The Child Who Changed Them (Parent Portal 5)

“And he didn’t have life insurance?”

She shook her head. “And I was on his health insurance plan, which was only going to be good for another thirty days. By marrying Wood, I was able to get my hospital stay and treatments, on his insurance. Without that, I don’t know what I would have done.”

He frowned. It was like she was trying to get him to see someone else. As though she saw herself as weaker than the woman he knew her to be. If the plan were the only reason to marry, she would have purchased her own policy. Gone on a short-term interim plan. She was still holding his gaze. As though telling him things her mouth wasn’t saying.

Was it about what she’d said the night before? About her leaning on men? Was the independent woman he knew only a small part of the person she was? Was that what she wanted him to believe? Because he didn’t see it. At work the woman had shoulders the size of a mountain. She took it all on.

“I sure wouldn’t have been able to start my classes on schedule and then would have had to reapply to med school,” she said. “And who knows if, by then, I’d have done so. Or made it in if I had. And yet...that wasn’t Wood’s problem.”

“If he loved you, it was.”

She nodded. And then said, “I loved him, too. He was my brother—still is. He was the only family I had left. I leaned too hard.”

“You were his only family, too, then, right?”

She shrugged again. Nodded.

Something else was nagging at him. “You said you wouldn’t have made it to school without insurance—and that was why you married Wood, so he could take care of you?”

He knew she’d been in the car when Peter had died. A nuclear med tech had mentioned it along the way, but when more

information would have been forthcoming, he’d shut it down, figuring Elaina would tell him what she wanted him to know.

With his own truths to keep to himself, he had to respect the rights of others to do the same.

“You’ve seen the scars,” she said. The allusion to him having her naked in his bed shot straight to his groin. Yes, he’d seen the silver lines along her lower spine. And the ones on her abdomen. He’d never asked much about them. She’d said only that they were from the car accident, had asked if they bothered him.

They hadn’t. At all. He’d spent quite a lot of time showing her how very much they didn’t bother him, as he recalled.

When what he should maybe have done was ask her how much they bothered her.

“I knew you were hurt. I assumed you had stitches. Bruising. Maybe a surgery if there’d been internal damage. But...none of that would have prevented you from going to medical school.”

“I...couldn’t walk.”

“What?” Greg was shocked. He strode toward her, not sure what he was going to do when he got there, but when he saw the blank look that came over her face as he reached for her, he stopped about a foot from her, his arms dropping to his sides.

“You couldn’t walk...” he said. Years of medical training caused all kinds of horror scenarios to play in his mind, scaring him. Dealing with images of Elaina gravely injured was beyond anything his training had taught him. And he had to remind himself that she was fine. Standing right in front of him, healthy and perfect.

And pregnant with his child.

“I was paralyzed,” she said, as though telling him she’d lost a tooth. “For a while there they thought it was permanent, but with surgeries and Wood’s constant care, and a minor miracle or two thrown in, I recovered.”

She made it sound like she’d managed to make a good dinner when she didn’t know how to cook.

“You recovered,” he said. He knew about spinal cord injuries. “You had to have gone through pure hell,” he said. “Learning to walk again...and the pain...it had to have taken months of constant work...”

And more strength than he figured he possessed.

“Wood was there,” she said.

And he was beginning to understand a bit more. At least he thought he was. Hoped he was. “You were all the family he had left.”

Pressing her lips together, she nodded.

“He’d lost his parents, just as you had. You’d both lost Peter...”

She didn’t say a word. Just kept standing there, as though awaiting a sentence to be passed upon her.