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“Da-da,” he said, and twisted his whole little body away from Kendry to grab his father’s lapel.
Dr. MacDowell easily took the child’s weight from Kendry. “Hey, son. Let’s go home. Can you say ‘bye-bye’ to Miss Harrison?”
But as Dr. MacDowell shifted a step back from Kendry, Sammy reached his hand out for her. “Me,” he said. His little fist opened and closed, stretched out toward her. “Me.”
“Bye-bye, Sammy. I’ll see you again real soon.” Kendry wished she could drop a kiss on his soft hair, but she wasn’t supposed to kiss the children. It was against hospital policy, for health-related reasons. Besides, she’d end up with her face way too close to the doctor’s face. She imagined the sensation of brushing cheeks with him—
That was best saved for another time.
No, that was best saved for never. It would never be a good time to imagine the feel of Dr. MacDowell’s skin.
It would be warm.
Stop it.
Kendry settled for a smile, then bent to pick up her bag. When she straightened, Dr. MacDowell hadn’t left, but looked like he was waiting on her. For a second, for one insane second, Kendry thought that the handsome man with that adorable child was waiting to spend more time with her.
“Can I walk you to your car?” he asked.
Kendry wanted to melt on the spot. He was such a gentleman. Too bad she didn’t have a car for him to walk her to.
No, she was Kendry Ann Harrison, minimum-wage-earning hourly employee, the girl who rode the city bus because she’d once been too stupid to go to college when she’d had the chance. She didn’t belong with the guy who’d devoted a decade of his life to learning all the medical know-how that allowed him to save people’s lives.
“Thanks, but I have to go clock out. Have a good night.”
She slung her tote bag over her shoulder and headed out of the room with what she hoped was a cheerful, unembarrassed, jaunty attitude.
“Me,” Sammy said, drawing out the syllable in a high-pitched voice of distress.
Kendry almost stopped. She knew that when Sammy wanted something, he said “me” instead of “mine.” But since she was Kendry, and his father was Dr. MacDowell...well, she wasn’t his mother, and he wasn’t her baby.
Still, she turned to blow her favorite baby a kiss over her shoulder.
* * *
The juggling routine never varied.
Jamie thought he ought to be getting better at it by now, but he still felt like a caricature of a single parent, the kind on TV commercials who dropped briefcases and seemed incapable of balancing babies and bottles. If only there were a solution at the end of thirty seconds of failure, like on TV. If only Jamie could press a door-opening button on the key to a certain car, or spot some golden arches that would magically make his day easier.
The juggling only got worse in real life. This evening, it was raining, but Jamie couldn’t pull his car into the garage, which was still full of boxes from his deployment. He dashed with Sam from the driveway to the side door, but the door refused to open. The days of uncharacteristic rain had made the wood swell, so Jamie ended up kicking open the door while Sam cried and the rain pelted them both.
“I know, Sam, I know. We’ll get you out of these wet clothes ASAP. They get cold real quick when they’re wet, don’t they?” Jamie kept his monologue running as he tried to keep the arm that was holding Sam inside the house while reaching out into the rain with his other arm to retrieve both his briefcase and the fallen diaper bag. “I can fix the clothes thing, son. Give me a second to shove this door closed, and I can fix that one problem. Thank God.”
Sam didn’t seem convinced, judging by the misery on his face and the volume of his cries.
Jamie applied some force to get the door to shut. In the still of the house, he could hear the rain dripping from the bottom of the diaper bag. The denim was soaked. One more thing he’d need to fix before his next shift at the hospital. Unpack the diaper bag, throw it in the dryer, repack it before work.
Damn. He let his head drop back to rest on the wall, let the denim drop onto the wood floor, which was wet, anyway.
His daily life wasn’t difficult, really, just a constant to-do list of tasks. So why did he feel so overwhelmed by it all sometimes?
Maybe his brother was right. Maybe having a nanny waiting for him now would be the solution. A grandmotherly woman, ready to put the diaper bag in the dryer for him. A gray-haired lady who would have had the lights on in the house while she waited for him to come home. One of the nanny services he’d consulted had specified light cooking as an option in their contract. There could be supper waiting for him now, made by a sweet old lady.
Even when he was dripping wet and tired, Jamie didn’t like the image. He didn’t want a grandmotherly person in his house, someone to accommodate, someone to adjust to.
He wanted a partner, a peer, someone who would love Sam like her own, day after day, year after year, with no salary and no vacations. A mother for Sam, not for himself. Was it too much to ask?
Sam wailed.
“Right. It’s just you and me, kid. Dry clothes, coming right up.”
Chapter Three
Jamie struggled with his guilt while his son struggled with his bottle.
When all the little things went wrong, one after another, when Jamie’s workday had been long and his baby refused to be comforted, memories of Amina brought him no comfort. On days like those—on days like today—instead of missing Amina, instead of wishing she were here to share the safe life of suburban America, Jamie would feel angry.
Amina could have shared this life. Amina could have seen their son growing day by day, but she’d chosen a different route, a path in life that had led to her death. She’d left Jamie alone to pick up the pieces, to protect her baby, to keep her memory alive for their son. And sometimes, damn it all to hell, Jamie was pissed off at the choices she’d made.
Being pissed off at a dead woman was unacceptable. The guilt was heavy on him now. It felt familiar.
He and Sam were dry, at least, both wearing white T-shirts and sitting together in the leather recliner. Jamie hadn’t been able to find a rocking chair that fit his size comfortably, and the recliner did the trick when it came to relaxing with the baby until Sam—or both of them—fell asleep.
Tonight, though, as Sam worked his way through swallowing and spitting up the contents of his bedtime bottle, relaxation seemed a long way off. Sometimes Jamie thought he’d never relax again—not for the next eighteen years, anyway. Not while he was the sole adult responsible for making sure Sam had all he needed for a good life.
Usually, these quiet moments with his son made everything fall into place. The troubles of his workday receded, unable to keep his attention when he held this baby and felt all the wonderment of a new life.
Usually, but not tonight.
As Sam grunted and sucked his way through the bottle, Jamie studied his son’s face. Sam looked like Amina. His arrestingly dark eyes were undoubtedly his mother’s. Jamie smoothed a hand over the soft, black hair on Sam’s head—also Amina’s. He let Sam curl his hand around Jamie’s index finger. Those fingers didn’t look like Jamie’s. Nor his toes. Did they look like Amina’s?
Jamie no longer remembered details like that, the shape of her thumb or pinky finger. He was forgetting. If he forgot Amina, there would be nobody to tell Sam about his mother. Amina had been the last of her family, the sole survivor when the rest had been wiped out by the war. For resisting the Taliban, her family name had been erased to the last distant cousin. Amina had only been spared by a matter of days, she’d told him, sent to school in London before the slaughter in her village had taken place.
Jamie wondered how the MacDowells would have reacted if the local sheriff suddenly had the power to walk onto their ranch and start shooting. His family probably would have been as defiant as Amina’s family had been. Perhaps that was one reason he and Amina had hit it off so quickly. They were kindred spirits. She could have been a MacDowell.
She should have been a MacDowell.
Instead, even while she was pregnant with Jamie’s child, she’d chosen to stay in a country where prenatal care was nonexistent. Hell, indoor plumbing was still a sign of personal wealth. Against Jamie’s medical advice and personal plea, she’d obstinately traveled with a documentary film crew. In a remote village, she’d gone into premature labor while on her crusade to persuade Afghanis to let their daughters attend school. She’d died not from a Taliban bullet like the rest of her family, but from a lack of medical care, like too many women in her country.
Tonight, Jamie was angry at a woman who’d lost her entire family years before she, herself, had died.
More guilt.
Sam worked greedily at his bottle.
No, Amina’s family weren’t all dead. Sam was here, and Jamie would do everything to ensure one member of that brave family had a life that didn’t end in tragedy.
Jamie bent his head as he lifted Sam’s tiny hand and planted a kiss on the perfectly formed fingers. If they weren’t his fingers and they weren’t Amina’s fingers, whose were they? A bit of DNA passed on from a great-grandparent? Or did those fingers, perhaps, come from another man, a man who had come into Amina’s life before Jamie?
More guilt for even thinking such a thought.
Jamie had too much time to think about things in the safety of his quiet ranch house. Afghanistan had been intense—life outside the wire more so. Emotions ran high, bonds were formed quickly, and Amina, his unit’s translator and general ambassador to the local population, had literally slipped into his bed after they’d worked together for only two short weeks.
At the time, he hadn’t been surprised. They’d had chemistry and a connection from their first meeting. For the first two weeks, they’d spent nearly every moment together, seeking out the smallest villages and encampments, offering medical care to the local population. Amina’s intelligence and her determination to better her fellow countrymen had made an impact on Jamie, if not on the villagers.
He hadn’t been surprised that Amina was sexually experienced, either, because she’d lived in London longer than she’d lived with her family in Afghanistan. Her appearance was Afghani, but her personality was Western. He’d fallen for her and she for him. When, in the dark hours before dawn, she’d silently come into the hut he used as both clinic and bedroom, he’d had no doubts as she’d slipped into his bed.
Now, however, thousands of miles away and a year and a half later, he wondered. Had she already been pregnant? Had she wanted Jamie to believe he was the father, so that her son would have an American protector?
Sam gurgled down a few swallows of formula and patted Jamie’s hand with his own. Jamie clutched the baby closer to his chest.
If Amina had wanted an American soldier to protect her coming baby, she’d gotten one. Jamie would never let Sam go, whether they shared DNA or not. The feel of this child in his hands was essential to his life. It had been from the moment a local midwife who’d trekked miles on foot stood outside the barbed wire and handed him a dehydrated newborn and the news that Amina was dead. Dead and already buried, in accordance with their laws.
And so Jamie had sworn on a legal document that Sam was his biological child. He’d gotten the required signatures of others in his military unit, fellow soldiers and civilian contractors who could vouch that they’d seen Jamie working with Amina the eight months before the birth of the child, an appropriate period of time that could make it possible for Jamie to be the father. If any of those witnesses had wondered how an infant born at only eight months of gestation had appeared to be full-term, they’d kept that to themselves as they’d scrambled to help Jamie find formula and bottles—a futile search.
IVs had kept Sam alive those first critical days. Jamie had still had a week left on his tour of duty, but he’d literally wheeled Sam’s stretcher onto the next medical flight to Germany. No one had questioned him. Jamie had gambled that forgiveness would be easier to gain than permission, and that gamble had paid off.
So far.
But in the quiet of nights like tonight, as Jamie looked at the son who looked nothing like him, fear crept into his chest. What if the State Department got around to that paperwork and a diligent clerk decided to order medical tests to prove the baby biologically belonged to the soldier?
The blood-type test would be ordered first. If the blood types were incompatible, then the soldier could not be the father of the child. If the blood types were compatible, it only proved that it was possible for the soldier to be the father, but the paternity was still in question.
Jamie knew his blood type. He knew Sam’s. It was possible that he was Sam’s father. But it was not a fact, not without further DNA testing, and if the State Department chose to order those tests...
He willed the fear away. Jamie sat Sam up to pat his back, hoping that air bubbles would come up but formula would stay down. It was a struggle at every feeding. The nurse at the hospital playroom had said that Sammy had more problems with the bottle than other babies in her care. That nurse seemed particularly bright, the one with the ponytail and glasses.
No—the young woman was not a nurse. She was an orderly. Jamie had noticed her before, when she’d worked in the emergency room. The orderly was certainly working in the right field; she had a natural talent for noticing patients’ needs. She’d been working in the pediatric playroom more and more often, something Jamie had been glad to see. Sammy was in good hands when that particular woman was on duty.
“Come on, Sammy, give me a burp to make any college frat boy proud.”
Instead, Sammy vomited a substantial amount of formula over the blanket that Jamie had laid over his lap. The formula wasn’t curdled, not even partially digested. What went down came right back up, every feeding.
Sammy had been born with a birth defect, a hole in the wall of his heart. It would be repaired soon, and Sam would grow up never knowing it had been there. That particular birth defect shouldn’t cause feeding issues. Jamie had assumed all this spitting up was normal, but now the orderly—Miss Harrison was her name—had said Sam needed to sit up to drink his bottle.
As he soothed Sam by rubbing his back, Jamie’s medical training kicked in automatically. Consider the options. Eliminate them one by one.
What conditions caused a baby to need to be fed upright? Cleft palate? Jamie tapped his index finger to Sam’s perfect, bow-shaped lips. Obviously, Sammy didn’t have a cleft palate.
Jamie tried to feed Sam a few more ounces of formula, this time sitting him far more upright. It did make a difference. He could feel Sam’s body relaxing as the ounces went down with less struggle. Was this how most babies fed, then? Settling in, relaxing, not fighting to get each swallow?
This time, when Jamie burped Sam, he slipped his finger in his son’s mouth and felt the palate. The roof of the baby’s mouth was there, intact. Of course, this had been checked early in Sam’s life, part of the routine exam American doctors gave all newborns. Jamie had flashed his penlight down his son’s throat more than once. The roof of his son’s mouth was fine, intact on visual inspection. This time, Jamie pressed a little harder, moved a little more slowly, working his way toward the throat, millimeter by millimeter.
Sam objected, but Jamie concentrated as he would with any patient. He kept palpating despite Sam’s whines and wiggles—and then he felt the roof of the mouth give. The palate wasn’t formed correctly toward the back of the throat. It looked normal because the membrane covering the roof of the mouth had grown over it, but there was a definite cleft, hidden.
Miss Harrison had noticed a symptom that Sam’s pediatricians and Jamie himself had missed. Sam had a cleft palate. A very slight, easily overlooked, but definitely malformed palate. One that hindered his swallowing.
Guilt.
If any parent should have figured that out, he should have. He was an M.D., but this was his first child, the first baby he’d ever given a bottle to, and it hadn’t occurred to him that the amount of formula that came back up was greater than normal.
Like the doctor he was, his brain kept working despite the guilt. After the diagnosis, treatment options needed to be reviewed. As medical problems went, this one was simple. Sammy would have to go under the knife one more time, but it was fixable.
“Me,” Sammy whined, reaching toward the empty bottle. “Me!”
“This is what you want, little buddy?”
Jeez, his kid was probably hungry, ready to eat more, now that he could get it down and keep it down, thanks to Miss Harrison figuring out the best position.
“Me.”
“Got it. Coming right up.” Jamie carried Sam into the kitchen, tossing the balled-up dirty blanket into the laundry room as he went, then started the process of opening the can of formula.
Jamie owed Miss Harrison more than a simple thank-you. He could write her a commendation, although the possibility for a raise or a promotion was slim when the hospital was under a strict budget.
“Me.” Sammy grabbed for the freshly filled bottle.
Jamie chuckled to himself. “Yes, this is yours. Trust me, I don’t want it.”
At least his son did well communicating. He was advanced for his age when it came to expressing his needs verbally, as he was doing now. “Me” was an effective way for the baby to say he wanted something. He’d used it earlier today, when Jamie had come to pick him up at the hospital day-care center. Sam had wanted—
Jamie stopped in the middle of the living room.
Sam had wanted Miss Harrison.
Chapter Four
Jamie MacDowell, emergency room physician and war veteran, very nearly chickened out.
Last night’s revelation that Sam was attached to Miss Harrison warranted further investigation at his first opportunity, but when Jamie spotted her sitting alone in the hospital cafeteria, he felt like a boy in sixth grade, ready to turn tail and run rather than sit next to a girl.
The cashier charged the lunch to Jamie’s account. Instead of looking toward Miss Harrison’s table, Jamie made eye contact with the cartoonish scarecrow that was taped to the cash register for the fall. In four weeks, Jamie would be reporting to his reserve unit for two days of military training.
For the next six months, he’d report once a month, train for two days and come back home. Unless, of course, the medical unit was activated and deployed to Afghanistan, or any other corner of the world where they were needed. Jamie would go, and Sam would be left behind.
Sam needed a mother.
With a brief nod at the cashier and a fresh sense of determination, Jamie picked up the plastic cafeteria tray in one hand and turned toward Miss Harrison’s corner of the cafeteria. Sam’s favorite caregiver sat, alone, at one of the smaller tables. She was concentrating on her meal, so Jamie studied her face as he approached. He’d thought of her as plain, but she wasn’t homely. If they shared a house, it wouldn’t be a punishment to look at her across a dinner table. She had even features. Her mouth was compressed into a bit of a frown right now, but her lips were pink and not too full, not too thin.
Not that it matters. Mothers were always beautiful to their children, and this woman might make a good mother. He was here to find out.
“Is this seat taken?”
She looked up at him and froze for a moment, her spoon halfway to her mouth, before she glanced toward the entrance to the physician-only dining room.
“I’m not required to eat in the physicians’ lounge.” He smiled at her and stood there like an idiot, holding his tray. Middle school had never been this uncomfortable. “May I join you?”
She nodded, so he sat.
