Page 30 of Silver Fox's Secret Baby

"He was pretty shocked. I think he was really upset with me, but that other doctor, Dr. Adams, walked up and interrupted us." Adams clearly had no clue what had transpired between us, and if he knew, he'd have forced Ethan to step back and let him handle it all. Colorado state law was clear. Ethan was barred from practicing medicine on people he was related to. It was a means to ensure all patients got the best care and all doctors were levelheaded when treating them.

In this case, the shock alone would make Ethan vulnerable to making mistakes. I knew he was an excellent doctor and surgeon and he was ethical, too. He would stand down if he knew it was going to put Noah at risk.

"Alright, well the only thing we can do is wait for Noah to come back to us now. We'll deal with the other stuff later. Alright, sweetheart?" Dad patted my knee and reached for theStyrofoam container on the table at the end of the sofa. He set it on my lap and opened it, and the smell of the hospital’s grilled cheese wafted up to greet me.

"Dad," I groaned, "I'm not hungry."

"Nonsense. You haven’t eaten since a little before lunch and it's almost eight now. You'll need your energy for when Noah comes back."

I sat up and readjusted the carryout dish on my lap, and Dad handed Mom one of her own. Hers was a deli sandwich, and she smiled and thanked him warmly, but all I could do was sit there and tear up. The food would be tasteless and it looked even more unappetizing, but that wasn’t why I was crying. My heart was so full of emotion, it had nowhere to go and I had to let it out.

"Are you okay, Lily?" Mom asked. She wiped a bit of mayo from the corner of her lip and looked at me with such compassion.

"I ruined everything, Mom." I sobbed and covered my face and felt someone take the food off my lap. Dad pulled me against his chest in his strong arms again and spoke soothing words, but I cut him off. "Dad, please. You don't understand." I pushed him away and swiped at my cheeks. "Ethan was ready to go to HR and tell them we were dating and in love. He told me he wanted me back in his life.

"You know—both of you—how much I loved him. How badly it turned out last time—how hurt I was. He is so amazing and wanted to make it right, and my secret and the way I ran off with his baby and never told him just ruined any chance I had. He'll never love me again. And now my heart…"

The complexity of the past few months of getting reacquainted with him had collided with the past in a cataclysmic explosion that changed the entire direction of my future now. I wanted Ethan. I fell back in love with him, as if I'dever stopped loving him to begin with. And now I wouldn't have that. I had to mourn him all over again.

"Alright, Lily," Dad sighed. "I think you need to rest. You're getting in your head too much. Do you want me to get you some sleeping tablets?" Mom was already standing as Dad set the grilled cheese on the table. They made space for me to lie down. Maybe a nap before Noah returned wasn't a bad idea. Though I doubted I'd even fall asleep, or if I did, that I'd sleep well.

"No. I'm so emotional I'll have no problem being a zombie for a few hours." I lay down with my head on the arm of the couch, and Dad pulled a blanket from the storage box near the window to cover me.

"We'll come back in a few hours. We’ll be here when Noah comes back." He kissed my forehead. "Rest now."

I closed my eyes before they were even out the door, but my heart would never shut off. It was going to hurt for days, or weeks. Maybe months.

22

ETHAN

The hot water scalded my hands as I scrubbed the disinfectant soap into my palms. The initial shock of learning I had a son was still throbbing in my head, making it difficult to think straight. I had overseen the imaging review with Dr. Adams and at the time still intended to do the surgery with him, but seeing how my hands still shook, I knew he would be the one with the scalpel in hand. I would never risk any patient with my emotional state, let alone my own child.

I blindly went through the motions of scrubbing in and making sure I followed all protocols, but I couldn't get past the look on Lily's face when she confessed. She was planning to tell me many times, and I could pinpoint in my memory every single time I believed she'd have done it. The opportunities were there, and each time, I had gotten called away, to care for Mom, to deal with patients.

But she knew years ago. She knew when she left. I pieced that together from the conversation we had earlier today just after our lunch romp in my bedroom. She muttered something about when she left Denver, and I could have sworn she was going to say she knew she was pregnant. She had to have been pregnant then for this to occur. I looked at Noah’s charts.

Not only was my son born at thirty-seven weeks with a heart defect, but those thirty-six weeks fell only seven months after she left, meaning she was pregnant for weeks before she left. It meant she knew. It meant she either cheated on me or Noah really was mine, and the fact that she confessed that he was left zero doubt.

She knew she was pregnant when she left and she left anyway. She kept him a secret her whole pregnancy. She never told me when he was born, or that he had a heart condition. She went through bottle feeding and diaper changes, all while harboring him as her little secret. When he had his first surgery, she never reached out, and she finished medical school and her residency and thought she'd move back here and work at a different hospital and still not tell me.

It must've come as a huge shock when I was there that night at her welcome dinner into Mountain View. She must have almost peed her pants. This entire time, she had to have had so much anxiety and fear over what I'd think or what I'd feel. I'd been pursuing her exclusively, begging her to come back to me. How could she live with herself?

My heart oscillated between knowing how badly she had to have been tormenting herself over the whole thing and how angry I was and hurt that she never came to me. I could have helped her all those years. She didn't have to be alone, and she chose being alone over being with me. It not only said something about the amount of pain I had caused her, but also how little she thought of me.

"Are you okay?" Dr. Adams asked, and I noticed he was standing beside me scrubbing in too.

"Uh, yeah, why?" I asked, rinsing my hands.

"Because your hands are almost raw from scrubbing and they're beet red." He scowled and looked down at my hand, and I looked down too.

He was right. My palms were almost bloodied from the way my nails scraped against my skin. I was tired and emotional. My eyes hurt from staring off into space wide open. I needed some eye drops for moisture and sleep to alleviate the emotions.

"I'm fine…" I sighed, but I realized I wasn't fine. He would see that, and I knew I couldn't operate. "But I need you to take lead on this. I'll guide you through, but I can't actually perform the surgery." It was the right call, but I wouldn’t hand it over completely. My son needed me, and now, more than ever, I had to be there for him.

Lily had just allowed me to be in his life, and I had to be there. Even if all I could do was stand over the surgeon’s skilled hands and guide him in the way he should go, it was what I had to do. Noah deserved the best, and I wasn't the best at this point. My heart was too messed up to do this.

"Of course, Ethan. Is everything okay?" he asked, and he shook the excess water off his hands. It made me wonder exactly how long he had been standing there scrubbing before he said something. Our ritual took at least fifteen minutes to scrub in.

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