Page 35 of Secret Baby for the Triplets

Separating them, I gently push Brock back into his chair. “All we know is that Emerson was unconscious.”

“There wasn’t a mark on her,” Toby hisses at our oldest sibling. “She probably collapsed because you worked her to death, you prick.”

“You didn’t talk to Andy like I told you to do, though, did you?” Brock barks. “So, it still could be?—”

“Andy didn’t do this!” Toby yells, his voice ricocheting across the room.

“Sir!” One of the nurses gives him a reproving look. “Keep your voice down!”

Toby glowers at her. “Do you have any idea how much money my family has given this hospital over the past half-century?”

“However much it is, it’s not enough to soundproof the walls. Please think of the patients,” she urges.

Toby’s face hardens, and he strides toward the reception desk, splaying his hands over the countertop.

“I am thinking of the patients, one in particular. Where is Emerson Ward? Are there any updates at all?”

She exhales sympathetically and sits back, tapping into the computer system. “Give me a minute, all right?”

Toby rolls his eyes and saunters back toward us, flopping down in the chair next to Brock, but he avoids my brother’s eyes as I watch the pair.

“What did you see in the coach house when you found her?” Brock asks again.

“No,” Toby growls. “I’m not going through this again.”

“I think she passed out, Brock. I don’t think this was an attack,” I tell him, pushing myself off the wall to sit with them. “I see why you’re suspicious of Andy, but honestly, the old man doesn’t have it in him.”

“Lana, maybe?” he offers weakly.

“Nobody attacked her! Why is your mind going there?” Toby curses. “To assuage your own guilt?”

The other people in the waiting room look at us with disgust, and I eye them apologetically.

“He’s right,” I agree. “We all know she was overworking herself. She probably just overdid it.”

A young physician in a lab coat emerges from around the nurse’s station, but none of us react until he comes to speak to us.

“Are one of you the father?”

At first, the question falls flat, the three of us staring up at him unblinking.

“Whose father?” I ask, sure that he has the wrong group.

“The father of Emerson Ward’s baby.”

Blood drains out of my face, and I feel my brothers withdraw around me in tandem.

“Oh…” Brock inhales. “No.”

“Shit,” Toby mutters.

The doctor’s eyes widen as if he realizes he’s made a big mistake, but he clears his throat. “Emerson is awake now if you’d like to see her.”

“Is she all right?” I ask, jumping to my feet.

He nods. “I can’t really disclose much more than I already have, but you can see her.”

“And the baby?” Toby adds.

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