God knew, he didn’t want to push. The morning, his
association with Cassie, wasn’t about him. But if he had to wait much longer to find out the fate of the baby he’d fathered, he was going to need to pound a hammer against some rock.
His heart thudded as she looked over at him and he saw the tears in her eyes, and all worry stopped. Just as it had when his mother died. When Peter died. And Elaina almost did. His job was to be there. To take care of those about whom he cared. It was what he was good at.
But...he didn’t know what to do now.
“It’s not leukemia.” He barely heard the words before the strongest woman he figured he’d ever met broke down into sobs. Like, literally broke down. Her head fell, her shoulders rolled in and her body jerked with the violence of the emotions racking through her.
Pushing up the console in between them, he moved over and rubbed her back, handing her a tissue, waiting for the initial emotion to pass before attempting to find out more. And when it did, when she straightened, dark eyeliner in streaks around her eyes and down her cheeks, he gently wiped the darkness away.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Sounding breathless, Cassie glanced at him, eyes red and cheeks blotched. “I don’t know what happened there. I just... I thought I could handle anything, but...holding it all in... I don’t know. Maybe I’ve never cared so much, but...”
“Cassie.” He’d moved back over to his seat.
“Yes?”
“What are we handling?”
She stared at him. And he heard his words in instant replay. We.
It wasn’t leukemia. She didn’t need his bone marrow. Technically, he was out.
And he wanted more. She could choose to give it. Or not.
“Fetal anemia.”
With those two words, an answer to a non–sperm donor question, everything changed between them. Her baby might need a blood transfusion, but since they’d found the condition early enough, could treat it, the baby had a normal life expectancy. Cassie no longer needed her sperm donor. But did she want a friend?
* * *
Once she started talking, Cassie couldn’t seem to stop. Sitting in Wood’s truck, words just poured out of her.
“The anemia is mild at this point,” she said, still wrapping her mind around the fact that her baby wasn’t dying, didn’t have a terminal disease. But her child still had a medical issue. “There are several known causes, the most common of which is blood type incompatibility, but we know we don’t have that, as your blood type was checked against mine before insemination.”
His blood. Hers. Together inside her. The realization brought a warmth...and strange bit of calm...to an unreal day.
“Which is why they didn’t immediately think of anemia. It’s possible my blood and the baby’s commingled...” She went to describe something she didn’t fully understand, in the words the doctor had used. And then realized he didn’t need her plebeian explanations. “I’m sure Elaina can explain it all to you better than I can,” she said.
And then stopped talking. He’d never, for one second, given her reason to believe he wanted more from her.
But her...she was starting to fantasize about the man. To want more. She was the one in the wrong.
“I’d like to hear it from you.” Wood broke into her thoughts. “While I’m only a donor, the reality is that that child is a product of my body. I’m finding that knowledge to carry some weight, paperwork aside. I know I have no rights to parent the child, but the law can’t stop me from caring.”
Something told her she should discount that point. Couldn’t find an argument. A lawyer, used to proving sides, and she couldn’t find an argument.
“That being established, I’d like to be kept abreast of this information.”
His request was fair. She was the one who’d contacted him. Who’d drawn him into this. Staring out the windshield of the still parked truck, she told herself she could draw clear lines and stay on her side of them.
“Fetal anemia can be fatal, but only if it’s not tended to,” she continued. “For right now, I’m just to watch my diet, and there’ll be a change in my vitamins to compensate for the baby’s lack of iron. I’ll have to be monitored closely. They can watch things through ultrasound to begin with, judging blood flow from shadows. If things continue to get worse, they’ll do another amnio. Since they don’t know what’s causing the anemia, they can’t really predict how this is going to go.”
“Worst-case scenario?”
She didn’t want to go there, but found herself able as she looked into his concerned gaze. The man was a well of strength like none other. He just took it on. Made it look easy.
“In-utero blood transfusion.”