The Child Who Changed Them Read online

  Her connection with Wood had always seemed like an emotional one, a close friendship more than a traditional marriage.

  Greg found that bond more of a threat than sex would have been. She’d never let him get even near the door of her deepest heart.

  So how could he have felt that he really knew Elaina, even from way outside that door?

  Because he was who he was, which meant he went all in with a woman way too soon, being too eager to share his life with a permanent companion. Because he really wanted a partner in his life.

  He’d always been the nerd who’d spent his high school and most of his college years on the outside looking in at the popular kids.

  Rather than getting drunk—he hadn’t liked giving up his mental autonomy—he’d liked to watch movies that ended well. To read. To analyze and figure things out.

  Sometimes his observations had been too on point for the comfort of others. His own mother had once told him he intimidated the heck out of her. She’d meant it in the best possible way, but like some inadvertent words do, those had stung. And stuck.

  Staring out into the darkness of the ocean in the distance, his car being the only one in the lot, Greg grabbed the steering wheel tight.

  Elaina was pregnant.

  He might not have any candidates for the identity of the father, but he knew it couldn’t be him.

  He’d been tested by three different facilities, and all three confirmed his condition. He had a not completely uncommon condition of antisperm antibodies, where his antibodies attacked his own sperm, and with extremely low motility, he had a count so low he was unable to impregnate a woman.

  And Elaina had no idea. Other than his ex-wife, no one knew. It wasn’t the type of thing a guy went around bragging about.

  Elaina had just seemed so absolutely convinced it was him. Which told him that she firmly believed there was no other possibility.

  Because the other guy had used a condom? They were only effective 98 percent of the time. Maybe the father of her child had told her he’d had a vasectomy.

  Whatever the reason, she was pregnant, thought him the only possible father, and would go on thinking it unless he proved her wrong.

  And if she wasn’t at all the woman he thought her to be, if instead she was like Heather Baine, the girl he’d dated the summer before leaving for college, and knew, as Heather had known, that he wasn’t the father of her baby as she’d claimed, then he had a right to clear his name. Heather had burned him bad. He’d turned over his first semester tuition before he’d found out that she’d been lying to him all along. A guy didn’t forget that, either. He wasn’t going to be burned, be used, a second time because the real father wouldn’t stand up. He couldn’t believe Elaina would do such a thing. The idea of it pissed him off a whole lot more even than Heather’s duplicity had done. But he also couldn’t be the father of her child. Grabbing his phone from the breast pocket in his scrubs, Greg hit the speed dial he hadn’t yet bothered to erase, half expecting her not to pick up.

  “Hello?” She sounded...tentative. Not unfriendly, but not sure she wanted to speak with him, either.

  “Hey.” He wanted, first and foremost, to reassure her. Because when it came out that he wasn’t the father, Elaina might need a friend.

  The line was silent then. He’d made the call. The onus was on him.

  Glancing out at the sand that was barely visible as it faded into the darkness, he hung his free hand over the steering wheel. Remaining calm. He had proof.

  “I want a paternity test done.” Greg had never thought to be having this conversation again in his life. And certainly not with Elaina. The whole thing made him feel slightly sick.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They can be done in vitro now. At seven weeks. With no risk to the baby.” Helped having a head filled with medical knowledge.

  “You’re seriously requiring a paternity test?” Her voice rose at the end of the sentence. He’d offended her.

  Or at least she was pretending to be affronted. He didn’t see that type of deceptiveness in her. And he’d been wrong before.

  He let his silence answer the question for him.

  “I can’t believe this,” Elaina finally said, her tone low. Defeated. “You know how insulting this is?”

  How embarrassing would it be for her to get the test done in Marie Cove, where the medical community was relatively small?

  “You can go to LA,” he said.

  “I have no need to go to LA,” she shot back. “Cheryl Miller’s my ob-gyn. I’ll go to her. At seven weeks.” With that, and the sound of tears in her voice, she hung up.

  Greg would have liked to feel bad for her, but he didn’t.

  Well, he did. But not for asking for the paternity test.

  She’d left him no option but to prove to her that she was wrong.

  He most definitely was not the father of her baby.

  * * *

  Elaina didn’t sleep well that night. Past grief and the need to wall herself off to do her job had taught her to get herself to sleep. But she couldn’t turn off the restlessness in her mind. There were no concrete dreams, just a jumble of nonsense situations that she couldn’t remember, but that left her feeling powerless. Upset. And tired.

  Not in a good frame of mind to be in the next morning, either. She arrived at work early as always, to find a message. Greg was already there and needed a consult. He’d made the request through the online hospital portal, meaning there’d be an official record of it, and her response to it would be recorded into infinity, as well.

  Curbing her first instinct to tell him to go to hell, taking a deep breath against the tears that suddenly sprang to her eyes, she took a sip of her decaffeinated coffee. Then another, before typing her affirmative response. The words were coming out fine. She’d just pretend he was a different doctor she dealt with regularly.

  But an hour later, when she presented herself at Greg’s office door, she really just wanted to turn around and go home. Or stop at the dog shelter, adopt a housemate and then go home. She knocked, instead.

  The guy was an ass. She was lucky she’d already broken things off with him. Was glad she had. She’d never been so insulted in her life.

  What were they? High school students? Like she’d insist she knew the identity of her baby’s father if she didn’t?

  When Greg answered his door, standing there in scrubs and his white coat, his hair mussed and striking green-gold eyes loaded with compassion as he assessed her, she forgot how much she disliked him.

  And felt like crying instead.

  Which was ridiculous.

  They’d been friends with benefits. Lovers and workmates. There’d never ever been a hint of anything emotional between them. Not only had there been no commitment, but not even any conversation that could lead to emotional closeness. She’d made sure of it.

  So how was it possible for her to feel so...hurt...by his insistence on a paternity test, like there’d been some kind of trust between them?

  “How are you feeling?” His question put her hackles up.

  “You said you needed a consult?” Standing in the hallway, she made no move to enter his office. As far as Elaina was concerned, they could take care of whatever it was right there. They were in a secure hallway. No one else was around. No need to be concerned about patient confidentiality issues, about being overheard.

  “Can you come in?” he asked, stepping back.

  Because any other time she would have entered, because for any other peer she would have done as he’d asked, she let herself walk into his space and stood there, doing nothing, as the door closed behind her. Shutting her in alone with him.

  Her first instinct was to walk into his arms, lay her head on his chest and let the strangeness between them evaporate. And she fought that instinct with all her might.

 
She didn’t need to lay her head on anyone’s chest. She wasn’t going to spend her life using other people for her own emotional satisfaction. Even if a miracle happened and she someday fell in love again, she would not allow herself to be dependent on the person she loved. She’d done it with Peter. With Wood. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life being that woman.

  The boatload of counseling she’d had, some as recently as the previous week, had given her a clear vision of her future plan. Her relationships were to be interdependent. Not codependent.

  “I need your take on Brooklyn,” Greg said, and she blinked, blindsided by the sudden change in conversation. And then, realizing there’d really been no conversation; she’d been a fool for thinking his call for consult had to do with the two of them.

  “I wrote my report.”

  He nodded. “I read it. I just wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “I put everything in there. I found nothing different.”

  “But after we gave her that medication four days ago, there should have been a difference since, shouldn’t there?”

  The little girl had multiple health issues, including a neurological disorder that, when she was stressed, created higher levels of hormones resulting in aggressive behavior. Brooklyn had a gastrological situation that also came on when she was upset. Born to a drug addict, she’d been in the system most of her life, but because her mother wouldn’t sign adoption papers, she wasn’t able to find a permanent home anywhere. Four days ago, a police car had brought in the girl, her foster mother following behind to say that Brooklyn was making up symptoms, and asking for the doctor on call to have a talk with her daughter. She felt that Brooklyn was using nebulous maladies as an excuse to throw fits anytime she didn’t get her way.

  “She’s got a new sibling at home,” Elaina pointed out. “Her stress levels will be higher, even with the medication.”

  She listened while he talked about the little girl complaining that her stomach had never quit hurting since her last hospital visit. All the while her mother was pointing out times at home that Brooklyn appeared to be pain-free, making it sound as though she only was in pain when she wasn’t getting what she wanted.

  And yet, it was clear that Brooklyn’s foster mother loved her. Clear that she believed Brooklyn could get better. In Elaina’s opinion, the woman was feeling powerless, frustrated, with her inability to help the child.

  “Althea was right there, holding Brooklyn’s hand, the whole time I was with her,” Greg said.

  “You know that her neurological condition can bring on psychosomatic symptoms,” Elaina reminded him.

  “And with the medication I gave her Monday, she should have been pretty calm for a few days, at least. I couldn’t prescribe another dose today,” Greg said, “but I sent her home with a prescription...” He named it. A drug with similar capabilities of the much stronger one he’d had administered by IV before he let Brooklyn go at the beginning of the week. But this was one that could actually be purchased at the pharmacy. “I asked that she be brought back in, through the ER, on Sunday,” he told her. “I’d like you to do another set of scans at that time, paying close attention to the brain waves, and see if you notice any change at all.”

  “You think she didn’t get the meds on Monday?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “But why...”

  “Martha was on again.”

  She was a good RN, and one who’d tried to get her nurse practitioner license and failed the exam. Someone who thought she knew more than the doctors sometimes about what patients really needed. She was the one who was with patients for hours a day, who tended to their every need, while the doctors saw them for a couple of minutes and were gone.

  This was a possible conclusion Elaina and Greg had drawn when they’d noticed some discrepancies in the charting the nurse had done per doctors’ orders.

  Nothing that they’d proven. Certainly, no patients had suffered ill effects under Martha’s care.

  It could also just be that Martha needed a refresher course on protocol before she found herself being written up. Not a call for Greg or Elaina or the charting committee to make.

  The administrator they reported to would be the one to make those kinds of decisions or determine if any action was needed.

  “And if there’s no change at all, I’m leaning toward the idea that Mom isn’t giving her the meds at home, either. Some parents don’t like the risk of side effects or determine that the child is better off without medication. Like the whole vaccine debate. Maybe she watches Brooklyn’s behavior, finds her more agreeable without the drugs, and thinks she can help Brooklyn holistically, or by teaching her better behavior. And when symptoms get too bad, she fears the child’s gastrological problems are rearing up and brings her to us to make sure she’s okay.”

  Greg settled his backside against his desk, drawing her gaze to his thighs. And between them.

  A familiar heat touched her privately for the second it took her to snap her gaze away. She sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk but then wished she hadn’t. She’d just forced herself to have to look up to him.

  This man who was demanding a paternity test on the child that was, even then, growing inside her.

  Oh my God.

  She was pregnant.

  Like it was just then hitting her, she sat there, looking at Greg, wanting to break out in laughter. And break down in tears.

  She’d gone straight to work from the clinic the day before. And had allowed herself to be consumed by the father problem.

  Failing to let the rest of the news take root.

  She was going to be a mother...sooner than she’d thought.

  “So will you do the scans for me?”

  “Of course.” Sunday. On Brooklyn. “I’ll do anything to help that little girl, you know that.”

  At least, he should know it. But then, he should also know that if she said he was the father of her child, then he was. “Are you thinking Martha didn’t administer the medication you prescribed on Monday?”

  “She scanned it out of inventory, but there’s no scan of Brooklyn’s wristband documenting that she actually got it.”

  “She probably got distracted and didn’t do the scan. Maybe another emergency going on,” Elaina said, though she was concerned by the lack of attention to a critical technical procedure. “She’s great with the kids, gentle, patient. She gets along with all of the other disciplines, child life, radiology, she’s always willing to work overtime, and she knows medicine. Knows when to call a doctor, knows what we’re looking for when she does.”

  “So maybe she gave the medication to someone else to administer and it didn’t get done for whatever reason.”

  “I have to admit, I ran the scans you ordered yesterday, but I didn’t read all of the charting.” Her duties didn’t require her to know, or follow, a patient’s total care. Only that she know everything about her part in it. She read scans. She didn’t treat. “I’m assuming you ordered blood and urine samples?”

  He nodded.

  “And they came back with no sign of the medication in her system?”

  Another nod.

  Based on the type of medication he’d prescribed... “It should have been there for five days.”

  “And we were only at the end of the third day,” he told her.

  “Of course, systems process differently, but with no change of neurotransmitters on the brain scan, and no trace of medication in her system...” She paused for a few seconds.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked him, worried for Brooklyn, for Martha, for the hospital, but also relieved to be able to be side by side with Greg on the matter, to have something to share with him.

  “We’re going to have to report the discrepancy, but I’d like the result of Sunday’s scans before we do. We’ll then hav
e comparisons with Brooklyn’s body three days post-medication. And I’d like your help, as a fellow member of the charting committee, going over any charts Martha’s had access to in the last month, as well as taking a look at any charting that others who worked in the ED on Monday may have done. It’s within the scope of our committee work. But I’d like to limit it to just you and me for now. So we can keep this small, and reputations won’t need to be damaged, until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  As the head of the committee, he could make that call.

  He was giving Martha the benefit of the doubt, without letting the matter go. Exactly what she would have done. “Of course, I’ll help,” she told him. “In this case, Brooklyn’s going to be okay, but it could have been so much worse.”

  He opened his mouth as though to say something to her, but then turned away. And that quickly she was hurting again. Wanting to know what he’d held back. That didn’t sit well with her. She knew they’d based their entire relationship on withholding the most emotionally personal parts of themselves, so why should his not telling her something bother her now?

  How could she hurt over something she’d never had?

  And how could she still be glad that there was a need for her to work with him over the weekend? How could she be clinging to the opportunity?

  It wasn’t logical.

  She should be resenting the fact that she was pregnant with Greg’s child when the baby should have been Peter’s. Or at least feel sad that she wasn’t carrying Peter’s baby. Maybe that would come. As soon as she had time to process.

  She was pregnant!

  It still wasn’t sinking in. Not fully. Maybe in bits and pieces. Like big, fluffy snowflakes falling softly around her and melting as soon as they touched the warm earth.

  She agreed to see Greg later that afternoon, to split up charting detail, and as she was heading back down to Imaging, a thought occurred to her.

  It was possible that she was romanticizing Greg, attaching to him emotionally, because she was pregnant with his child. She wanted to deny the assertion. To know in her heart that she was done being that woman. That it wasn’t happening again.