Dr. Attending (Midtown Memorial #4)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Weston

T he corner of Parker’s mouth twitches as I finish my story in the cramped emergency room bay.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that my ex-best friend’s expression was full of pride . . . but that wouldn’t make sense. He hates me—or at least, that’s what he’s led me to believe for the past year and a half.

The soft sound of a door sliding open catches my attention, and I shift my focus from my son to the person who just appeared in the corner of the room—Cassidy Callaway.

She freezes, her hazel eyes widening as they land on the ten-month-old boy sitting between me and her husband. She swallows hard before looking to Parker for an explanation.

He gives her a reassuring smile. “His name is Carter.”

Cassidy reaches up to tuck a stray blonde hair behind her ear, blinking several times like she’s face-to-face with a ghost. “Carter?”

My son’s name is a thick whisper on her trembling lips, and it makes me wonder how often she’s able to say it these days—if her grief has eased at all in the three years since her brother’s death.

Because mine definitely hasn’t.

Cassidy draws her lips between her teeth and swallows, looking at me with pleading, glassy eyes. “Why—”

The rest of the thought gets lodged in her throat, held hostage by emotion.

I nod to Parker, letting him know that I’ve got it from here. But before he can make a move, Cassidy waves him off and starts toward us.

Her steps are more assured than her expression as she crosses the small room and joins us at the stretcher.

“Hey, buddy,” she coos, bending down to my son’s eye level andhesitantly reaching out.

I expect him to shy away because the past few hours have been taxing, but he simply studies her curiously instead.

His chubby fist then confidently curls around her finger like he’s known her for his entire life, yet his white-blond brows knit the way they do when he’s about to burst into tears.

Instinctively, I start to rub his back to soothe his oncoming tantrum. But instead of erupting into a wail, Carter inhales sharply. His eyes pinch closed, and he expels a forceful burst of air from his mouth, spraying saliva and daycare crud all over Cassidy’s face.

She blinks a few times to bat the spittle away from her lashes as a massive glob of mucus slides down her cheek.

I think all of us, including my son, are so surprised by the force of his sneeze that nobody moves . . . until a retching sound breaks the silence in the room.

I glance toward the noise.

Morgan, a nurse on the floor and Cassidy’s best friend, is hovering over the sink in the corner, alternating between curse words and gagging sounds as she grabs a handful of paper towels. She dangles the wad from her fingertips, holding them at arm’s length like she might catch the plague from touching a little bit of snot.

“Here. Just—”

I chuckle and offer Cassidy an apologetic shrug as she takes the paper towels from Morgan. “Sorry about that.”

Cassidy waves me off and begins to wipe herself clean, not bothered in the slightest by the baby goop. “Don’t be sorry. That’s what kids do.”

Leaning down toward my son, she coos, “That was silly.”

Carter giggles and reaches out for her as she playfully squeezes his white sneakers. He sneezes again, this time less forcefully so that only a small trickle of snot drips from his nose.

“Fuck.” Morgan dry heaves again, face draining of color as her pale-green eyes find mine apologetically. “Sorry, but I’m out. Mucus is the one bodily fluid I don’t do.”

The old me would’ve made a crude joke about her sex life, but these days I’m too exhausted to think of anything witty, let alone sexual, so I nod appreciatively instead.

Morgan and her husband Walker have shown me nothing but kindness since I came back to Atlanta. I have no idea what I did to deserve their friendship, but I’m incredibly thankful for it.

Cassidy glances up at her friend. “Can you—”

“Yes, Cass,” Morgan interrupts, shaking her head as she walks away. “I’ll cover your patients. Don’t worry.”

When she reaches the door, she pauses to tighten her light-brown ponytail. Her body is angled so that I’m the only one who can see the concern etched on her face when she glances back at me—a silent question of if I can handle the situation without her.

I force a reassuring smile to my lips because Parker hasn’t tried to kill me . . . yet.

Cassidy laughs once the door closes. “You should have called me instead of Morg,” she says as she works to untangle a strand of hair from her stethoscope. “She isn’t a kid person.”

Parker steps back from the table and lets out an amused grunt as he reaches for the pager in his pocket. “That’s shocking, considering she acts like one most of the time.”

“Sorry, Cass,” I reply, shifting my attention away from my ex-best friend and toward my ex-girlfriend. “I didn’t know you were working.”

It’s a filthy lie. I was fully aware that she was working today, but I didn’t want to drag her into this. When I moved back to Atlanta, she asked me to respect her boundaries so that she could work on her relationship with Parker, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to prove to myself—and to everyone else—that I really have changed. Which is why I asked Morgan to help me instead.

“Well, he seems to be doing okay.” Cassidy smiles up at me from the floor as my son very proudly bangs the tips of her stethoscope together. “What happened?”

“Climbed off the changing table when I turned around for some wipes, and I had to catch him mid-fall,” I explain, still thankful that the outcome wasn’t worse. “I was so focused on trying to make sure he didn’t hit his head that I must have snagged his arm a little too hard.”

I don’t add the reason I was terrified of having him hit his head. I already had to explain his maternal health history once today, and I’m not exactly itching to have to do it again.

“Was it broken?” Cassidy asks.

I shake my head. “Nursemaid’s elbow.”

Her brows knit like I’m speaking a foreign language. And just as I’m about to open my mouth to explain, Parker glances up at me with a smirk.

“Don’t act like you knew what it was . . . you thought he had a broken clavicle.”

I can’t argue because he’s right. I panicked. The rational part of my brain was misfiring, running on fear rather than medical logic. I should have taken a minute to breathe and assess my son calmly, but instead, I did the first thing I could think of—bring him to Midtown Memorial Hospital.

In retrospect, I could have easily taken him to the children’s hospital down the road. Nothing about what I said or did made logical sense—nothing except for paging Parker Winters. Because the truth is, when it comes to my son, there’s no one I trust more than him. Our friendship might be complicated, but he’s the best doctor I know.

“You gonna tell me what nursemaid’s elbow is?” Cassidy asks, narrowing her eyes on her husband with an unamused expression. “Or are you just going to keep trying to big dick him?”

Parker blinks a few times, like he’s surprised by her response. His voice dips so low that I almost don’t hear him when he replies, “I think you of all people would know who has the bigger dick, sweetheart .”

Cassidy cocks her head. “And I don’t think you want to know the answer to that . . . sweetheart .”

I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stifle my amusement so that I don’t destroy the progress Parker and I made this afternoon.

“While I would love to finally hear the truth about which one of us is packing more heat,” I interrupt, trying to diffuse the tension in the room. “Can we please refrain from having this conversation in front of my very young, and very innocent son? I already took an L in the Dad category once today, and I’d rather not add another one.”

Parker fights a smile as he reaches up to pull the crisp navy scrub cap from his head. “I’ve got to run. You should be good to go.”

“Thank you.”

I stare straight into his eyes when I say the words because I want him to know how much I mean them.

Asking Morgan to page him was a gamble. He’s made it a point to avoid me at the hospital since I came back to work, and when he walked through the door this afternoon, I wasn’t sure how everything would play out. I hoped that he would help me, but there was a small part of me—the part that knows just how cold and clinical he can get—that expected him to cause a scene.

But he didn’t.

He simply listened and acted like he genuinely cared as I gave him a quick rundown of the past year. And when I finished, something in his expression shifted which made me hopeful that his resentment toward me might not be as deeply rooted as I imagined.

Parker gives me a crisp nod and runs his fingers through his dark hair before bending down to let Cassidy know that he’ll see her at home.

Once he closes the door, neither one of us speaks for a moment.

I should probably start with an explanation as to why I named my son after her dead brother. Or why I even have a son in the first place. But I can’t seem to get the words out. It’s like the truth is buried in so much pain and regret that even if I wanted to unearth it, I’d be digging for hours.

Fortunately, my kid is a natural charmer. He waves at the door and breaks the awkward silence with a noise that sounds like “Ba.”

Cassidy’s eyes snap to me, wide with amazement. “Did he just?”

I let out a laugh. “Yep. Started last week.”

The first time that Carter said it, I thought he was asking for his bottle. But then the daycare staff sent me a video of him waving at the door after I dropped him off saying, “Ba. Ba. Ba,” and it all made sense—he was telling me bye.

Even though I know returning to Midtown Memorial was the right decision for both of us, it killed me that my son’s first word was goodbye. It’s not like I have to work. I could easily stay home and raise him since I have more than enough money sitting in my trust to last a lifetime. But I’ve had to remind myself that I can’t be the best dad for him if I’m not happy . . . and the truth is, I’m happiest when I’m in the OR. I’m happiest when I’m here.

Carter must sense that we’re talking about him because he turns to me with a smile and babbles, “Ba. Ba. Ba.”

He reaches for me like he wants me to pick him up, so I hoist him into my arms, careful to avoid touching his elbow. As a doctor, I know that he isn’t in pain now that the joint is back in its socket. But as a dad, my years of medical training don’t seem to hold the same level of importance because all I can think about is how I don’t want anything to hurt him.

I cross the room to grab the navy diaper backpack from the chair against the wall.

“We should probably get going,” I say, adjusting my son on my hip as I sling the bag over my opposite shoulder.

I brought Carter to the hospital immediately after his private swimming lesson, so I’m still wearing my trunks and a sweaty Lululemon athletic shirt. I feel just as disgusting as I probably look, and as soon as I’ve got him fed and taken care of, I’m going to rinse off and pass the hell out.

“Wes . . .”

Cassidy’s tone sounds just as anguished as her expression. I can tell that she wants to say more, but is holding herself back as she watches us from across the room.

“He’s mine,” I say, bridging the gap because I know that she won’t. “In case you couldn’t tell.”

Most of the time I feel like Carter is a carbon copy of me, but occasionally I’ll pull out the picture I have of his mom from Thanksgiving a few years ago and see glimpses of her too. We never got the chance to know each other properly before things went south, but I know she’d be proud of how he turned out. He’s a healthy, happy baby, which is pretty much all you can ask for as a parent.

Cassidy snorts with amusement. “I can definitely see the resemblance.”

I study her for a moment, feeling a wave of guilt wash over me. “You want to know what happened.”

She doesn’t have to ask. I can see the question—and the hurt—written all over her face.

When we met up after I had just moved back to Atlanta, I didn’t want to share the reason why I was back. My son had just been born, and I was still clinging to the hope that he wasn’t mine.

That idea is ludicrous now because I can’t imagine life without him. But at the time, I was terrified, and I wasn’t ready to talk about it with anyone, especially the one person who has always seen the best in me.

“More than anything,” she answers.

I smile because I wonder the same thing almost every day. As I’m about to open my mouth and provide a condensed version of how my son came into my life, he starts to whine in my arms.

“A story for another time,” I promise, bouncing Carter up and down to distract him from a meltdown. “Been a long afternoon, and the little man needs some rest.”

I pause as I’m almost out the door, glancing back because I know that if I don’t ask now, I’ll regret it.

“Hey, Cass . . . do you think Parker will come around?”

She shrugs but her lips tilt into an encouraging smile. “There’s only one way to find out.”