Daddy By Accident. Paula Riggs Detmer
to be held in the arms of a man she’d just met.
She started to thank him again, only to find herself seized by a spasm of pain in the small of her back. She stopped breathing, her heart tripping. The pain spread, rippling toward her belly, nearly squeezing her in two.
“No!” she cried in sharp agony. “It’s too soon!”
“Get Dr. Jarrod, stat,” she heard the nurse order sharply. “Tell him the patient may be going into premature labor.”
Stacy clung to the strong hand wrapping hers, terror racing with the adrenalins in her veins.
“Try to relax, Stacy. Take deep breaths.” Boyd’s voice was steady and call, everything she wasn’t.
“Tell them to save the baby,” she pleaded. “Make them promise. If there’s a choice, my baby has to live.”
“Look, babies are surprisingly resilient, especially in utero,” he said in that curiously raspy voice.
“But what if she isn’t? What if—”
“Hey, none of that, okay?” Lifting a hand from hers, he brushed back a lock of her hair, his touch as gentle as a lover’s caress. “You’re going to be fine. Both of you.”
Stacy tightened her grip on his hand. “Is that a p-promise, or a guess?”
His hesitation was slight but noticeable. Because he didn’t want to lie? she wondered.
“Definitely a promise,” he declared an instant before the curtains parted to admit a tall, lanky man who, in spite of the blue scrubs, reminded her more of a working cowboy than a doctor.
“MacAuley?” he exclaimed on a double take. “What the hell?”
“Later,” Boyd said, stepping back. He’d done all he could do for the dark-haired angel with the beautiful eyes. Now it was up to the professionals. And luck. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to believe in either one.
Two
Boyd thumbed open his third can of beer, drank deeply, then wandered out of the kitchen onto the back porch. It was nearly seven, and the sun was hovering at the edge of the western horizon, turning the sky to flame, while the conifers that typified the Oregon skyline suggested black teeth eating the sunset inch by inch. Below the ridge that wedged downward at a sharp angle, the Columbia River resembled molten lava as the sun’s rays skimmed the surface.
Propping a bare foot on the railing, he leaned forward slightly, hoping to catch a breeze, but the air was deathly still. At the house to the left, Linda and Marshall Ladd were barbecuing burgers. At the end of the short street, Portland firefighter, Cliff Balisky, was roughhousing with his two boys, who from the sound of their triumphant shouts were whomping up on the old man.
Suddenly restless, he chugged down the rest of the beer in his hand and gave some thought to opening another. How long had it been since he’d been drunk enough to pass out? Drunk enough to buy himself a few hours of mindless oblivion? Four, five months maybe? Longer?
Before Karen and the baby had died, he’d never been much of a drinker, mostly because he didn’t like the reckless edge it put on his personality. Tonight, however, the need for numbness had overridden his customary caution.
He knew the reason for his black mood. The ambulance ride, the all-too-familiar bustle of the ER. A baby in danger. A wisp of a woman with big green eyes and a tumble of silk-soft hair who’d somehow slipped beneath his guard and touched a part of him he’d thought he’d lost.
The woman was fine, he assured himself firmly as he headed inside for another beer. Definitely in good hands and no doubt still sleeping peacefully, just as she’d been when he’d left her a couple of hours ago. Still, his conscience would likely give him fits unless he made sure, he decided as he reached for the wall phone by the kitchen window.
Though the hospital switchboard was known for its efficiency, it took the operator an interminable five minutes to track down Prudy, another minute before he heard her calm voice in his ear.
“I thought you might be calling,” she said after he’d identified himself.
“The hell you did.” Boyd glowered at his reflection in the window over the sink. He was already regretting the impulse to call.
“In answer to your question—”
“What question? All I did was say hello.”
“She’s resting comfortably.”
Boyd heard the teasing note in Prudy’s tired voice and felt his patience thinning. “Are you going to tell me what I want to know or am I going to be banging on your door at five a.m. for the next week?”
Prudy groaned. “You sure know how to bargain from strength, you rat.”
“A man’s got to do—”
“Okay, okay.” He heard laughter in her tone and felt the tension clawing his spine ease off a notch. “She’s concussed, which you already know, has a severe sprain of the left ankle and an impressive collection of bruises.”
Boyd cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “And the baby?”
“So far so good, although Mrs. Patterson’s been spotting. Jarrod has her on a fetal monitor and an IV drip, mag sulfate. The fetal heartbeat is strong and steady.”
Boyd acknowledged that with a grunt. It was exactly what he would have done. “What’s Jarrod’s prognosis?”
“Guardedly optimistic.”
He lifted a hand to the back of his neck and methodically kneaded the tension-twisted museles. “Do me a favor and read me Jarrod’s notes, okay?”
“You know I can’t do that,” Prudy exclaimed softly through the wire.
“Why the hell not?”
“Come on, Boyd. You know the rules about a patient’s right to privacy as well as I do. You’re not a relative and you’re not on staff, so therefore—”
“Screw the rules. Tell me.”
“No.”
He felt his face growing hot. “Since when did you become so righteous, Ms. Holier-Than-Thou?” As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to call them back.
The silence at the other end was more damning than a curse, and he drew a long breath in an attempt to level the sudden spike of anger that had had him speaking before he thought. Prudy was the last person he wanted to hurt. As friends go, she was the best. After the accident, she’d taken care of him like a persistent little mother hen, there for him when he’d needed someone. He’d been close to losing it then, closer than he wanted to recall. He’d battled back to a semblance of normality by burying his memories along with his ability to care too deeply for anything or anyone.
“I’m sorry, that was out of line,” he said when the silence grew longer than he could handle.
“She really got to you, didn’t she?” Prudy questioned quietly.
“Yeah, I guess she did.” More than he wanted to accept.
“Boyd—”
He heard the sympathy in Prudy’s voice and ruthlessly cut her off. He could handle the past as long as it remained buried. “Give her my best, okay?” He hung up before Prudy could say more.
Stacy woke to the echo of a scream. Her own, she realized with a pounding heart and drenched skin. She felt queasy and heavy, and her ankle throbbed. Disoriented, she turned toward a glimmer of light to her left, then wished she hadn’t as the dull pain in her head took on star-burst edges.
The room’s bare white walls were shadowed. The narrow bed came equipped with side rails and was slab hard The pillow beneath her aching head was