Page 66 of Doctor Daddy

“Then you must be from the south. You don’t have an accent,” I said.

“I don’t, but you do. Alabama?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. Atlanta. You must be from Florida.” I chuckled.

“Got that one right,” he said. “Land of humid weather and alligators.”

“Don’t you freeze to death up here in Chicago? I swear outside of this department I’ve been cold since the beginning of October.”

“Nah, working down here keeps me pretty warm. What you need to do is invest in a couple of good jackets and coats. You’ll really want them for January and February when it’s really cold. Your program mentor came through here and said you’re going to be rotating out at the end of next week. Are you planning on coming back?”

I shrugged. “Depends on what they rotate me into next. I don’t know where they’ll assign me next summer.”

“Just so you know, even if you don’t finish the program, you’ll always have a job in my department. You hear me?”

I smiled. It was a relief to know that I was doing a good enough job that somebody wanted to keep me employed.

31

MARK

Icouldn’t believe I was back in Chicago. I didn’t like the idea that Brooke was up here with someone else’s baby. Thinking about it raised my ire and boiled my blood. That could have been our child had she simply been honest with me from the beginning. Clearly, that hadn’t been her agenda back then.

I was too old for this shit. I needed to get over my obsession with her. I was behaving like a love lost teen, and not an adult. I didn’t need to be worried about seeing her, and if I did, so what? It wasn’t as if I would fall to my knees and beg forgiveness for some situation, I still wasn’t clear on what had happened.

I had to remind myself that Brooke worked in a hospital, and I was not going to see her again. I would be at the conference hotel the entire time. The odds of me running into her were slim to none.

I climbed out of the cab and wheeled my bags up to the service counter.

“Are you checking in with us today?” The bright young woman behind the counter smiled at me.

“Yes, I have reservations, Dr. Mark Bryant.”

“I see you’re here for the obstetrics conference. Welcome.”

Her fingers made a rapid click-clack over the computer keyboard as she looked up my information.

I could almost hear the whir of the printer as it printed out a few pages. She placed one of the pages in front of me with a pen.

“I need your signature here, please. Will you be paying with the credit card we have on file?”

I nodded with a grunt.

As I signed and placed the pen down, before she could hand me my card key, a frazzled-looking co-worker— I assumed from the matching uniform— crashed into the desk next to me.

“Call 911. She’s having the baby right now.”

“Are you kidding me, Jason?” The clerk looked shocked.

“Yeah, her water broke and everything. We’re in the ballroom. Hurry. I don’t know what to do.”

I turned to the frantic young man. “I’m an obstetrician. You said you have a pregnant woman? I can help.”

“Yeah. This way.”

I turned to the young lady at the counter. “Call an ambulance, explain that there is an obstetrician on site. However, we would still need an emergency crew. Can you hold my bag back here?”

I lifted my bag onto the counter.

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