Father On The Brink. Elizabeth BevarlyЧитать онлайн книгу.

       Three

      Katie awoke to the sound of voices and realized she must have dozed off on the gurney as the orderly wheeled her to her room. When she opened her eyes, she saw Cooper Dugan, laughing in response to something a woman wearing raspberry-colored hospital scrubs was saying. Katie smiled, too, for a minute forgetting exactly who she was or what had happened to her. For one very brief, very magical moment, all she was aware of was her own existence in the same room with Cooper. And for that very brief, very magical moment, that was all that mattered in the world.

      Then the baby in her arms snuggled closer to her, and she remembered that there was in fact something in the world infinitely more important than a laughing, handsome man. She bent her head to nuzzle her son’s soft, downy black hair, and her smile deepened. She placed a kiss on the crown of his head and hugged him tight. The nurse and orderly helped her into her bed, and in the bright white light of the fluorescent bulb buzzing above her, she marveled again at Andrew—the new man in her life.

      Men had come and gone in Katie’s past, some leaving her with more than she’d had to begin with, some leaving her with nothing at all. But Andrew would be with her forever. And already, she could sense that the changes he wrought in her were, without question, changes for the better. Where before she had been wandering through life with absolutely no destination in mind, the birth of her son had endowed her with a sense of purpose, and a drive to make sure the two of them would never be torn apart.

      It was almost terrifying, really, the genesis and immediacy of these new emotions inside her—this fear of harm coming to her child, this love that overwhelmed everything that had come before. She knew utterly and irretrievably that she would die before she would allow anyone—anyone—to hurt her son or take him from her. But instead of being frightened by such a certainty, she was oddly calmed by it. Motherhood was something that had always awed Katie in the past, when she’d observed other women participating in it. And now, finally, she understood why.

      “Katie?”

      Cooper’s voice came to her softly from the other side of the room, and she lifted her head to find him slowly approaching. When he stopped beside her bed, he extended a hand to brush her hair back from her forehead. He completed the gesture with such familiarity, she doubted he even realized what he was doing. Then he dropped his hand to Andrew’s head, cupping it softly over the baby’s scalp before stroking his finger over one of the infant’s pudgy cheeks.

      “How are you two doing?” he asked quietly. “That wild ride in the ambulance didn’t jar you too much, did it?”

      She shook her head and whispered, “No,” the singleword reply all she could manage for the moment.

      “The nurse here…” He gestured over his shoulder toward the dark-haired woman in the hospital scrubs. “…she said she needs to check you and Andrew out. Think you’re up to that?”

      “Sure.”

      He straightened some, then hesitated for a moment, as if he didn’t like what he was going to say next. “Um, listen, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to run out on you for a little while. There are still some snowbound people who need help, and I’m in a position to offer it.”

      “That’s okay, Cooper,” she said softly “Hey, you did the important thing. You gave me my son.”

      He grinned at her, a crooked, very endearing grin that set Katie’s heart to flip-flopping madly. “Yeah, well…I think you had more to do with that than I did.”

      “Maybe Maybe not.”

      He covered her hand with his and squeezed hard for a minute before releasing it. “I’ll come back tonight to see how you and the little guy are doing.”

      She nodded.

      “Can I bring you anything? Make any calls for you?”

      She knew he was referring to her husband, whom she had earlier assured him was always impossible to locate when he was traveling on business. She handled the question now as she had then, and simply repeated, “Thanks, but I can take care of that myself.”

      “If you’re sure.”

      “I’m sure.”

      “Then I’ll just bring you a strawberry milkshake, how’s that?”

      This time Katie was the one to grin. All night long, she had screamed out a number of insistent, often colorful, demands for a strawberry milkshake to help her through her labor. And as far as she was concerned, the idea still had merit.

      “A strawberry milkshake sounds wonderful,” she told him.

      “You got it.” He brushed an index finger tenderly over her cheek, an action so soft and quick, Katie almost thought she imagined it. Then he was gone, and she watched as the door swung closed silently behind him, and wondered why she was going to miss him so much once he was gone from her life.

      “This won’t take long.”

      The nurse’s voice brought Katie’s attention around. Reluctantly, she surrendered Andrew, and watched closely as the other woman swaddled her son in a flannel blanket and settled him in a clear, plastic bassinet.

      Then she turned back to Katie and said, “We’re going to have to take Andrew to the nursery for a little while for—”

      “No.”

      The quietly uttered objection stopped the nurse short. “What?”

      “You can’t take Andrew anywhere. He’s staying here with me.”

      “But—”

      “He’s staying here with me.”

      There must have been more fortitude in her voice than she thought she had been able to manage, because the nurse nodded once and said, “Okay. I’ll have the neonatologist come examine Andrew here.”

      “Thank you.”

      “Now, let’s see about your blood pressure.”

      Obediently, Katie extended her arm, then remained silent for the rest of her exam. The neonatologist came to look over and measure Andrew, deeming him fit and hearty and perfectly capable of facing up to life. When it was all over, the nurse presented Katie with a sheaf of papers in a rainbow of pastel colors. Most of them simply required her signature. But one of them—the one she had known was coming but dreaded nonetheless—required information for Andrew’s birth certificate.

      Automatically, she filled in the blanks that requested the pertinent information about herself, but she hesitated when she came to the line that asked, Father’s name. She wondered helplessly how she could avoid identifying William as Andrew’s father, wondered, too, what would happen if she just left the line blank or filled it in with the word unknown. Would William still have a strong case for taking Andrew away from her if she failed to identify him as the baby’s father? Would the act of identifying no one at all— thereby making herself sound promiscuous enough that she didn’t even know who had fathered her child—make it easier for William still?

      Katie was still pondering her dilemma when, as if prompted by providence, the nurse in the raspberry-colored scrubs said the magic words for her.

      “That husband of yours is quite a guy.”

      Katie’s head snapped up, and she stared at the other woman. “What?”

      The nurse stared back. “That guy who came in with you,” she said with an indulgent smile. “You know…your husband. I mean, I only got to talk to him for a minute, but he seems like a great guy. He’s been so attentive since you arrived, fussing over you like a mother hen, ordering everyone