The Heart Surgeon's Secret Son

Kimberly lingered in the hallway, feeling silly and out of place, but she hated to leav

e until she heard the officer’s status.

Daniel would be in surgery for hours.

That was, if things went well, because the only way Daniel would finish sooner was if the officer died. Unfortunately, no one expected the man to make it through the surgery, much less through the night.

If the worst happened, she’d like to be there for Daniel.

She grabbed dinner in the hospital cafeteria and chatted with Gregory for a few minutes when he joined her at her table.

“You and Daniel knew each other in Atlanta?” he asked, eyeing her from across the table.

If she refused to talk, it would only raise Gregory’s suspicions.

“We both lived in a small suburb outside Atlanta.” She decided to tell Daniel’s colleague the same thing she’d told Sage. “Daniel was a grade ahead of me in high school.”

“Was he Mr. Perfect back then, too?”

“Mr. Perfect?” She hadn’t caught any sarcasm in Gregory’s tone, but she asked for clarification just in case.

“You know, popular, athletic, smart, good with the ladies?”

She laughed. “Yes, Daniel was all of those things.”

So was his son.

“You and he were an item?”

How did she answer that? She wouldn’t lie to one of Daniel’s partners, but she really didn’t want to discuss their past with a virtual stranger.

Then again, from watching them together, she could tell Gregory and Daniel were good friends and had been for some time.

“We were dating when he moved to Boston for medical school.”

“He dumped you for Boston?” Gregory looked a bit incredulous.

“Not exactly.” She wouldn’t tell him she’d been the one to end things. For some reason, what Daniel’s friends thought of him mattered, and she didn’t want to sully his image in any way. “It was more of a mutual decision.”

For a moment she thought Gregory was going to push for more details, but he took a sip of his soda. “And now work sends you here to him.” He shook his head in wry humor. “Funny how life works, isn’t it?”

Funny, indeed.

After a couple of hours of not hearing anything, Kimberly caught a cab back to her hotel and called Ryan. She caught her son and his friend playing their guitars. They sang a new song they’d written the night before and she listened over the line, her eyes closed, wondering what Ryan would say if he knew who she’d spent her day with.

When she arrived at the hospital early on Thursday morning, Daniel’s nurse Trina told her that she’d find Daniel in the intensive care unit.

Aaron Clark, the police officer, had been admitted to the ICU and was in critical but stable condition. He’d miraculously survived Daniel removing the bullet and attempting to repair the heart wall.

Waving to the nurses, Kimberly stood in the ICU hallway, watching Daniel talk to the police officer’s wife and teenage son in the open waiting area.

Although his hair was a darker blond than Ryan’s, the teenager’s height and built was similar. Seeing him brought home just how much she missed Ryan, how quickly he was growing up, and how soon she’d be all alone in life.

It also opened up another can of worms she didn’t want to deal with.

Daniel was talking compassionately with the young man in a scenario that could easily have been a father talking with his son.

His hand rested on the boy’s shoulder and he spoke to him with a directness that not many doctors afforded a teenager. The boy, struggling to be strong, nodded his head at whatever Daniel had said.