2. Nathan Sr
NATHAN SR
THE PREVIOUS MORNING
I don’t enjoy starting his morning with an argument, but my son has always had a talent for poor timing.
Nathan Jr. storms into my office without knocking, drops into the chair across from my desk, and immediately starts talking before I’ve even finished reviewing the patient chart in front of me.
“I need a favor.”
I don’t look up yet. I sign the last line on the discharge order, close the folder, and set it neatly on the edge of the desk before I lift my eyes to him. “You need many things,” I pointedly say.
He frowns at me and smooths the front of his Armani. The boy looks good in a suit. Always has. The Clarke name opens doors, and he’s spent most of his adult life walking through them like the world owes him a welcome.
“I need money,” he says.
I lean back in the chair and fold my arms, letting the silence sit there for a second while he pretends not to notice. “How much?”
“Fifty.”
“Thousand?” I raise a brow at him.
“Yes.”
I lock my gaze on his eyes and refuse to give him the pleasure of looking away. “You walked in here before eight in the morning to ask me for fifty thousand dollars?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s an investment.”
“That’s a creative word for it.”
His mouth tightens, and I watch the irritation build behind his eyes while he shifts forward in the chair. “You know the foundation gala is coming up. There’s a donor I’ve been cultivating, and if I close this properly we could move the hospital into an entirely different funding tier.”
I tap one finger against the desk. “And you need fifty thousand dollars to impress him?”
“It’s not that simple.”
It usually is. Nathan Jr. stands and starts pacing across the office. He does that when he’s nervous. The boy has never liked sitting still when the conversation turns uncomfortable.
“You have the money,” he reasons with me. “You wouldn’t even notice it gone.”
“That’s not a good enough reason.”
“It should be.”
I tilt my head and study him for a moment.
The resemblance still catches people off guard.
Same eyes. Same height. Same build. When we stand next to each other at hospital events, strangers assume they’re looking at a younger version of me.
Life has a sense of humor, because he’s not remotely related to me.
“You’re not getting fifty thousand dollars,” I tell him with a sigh.
His head snaps toward me. “Why not?”
“Because we both know it’s not for the gala. You’ll burn through it in three weeks and come back asking for more.”
He stomps his foot on the floor, which is very on brand for him. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s for your own good.”
He lets out a short laugh that doesn’t carry any humor. “You’ve always thought the worst of me.”
“No,” I reply calmly. “I’ve simply watched you grow up.”
For a moment he doesn’t move, and the office goes quiet except for the distant noise of the trauma floor waking up outside the glass wall. Nurses walk past with coffee cups. Interns rush by holding charts like their lives depend on them.
My son stares at me. “You know,” he says slowly, “you’ve never actually liked me very much.”
I haven’t managed to lower my brow yet. “That’s an impressive conclusion.”
“It’s obvious.”
He turns away and walks toward the window, hands sliding into his pockets while he looks down at the street. “I mean,” he continues, “once you found out.”
This ghost shows up in the most irritating moments. Usually when Nathan Jr. is asking for money. He keeps his back to me and his gaze fixed on the busy street ahead. His shoulders sit high under the suit jacket, his hands buried in his pockets.
“Once I found out,” I repeat, and I let the words land flat. “You mean the test?”
He turns his head halfway, and his mouth curls in something that tries to pass as a smile. “You can say it. Once you found out I wasn’t yours.”
I don’t move in my chair, and I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
“I said ‘the test’ so you didn’t have to perform.
” I tap my pen against the folder once. “You were three, and you were in a dinosaur sweater, and you had yogurt on your cheek during the blood draw. I didn’t care about whether you were mine, I cared about the circumstances of the discovery. ”
His eyes flicker, then he looks away again like the memory offends him. “That’s not the point.”
“It’s always the point.” My voice stays even while the trauma floor wakes up outside the glass. “You keep bringing it up like it absolves you for being a dick, and it doesn’t.”
He pivots off the window finally, and the irritation in his face has nowhere to hide now. “You’ve treated me different ever since,” he says, and he spreads his hands like he’s presenting evidence. “You stopped…I don’t know. Pretending.”
I loosen my tie, pick up the discharge order again and slide it a fraction of an inch into alignment with the edge of my desk.
It gives my hands something to do, and it keeps my temper where it belongs.
“I never let history come between us, Nate. That was all you. You think I owe you my whole life, but it doesn’t work that way. ”
He scoffs and drops back into the chair across from me with a heavy thud. “History,” he repeats. “Fine. Tell me the story again, Doctor Clarke. Make it sound noble.”
“I don’t need it to sound like anything,” I reply, frowning at him. “It happened the way it happened, and you know most of it.”
He leans forward, and his voice goes quiet. “No, I know what you tell people.”
I hold his stare. “Then listen,” I say with a shrug. “Your mother and I slept together once, and she told me it was a mistake, and she walked out of my apartment before sunrise.”
His expression shifts, quick and ugly. “You always talk about her like she was trash.”
“I talk about her like she was careless,” I retort, my patience beginning to wear thin.
“She was brilliant in a room full of donors, she knew every name and every handshake, and she could make a surgeon feel like a god for an evening. Then she went back to her life, and I went back to mine, and I assumed that was the end.”
Nate looks at the ceiling like he’s counting to ten, then he drags his gaze back to me. “And then she got pregnant.”
“And then she disappeared,” I correct, and my tone stays dry. “I didn’t get a call, a message, or the courtesy of a warning. I found out years later when she showed up at my door with you on her hip and a folder of documents in her hand.”
He laughs once, short and bitter. “She told me you were thrilled.”
“She told you what helped her sleep,” I say, and I lean back. “She looked tired that night, her makeup was perfect and her hands shook when she passed me the papers. She’d burned through whatever life she’d built and she needed an anchor, and she decided my name would do.”
Nathan Jr. stills, and he watches my face like he’s trying to catch a crack. “So you did it to protect your name.”
I lift a brow. “Do you want the version where I was twenty-nine, I’d finally stopped being a resident people laughed at, and I had a reputation that could be ruined by one headline,” I ask, and I keep my voice low.
“Or do you want the version where I looked at a child with my eyes and my hair color, and I decided I wouldn’t let him be treated like a mistake in public? ”
His lips press together, and he doesn’t answer, so I continue.
“She asked for support,” I say. “She didn’t ask nicely, and she didn’t offer trust, but she made it clear she’d go loud if I didn’t go quiet. I agreed to help, and I agreed to meet, and I agreed to dinners.”
He shifts in his chair, and his knee bounces once under the desk. “Those dinners,” he mutters. “You mean when you played family.”
“I mean when I tried to show up for you,” I correct. “Once a month, sometimes twice, always in a restaurant your mother liked so she could be seen. She’d arrive late, you’d arrive hungry, and I’d cut your chicken into smaller pieces while she smiled at people walking past our table.”
Nate’s face goes stiff in a way that reads familiar. He’s always hated this part, the part where he has to picture her as human.
“And one night, another man showed up,” I go on as I fold my hands. Nate winces immediately and opens his mouth, but I raise a hand and will him back into silence.
“He walked into one of those dinners, stood at our table, and he asked for money like he was ordering dessert. He called your mother by a name I’d never heard, then he looked at you, and he said, ‘That’s my kid too.’” I pause for a moment.
Nathan Jr. makes a sound in his throat, halfway between anger and embarrassment. “He was a loser.”
“He was loud,” I answer. “He wanted cash, and he wanted it in front of witnesses, and your mother tried to smooth it over with smiles. She failed. He kept talking, and you started to cry, and the waiter hovered like he was deciding whether to call security.”
Nathan Jr. stares at his hands now, and his fingers flex once. “I remember you standing up.”
“I did,” I say. “I paid the bill, picked you up, and walked out with you pressed against my shoulder while your mother argued with him in the doorway. Your cheek was wet, and you kept asking if you were in trouble.”
His mouth twitches, and he looks away fast. “I wasn’t in trouble.”
“No,” I say, and I let the word sit there. My heart breaks once more, like it had for him all those years ago. “You never were.”
I wish he’d come back. There was a time, a very brief one, where he was a good kid. Then his mom decided to try and make things work with the other guy and took Nate away for ten years. I resisted at first, but that was futile. When he came back to Boston, he was too far gone.
The office goes quiet for a moment, and I can hear a code cart rolling past in the hall. My phone stays face down on the desk, my pager stays clipped to my belt, and I let the memory finish without rushing it.
“I ordered the test the next day,” I quietly recall. “When the results came back, I read them alone in this same chair.”
Nathan Jr. lifts his head slowly. “And you were relieved.”