26. Jack
26
JACK
I didn’t have to ask which set of concerned people were Sophia’s parents. She looked exactly like her mother and I spotted them approaching the door as I walked out. Her father, a middle-aged man with a balding head, round face, and a wisp of a combover, looked very stern. He was exactly what I expected based on Sophia's accounts of how she'd been raised. I nodded at them respectfully and passed by, on my way to the doctors’ lounge.
My heart felt so full yet so conflicted at the same time. My chest cavity felt like it was physically swelling with all the emotion. I knew as a physician that it was the release of my fight or flight hormones, surging through me with the shock. It started in the operating room and had continued ever since. For a brief moment when I saw that Sophia was okay, I felt better, but when she told me the news, I felt a bit dizzy myself from the adrenaline rush.
So I was going to be a father again. The shock of it was so much, I had to sit down. I found a chair in the corner of the lounge and crumpled my scrub cap in my hands as I leaned my head against the wall and shut my eyes. It made total sense now why Sophia had been dragging her feet about going to HR. It wasn't just about her parents and their opinion about her internship. Now she had a secret from them that would cause a lot more than work stress.
"Dr. Thornton, are you okay?" I heard Dr. Briggs's voice and opened my eyes. He'd come up to the lounge after scrubbing out, though he'd probably gone to my office first for the debrief. I hadn't even thought about it. The moment I was scrubbed, I ran straight to emergency. I sat a bit straighter and rubbed my face.
"Yeah, uh… Thanks for stepping in last-minute." I felt grateful for him but also a bit shaken and embarrassed. He'd had to jump in at the last minute, though his training had prepared him for it.
"No problem.” He pulled up a chair and sat down, taking off his own scrub cap. "I guess you went to the ER to see Dr. Chen?"
"Yeah, she's alright. Anemic… But I was worried." I hoped my fondness for her wasn't too obvious, but at this point, it was only a matter of time until everyone knew, anyway. I had to go to HR, but after that announcement, I felt like I should go to her first. We had a lot to discuss.
How would Leah take this? What would the lawyer think? Would Dana freak out more and get even more hostile? Hell, what did I even think about this? I was thinking about how a new baby would affect current circumstances without even reflecting on what it meant for me. I was officially dedicating the next twenty years of my life to raising another child. I'd be almost sixty by the time this was over, but something inside me sparked with joy when I thought about it.
"You okay?" Dr. Briggs asked, and I shrugged a shoulder. We'd worked together long enough that he knew me well enough to know something was going on. I just couldn't come out and tell him what it actually was until I had that fateful conversation with HR. There were enough hints now for him to begin drawing his own conclusions, though without proof, no one could point a finger.
"I'm alright. I'm just exhausted. The workload is taking a toll on me too." I forced a weak smile, and he nodded.
Dr. Briggs knocked twice on the table situated between us and then stood. "What I know is if someone I cared about was in the ER, I wouldn’t be worrying about work." He gave me a pointed look, and I tried my hardest not to respond, but I could tell he was reading me like a book. "I'll see you tomorrow. Hopefully, Dr. Chen is feeling better soon."
"Have a good night," I told him and watched him walk out.
Sophia and I had been having fun. We'd snuck around, had wild sex, gotten to know each other, and at times, I'd felt a deeper connection with her than I had anyone else in my entire life. When the heat got turned up with the custody case, I knew it was time to take things more seriously and I wanted to. I wanted to declare our relationship and go to HR—do things the right way. I still wanted that, but now there was an added element of upheaval.
Sophia wasn't anywhere close to having a stable career. She had at least four and a half years of residency training left. That was assuming her parents let her stay here in Denver. I couldn’t imagine her being gone, but I had to think about what was best for her now and the baby. If for some stupid reason things between us fell apart or didn’t work out, she'd be a single mother. She was at the precipice of greatness in her career, and maybe that internship at Johns Hopkins really was what she should do.
But I'd never be able to tell her that. It would mean hurting her, to agree with her father… It would be pushing her away, sending her across the country where we had to resort to phone calls and emails. I didn't want her that far from me, but it wasn’t like we were ready to be married. I’d made that choice with Dana and it screwed me up. We got married so quickly, and it fell apart even faster.
I wanted Sophia, but I wanted to do things the right way. And against all odds, I wanted that baby too. I'd be a fool to make any sort of decision that would hurt her or our child. I just didn't know what the right choice was, and I didn’t know how to make it.
My thoughts were interrupted when I got called to check on a post-op patient, and by the time I got down to the ER to see Sophia again, she'd been discharged. The nurse told me she left with her parents and hadn't given any notes or anything. As her boss, I had a good reason for following up, but as her lover, I was more interested in just knowing she was okay.
I nodded off in the on-call room, but I left my phone on just in case she called. Life just got a lot more complicated, as if I needed it. But I was seeing a ray of hope on the horizon. Sophia and I would work this out. I knew we would. I just wondered what hell we'd be walking through to get to the other side.