Page 32 of Baby for Dr. Damaged

I ignore him. My fingers twist up and tangle in the front of my skirt. I let out a breath, but it’s shaky and strangled, a sound chasing the end of it. “You’re sure?”

My eyes are burning with tears. I’m one word away from having a complete breakdown. Carter puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me closer. I feel like my muscles have turned stiff. It’s impossible to so much as sag up against him. My throat is tight, and my lungs seem to have forgotten their actual function.

“I’m positive,’ says Dr. Joyce. “I’ve run the tests three times, to make certain of it.”

“It's a boy then,” I say, the realization almost broken. “It’s more common in boys than in girls.”

My words are trembling. The tears are burning my eyes, right there at the edge of spilling down over them. Dr. Joyce nods. “I’m sorry. I know you would have rather found out a different way. There’s still a chance that it’s not, we won’t know for certain until we do imaging—”

“Ninety-eight percent of the cases are in boys,” I say. The fact is an easy thing to rattle off, the kind of information that’s become ingrained in my mind over the years. I let out another trembling breath. “It’s a boy. It’s a boy, and he’s sick.”

And that’s it. The last little push that I needed. Suddenly, I’m sobbing uncontrollably, the tears rolling hot and wet down my cheeks. Carter pulls me against his chest and wraps me up in the tightest hug that the gangly guy can offer, while Dr. Joyce makes a quick retreat out of the office to give us something resembling privacy.

It doesn’t matter that he’s left though. I feel raw, like someone has stripped away my skin and hung me up for a med school student to examine. Carter’s aftershave is almost suffocating when I bury myself against him.

Margur’s disease; the same thing that’s killing my baby brother. And my little boy is about to be born with it.

Just the thought is enough to have me sobbing even harder. I’m making sounds that no woman should make, like I’m being gutted and bleeding out.

It feels like that’s what’s happening.

I know that Carter must be running his hand over my back and trying to give me some sort of comfort, but I don’t actually register any of it. The whole world seems to have been flipped upside down on me, and the only thing that I can think of is this: I don’t want my little boy to die. Soon followed by another one: I don’t want to be alone in this anymore.

I have always been the responsible one. I handled the problems that showed up in my family, so that my parents had time to focus on Harris. I’ve spent my whole life looking at the world through that lens; one of self-reliance and self-confidence.

But I don’t feel like I can keep myself together this time. I feel like the moment Carter lets go of me, I’m going to shatter onto the floor and into a thousand pieces, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.

No one, that is, but Jackson.

It’s time to call him.

Chapter fifteen

Jackson

Thephonerings,andI almost don’t answer it. It’s only the flash of AMANDA on the front screen that has me sliding the button over toward green. “Hello?”

“Jackson,” Amanda asks, absolutely sobbing. “Jackson!”

I immediately veer away from the patient’s room that I was walking toward and head for the break room instead. “Amanda? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

She just sobs into the phone. I try to get an answer out of her a few more times but can’t.

“Honey,” I tell her, trying to keep the rising panic out of my voice. “You have to tell me where you’re at, alright? I’ll come get you, just tell me where you’re at.”

Amanda's sobs continue to fill the phone. Then it sounds like it trades hands and the voice of Carter, one of the residents, comes on the line. “We’re in Barry Joyce’s office, on the second floor. I think she needs you to come pick her up.”

“Stay with her, I’ll be right there.” I don’t even ask what he’s doing there, or why they might be at Dr. Joyce’s practice. I just beeline to the nurse’s station.

Glenda is behind the counter. She looks up at me and then frowns. “What’s wrong, Dr. Hawk?”

“I have to leave,” I tell her. “It’s a family emergency.”

“You have to wait until I can find someone to come in, you know how that goes,” says Glenda, but I’m already turning and going past her, toward the elevator. She stands up, bracing both hands on the top of the counter and leaning against it. “Dr. Hawk! You can’t just leave!”

I slam on the button so hard that it makes my finger ache. The moment that the doors slide open, I step inside, not looking back. I’ll apologize to Glenda for putting her in a tight spot later. Right now, the only thing I can think about is getting to Amanda and finding out what’s wrong.

For all the years that I’ve worked in this hospital, I’ve never taken off like this before. For my wife, when she was sick, I would drop everything to tend to her—but even then, I was never put into a position where Ihadto rush out of work.

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