Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
Roxy
McAllister is a common last name so I’m not letting myself fall down the rabbit hole of ‘could it be’? But on the other hand, I have to wonder how many of those names are also attached with the first names of Roberta and Abraham? Still, part of my brain is spinning out of control even as I assess the little girl on the bed. I can see bruises already forming, along with bloody areas, so mentally add X-rays to my list of stuff to put on my orders. Right now, though, she’s terrified, so I need to try and calm her as much as possible so I can complete my exam.
“Egypt, stay with me, sweetheart,” I beg the little girl whose eyes are fluttering.
“Hurts,” she sobs.
“I know it does, honey. We’re going to try and fix that, okay?”
She tries to nod her head but winces and cries out. When her arms start flailing, Whitney, my attending nurse, steps forward and tries to halt her movements so I can continue my assessment. “Do we want to use the straps?”
“I’d like to see if we can’t calm her ourselves before we go down that route,” I answer. “She’s traumatized enough.”
“Mommy, Daddy! I want my mommy and daddy.” After calling out for her parents, her entire body goes limp from the pain. Her body may be shutting down, but her breathing is even and consistent so I don’t panic.
“Let’s get this blood cleaned up so I can tell how severe her injuries are,” I order. I continue my examination as Whitney goes around me, working on cleaning the areas I’m not hovering over. I grab the ophthalmoscope to check her eyes. Her pupils are dilated but it’s not bad enough that I’m concerned. At least, not yet. I’ll keep an eye on it and recheck to make sure they’re still reactive to light once I conclude the rest of her exam.
Sitting at the computer, I log into the portal and pull up the patient files. I need to know if the boy Saber worked on is who I suspect he is.
Tears leak from my eyes when I scan his information and his date of birth matches up with the exact date and time Draco, as Saber named him, was born. The name his adoptive parents named him is Canyon. I practice saying his name on my lips several times, working my ass off to keep my grief-stricken emotions locked up tight in my chest.
Our boy has now lost two sets of parents. My heart is literally breaking for him.
A shadow looms over me and I hear Saber growl over my shoulder, “We need to talk. Now.”
Nodding my head instead of verbally speaking, I agree with him that we do need to air this out. Right now, however, I’m afraid if I try to talk, every one of those emotions I’ve placed behind a steel vault will come pouring out. I stand from my seat on shaky legs as I follow him to the doctor lounge.
My fists are closed so tightly that my nails are embedded into my palms, and if I’m not careful I’ll end up breaking the skin. Considering we’re in a hospital where germs abound, I don’t need any open wounds. Especially not on my hands which come into contact with a lot of surfaces throughout the day during my shift.
Once we breach the doorway, I shut the door and lean against it as he goes to the coffee pot and pours two cups of lukewarm coffee. At this point, I don’t give a shit what it tastes like because the confrontation that’s fixing to take place is going to require me to have something in my hands.
“Sit, Roxy,” Saber commands, his words come out like he’s been gurgling hot lava rocks. When he turns around and faces me, his demeanor is full of fire and brimstone. Like a dog being commanded by its owner, my feet carry me over to the set of tables and chairs and I pull one out before plopping down into it.
“It’s him,” I whisper, and the tears that I’ve held back begin to freely flow down my cheeks. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to confirm it with a DNA test and find a way to bring him home where he should’ve been this entire time,” he insists.
“How are we going to do that, Saber? We signed our rights away to him, he may not want us and if we force the issue, it may make him hate us in the long run.”
“He’s not a little kid. By now, he’s probably taken biology classes in school and will realize that we weren’t much older than he is now when you got pregnant.”
I want to smack him right now. He’s talking as if I scooped up his cum and injected it into my hooha with a fucking turkey baster or something. I seem to recall, rather vividly, that he was always there whenever we had sex.
However, now’s not the time for me to be snarky. I’m too damn raw, especially knowing that two children lost their parents today. I also don’t know if the McAllisters ever told him that he was adopted as an infant or not. Talk about a major conundrum. His life has just imploded in a horrific way and it’s obvious that Saber’s hell-bent on bringing Canyon back into our lives.
Will that completely fuck him up? What about his little sister? There’s no way we can take on him and leave her to the whims of the foster care system. I shudder remembering some of the shit Saber and I slogged through when we were kids.
“You’re right, but don’t you think that’s a lot of stuff to lay on a kid who has lost the only parents he knows? Not only that, but his grandmother passed away too, his little sister is badly injured, and his only remaining grandparent is suffering from Alzheimer’s. How do you propose we add that fuel to his dumpster fire of a life right now, Saber? How?”
Okay, so I may have tossed in a bit of snark in my tone, but I’m so out of sorts because of how he’s treated me ever since I was forced to be in his presence, I think it’s well-deserved. The vein in his neck is very pronounced and I suspect he’s about to completely lose his shit.
“We take it one day at a time,” he says through gritted teeth. “I need you to be with me on this, Roxy. We have to be a united front when we start an inquiry into if we can bring him into our family.”
“What family, Saber? We barely tolerate each other and half the time can’t stand to be in the same room as the other. How pray tell, do you suggest we present a united front?”
“I don’t know, Roxy. I don’t fucking know. And what I’m fixing to propose is going to piss you off, but you’re going to do it because you owe it to me.”
My heart thunders in my chest waiting for him to lower to boom and tell me what it is he’s fixing to force me to do. “What, Saber? Tell me what this proposition is so I can start trying to figure out a way to accept it or counter it.”
And what the hell does he mean that I owe it to him? I owe him nothing . He lost that right fifteen years ago when he destroyed us. A thought comes to mind but I push it away. That particular memory is fraught with fear, sadness, and anger, and reliving it isn’t something I want to do, especially while I’m at work and our broken son is laying in a bed a few doors away.
“You’re going to marry me, Roxy.”
“I’m sorry,” I say with a lackluster chuckle. “I must have misunderstood you. I didn’t realize my ears were clogged until just now. Did you just imply that we were going to tie ourselves together in a way that means there’s a Mrs. attached to my name?”
“No implying, just stating straight out facts,” he rumbles, his tone harsh and unyielding.
“Why on earth would I marry someone who loathes the very ground I walk on and the air I breathe?” I query. “Seriously, Saber, I say this with all due respect, but you’re fucking out of your damn mind if you think I’ll marry you. I know you don’t remember things all that clear, but I do and I’m not setting myself up for that kind of abuse again.”
“Abuse? When did I fucking abuse you, Roxy?” he sneers, his voice sinister sounding.
“How about the day you told me it was my fault I was pregnant? Or wait, I know, how I was ruining your life? If I recall, you were naked in the bed with me, and not only was I on the damn pill, but you wore condoms. Do you remember? In fact, Saber ,” I sneer back, “they were condoms that you insisted on buying because you were worried I would mess with them since one of your buddies had that happen to him! You watched me take my damn pill every single day and you were the one who picked up my prescription, so I couldn’t tamper with it. You were downright paranoid after Chet got trapped by his girlfriend.”
“I never, not once blamed you for being pregnant, Roxy and you know it! I was furious at the fact that you didn’t leave me with any choice but to give our son away to virtual strangers. Do you want to know why I finally gave in when you wouldn’t see things from my point of view and signed on that motherfucking dotted line?”
“Do tell,” I jeer, waving my arm at him as if to say, ‘go on’, “because I can’t wait to hear this one. And, you sure the fuck did blame me for all of it.”
I spent too many hours with a therapist not to remember everything that happened as though it was crystal clear.
“No, Foxy, I didn’t blame you for being pregnant. I blamed you for being so willing to just give our child away, the one that wanted to be born so badly that he defeated two different birth control methods. It might not have been easy, but we were both smart and we’d have figured out how to finish school while raising a baby. So many other couples do it and have done it.”
Because arguing with him is like talking to a brick wall, I toss my arms up in the air, completely frustrated. It’s always him that’s right and the rest of us are in the wrong. “Just fucking tell me, Saber. Why did you finally give in and sign away your rights?”
He mirthlessly chuckles and sneers. “I went and saw a law professor at the university. Wanna know what he told me? Come on, take a guess, Roxy.”
Him going back and forth between calling me Roxy and Foxy is starting to give me whiplash. I clamp my lips together and wave my hand through the air in a carry on motion.
“We weren’t married, so in the state of Texas, at that time, my rights meant nothing. Not even the fact that we lived together and were considered common law married was a factor. It meant zilch in the eyes of the court. It’s the mother who was in charge of making those decisions because fathers basically had no rights to their children unless he was wedded to the mother. If you were unwilling to give me full custody I had no other alternative than to put my name down so at least I had some sort of tie to him and claim that he is mine. Therefore, the fact that you made that decision for the both of us, without any consideration to me or how I felt about it, meant I was up shit creek without a paddle. So yes, you owe me this.”
My entire body slumps in the chair. I knew he was passionate when it came to Canyon, but I didn’t know the lengths he had gone to so he could fight me on the adoption and raise him on his own.
“I’m sorry, Saber. But I’m not sure I’m in a place where I can accept that or any terms you may give me. I need time.” As quickly as I can, I jump out of the seat, toss the foam cup of coffee into the trash bin and scuttle out of the room. All the while, my brain is stuck on the information he shared.
It’s like a broken record just looping through my head and I realize that it’s possible that maybe the two of us had some major miscommunication going on back then. Taking into consideration the pregnancy hormones that were flowing through me, as well as the stress of us both being in a highly competitive career path, and it’s more than obvious that we might have both been talking, but neither of us was really listening to each other.