Page 4 of Dr. Baby Daddy

Good job, Izzy. There goes the not starting a fight with your neighbor.

My mom always said I should learn how to hold my tongue.

He scoffs. “How about you stop making assumptions about whether or not you’re bothering people?”

I step back as a woman passes down the hall with her child in tow. “I’m sorry. I thought it would be fine. I can stop, but I really do need the practice. What time would be best for you? I can try and make my practice schedule work for both of us.”

“Don’t bother. This is a quiet building. It might not be the nicest one in the neighborhood, but that doesn’t give you the permission to come in here and disrupt people’s lives, which you will be doing if you try to work around my schedule. You need to find somewhere else to practice.”

My eyebrows shoot up my forehead.The audacity of this man.

“This is my home, and I will be practicing here.” I adopt a pose like his, crossing my arms and glaring back at him. “You could work with me on this a little bit.”

He shakes his head, strands of his hair falling across his forehead. “You don’t get it, do you? Of course not. Your Broadway dreams trump consideration like they do with every other person just trying to make it here.”

A loud squawk cuts off his tirade. He groans and lifts a hand to drag it down his face before digging a pager out of his pocket. The man glances at whatever is there before pressing a button and shoving it back into his pocket.

The man steps closer to me, his glance cutting inside to my piano. “Keep the damn noise down.”

His cologne is spicy and sweet at the same time, luring me in as he looms too close for my liking.

As quick as he entered my space, he’s gone, storming down the hall to his own apartment.

The door opens and closes with a slam, and my new neighbor disappears. I sigh and watch his door for a moment longer, hoping that he comes back out so I can give him a piece of my mind.

I’ve never been spoken to like that, and I’m not about to take it lying down.

Maybe there is more going on in his life than you know about.

It could just be a bad night.

With that in mind, I head inside, closing the door behind me. The chain rattles as I slide it back into place before going to open the windows.

Even though living in New York is off to a rough start, the rest of my day doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle.

I can spend some time unpacking, and then I can figure out what I’m going to do about my grouchy neighbor.

CHAPTER 3

OLIVER

The end of my shift comes with the feeling that I’m not doing enough, even though I do all I can. Tonight, I held a crying mother while delivering the news that her son didn’t make it through surgery.

I repaired the bullet wound in the man who shot that woman’s poor son.

I saved his life despite the fact that he took the boy’s without a second thought.

More and more often, kids are coming into the emergency room after being the victims of gun violence. In a city as big as New York, it’s unavoidable.

It still serves as a reminder that I’m better off alone. If there’s nobody I care about, then there is nobody to tear me apart when they die. I won’t have a doctor standing in front of me, telling me that they did everything they could, but unfortunately, my loved one died.

The mother nods to me as we cross paths in the waiting room. Her husband has his arms wrapped around her, guiding her to where their son’s body is.

My stomach tosses and turns as I press my badge against the pad outside an on-call room. The light turns green, and the door unlocks.

I disappear inside, taking a shuddering breath. My hands shake as I grip the edge of the sink and look at my reflection. Dark circles frame my eyes, the lack of sleep finally getting to me.

If it hadn’t been for that damn piano, I might have been able to get a bit of sleep before rushing back to the hospital for my shift.

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