Chapter 7 Lucas
Lucas
Hospitals are designed to make civilians feel safe. Bright lights. Calming paint. Posters about handwashing with cartoon bubbles. For me, they flip a switch: too many variables I don’t control. Doors I can’t clear. Machines I can’t fight.
Melanie winces on the triage bed while the nurse straps two disks to her belly with a stretchy band—one to catch the baby’s heartbeat, one to track tightening.
I focus on the readout because numbers make sense when nothing else does.
The paper spits a steady line of little mountains.
Good variability. Spikes when the baby wriggles.
The “contraction” line is less regular—small humps, inconsistent spacing.
“Braxton Hicks maybe,” the nurse says, warm and competent. “Let’s hydrate and watch.”
Mel nods, biting her bottom lip. My hand is already there before I think, thumb brushing that lip away from her teeth. “Breathe with me,” I say, quiet. In. Out. I match her pace until her shoulders drop half an inch.
The curtain rattles, and Amelia barrels in like a short-range missile, hair in a lopsided bun, hospital bag slung cross-body. “Move,” she orders no one in particular, then squeezes Melanie’s hand and glares at me like I’m in charge of pain as a concept. “How long has this been going on?”
“Started at Dragon Garden,” I say. “Intervals irregular. She could still talk through them. Pain peaked around seven, but dropped fast.” My voice sounds steady. Inside, I’m an unspooled wire.
Amelia’s eyes soften. “Thank you for getting her here.”
“Where’s Mom?” Mel asks, wincing as the nurse tightens the band a notch.
“Parking,” Amelia says. “She refused to hand the keys to the valet because he ‘looked twelve.’”
I stand to make space when Mrs. Mason sweeps around the curtain. She goes straight to Melanie, fingers in her hair, murmuring mother-code. Then she looks at me, sizing me in one pass: height, purpose, intent.
“Lucas,” Amelia says, standing to introduce. “He—uh—was with Mel when it started.”
Mrs. Mason shifts her concern into a gracious smile. “Thank you for bringing my daughter in.”
“Of course,” I say. I mean it. I’d carry her up twenty flights of stairs if the nurse told me the elevator was broken.
They lean in, a little family knot of murmurs and hair smoothing. Good. She has a net. I step back, let their comfort wrap her up, and slip out through the curtain to the corridor because I have a call to make.
I hit call on Duke. He picks up on the first buzz. Background noise says parked engine, low radio, Gunner’s baritone making a crack about cold coffee.
“Where are you?” Duke asks.
“I’m at the hospital with Melanie. Ran into her while picking up our Chinese order, and she had pain,” I say, keeping it clipped. “I’m staying until she’s released.”
“You went for crab rangoon and turned into a birth coach?” Gunner mutters, amused.
“Shut up,” Duke says, but he’s smiling. I can hear it. Then, to me: “You’re where you should be. We’ve got the rest. Client’s still snug. I’ll text you if anything shifts.”
“I left the food,” I add, brain unhelpfully offering logistics. “Hostess said she’d deliver.”
“Gunner will survive,” Duke says dryly. “Stay with her, Lucas. Holidays are soft targets—people make bad choices when they’re stressed. Safer she’s got someone who can read the room.”
I nod even though he can’t see me. “Copy.”
“And Lucas?” Duke’s voice drops a notch. “You good?”
“Always,” I lie. He lets it pass like a good friend.
I pocket the phone, take one breath against the cinderblock wall, and go back inside the curtain.
Melanie’s color is better. The nurse has a pitcher of water stationed like a sentry. Mel’s already halfway through cup three. The band prints more boring mountains. Boring is excellent.
The OB on call—a woman with kind eyes and comfortable shoes—arrives, scans the strip, asks a handful of calm questions, and does a fast exam. “Good news,” she announces, peeling off gloves. “Baby looks perfect. You’re not dilating. Those tightenings are practice—Braxton Hicks. Totally normal.”
I feel something unclench in my ribs so fast I almost sway.
The doctor smiles at Mel. “This far along, hydration is queen. Add rest to that. Ease up on the heavy lifting and stress where you can. If anything changes—fluid, bleeding, timeable contractions—you come back. Until then…” she taps the belly monitor gently, “your little tenant is happy.”
Melanie’s eyes flood with tears, and she laughs, hands over her face, relief spilling out in a messy, gorgeous exhale. Mrs. Mason wipes her cheek with a tissue and kisses her forehead. Amelia breathes out like she’s been holding her lungs hostage for an hour.
The nurse unstraps the bands, hands me a wipe and some tape to wrangle cords because apparently I look like a man who can coil anything. And you know what? She’s right.
Discharge papers materialize. “Take it easy,” the doctor repeats. “Feet up. Netflix. Water.”
“That I can do,” Mel says, voice shaky-soft with gratitude.
“Good,” I say. “I’m taking you home.”
She starts to protest, but Amelia is already checking her watch. “I have to run back to work for the evening shift,” she tells Mel, wincing. “And Mom needs to drop me. I hate leaving you, but I’ll be back after nine.”
Mrs. Mason squeezes my arm, light and grateful. “Thank you for staying. Truly.”
“It’s nothing,” I say. It’s not nothing. It’s the only thing that’s felt correct in twenty-four hours.
We exit as a slow-moving unit: nurse with a wheelchair, Amelia balancing the hospital bag and her coat, Mrs. Mason holding two extra cups of water. I bring the SUV around and help Melanie in, buckling her because her hands are full of discharge forms and stubborn pride.
“Text when you get home,” Amelia says through the window. “I mean it. Lucas, if she tries to assemble anything, confiscate her Allen wrenches.”
“Copy,” I say.
“I’m fine,” Mel protests weakly, then winces when a small tightness rolls under her palm. “Mostly fine.”
“Feet up,” I remind her, adjusting the seat back a notch. “Orders.”
We pull away from the curb. ER lights shrink in the rearview. The heater kicks on and the car fills with warm air and leftover adrenaline. Street lamps paint gold stripes across her face as we glide through town.
For two blocks, I let the quiet sit. She stares out the window, thumb tracing the edge of the discharge paperwork. Her other hand is on her belly, rubbing absent circles the way you do when you’re telling someone who can’t hear you that everything’s okay.
I clear my throat. The question has been ricocheting inside my skull since the moment I saw her in the store. It’s none of my business… except it is, in the parts of me that won’t obey the memo.
“Where’s Freddy?” I ask, keeping my voice even. “Why wasn’t he at the hospital?”
Silence. If I’d asked anything else, she’d have answered by now. She doesn’t pretend not to hear me. She just watches our reflections swim along the shop windows like she’s reading closed captions in her head.
Finally, she turns, meets my eyes head-on. No flinch. No flirty dodge. Just honest fatigue and a flash of… shame? fear? “He—” She stops, swallows. “Freddy’s not great in emergencies.”
It lands wrong. Not because it couldn’t be true—lots of people fold under pressure—but because it doesn’t match any of the other data points. My jaw ticks. “He had time between Dragon Garden and triage,” I say quietly. “Plenty of time to get to you.”
“I didn’t call him,” she says, so soft I almost miss it under the fan’s hum.
“Why not?”
Another long beat. We pass the coffee shop where I first saw her yesterday. The sign glows warm, the door swinging open and shut for people whose lives are smaller and bigger than ours in all the normal ways. She watches it go by.
“Because,” she says finally, exhale audible, “sometimes uncomplicated is just another word for unavailable.”
I digest that. It doesn’t answer the question, not really. It answers a better one.
“Mel,” I say, picking my words carefully. “If you need me to back off, I’ll back off. But I’m not going to pretend I didn’t notice there’s no record of a Freddy that intersects with your life.”
Her head snaps, surprise widening her eyes. “You… searched me?”
“Public records,” I say. “Tags. Nothing invasive.” I pause. “Occupational hazard.”
She makes a sound between a laugh and a groan. “Of course you did.”
We hit a red light. The SUV idles. I turn, giving her my full attention the way I would on a detail when a principal is about to tell me the thing that changes the whole op. “If you tell me to drop it, I will. But I don’t want to operate on bad intel. It gets people hurt.”
She stares at the dash, then back at me. Whatever she decides lands in her eyes before it hits her mouth. She opens her lips—then the light flips green and a horn taps behind us.
“Home first,” I say, easing forward. “Then we can have hard conversations on a couch like civilized people.”
She huffs a laugh, tension cracking a shade. “Fine. But only if you bring me the lo mein we abandoned.”
“Already on it. Dragon Garden’s delivering,” I say.
Her smile is small but real. “Show-off.”
I take the turn toward her building, scan the lot, file plate numbers without thinking.
Snow feathers the windshield, and the wipers whisper.
I don’t know what she’s going to say in ten minutes.
I don’t know if I’ll like it. I do know two things with the clarity that only drops into place during a crisis or a dawn stakeout:
She shouldn’t be carrying this alone.
And I’m done pretending uncomplicated is the same as good.