact on you as Anne’s thunderstorm experience? If so, why do you think it had such a lasting effect?

  Was Anne right in being cautious about her feelings for Neal, given that he was her student? Why or why not? Was his age a factor or not?