Chapter 8 #2
I don’t think I’ve ever driven with a toddler in the car, and I’m incredibly cautious on the way to my parents’ place. Fortunately, there’s hardly any traffic, and no one seems bothered that I barely get up to the speed limit.
By some miracle, I get Liam out of the carseat and into the house without waking him up. Mom meets us in the entrance hall and smiles at the sight of me with a kid against my chest.
“What a darling,” she whispers. “Take him up to the guest bedroom. You said his name is Liam?”
“Yeah.” I carry Liam up the stairs to the guest bedroom, with my mother following behind. The mattress has already been moved off the bed and onto the floor, and I lay him gently in the middle of it.
“You think he’ll be okay there?” I whisper to my mom.
She nods. “After you called, I went through the room and hid the knives and drugs.”
It takes me a moment to realize she’s joking. “You don’t think he needs a crib?” I ask.
My anxiety seems to amuse my mother. “With the mattress on the floor, he can hardly fall out of bed. And if he’s anything like you were at age three, he’d be able to climb out of a crib.”
“Right. Okay.” I stare down at Liam and wonder what he’ll think when he wakes up in an unfamiliar room.
“He’ll be fine, Luke,” she reassures me. “I sleep light, so I’ll hear him if he wakes up.”
We tiptoe out of the room, close the door, and head back down the stairs. “How’s Melissa’s daughter?” my mother asks.
“She had a bad allergic reaction, but she’s going to be fine. She’s in the ICU for observation, so the pediatrician’s taken over for now.”
“You going back there tonight?”
My mother knows me well. “Yeah.”
When I get back to the hospital, I head straight to the ICU and stop outside Claire’s room. Through the glass door, I can see that Claire’s asleep, and the bedside monitor shows normal heart rate and oxygen levels. Melissa’s curled up in a chair next to Claire’s bed, and her eyes are closed too.
A nurse walks up and nods to me. “She’s been stable, Dr. Carlton. She and her mom both fell asleep shortly after you left.”
I study Melissa carefully. She used to struggle with insomnia, and something about her breathing makes me doubt that she’s asleep. But if she really is asleep, it would be cruel to wake her up, so I thank the nurse and leave.
Dr. Markland promised to call me if Claire had any problems, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t try to sleep myself. I climb the stairs to the call rooms and claim an empty one, but as soon as I stretch out on the bed, I realize I’m way too wired to sleep.
So I head down the hall to the doctors’ lounge. The lounge is empty—not surprising, since it’s after ten P.M.—and smells of stale sweat and burnt popcorn, which isn’t surprising either. I rotated through a lot of hospitals in residency, and every doctors’ lounge smelled the same.
I consider going back to the parking lot to sit in Melissa’s car, which smells faintly of citrus and of her. I still have her keys, so there’s no reason I couldn’t, except . . .
I operated on Melissa’s daughter yesterday. She said we’re ancient history. When she broke up with me ten years ago, she did it over the phone.
I give my head a shake, hoping to shake Melissa out of it.
I turn on the TV, but there’s nothing I want to watch. Although the hospital sprang for a flatscreen TV, they’re too cheap to pay for Netflix.
There are a couple of books tucked on the shelf under the coffee table, and I pull them out.
A Grisham book, which I’ve already read and enjoyed, and a Harlequin historical romance that looks like it’s from the nineties.
Maybe the eighties. The cover boasts a shirtless man kissing a blonde with an impossibly tiny waist and improbably large skirts.
I’d love to know which of my colleagues abandoned this little gem, but I’m sure no one would admit to it.
And then my brain floats back to Melissa. After everything that’s happened tonight, there’s no way she’s asleep. I pull out my phone and shoot off a text, asking if she’s awake.
Her reply zings back five seconds later.
Melissa: Yeah.
Me: All good with Liam. Sound asleep in the guest bedroom.
Melissa: Thanks. Troy’s driving back tomorrow morning, so one of us can pick Liam up.
Me: Great.
The good thing about texting is that she won’t know I’m being sarcastic. I could do without seeing Troy Thompson again, but I guess Melissa had to call him.
Me: Claire okay?
Melissa: Seems to be. Sleeping now.
Me: How’s Claire’s mom?
Melissa: Okay.
Me: Not sleeping, though.
Melissa: No
Me: Put your earbuds in.
Melissa: ??
Me: I’m gonna call you. I’ll do all the talking, so you don’t wake Claire up.
Melissa: Okay
Me: Earbuds in?
Melissa: Yeah.
I hit the button to call her, and she answers immediately, her voice a whisper. “Is something wrong, Luke?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I called to talk you to sleep. Set your sleep timer to turn off your phone in half an hour. If you’re still awake, you can turn it back on and text me, and we’ll keep going.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
And now I’m at a loss for what to talk about. There are so many things I could say to Melissa, but this isn’t the time for a serious conversation.
My gaze moves to the books under the coffee table. “I found a book in the call room. A Dream of a Duke. It looks like a literary classic.”
I hear a muffled laugh, which is all the encouragement I need. I flip to the first chapter and begin. “After four unsuccessful Seasons, Miss Prudence Leadbottom—”
Melissa interrupts me with a snort. “That’s not really her name,” she whispers.
“Shh,” I tease. “You’re not supposed to talk, remember? Claire’s asleep.” The heroine’s name is actually Ledbury, but I like my version better.
“Miss Prudence Leadbottom was resigned to the fact that she was unlikely to receive an offer of marriage,” I continue. “She wasn’t troubled by the prospect of life as a spinster, since, in her opinion, men were far more trouble than they were worth.”
I skip a few pages until I find the scene where the heroine meets the duke.
“One afternoon, Miss Leadbottom was walking in the park when she nearly collided with a stranger. The gentleman was tall and dark, with muscular thighs that were displayed to advantage in tightly fitting buckskin breeches.”
Melissa giggles softly and I keep reading, enjoying her muffled laughter and whispered commentary. After about ten minutes, she goes quiet, and I suspect she’s fallen asleep. I keep reading until the sleep timer kicks in and the call disconnects.