Chapter Five
Ugh. She hated that sound.
Drennan could feel the tug of the IV in the back of her hand.
The slight cold burn of fluids eased through her veins before warming up in her forearm.
Every sense she owned felt intensified, from the overly loud pulse of the heart rate monitor to her left and the shuffling and voices outside the curtain surrounding her bed to the air-conditioning blowing straight down on her.
A hospital. The unconscious haze cleared with deeper inhales. Familiar calls on the muted PA and scuffed tennis shoes hit that aching place inside of her that missed her former life. An ER—even on slow shifts—had never been boring.
The stained cream-colored curtain ripped to one side on metallic shower hooks, putting a thin dark-haired woman with a clipboard clutched to her chest swallowed by her white coat in Drennan’s personal space.
Rich brown eyes locked on her with a hardness that had no business on the doctor’s face.
“You don’t call. You don’t write. The first I hear about you taking that job with the ME is by your ass landing in my ER. ”
Drennan attempted to sit up, only to be humbled by the overwhelming sting in her hand from the IV line. Hospital. Throwing up. Passing out. Her heart rate double-timing as panic took hold. “The baby—”
“Perfectly healthy. No issues that we could see.” Dr. Cassidy Duffy navigated around to the side of Drennan’s bed, checking her IV bag and the stats the machines picked up every few seconds.
The woman exemplified the girl next door, with long brown hair, a soft smile that reached her eyes and an openness that calmed patients under her care into a coma.
Her accent—straight from the streets of Boston—could do wonders in a crisis.
“Seems you got a touch of dehydration, and by a touch, I mean you could’ve died out there.
You’re smarter than this, D. What the hell were you thinking? ”
Okay. Scolding and that accent didn’t go well together.
In her former life, Drennan had been the one armed with criticism in her Ohio ER.
Cassidy had been the one to follow. She sank deeper into the clumpy pillows that’d seen far more than she wanted to think about.
Acid coated the inside of her mouth, and she reached for the glass of water positioned on the small bedside table.
“I can’t keep anything down, especially fluids. ”
“Ah.” Lowering onto the rolling stool beside the bed, Cassidy lost the clipboard and leveraged both hands on her blue scrubs.
Once one of Drennan’s subordinates, she’d gotten out of Ohio to take the lead in her own ER, as small as it was.
Cassidy had never explained the sudden move, but Drennan could probably relate more than most for the need to make drastic changes. “You see an ob-gyn yet?”
Drennan sipped at the water, not looking for a repeat performance of what’d happened in that parking lot. Definitely not her finest moment. “Just found out this morning. The constant throwing up was a good indicator. Well, that, and the missed periods. Got a recommendation?”
“Dr. Santori. She’s on staff here at the clinic.
I’ll tell her to expect your call and you need an appointment, especially after what happened today.
But for the next hour, we’ve got you hooked to electrolytes and fluids.
” Cassidy scanned her from head to toe then back, shaking her head.
“So I take it the irritatingly handsome bulldozer demanding answers from my front desk staff is the father?”
Harvey? Fractures of memory filtered through the embarrassment doing its best to drown her in the middle of this mattress.
Oh, hell. She’d never be able to face him after this.
Passing out from simple dehydration? Her mother’s voice was right there, incessant and needling.
What kind of doctor are you? Eight years of medical school didn’t teach you you have to drink water to survive?
How are you going to help other people when you can’t even take care of yourself? Forget about—
“Stop that.” Cassidy’s voice went from friendly to firm in a split second, and Drennan couldn’t help but let appreciation chase back the darkness that’d started moving in.
This was why Cassidy Duffy had made an excellent assistant emergency physician.
Her ability to read people, to know exactly what her patient needed in the moment, had saved too many lives to count.
“I know that look. She’s not here, Drennan.
You left her behind in Ohio for a reason. ”
Tears burned in her eyes. So stupid. She could blame the hormones, but she’d had this reaction every time she thought about the relationship she was supposed to have with her mother.
How close they could’ve been. Only now it was worse.
Because there were things she needed from her mother.
Questions she needed answered from the one person who was supposed to be here for her during this time, who’d gone through all of this once before.
Baby showers and registries, breastfeeding or formula advice, visits from Ohio and hugs when it got to be too much—she wouldn’t get any of it.
Not from her mother. And not from the father of her baby.
Her stomach convulsed, but there was nothing left to throw up.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
She hadn’t given a whole lot of thought into Harvey’s role in this pregnancy, but she hadn’t expected him to not want to be involved at all.
Sure, he’d offered financial support, but she’d already told him she didn’t need his money.
So, what? She had to do this completely alone?
No discussion? She knew the research. Children raised in single-parent homes could thrive as well as dual-parent homes.
It wasn’t the structure of the family. It was the quality time and love that determined the success of a child.
But she’d wanted more for her child. She’d wanted him to be excited and to maybe give her a hug to calm the sheer panic that’d followed her around all day. But, apparently, she’d have to settle for him paying for this emergency room visit.
“Your mother doesn’t get to live in your head for free.
” Cassidy’s plain, long fingers swept Drennan’s hair out of her face and twisted the ends into curls on the pillow.
“Make her pay rent. Understand? You set the rules. You decide how much influence she and everybody else has in this new life you’re starting. ”
Drennan didn’t know what to say to that.
As much as she appreciated Cassidy’s attempt to bolster the boundaries she’d been working to construct since leaving home, some things just couldn’t be fixed so easily.
A chasm wasn’t made in a single day. It eroded little by little—forgotten birthdays, criticism about her weight, spewed regret for having a daughter like her.
Years of covert toxicity with sprinkles of genuine affection had trained her to be grateful for whatever affection she could get, and she just needed some of that warmth to help her through this. From anyone.
“Now tell me what’s going on with you.” Cassidy grabbed for the clipboard and ran an observing eye down the page. “You called me up for a recommendation letter for a job you’re too qualified for, then you show up pregnant and unconscious in the middle of nowhere Utah three months later.”
Drennan didn’t have the energy to get into it, but Cassidy could quite possibly be the only friendly face she had in this new life.
Dr. Yarrow hadn’t batted an eye at her work history, and he was pleasant enough when things were going his way, but he was her boss.
Nothing more. And Harvey… She didn’t know where they stood.
He’d gotten her to the emergency room in Springdale, but that had probably been more out of obligation to their child rather than genuine concern.
The heaviness he carried in his expression hadn’t been there the night they’d met.
She didn’t know anything about how it’d gotten there.
Didn’t know him other than he worked as a national park ranger and had once been in the military through his own admission, and while she couldn’t even think about regretting this baby, she hadn’t planned for this, either.
They weren’t friends. They were barely more than acquaintances, pulled in together on a case of drowning in the park. “It’s a long story.”
“All right. Another time then.” The head of the ER leaned back on her stool before shoving to stand.
Hints of soap and disinfectant tickled Drennan’s nose as Cassidy leaned across the bed to detach the IV.
“Well, you’ve had your required fluids and electrolytes.
You know the drill. Little sips of water throughout the day.
Eat calorie dense foods to get as much energy as possible.
I can prescribe the anti-nausea meds if you think that will help with the vomiting, but Dr. Santori will want to follow up with you in the next day or two.
That bulldozer out there going to take you home? ”
“I’ll call a rideshare.” Oh, crap. Defeat drained the last of her reserves as she hovered on the edge of the bed.
The van. She’d been on her way to the funeral home when her stomach had lost its ability to put up with the smell coming from the back cargo area.
Drennan checked her smartwatch. Three hours.
She’d been here for three hours. The heat would’ve severely altered the body’s decomposition rate and any evidence that might’ve been left behind.
She’d compromised a homicide investigation. “I have to go.”
“Don’t let me catch you in here again, D.” Cassidy hugged her clipboard to her chest. “You take such good care of everyone else. I’ll box your ears if you’re not taking care of yourself.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I’ll be careful.
” Her feet didn’t feel like her own as she shuffled free of the curtain and headed for the front of the clinic.
The bandage on the back of her hand itched like crazy, and she felt like a rhino was sitting on her bladder, but that was nothing compared to the shock of seeing Harvey pace back and forth across the waiting room.
Her stomach dropped out, her throat going dry.
A swell of heat had her grabbing for the nurses’ station desk.
He’d waited for her.
That intense gaze that’d dragged her in like a strong pull of gravity that night at the bar settled on her. Harvey closed the distance between them. “You good?”
“I’m fine. To be fair, you warned me about dehydration out in the park.
I guess with the death scene and the news, it slipped my mind more than usual.
” Was she fine, though? A strange twist of warmth knotted in her lower belly, and Drennan tightened her hold on the cold surface of the desk to keep herself from leaning into him to get more of it.
She sucked in a sharp breath to contain herself.
She pointed to the front doors. “You didn’t have to wait. I planned on calling a rideshare.”
“I wasn’t just going to leave you here to deal with everything alone.
They wouldn’t let me in, though, since I’m not a relative.
” His hand shifted as though he might reach for her.
Right where their baby was growing, but he pulled back, thinking better of the contact.
Clearing his throat, Harvey straightened impossibly taller. “The baby?”
She…didn’t know how to do this. The hot and cold back-and-forth.
One minute he wanted nothing more than to keep his distance in every regard but financially, the next he’d admitted to his concern for her.
Or was it just societal pressure and customs to make sure the woman you knocked up after a one-night stand was physically okay?
Drennan couldn’t read him as well as she could that night, and she hated it.
The constant need to be on guard for the next threat to her mental health, the fact he felt the need to protect himself from her in the first place. “No problems.”
“Good.” He grabbed for her hand, rough calluses and another dose of that comforting heat scraping into her palm. “Then I’m taking you home.”