Wedding Date with the Army Doc Read online

  “Is that job ever ‘officially’ over?”

  “The part about being completely responsible for them, yes. The being-a-parent part?” He grimaced. “Nope.”

  Now that the hurdle of meeting his son had come and gone, Charlotte focused on the next big event. Truth was, she’d interpreted the invitation to the wedding in Savannah as a turning point in their relationship. Though Jackson hadn’t committed to the trip meaning anything beyond a few days together on his home turf. With her as his backup. Her thoughts, not his. She felt otherwise. He needed her there.

  But if that was all he wanted, backup, she’d oblige. Because she knew exactly how she felt about him—this could be the start of something big! Old song or not, it was how she felt, yet she chose to hold her thoughts close to her heart rather than test the waters on Jackson. It was still too soon.

  * * *

  Two weeks before the big event she went shopping for a special dress. She whistled while she combed through the circular racks in the showroom, happily looking forward to visiting a state she’d never been to before. She loved it already since it was the place that had shaped Jackson into the wonderful, charming and sexy man she’d come to know and...and what? Was she there yet? Or was she stuck in the “start of something big” stage? Maybe she was waiting for him to catch up.

  All the new and optimistic feelings ebbed when a wave of insecurity and anxiety took over and her stomach threatened to knot up and push out her lunch. She swallowed hard and forced herself to pull it together. Shocked by the emotional reaction the act of buying a special dress had caused—or was it thinking about feeling something more for Jackson than she’d ever expected?—she took pause.

  Sure, Jackson had seen her and accepted her for who she was, but how would she measure up to the people back home? Wondering and fearing how she’d manage in a sea of people she didn’t know, her only lifeline being Jackson, who would no doubt be dealing with a boatload of his own issues, she fretted. Suddenly depressed about her tall and sometimes clunky-feeling appearance—the hair that would probably frizz up in the summer Georgia humidity, not being able to buy a perfect dress right off the rack, not to mention a subtle competitive feeling toward his ex-wife, which annoyed her to no end—she passed off feeling out of sorts and generally unsettled on nerves about the upcoming event. Not the other way around—feeling profoundly sick to her stomach on a perfectly fine Saturday morning, and getting nervous about what it might mean.

  Then she went back to hunting for that perfect dress that would make her feel like a knockout. A dress that would cause Jackson to see her in a different light.

  As a woman he couldn’t live without.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ONE WEEK LATER Charlotte sat in the laboratory with one of the histologists assisting while she examined, described and cut sections from yesterday afternoon’s surgeries and clinic procedures. This morning there were no less than twenty-five bottles of varying sizes, each prefilled with fixative. An appendix, a gallbladder with gallstones, a cervical conization, a large, dark and oddly shaped mole, a wedge resection of lung—removed by Dr. Jackson Hilstead, she noticed on the requisition, which meant he’d probably pop by tomorrow to look at the slide with her. That put a secret smile on her face. She’d been doing that a lot lately, smiling for no reason.

  In walked Dr. Dupree, looking like he had something on his mind, and he immediately wiped her smile away.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, opening the first bottle. Not that she’d wanted to see him or anything. Oh, man, she hoped he didn’t read anything into her off-the-cuff, trying-to-play-nice greeting. The man was incorrigible.

  “I’ve been told to step back.”

  Well, it was about time someone did. Who, though—hospital administration, the sexual harassment team? She kept her smirk to herself. “Step back?”

  Not wanting to let him slow her down on the job at hand, she examined, then interrupted Dupree to describe and measure the dimensions of a piece of tissue, then used a scalpel to find the best possible section to represent the entire specimen for slides and put it into a cassette.

  He waited impatiently for her to finish. “Jackson said you two were a thing and I should step back. It was a couple of weeks ago, so I’m just checking if that’s still true.”

  Her line of vision on the specimen flipped upward, catching her assistant’s gaze, whose eyebrows nearly met his hairline.

  Jackson had staked a claim on her? Glad she was wearing a mask, she hoped her smile didn’t reach her eyes, though the thought of irking Dupree even more was tempting. “Maybe in your world ‘things’ only last a week or two, but I’m sorry to burst your bubble. The official word is, yes, we are still ‘a thing.’”

  Did you hear that, world? Why did that put an entirely new spin on the right here and right now and make her feel amazing?

  The histology technician pretended not to be listening to every word as he labeled the cassette then placed it in a large buffered formalin-filled container in preparation for the overnight process. The next day, after cutting ultra-thin sections of the paraffin-encased specimens, the histologists would deliver a set of pink, blue and purple stained slides neatly laid out in cardboard containers for the pathologists to read.

  This was tedious but necessary work, which took at least twenty-four hours to complete from the time of receiving the specimen to stained slides. Charlotte took her duty seriously and focused her attention on the specimens. Not Dr. Dupree. Even though what he’d said, not his visit, was responsible for her mood being lifted to one of elation. “If you’ll excuse me, as you can see, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Undaunted, Antwan waited for her to look at him. “I’ll check back in a couple more weeks.” And off he went.

  The nerve of that guy. She huffed and the assistant shook his head. Yeah, they were on the same page about Antwan Dupree’s reputation around the hospital. But beyond agreeing the guy was an idiot, no one could possibly understand where she was, in the condition she might be in, at this exact moment. She was on her own with that.

  The room had special ventilation to suck out the caustic fumes, and she wore a duck-billed mask as well as a clear face guard to protect from any formalin splash into the eyes. It was the same thing she did on any given day at work without any side effects. Yet today, during the cutting process, she felt decidedly nauseous.

  Who was she kidding? It wasn’t just today.

  Dreading what a week of all-day queasiness might mean, she promised to take a test once she finished the morning’s lab work. She couldn’t push it out of her mind another second.

  At noon Charlotte stole away to the hospital laboratory and had a trusted and super-skilled lab tech draw her blood, barely feeling the prick of the needle. Then all she could do was wait for the result with fingers tightly crossed it would be negative. She couldn’t let her mind venture into the realm of what she’d do if the pregnancy test was positive.

  Absurd. She couldn’t possibly be...could she?

  As a resident pathologist, she’d seen and examined far more than her share of young women who’d wound up in the morgue, only to discover at the autopsy they’d died from blood clots related to their birth control pills. The clots may have lodged in their lungs or brain but, wherever they were, they’d wound up being the cause of death on the autopsy report. She’d stopped taking BC pills and, even knowing the odds of forming clots were extremely small, had chosen never to use them again.

  So she’d been using a diaphragm with Jackson...except on that first night when he’d caught her by surprise and he’d used a condom. And that time in her office.

  Later, with zero appetite, she forced herself to eat some lunch in her office when halfway through the intercom buzzer went off.

  “Dr. Johnson? This is Sara from the lab. Um, your test is positive.”
/>   “Positive?” Had she heard right? Her heart tapped a quick erratic pace at those four little words. Her blood test was positive. She forgot to breathe.

  “Dr. Johnson?”

  “Yes, Sara, okay. Thanks.” She’d done the worst job in the world of pretending she wasn’t stunned. It seemed her little “thing” with Jackson, to use Dr. Dupree’s term, had just turned into something much bigger. She was pregnant. No. No. No.

  She hung up, reached for her trash can, bent over and lost the contents of her stomach into it. She was pregnant.

  When she recovered, and was positive her voice wouldn’t quiver, she picked up the phone and dialed Jerry Roth. “I’m not feeling well, just threw up. I’ll need to take the afternoon off.”

  Since she was notoriously healthy and hardly ever called in sick, he didn’t hesitate to let her go. “Go. Take care. Feel better.” If it were only that easy.

  * * *

  Once at her town house, having been suspended in a bubble of disbelief so she could drive home safely but now feeling numb, she got out of her clothes and into her pajamas. Why she decided it was the right thing to do she didn’t know. But it was. Even though it was early afternoon and summer, she wanted—no, needed—to snuggle into her soft bathrobe, to hide out and hope to find comfort there. Then she made a cup of herbal tea, noticing a fine tremor in her hand as she dipped the bag into the steaming water.

  One little blood test had, once again, turned her life upside down.

  What was she going to do? She didn’t dare tell Jackson until she’d made her decision. The man had been adamant about never wanting another child. He’d warned her on their first date, hadn’t he, almost coming off as fanatical about it. No more children. If she hadn’t already made up her mind about liking him by then, he would have chased her away with his proclamations. Even though the “no kids” rule had matched her own.

  The night they’d first made love he’d opened up and admitted feeling trapped into marriage by his ex-wife. Not that she wanted to get married to him because she was pregnant. But right from the start he’d made it known he was off the market in the marriage department. She wouldn’t do that to him. But the baby. What about the baby?

  Out of nowhere a long-forgotten dream from before she’d learned about her genetic markers whooshed through her. Her once-upon-a-time hopes of having it all—marriage, a career, children. She’d loved her rotation through pediatrics in medical school. Yes, she’d wanted children. Little knockoffs of her and whoever her husband turned out to be. Warm and lively little bodies that hugged better than anyone else on earth. The only munchkins in the world who would call her Mommy.

  She plopped onto her couch and hunkered down for an afternoon of soul-searching with a potential life-changing outcome. Who was she kidding? Her life had already changed that first morning in the dress shop with that odd sensation of illness that she’d brushed off as anxiety. She just hadn’t known it yet.

  Was there a scientific way to handle the situation? She’d already done the math and come to the conclusion the risk for her getting cancer was too high, so she’d had the operation. She also knew without a doubt she never wanted to pass it on. Now, though, she couldn’t remember what the exact percentage was for a potential “daughter” to inherit her markers and gene mutations. A lot had to do with the father, didn’t it?

  She dropped her head into her hands, her thoughts fogging up, and stared at the teacup on the table in front of the couch. Besides being addled by nausea, her mind was fuzzy around the edges with waxing and waning emotions of fear and joy. She couldn’t ignore the joy part, keeping her thoroughly confused. What in the world was she supposed to do?

  She’d sworn since she’d discovered she had not only the breast cancer blood marker but also the gene mutation, hell, she’d been adamant about it, never to have a baby. No baby. No how. Any baby. Ever.

  She remembered the day she’d begged her sister, Cynthia, to get tested and how she’d refused. Cynthia had already had a child by then—a boy—so at least that was one less concern for Charlotte. But when her sister had informed her that she and her husband were planning to try for another, Charlotte had stepped up her campaign. Finally Cynthia had relented and had tested negative. Charlotte had had to bite back her envy in shame. Of course she was happy for her sister, who’d gone on to have twins, one of whom was a girl, and she still worried about little Annie’s future. Cynthia had the same parents yet didn’t carry the markers. Where did that leave Charlotte, the bearer of the unlucky genes? Where would it leave her baby if it was a girl?

  Though what she carried would only potentially affect a girl baby, for personal ethical reasons she could never take a chance, get pregnant and wait to find out the sex before making a decision. No way would she be a designer parent, picking and choosing the child’s gender, so she’d accepted it would be better to never have children. At all.

  So here she was.

  She needed another cup of tea. Maybe a gallon of it.

  Somewhere during the course of cup after cup of calming chamomile, her anxiety rose, and several visits to the bathroom later, cautious excitement tiptoed into the mix of out-of-control feelings.

  What? How could she be excited about something she’d sworn she didn’t want? A baby.

  Well, because she’d never actually been pregnant before. And now that she was, it seemed like a quiet miracle. A gift she’d never expected but somewhere deep inside had still always wanted. A bubble of joy insisted on making itself known. For a few seconds Charlotte let herself feel it, float on it, dream with that joy. A baby. I’m going to be a mother! Say it out loud. Make it real. She whispered it. “I’m going to be a mother.”

  Oh, God, she needed to hug that toilet again.

  A little later, groaning and lying flat on her back on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, she stared at the white ceiling and remembered Dr. Gordon’s words—Life shouldn’t be about what might happen, but about what’s happening right now.

  She’d been born with a genetic marker she’d had no clue about, had been a happy kid as far as she remembered, and a typical teenager, until her mother had got sick. Long afterward, she’d discovered her potential for cancer, something that could be measured and planned for, unlike most people who never knew or suspected anything until they got their diagnosis. She’d dealt with it in her own way, and now she had to search her soul to decide whether or not to allow that same chance for her baby because life shouldn’t be about what might happen. The key word jumping out at her this time—life.

  Right here and now a baby was taking form in her womb, and cells were dividing and multiplying at the speed of light. Amazing. A million things could change during the process of a pregnancy. The possibilities of “what might happen” were exponential. Extraordinary. But right this second it was a fact—she was pregnant. And it seemed amazing! But the scientific part of her brain sneaked back in. Yes, she was going to be a mother. Unless a long list of potentialities stopped the process. Most importantly, would she be able to live with the guilt if her baby turned out to be a girl and also carried the same genetic markers? Or the guilt of not letting her baby have a life at all?

  Her head started spinning with overwhelming thoughts. Could a person overdose on chamomile?

  She rolled onto her knees, stood and staggered to her room and her bed.

  At this exact moment in time she, without a doubt, knew one thing and one thing alone—that she needed a nap.

  * * *

  The flaw with allowing herself to succumb to a long escapist nap—in this case several hours—in the late afternoon was having to lie awake with a gazillion thoughts winging through her head now, late at night. She couldn’t get Jackson out of her mind. Of course. Every rule he’d laid down from the start. In spite of that, how wonderful and compassionate he’d turned out to be. What a great lover he was, how the thoug
ht of being with him always made her quiver inside. How he’d recently admitted to people other than her that they were “a thing,” both at work with Dupree and his personal life with Evan. Hell, the whole hospital knew!

  How he never wanted to get married again or have children.

  Yeah, that part. Plus the fact his ex-wife had got pregnant and rushed him into marriage. There was that fear again—would he suspect her of trying to do the same thing?

  She had to make sure he understood that wasn’t her plan. Hell, she still had to wrap her brain around the pregnancy part. She was nowhere near ready to think about the concept of marriage.

  Besides, he’d yet to tell her he loved her. A fact. Did she love him? If she ever married it would have to be for love, not because she’d felt forced into it. Nothing else would do.

  What was she supposed to do about their relationship now that she was pregnant? Should she wait until after the wedding to tell him? Could she bear to be around him keeping such a life-altering secret, forcing a pretend face that communicated all was well, and, oh, hey, I’m having such fun, when in reality, since the wedding in Georgia was only a week away, she’d probably still be fighting morning sickness?

  Would it be fair? To either of them?

  She glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. Maybe he’d tried to call her this afternoon while she’d been passed out in a pregnant-lady stupor. She walked to the living room and found her purse. Sure enough, he’d called, not once but twice, and had left a message after each one.

  “What’s up? Where are you? I heard you left work sick. Can I bring you anything?”

  And an hour later.

  “So you must be feeling really crappy and you’re sleeping, because I checked the hospital and you hadn’t been admitted. Kidding, but not really. I’m kinda worried. Call me if you need me. Okay? I’m home.”

  The man deserved to know. Right here. Right now. She understood the bomb she was about to drop on him would probably— Who was she kidding about probably? It undeniably would jeopardize their relationship. Though the thought already broke her heart. She grabbed an already used tissue from the coffee table. He may only see what they had as a “thing,” but for her he was the “start of something big” romance, the first man she’d trusted since Derek. For Charlotte trust was the step just before...