Felicia Mason - The Single Dad Finds a Wife

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Spring found she had not been able to stop thinking about the father and son duo, even after all the unexpected extra hours in the emergency department, getting home and going straight to bed.

Three mornings a week she worked out at F.I.T. gym with her sister. Today, though, she’d begged off after promising that she’d run five miles to make up for it. She’d had specific and necessary errands to run before going to the hospital. There had been a place at Commerce Plaza she needed to visit.

As she walked into the hospital, she carried a two-foot-tall brown teddy bear sporting a natty red-and-white-polka-dot bow tie around his neck.

She wasn’t in the habit of buying gifts for her patients. Like many service professionals who worked with children, she kept a stock of small toys like yo-yos and coloring books with crayons to give to kids, but nothing like this plush bear that was built well and meant to last a lifetime.

Spring was so thankful that Jeremy had come through the surgery and recovery with flying colors. She knew that she was getting emotionally involved. But she couldn’t help it.

Jeremy Camden was now recuperating in a patient room in the pediatric wing of the hospital.

She tapped on the partially open door, heard “come in” and entered the little boy’s room.

“Dr. Spring!” the boy exclaimed when he saw her. He struggled to sit up, then let out an “Ow” and leaned back.

“Easy, Jeremy,” Charlotte Camden admonished her grandson while rising from the chair near the boy’s bed. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

Charlotte pushed the mechanism that raised the bed so Jeremy could sit up.

“Is that for me?” the boy asked, eyeing the teddy bear.

“It sure is,” Spring said. “But you have to do what Dr. Emmanuel and your grandmother say.”

“I am. Gonna have a sore,” he said, tugging at the small hospital gown so she could see as she approached.

“A scar, Jeremy,” his grandmother corrected.

Spring ruffled the boy’s hair and handed him the bear, which Jeremy immediately hugged.

“He’s almost as big as me!”

The delight on his face assured her that she’d done the right thing in buying and giving it to him. “He sure is,” Spring said.

“What do you say?” Charlotte prompted him.

With one small arm flung around the stuffed animal, Jeremy reached for Spring with the other. The hug came naturally to him. It was awkward with the bed rail, the IV and the bear, but so worth it when he said in her ear, “Thank you—I love him.”

“How are you feeling?” she asked as she checked his readings on the monitors near the bed and on his chart. Everything looked good and so did he.

“I get to stay here in the hospital!”

Spring smiled.

“Only a child would see that as a good thing,” Charlotte said with a laugh.

Only a child who was never or rarely sick , Spring amended silently. Now came the recuperation period, and she knew from experience that if he was feeling better, he’d be itching to run around like a little boy with boundless energy.

“Because it was so late when David brought him in, the doctor said they’d like to keep Jeremy for a full day of observation.”

Spring wondered where David Camden was. The nurses said he hadn’t left his son’s side since he’d come out of surgery.

“You just missed David,” Charlotte said as if reading Spring’s mind. “I sent him to the hotel to get some proper rest. He has a business meeting later today and several tomorrow morning and needs to be ready for them. We’ll probably both end up staying the night.”

“Oh.” Spring was surprised at the deflated feeling that rushed through her, but she responded to the older woman. “Yes. That’s good.”

Then she questioned her own actions and second-guessed her motives. Had she brought Jeremy a gift simply to be able to see his father again?

No, she realized. When she saw the bear, her first thought had simply been the towheaded little boy who’d been in so much pain and had been such a trouper.

“Dr. E said I can go home after today and Grandma’s gonna stay at the hotel. Then we go home later,” Jeremy reported.

Spring was still confused about the whole business concerning the hotel versus the house, but she wasn’t about to question Mrs. Camden. She’d already gathered from what David had said and from the quality of Mrs. Camden’s clothing that they were not in the financial trouble she’d imagined.

“I checked with Jeremy’s pediatrician in Charlotte. He suggested a day of bed rest after he’s released rather than a road trip home.”

“And Charlotte is home?”

Charlotte Camden nodded and then smiled. “I was named for the city and for an aunt. I know it gets confusing sometimes. David’s company is based there. I’m the grandma in chief on the board of directors.”

David’s company.

The words should have been a comfort, should have taken away the uncertainty and assured her that he had spoken the truth. Instead they made Spring feel as if she were suddenly treading water near a rip current.

She had been attracted to him from the moment she’d set eyes on him. And Spring Darling had no room in her heart for attraction and what it tended to do to the emotions. She had been down that path before, and it led straight to disaster. No, she reasoned, being attracted to a person was merely a chemical response in the body, dopamine and testosterone responding to like receptors in the other person—something any first-year medical student knew. It didn’t have to mean anything else. But none of that reasoning explained the arc of fear that lanced through her now.

What if they began a relationship? And what if he lied to her the way Keith had? She had given her heart once before only to have it thoroughly and utterly trounced. Crushed by a man she’d trusted and thought she’d loved, a man she had been ready to marry.

That made her think of her sister’s upcoming engagement party, an event Spring knew she would have to attend no matter how much it hurt. She was truly happy for Summer and knew that in Cameron Jackson her sister had found a man of strong faith and character. Summer and Cameron weren’t responsible for the heartsick memories their happiness invoked in her.

“Dr. Darling, are you all right?”

Spring blinked. Mrs. Camden’s gentle hand rested on her arm as if holding her steady.

She forced a smile and nodded. “I’m fine. Really,” she added as if to assure herself rather than the other woman.

“For a second there you looked in pain.”

“My thoughts just drifted for a moment.”

Straight down a rabbit hole , she thought. Spring wasn’t given to flights of fancy or romantic notions. She was the straight-arrow Darling sister, the one totally focused on career and community. So she didn’t know where the scenario of a relationship had sprung from.

David Camden was the parent of a patient...and he’d planted a kiss on her that she still remembered, felt and wished to experience again.

“Dr. Spring?”

Her focus shifted again to her young patient.

“Yes?”

“What should I name my bear?”

Spring cocked her head a bit, considering the little boy and the bear almost as big as he was. “Well,” she said. “He’s wearing a bow tie. So how about Beau? B-E-A-U,” she added for his benefit.

Jeremy’s face lit up. “Okay. I like that. Hi, Beau,” he said, giving the bear a kiss. He then hugged it to him and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was sound asleep.

Charlotte smiled down at her grandson. “He and his father are the joys of my life,” she said.

“You’re blessed to have both of them,” Spring said, realizing that she truly meant the words. They were not merely the sort of pleasant platitude or banal cliché offered when two strangers conversed or when a doctor was trying to be pleasant with a patient’s family.