Chapter 11
Atlas
Grayce’s whimper threads through the baby monitor and easily breaks my slumber.
It’s not a full-on wail—just a tired, miserable sound that has me jolting out of bed.
I can hear Maddie cooing to the baby, which means she’s already in the nursery.
A low murmur follows—Maddie’s voice, frayed around the edges but soft in a way I haven’t heard directed at anyone but Grayce.
I didn’t fall asleep until after three. The game adrenaline took forever to burn off, and the conversation at two a.m. didn’t exactly allow for peaceful slumber. I should have been dead to the world this morning, but that tiny little baby whimper had me flying out of bed like the house was on fire.
I hop in the shower and within ten minutes, I’m dressed and mentally sifting through the contents of the fridge with the idea of cooking breakfast.
In the kitchen, I find Maddie at the table with her laptop open, hair scraped into a messy knot, one leg jiggling under her chair in time with Grayce’s unhappy little grunts.
Grayce is slumped against her shoulder, cheeks pink, fist stuffed in her mouth, tugging her ear with the other hand like it personally offended her.
Maddie’s phone is on the table, wedged between a notepad and a pen and she’s got an earbud in her left ear.
“I understand you’re full today,” she’s saying, voice clipped with effort.
“Can you recommend someone taking new patients? She’s eleven months.
No fever yet. Ear tugging. Fussy since last night—yes, we tried Tylenol.
” A long pause and her expression darkens.
“So, you’re saying if she has a fever, you could work us in, but otherwise, I’m shit out of luck? ”
Maddie closes her eyes against whatever’s being said on the other end, and I skirt by her to the coffee pot. I pour myself a cup and lean against the counter, watching.
“Okay, fine… yes, thank you.” She ends the call with a tap that’s polite but barely.
“Trying to get Grayce into a doctor?” I ask.
She nods, trying to type on the keyboard on her computer with one hand. “Everyone’s booked. The earliest I can find is Friday.” Her mouth flattens. “I don’t want to have to take her to an urgent care or the ER, but I might have to.”
We. We might have to, but I keep that inside.
Yeah, I don’t want her sitting for hours in a waiting room filled with coughs and pinkeye. “Agreed. We need to get into a pediatrician.”
Maddie shoots me a look that says, No shit, Sherlock.
Grayce lets out a warbling sound of complaint, her face screwing up in misery.
Maddie peers harder at her computer screen, perhaps trying to will a good doctor into existence who can work Grayce in this morning.
I see the calculation in her eyes, the mental list forming of all the things she needs to do.
I guarantee you the one thing not on that list is asking me for help.
“I’ll make a call,” I say, setting my coffee down and scrolling my contacts on my phone.
“A call for what?”
“To find a pediatrician for Grayce.”
“You don’t have to.” It comes out fast, automatic. A reflex, I’m sure.
“Not asking,” I say, because I can’t stand here and do nothing while she grinds herself into dust.
I tap the number for Drake McGinn, our primary goalie who’s been injured, but more importantly, a father.
He answers on the second ring with a jovial “What’s up, buttercup?”
“Sorry for the early call,” I say. “Need a recommendation for a pediatrician. Grayce might have an ear infection and we’re having a hard time getting in somewhere.
Figured since you’re a dad extraordinaire, and your wife happens to be one of the richest women in the world, you’d be able to guide me. ”
I risk a glance over at Maddie whose mouth is hanging open, and it takes all my strength not to laugh.
Drake doesn’t get weighed down by nonessential questions. He merely says, “Give me fifteen minutes.” Then he hangs up.
I set the phone down and pick up my coffee mug. Maddie still stares at me but then her jaw gets to working. “Who’s the dad extraordinaire that you know who also happens to be married to the richest woman in the world?”
“Not the richest woman,” I correct her. “One of the richest. And that would be Drake McGinn. He’s one of our goalies and has three boys, and he’s married to the team owner, Brienne Norcross.”
“You’re calling in a big favor just for a pediatrician recommendation,” she muses.
“Not a big favor. Our team is like a family. Brienne would expect us to reach out to her.”
Maddie closes the laptop and shifts Grayce to her other shoulder. “It feels like cheating to call the owner of the team for a baby appointment.”
“Would you rather sit in the emergency room?” I ask.
“No way,” she says quickly, and I grin at her.
“Have you had coffee yet?” I ask, noting there’s no cup near her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t like drinking hot liquids around Grayce. You shouldn’t either.”
“Duly noted,” I say, moving to the other side of the island. “But here… give her to me and you can grab a cup. We both had late nights.”
“You don’t have to—”
“For fuck’s sake, Maddie, just accept the help when it’s offered,” I grumble, running out of patience with her automatic denials.
She opens her mouth to argue, seems to think better of it, and rises from the chair. She wordlessly hands Grayce to me, who makes a sound of distress before settling against my chest.
She turns from me and before I can even sit down, my phone chimes. I nab it and see it’s a text from Drake. Pittsburgh Pediatrics, Dr. Klemmer. 9:30 a.m.
“We have an appointment,” I say with a wide smile.
Maddie’s head snaps to look at me over her shoulder. “What?”
I hold up my phone to show her the text, but she can’t read it from across the kitchen. “Brienne must have pulled a string.”
A dozen expressions march across her face—disbelief, relief, irritation, suspicion. The relief wins for a breath, then she folds it away and finds her spine. “I could have handled it,” she says, even though we both know she didn’t.
Not today. Not without waiting.
I decide to call her out.
“You didn’t,” I say, gentler than it reads in my head. “And that’s okay.”
Her eyes flash like flint. “It’s not okay to owe people.”
“We don’t owe anyone anything. This was happily done for us, and no offense, Maddie, but you need to be gracious when help is offered.”
Her face flushes as we stare at each other over the island. We’re both too tired to keep the usual armor locked in place and I can see her resolve crumbling. “Thank you,” she says, so soft I almost miss it.
“Anytime,” I answer, and I mean it.
“And I’m sorry I keep declining the help. It’s second nature.”
“That’s fine, just as long as you’re okay with me shooting that shit down.”
A small smile plays at her lips, and she ducks her head in a short but embarrassed nod.
“We need to feed Grayce,” Maddie says and then it’s on.
Two parents moving fluidly. Maddie pulls a bottle from the fridge and shakes it. I adjust Grayce in my arms and accept the milk, surprised she’s not insisting on feeding her. Something smug and warm lights up my chest at the trust.
Grayce locks onto my T-shirt with both hands, the softness of her pressed to my ribs, and for a second, I forget how to breathe.
“There you go, sunshine,” I murmur, settling the bottle into her tiny hands. Her lashes flutter, she sucks, and that small sound—contented, rhythmic—threads through the kitchen until the world shrinks to the circle of her mouth around the bottle and the rise and fall of her belly.
For two minutes, everything is simple. Then her foot finds the hem of my shirt and she tries to climb my sternum like it’s a tree.
“Ambitious,” I tell her, fighting a smile.
Maddie watches, arms crossed, the line of her mouth carved with slight worry. “We need to leave in thirty,” she says. “I’ll pack the diaper bag.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll change Grayce.”
Her eyes twinkle with what I swear might be humor. “I suppose I could let you do that.”
“Man… that is some major growth,” I deadpan.
And she actually lets a smile loose before pivoting into motion, efficient and precise, loading wipes and diapers and a spare onesie like she’s stocking a bunker for a siege.
?
The pediatrician’s office smells like disinfectant and animal crackers.
The waiting room walls are a safari—giraffes with eyelashes, zebras wearing Hawaiian T-shirts, and lions with smiles too friendly to be carnivores.
A fish tank burbles in the corner, multicolored gravel glowing under a strip of LEDs.
Grayce sits on Maddie’s lap, staring at the fish with serious interest, intermittently pulling at her red ear.
We’ve barely been waiting ten minutes when a nurse comes through a side door. “Grayce Donovan?”
“That’s us,” Maddie says as she stands with Grayce in her arms, and I stand right along with her. I’m not staying in the waiting room.
She smiles. “Come on back.”
We follow the nurse down a hallway lined with framed kid drawings in marker—dads with triangle bodies, moms with hair like spaghetti, lopsided houses with hearts in the windows. My chest tightens around the simplest possible definition of family.
We stop at a station where Grayce is weighed and measured, then are shown into the exam room, which is overly bright.
The examination table is covered with a strip of crinkly paper, and a mobile of wooden birds turns over it slowly in the breeze of an air vent.
We both take a seat on colorful plastic chairs.
The nurse turns to face us, clipboard in hand. “Okay, Mom and Dad, what seems to be the problem?”
My entire body buzzes as if I’ve been struck by lightning and I can tell by the stricken look on Maddie’s face, she’s as shocked as I am.
It’s the first time we’ve been called mom and dad, and I’m not prepared for the weight of it.
Maddie glances at me, then to the nurse, “Um… we’re actually her guardians, but we’re going to be adopting her.”