The ER's Newest Dad

She winced at him calling Ross “Daddy” in the middle of their workplace. No way had all their co-workers not heard his cries. Then again, they all suspected something was going on between her and Ross. May as well have it all out in the open so they could move on to some new tidbit of gossip.

“You need help?” Cindy asked, poking her head into the bay, her dark gaze going straight to Brielle.

“We’re fine,” Brielle and Ross said at the same time.

Ross finished injecting the area and set the syringe down. Justice had already calmed down somewhat.

“Alrighty, then,” the nurse said, disappearing again. “Justice, sweetie, if you need anything, you yell for me, okay?”

Justice nodded, wiping his face on Brielle’s shirt. “I don’t want ’titches.”

“Justice, does your hand still hurt?” Ross asked.

Not looking at Ross, he nodded again.

“It does? You’re sure? The magic potion medicine I put in should have put a spell on your hand and made it stop hurting completely.”

Justice seemed to consider that. “Maybe it worked a little.”

“That’s good, son. I want you to tell me if your hand starts hurting again because the magic potion is to protect you so your hand doesn’t hurt at all, okay?”

Justice eyed his hand as if expecting a glow or puff of smoke to be emitted from the wound.

Ross began to do his magic for real. He pulled the skin flap down, lining up the wound edges as perfectly as possible then began putting in suture after suture.

On the first suture Brielle distracted Justice’s attention to something elsewhere in the room rather than at what Ross was doing, and he was halfway into the second one when Justice noticed the needle.

“No.” Justice tried to pull his hand away, but Brielle kept a firm grasp on it.

“You’ve got to hold very still, son. Remember the magic potion,” Ross urged in a gentle but firm voice. He didn’t stop what he was doing. “You didn’t feel the first suture and you won’t feel this one either. You’re under the protection of magic, remember?”

Justice didn’t look completely convinced but he let Ross finish, his tiny body relaxing against Brielle’s. During the eighth suture his eyes closed.

“He’s exhausted,” she informed Ross as he tied off the last stitch and cut the Ethilon.

“No wonder. Fishing and this.”

“He never even cast his line.”

“Fossil hunting can be exhausting, too,” he said, obviously trying to go for lightness.

Something about them being alone with their son sleeping between them made Brielle feel nervous.

Moving gently so as not to wake Justice, Brielle repositioned herself so Ross would have easy access to the cut on Justice’s knee. He cut the knot, releasing the material of the makeshift bandage. The knee had bled enough to stick the fabric to the wound and he poured saline over the area to re-wet it so he could remove the fabric more easily from the area without tugging on the wound.

He repeated the steps he’d taken on Justice’s palm, first cleaning the wound, then disinfecting it, then squirting anesthetic into the open wound to provide some numbness before he anesthetized the area properly by injecting anesthetic around the wound.

Justice sighed in his sleep, but Brielle comforted him, singing softly and rubbing his back as she’d done his entire life when holding him, and he didn’t wake up completely.

Ross sutured the knee while Brielle watched, still singing softly to Justice.

“You’re very good with him,” Ross praised when he’d trimmed the Ethilon on all the sutures.

Something warm and gooey moved in her chest. “I was thinking that about you. That was brilliant with the magic potion.”

“He likes magic. Almost everything we played this week ended up involving some type of spell or magic force field.”

“Most children are fascinated by such things.”