Jennifer Greene: Millionaire M.D.

“Did you call a pediatrician?”

“No, of course not. I called you. I want you.”

“Win, come on, you know I don’t have any specialty with babies-”

“You know trauma medicine like no one else. There’s no one I want but you.”

“Damnation, Winona. You don’t know what you’re asking me.”

That was such a strange thing for him to say that her head shot up. This moment wasn’t about her and him. It was about the baby…but somehow all her hurt disappeared at that instant. She didn’t know why he’d ducked on setting the marriage date, but love wasn’t the problem. She saw the way he looked at her. His dark hair was still gleaming with melted snow, his cheeks rubbed red from the wind, but his eyes were soft and haunted with love, fastened on hers for one long lonesome second-before he returned all his attention to Angel.

He’d already stolen the baby from her arms, already moved over to the crib, where he had a flat surface to lay Angel down. Gentle fingers were firmly, swiftly, pulling off the baby’s clothes, assessing her, studying, murmuring to her.

“What do you mean, I don’t know what I’m asking you?” she asked quietly.

“I can’t risk anything happening to Angel. Not her. I can’t, Winona, dammit. I mean it. I don’t do trauma medicine anymore.”

It was confoundedly bewildering. She heard his words, but they didn’t make any sense. He’d already competently, calmly, taken on Angel.

And the minute he’d walked in the door, Winona had felt herself stop panicking. Well, almost. Her head was still screaming, her knees still shaking, her hands slicker than slides. Because she’d never been the kind of person to panic in a crisis, she wasn’t prepared to deal with herself when the symptoms hit so hard. For Pete’s sake, it was her job to handle people in a crisis and she did it darn well.

But this was about a baby.

Her baby.

And it just wasn’t the same.

Still, once Justin was there-no matter what the blasted man said-everything eased. Not her worry that Angel was in trouble. But if anyone could save a baby, Justin could. If anyone could help Angel, Justin would find a way to do it. If she trusted anyone in the entire universe-and there weren’t many on that list, never had been for Winona-she trusted Justin.

Quieter than a whisper, he said, “Put on the overhead. Bring the black bag over here for me and open it, would you? And then get me a straw from the kitchen. Quick, okay?”

There was no panic in his voice, nothing to make her worry, yet she instinctively understood to put on the spurs. She returned quickly with the items.

“You know what’s wrong, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s the whale.”

“Huh?”

“The stuffed animal. The minute I laid her in the crib-there had to be a reason for the symptoms, obviously? So I looked, and I saw the hint of loose stitches on the whale, the little fuzz of stuffing coming out. I’m guessing the baby put some in her mouth. And I’ll bet that’s where you were patting her-” He motioned to the carpet to her left “-because she spit some out on the carpet there.”

“Oh, my God. Do you think she swallowed some? Is that why she’s having trouble breathing? And could it be poisonous? Could-”

“Win.”

“What?”

“I need you to listen.”

She gulped in a breath. “I’m listening.”

“I can’t make this pretty. There’s still some in her throat. That’s exactly what’s clogging her air passage and why she’s having trouble breathing. It has to come out. Winona?”

“What?”

“I love you. And I promise-I promise, Win-she’ll be okay. But this isn’t going to be any fun to look at, so I just want you to go in the other room and sit down.”

She wasn’t about to go anywhere-although she did take a couple of seconds to grab the whale and hurl it into the trash before coming back to his side. He kept talking, using a low, easy voice to soothe the baby, but she was the one he was communicating to, warning her that he might have to do a tracheotomy, cut the baby’s throat, if he wasn’t able to suck the debris with a straw. One way or another it had to come out, and now, and the baby wasn’t going to like anything about this, but there was nothing else he could do.

It was an odd sensation, under the circumstances, to be more afraid for Justin than for the baby. But she kept watching him, with her eyes-with her heart. And whether it made logical sense or not, she understood that something was at stake for Justin-something more than the baby, something more than he’d known how to tell her.

And he was right. Nothing about the procedures he tried was pretty, but it was only a few minutes later when the baby suddenly choked and gagged and furiously coughed. And then it was done. Justin eased the little one to his shoulder, patting, whispering, soothing, looking at Winona with wet eyes.

“You tell our daughter never to scare me like that again,” he said.

Winona wanted her arms around Angel, but deliberately let Justin keep holding her. She did the running, changing the sheets, throwing out everything that had been in the crib earlier in case the stuffing could have contaminated anything else. By the time the sheets were clean and the light turned off, it was past midnight; Justin had redressed the baby in a warm sleeper, and Angel was hard-core snoozing. He laid her in the crib, but both felt the same reluctance to leave her. They both stood there, watching.

Fifteen minutes later they were both still standing, weaving-tired, still watching the baby, even though Justin had said three times that there was really no longer any reason to worry.

“And she’s sleeping like a log,” Winona agreed. “Come on, this is silly. It’s time for both of us to lie down ourselves and get some sleep.”

“You go. I’ll watch for just a little while longer.”

“No, you.”

“No, you.”

At two in the morning, Winona woke up in the rocking chair next to the baby’s crib…and immediately saw Justin next to her in the second rocking chair she’d carted in earlier. His neck looked as cramped as hers felt, his face as tired and drawn as hers must look.

Her mouth softly tipped into a smile, looking at him. He loved her. And he loved Angel. Whatever had been wrong with him earlier in the week, Winona knew positively what the truth was now.

His eyelashes shot up, as if sensing that she was awake and studying him. Just as swiftly, he jerked to his feet and immediately bent over the baby, assessing Angel’s happy, little breathy snores, before he could relax and plunk back down in the rocker again.

He rubbed a weary hand over his face. “She really is okay, Winona. This is nuts. We both need to get some serious sleep.”

“I know,” she agreed, but she didn’t move any more than he did. In the dark room, she kept seeing shadows and silhouettes, until the thoughts chasing around her mind finally took shape. “With all this trauma going on, I never had a chance to tell you, Justin. There’s no reason that you have to marry me anymore.”

“What?”

“I found out who Angel’s mother is.”

He swallowed, then stood up from the rocking chair and simply took her hand. In the dark, silent living room, he wrapped a throw around her shoulders and then hunkered down next to her on the couch. “Okay. Now tell me the whole story.”

“She was at the Texas Cattleman’s Club ball. One of the guests. Herb Newton’s wife, Alicia. Herb was on sabbatical in the Far East. She was pregnant last year, but then about the time the baby was supposed to be born, she told her neighbors and family that the child was stillborn, that she’d lost it. She had a midwife instead of going to the hospital. The midwife backed up what she said. Herb wasn’t part of the birth process. She told him the same thing, that the baby had died.”