11. Joseph
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JOSEPH
It's eleven in the morning, and I'm on my fourth coffee. Too much buzz for a man trying to act normal. My hands won't stay still, and I keep tapping my pen against whatever surface is closest, and two nurses have already given me looks.
I couldn't sleep last night. I kept seeing it—that tiny flicker on the screen, that heartbeat, fast and small and so alive my brain couldn't process it as real.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, replaying it.
The gray static, the doctor moving the wand, and then—boom.
A pulse. A rhythm. Something inside Millie that I helped put there, beating away.
My kid. My actual kid has a heartbeat. Holy shi-
I round the corner too fast and walk straight into a nurse carrying a stack of charts. Papers scatter. We both apologize at the same time, bending down to pick everything up and bumping heads on the way down, which is just perfect, exactly the kind of day I'm having.
"Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry."
"It's fine, Dr. Liu, just maybe slow down?"
"Yeah. Great advice. I'll do that."
She walks away, giving me a concerned look over her shoulder.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I flinch so hard I almost drop my cup. Okay. I need to stop with all the caffeine today.
I look at my phone. A text from my Mom. A photo of Christopher sitting in a cardboard box, staring at the camera like he's deeply inconvenienced by existence. Below the photo, a wall of text.
Ma
Joseph, Christopher finished his antibiotics two weeks ago, and the sneezing stopped, but now he's acting strange.
He's not eating as much. He just sits in his box and stares at the wall.
Do you think the antibiotics made him depressed?
Can cats get depressed? I read online that cats can get depressed.
Should I play music for him? Your father says I'm overreacting, but he doesn't see what I see.
This cat is sad, Joseph. Would classical music help or jazz? I'm open to either.
I type back:
Joseph
Ma. He's a cat. He lives in a box by choice.
She sends a sad face emoji and another photo of Christopher from a slightly different angle, as if the second angle is somehow more diagnostic.
I smile at my phone. She named a stray cat Christopher because she said it was a distinguished name for a distinguished cat. Every time she says it, I picture a seventy-year-old man in a wingback chair judging everyone in the room.
Funny thing—I never had pets growing up, and now I'm surrounded by cats. Tofu at home. Christopher at Mom's. And a baby on the way.
A baby. My baby. Those words still don't sit right in my brain. They're like a shirt that doesn't fit yet. I keep trying them on, and they keep feeling too big.
I think about telling Mom. She'd lose it.
Completely lose it. She's been wanting a grandchild for years.
Every family dinner, every phone call, she finds a way to slip it in.
"Your cousin just had her second." "Mrs. Chen's daughter is due in March.
" "I'm not getting any younger, Joseph." She says that last one like she's delivering a terminal diagnosis.
Like grandchildren are a time-sensitive medical issue, and she's running out of treatment options.
If I told her right now, she'd cry. Then she'd scream. Then she'd probably drive to a baby store and buy everything in it before I could finish the sentence. She'd call every relative she hasn't spoken to in a decade just to tell them. She'd tell neighbors. She'd tell random people on the street.
But it's too early. Most people wait until after the first trimester.
And telling Mom means telling her everything.
Who's the mother? How did this happen? Are you together?
What's the plan? I can already hear the questions lined up like patients in a waiting room, one after another, no end in sight.
And I do want to tell her. But I need to do it right. Millie should be there, the two of them meeting properly—not through a panicked phone call where she's still worried about Christopher the Cat.
Not yet. Soon. But not yet.
The problem is I'm terrible at secrets. Always have been. My brain has no storage capacity for classified information. It goes in, and words come out, and there's almost no gap between those two things. In college, I ruined two surprise parties. Two. One of them was mine.
This secret is eating me alive.
I walk through the halls after rounds, and every conversation feels like a minefield.
Dani at the nurses' station asks how I'm doing, and I say "Great, good, everything's great" too fast, and she squints at me and says "You're being weird.
" I'm not being weird. I'm being a man with a secret he physically cannot contain for much longer, and it's turning me into a bad actor.
In the elevator, one of the residents mentions she's pregnant. She's telling everyone. She's glowing about it. I say congratulations, and my voice cracks on the second syllable, and she looks at me funny.
"Sorry, I just, I love pregnant people."
Her face drops.
"I mean, I love pregnancy." Oh God, that's worse. "I mean, I think pregnancy is a beautiful thing. How amazing that women can carry a whole human being. It's just, it's incredible. The female body is incredible."
The elevator doors open. It's not my floor. I don't care. I'm out. I'm gone. I'm walking down a hallway I don't need to be in, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.
I take the stairs down to my actual floor and vow to never speak to anyone ever again.
Work helps. When I'm with a patient, my brain shuts up. I focus. I'm present. I'm good at what I do, and it gives me somewhere to put all this energy. But the second I'm done, the moment I'm between patients with nothing in my hands, it all comes rushing back.
By five p.m. I need to say it out loud. Just once. To one person. Just to hear the words exist outside my own head.
There's only one person I trust.
Connor.
I head to his office. At the end of the hall, the door always shut because Connor likes it that way.
I open it without knocking because I've never knocked, and I'm not starting now.
I've walked in on him doing everything. Charting, eating, on the phone with his lawyer during the custody battle, staring out the window, doing that thing where he processes emotions by being completely still and silent, which I give him endless grief about.
Today I open the door, and Connor and Sarah are kissing.
Not a peck. Not a see-you-later. They're in it. His hand is on her waist. She's got his lab coat bunched in her fist. Neither of them heard me come in.
"Oh, my God." I slap both hands over my eyes. "I'm seeing things no child should see. This is going to require years of therapy."
Connor doesn’t even blink. "Joseph, you're a grown man."
"I am a child! I am YOUR child! You have traumatized me, and I will never recover!"
"You're four years younger than me."
"Exactly! So young. So innocent. And now this."
Sarah laughs. She steps back and smooths her hair. Her cheeks are pink, and she's trying to look composed, but she keeps glancing at Connor and pressing her lips together to stop smiling.
"I was just leaving anyway," she says.
"Wait." My hands come down. My voice changes before I can stop it. Something drops out of the performance and lands somewhere lower, somewhere real. "If you have a minute. Can you stay?"
The room shifts. Connor straightens. Sarah stops laughing. They're both looking at me now, reading my face, finding what's underneath.
I close the door.
"What's going on?" Connor asks.
I start pacing. I can't help it. The caffeine and the secret and the sleep deprivation are all fighting for control of my body, and pacing is winning.
"Oh, today? A lot! I bumped into three nurses today, and there's a resident in this hospital who probably thinks I'm some perverted weirdo with a pregnancy kink!"
"Wait, what?" Sarah asks.
"Okay, right, right. Let's start from the very beginning."
I stop pacing and lean against the door, letting myself breathe for a second.
"A few months ago, I went on a date. Through a dating app. She was... she was incredible. We had dinner, we talked, we went back to my place, and well, you know. Anyway, she left before I woke up. And I thought that was it."
"Okay," Connor says, arms crossed, like he's waiting for the rest.
"Then, a few weeks ago, she showed up in my ER. As a patient. She fell down her stairs. Broke three ribs. I was the surgeon on call."
Sarah's eyes go wide. "Aww, that sounds like fate. Please tell me you asked her out again."
"Oh, just you wait. I'm just at the tip of the iceberg here."
Connor uncrosses his arms.
"Before they could do imaging, they ran a standard pregnancy screen." I pause. "It came back positive."
Silence.
"And I'm the father."
Sarah's hand goes to her mouth.
"So yeah. I'm going to be a dad. And she's living with me. In my apartment. With her cat."
The silence stretches. They stare at me. Jaws open. I've never seen Connor this still, and that's saying something.
Sarah recovers first. "But wait, is she okay? How are her ribs? Is the baby healthy? Has she had her first appointment?"
"Yeah, she's good. Ribs are healing well. Baby's healthy, heartbeat looked strong at the first scan. We just had the OB appointment yesterday."
"And how is she handling everything?"
"Better than me, honestly. She's steady. She's tough."
Connor is still processing. His brain takes in all the information before it responds.
"Connor. You in there, buddy?"
He blinks. "You got a woman pregnant from a one-night stand. Then you asked her to move in with you the moment she got discharged, and now, she's living in your apartment."
"When you say it like that, it sounds insane."
"It is insane, Joseph."
"Thank you. Very helpful. Really appreciate the support."
Sarah smacks his arm without looking at him. Connor doesn't even flinch. He's used to it.
Connor and Sarah glance at each other. That look. The one where they have an entire conversation without opening their mouths. It feels like your parents finding out you have a crush.
"Don't," I say. "Don't do the look."
"We're not doing a look," Sarah says, very much still doing the look.
Sarah's face goes soft. Connor's goes thoughtful. They're both adjusting, recalibrating, building a picture of this woman from what I'm giving them.
"Are you okay with all of this, Jo?" Sarah asks. Her voice is gentler now. "Having a child is a big deal. It changes everything."
"I know." I rub the back of my neck. "And I'm not going to sit here and pretend I have it figured out because I don't. I'm terrified. Half the time, I don't know what I'm doing. But I don't regret it. Any of it. I want this."
Connor nods slowly. He gets it. He's been somewhere close to here, and he knows the math.
"Also, I really like her. Like, actually like her. She's funny, she's smart, and she gives me this look when I'm being stupid that somehow makes me want to be more stupid just to see it again. She's... yeah. I'm in trouble."
Sarah looks at Connor. Connor looks at Sarah. Some married-couple telepathy passes between them again.
"You really like her," Sarah says. It's not a question.
"I really do."
Connor pushes off his desk and walks over to me. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes once.
"You'll figure it out."
Three words. That's all he gives me. But from Connor, three words is a whole speech.
He's not a man who wastes language. If he says you'll figure it out, he means it.
He's looked at the situation, assessed the variables, and decided I'm going to be fine.
That's a Connor Porter diagnosis, and those don't come easy.
"We're here for you," Sarah says. "Whatever you need. And I want to meet her. Soon. Especially since we're both pregnant."
"She'd like that. I think you two would get along."
"I already like her." Sarah smiles. "Any woman who puts up with you has my immediate respect."
"Wow. Okay. Love you too, Sarah."
"I'm serious, though, Jo. Bring her around. I know what it's like to go through a pregnancy feeling like you're doing it alone. Even when you're not. I'd love to just be there for her. If she wants that."
"She'd love that," I say. "Thank you, Sarah. Really."
She hugs me. Carefully, working around the bump. I hug her back. Over her shoulder, I catch Connor watching us, and he's got that almost-smile. The one that means he's glad but would rather die than say so.
I let go of Sarah. I look at both of them. These two people who met in a hospital and fell in love against all odds and built a family out of wreckage and hope. If they can do it, I can do it.
"Thank you," I say. "Both of you. Seriously."
"Anytime, Jo," Sarah says.
"Now get out of my office," Connor says. "I have charts."
"You guys just want to make out again. Where's the decency? There's a hospital full of patients out there, and you two are in here acting like teenagers."
"He's just emotional," Sarah tells me. "That's how he shows it."
"Oh, I'm aware." I grin.
"Out, Joseph."
"I'm going, I'm going."
I open the door, step into the hallway, and close it behind me.
I lean against the wall and exhale.
I said it out loud. Two people I love know, and they didn't run.
That's more than enough.