Page 19 of Baby for Dr. Damaged

“I’ve been calling,” I tell her, unable to keep the concern out of my voice. “Melissa said that you had picked her up, but I couldn’t get a hold of you.” As the words fly out of my mouth I realize that I silenced the house phone the last time I used it, which is not helpful. But the damn thing gets so annoying.

“You couldn’t—” A look of realization crosses her face, mortification settling there afterward. She stands up and hurries around the end of the couch, catching hold of one of my hands. “I’m sorry! I left my phone in the car! She wasn’t feeling well so I carried her in, and I just totally forgot to go back out and get it!”

“She’s alright? You both are?” I catch her face with my free hand, brushing my thumb beneath her eye, over smooth, sensitive skin.

“I’m so sorry,” says Amanda. “Everything’s fine, I promise. She’s already had something to eat, and she’s in her room sleeping right now.”

“Do you mind if?” I gesture down the hall, not wanting to be rude after she stayed here with Bonnie but desperate to go check on my child.

Amanda backs up. “Of course.”

Hurrying down the hall, I only slow when I’m able to slip into Bonnie’s room. She’s kicked her blankets off and dropped her stuffed toy. I step over, quiet, and pick the toy up, putting it back in her arms.

Bonnie’s eyes slide open. “Dad?”

“I’m here.” I give her a kiss. Her forehead is warm to the touch, still struggling with her fever. “Right here, sweetheart. Are you feeling okay?”

“Tired,” she says, yawning. Her hair is sticking up in all directions and she looks like she’s barely awake. “Amanda says I can play a song for her tomorrow.”

Bonnie rolls over, cuddling up with her toy. I don’t even bother to fight the smile that spreads across my face. Fingers brush the hair out of Bonnie’s eyes and then hook into the blanket, tugging it up and over her shoulders.

Only once I’ve managed to truly assure myself that she’s fine do I step back out into the hallway, and head for the living room. Amanda is still standing, though she’s moved to lean against the back of the couch, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Thank you,” I tell her.

Amanda nods. “It really wasn’t a problem.”

“No, it is. It was a huge problem. Your whole night has been taken up,” I say. “I know what an imposition it was, but I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“I didn’t do it for you to be thankful,” Amanda says, and then a sly smile curls across her features as she leans forward, head tilting to the side. “But if you want to make it up to me, thereissomething that you can do.”

Shuffling closer, I press my hands to her hips and lean down. “What’s that?”

I expect she’ll ask about a kiss, or staying the night again, or—something like that.

Instead, Amanda says, “I need a senior attending physician to lead my research into Margur’s disease. I want you to do it for me.”

The jerk back is instinctive, like I’ve been burned. I know all about Margur’s disease and how Harris is struggling with it. Lawrence is one of my closest friends. OfcourseI know.

Maybe I should have expected them to ask at some point, but the request feels like it’s come out of nowhere. I rake a hand through my hair, pushing it off of my forehead. “Amanda, I can’t do that.”

She takes a step forward, grabbing my wrist and clutching it with both hands. “Yes, you can. In fact, you’re the only person I can ask to do this! You know that the hospital will only let research teams be led by senior doctors. I have years before I can get them to approve me heading something like that. But you…”

“I’m not the legend people like to claim I am.” Carefully, I pull my hand away from hers and drift into the kitchen. There’s a seldom touched bottle of red wine in the back of the fridge. I pull it out and pour myself a glass. It spills dark into the clear container, like blood.

You see a lot of blood in my career. You see a lot of death. It’s funny, how it can still hit you right in the back of the chest, like a sucker punch.

Amanda follows me into the room. “I don’t need a legend, Jackson. I just need someone to help me with this. If you don’t organize the team, then there can’t be a team.”

“I— I don't know that I can.” I take a long sip of the wine, letting it wash over my tongue. “Amanda, I wasn’t good enough. Don’t you get that? You had to go take care of Bonnie today, because her mother isn’t here.” It feels like there’s a knot in my throat, pulling together and tighter. “And she’s not here because I wasn’t fast enough.”

The words are bitter. My fingers go tight around the stem of the wine glass and my gaze slides down, to the blood-red liquid within. Every time I think about it, the pain of that loss hits me again. The pain of my own failure.

I’m expecting Amanda to leave it there. Most people do. They find a reason to excuse themselves; no one wants to talk about the dead and departed, the people that couldn’t be saved—only about the cases that actually make it out of the hospital.

But Amanda doesn’t.

She rounds the island counter and steps close to me, taking my hand in her own. With the other, she plucks away the wine glass, leaning forward to sit it on the counter beside me.

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