The Wedding Plan. Abby Gaines

      CHAPTER THREE

      “WHEN WILL THEY TELL ME what’s going on?” Merry gripped the edge of her plastic chair in the ICU waiting room that the hospital had assigned to “Family of John Wyatt.”

      “As soon as they know something.” Lucas was doing a good job of acting as if she hadn’t asked that question twenty times already. She wondered if the U.S. Naval Academy ran classes in Maintaining a Rocklike Calm in a Crisis. Lucas would have aced it.

      “I called my dad,” he said. “He and Stephanie are waiting for a sitter for Mia, then they’ll be right here.”

      “They don’t need to come.” Her father and Lucas’s had been there for each other at all the most important events of their lives. She wanted this to be a little glitch, not a defining moment.

      She and Lucas lapsed into silence again. When a nurse stuck her head around the door, they both jumped.

      “A doctor will be out to see you in about ten minutes, Ms. Wyatt.” Her gaze drifted sideways to Lucas. Her eyes widened and she smiled. “Thank you for your patience.” She left the room with a lingering glance over her shoulder. Not at Merry.

      “If you’re looking for a date, you could be in luck,” Merry said.

      “Not interested.” Lucas stretched back in his chair.

      “I didn’t ask,” she said. “Are you seeing anyone at the moment? Other than me?”

      It wasn’t much of a joke. Still, he smiled. “Currently single. There was someone last year, before I was shot down—a nurse on my aircraft carrier. She married another guy. Lucky for you, I wasn’t invited to the wedding, so I didn’t need a date.”

      Merry forced herself to keep talking so she wouldn’t fall into a panic about her father. “That seems to be a recurring theme. Girlfriend breaks up with you, then marries someone else six months later. Do you think the adrenaline rush of getting away from you makes them crazy?”

      “She proposed to me, and I turned her down. She found a man who wanted the fairy-tale wedding. End of story.”

      Lucas stood and crossed to a poster of CPR instructions on the wall. He began reading, though Merry suspected he knew the details inside out from his military training. Her dad had still had a pulse when they’d found him, so CPR hadn’t been necessary. Maybe she should take a refresher course, so that next time…

      She shied away from the thought. Yeah, Dad was sick, but the dialysis was working. Whatever this episode was, he’d get past it. They’d get past it. “Why didn’t you want to marry her? What was wrong with her?” Easier to analyze Lucas’s patchy dating history than her father’s health.

      Lucas leaned against the wall, obscuring useful advice about clearing the airway before commencing CPR. “Nothing. She checked all the boxes.”

      “Loves the navy, built like a Victoria’s Secret model…” Merry counted points off on her fingers.

      He grinned. “Pretty much.”

      So Merry’s small breasts had turned him off. The only kind of Victoria’s Secret model she could be was for one of those bras that transformed nonexistent boobs into almost-cleavage. “She sounds perfect.”

      “She was turning thirty,” Lucas said.

      Merry gasped. “An old hag!”

      His mouth quirked. “Her biological clock was ticking. When I said I wasn’t ready for marriage, she asked me to be a sperm donor.”

      “And you didn’t want to?”

      “If I was going to procreate, I’d want to raise the kid myself.” He sat down again, this time several seats away from Merry.

      Of course he’d want to do it himself. He would never shirk a responsibility. But there was more to parenting than that, or there should be.

      “Being a dad is a big deal,” she limited herself to saying. John Wyatt was the only parent she knew. He’d not only been a wonderful father, he’d kept alive the mother she didn’t remember. If she lost him…

      “Snap out of it, Merry,” Lucas said. “Don’t assume the worst.”

      “Quit ordering me around.” Her reflexive reaction.

      “You never could do as you were told.” He shook his head with mock disappointment.

      “You never could explain why I had to be the petty officer third class, while you always got to be the captain.”

      He blinked at the reference to that childhood resentment. But she felt suddenly like a child. Vulnerable to loss.

      “It was for your own good,” he said. “I couldn’t promote you until you learned not to be insubordinate. You were even worse when you were the enemy—you could never accept that prisoner of war meant you were the loser.”

      “You could never understand that I might have cooperated if you didn’t insist on being in command,” she retorted.

      Though today had proved that a tendency to take charge wasn’t always a bad thing. While Merry had been paralyzed with shock, Lucas had found a blanket in the office, put it over her father, continued monitoring his pulse. He’d stayed so calm as they’d waited for the ambulance.

      “You were great today,” she blurted.

      “I didn’t do anything.” He folded his arms across his chest.

      The door to the waiting room opened. A woman wearing scrubs came in. “Ms. Wyatt?”

      Merry stood on legs that were suddenly leaden. “That’s me.”

      “I’m Dr. Randall. Your father is stable in ICU.”

      “Stable.” Merry clutched the word.

      “I’m afraid that’s a temporary state,” the doctor said. “We’re still running tests, but we believe your father has dialysis-associated peritonitis.”

      He’d had that before, though not so badly that he’d collapsed. Infection was a constant risk for peritoneal dialysis patients, usually resulting from a lapse in hygiene during the process. Merry made sure everything occurred in a sterile fashion during his lunchtime session, but she could imagine her dad “not bothering” in the evening.

      “I’ll supervise him every time from now on,” she vowed. “I’ll move in with him—I’ll hold a gun to his head until he scrubs every last speck of sawdust from under his fingernails.”

      Dr. Randall looked startled. Lucas grinned.

      “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” the doctor said. “If the infection’s as severe as we believe, Mr. Wyatt can’t continue on peritoneal dialysis…and the reason he switched to PD two years ago was because hemodialysis was no longer a possibility for him.”

      Lucas’s smile vanished. “How long does he have?”

      What did he mean, how long? That was the kind of question you asked about people who…

      “We expect his kidney failure to become fatal in the next ten days,” Dr. Randall said.

      “Dad’s going to die?” Merry’s knees sagged. Before she could keel over, Lucas’s arm came around her shoulders, held her up. Impersonal, but strong. “In ten days?”

      “Given his current condition, I’d say more likely in the next four or five days. I’m sorry, Ms. Wyatt, not to have better news.” The doctor fingered the stethoscope protruding from her trouser pocket. “I know this won’t make you feel better right now, but kidney failure is considered one of the gentler forms of death. Very peaceful. Many medical personnel say it’s the way they’d like to go.”

      Merry started to