Another Man's Child

He sped down the stairs with her, not even stopping to lock the door behind them as he stepped out into the garage and settled her into the Ferrari.

Lisa felt a rush of warm liquid between her thighs when he lay her back in the seat. “Oh, God, no!” she cried.

“What?” Marcus looked down at the blanket around her, saw the spreading stain. “Okay, Lisa. Just hang on, love. We’ll beat this yet. Just hold on.”

His words did little to ease the ache in her heart. She was a doctor. She knew what was coming. With her water broken, they wouldn’t be able to save the pregnancy. And she was barely seven months along.

She bit her lip and groaned as another pain consumed her. She was losing her baby.

“Hold on, sweetheart. Just hold on another few minutes. We’re almost there, and then everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see, it’ll be fine…”

Marcus’s soothing words filled the car during the entire trip to the hospital, but Lisa barely heard them as she fought the pain. It was constant now, and building in such intensity she was afraid she was going to tear apart.

Don’t go, little one. Please don’t go. She repeated the words over and over, as if somehow they could manage to accomplish what she knew medical science could not. She couldn’t bear to lose this baby. She couldn’t.

A stretcher was waiting for her at the hospital, and Lisa looked up into Debbie’s worried face even before she was inside the emergency-room doors.

She heard Debbie’s brisk command. “Take her into delivery, stat.”

“No! Not yet. Let’s wait and see—”

“It’s too late, Lisa,” Debbie said, hurrying along beside the stretcher. “It’s you we have to be concerned about now. You’re losing a lot of blood.”

It was her they had to be concerned about now. Did that mean…? No. It couldn’t She’d felt the baby move only a couple of hours ago. He’d kicked her hard, twice, when she’d climbed into bed. She’d rubbed her hand over him, soothing him, until he’d fallen asleep. She’d whispered good-night to him, just as she had every night since she’d found out she was pregnant.

She was rushed into a room filled with bright lights and people. Things were happening so fast, orders coming so quickly, Lisa couldn’t keep track of it all. She was in agony, both mentally and physically, and soon the only thing she was conscious of was Marcus standing beside her bed, dressed in surgical greens.

“We’ll make it through this, Lis. You just hang on for me, you hear?” he said, holding her hand while the doctor and nurses got an IV going, examined her and hooked her up to a couple of different monitors. In one part of her brain, Lisa knew everything they were doing. And she knew why. She knew she’d have given the same orders Debbie was giving were their positions reversed.

Yet she hated the doctor for taking away her dream.

As the minutes passed and the pain didn’t relent, Lisa focused more and more on Marcus. On his steady strength. His hopeful words. He was telling her what she wanted to hear. What she needed to hear. That everything was going to be all right. And because he was saying it, she tried to believe him.

Marcus thought that this was what it was like to lose one’s mind. He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate. To focus. As the medical personnel rushed around Lisa, peeling the bloodstained blanket away, he sank further and further into a blind panic.

“Get me the blood, stat,” Debbie Crutchfield hollered at one of the orderlies. “She may be hemorrhaging.”

It was his worst nightmare coming true. Lisa was in trouble. And all he could do was stand by and watch as the team of professionals tried to save her. And pray. Marcus had never prayed harder for anything in his life as he did then, standing beside his wife, horrified as he watched the blood flow out of her.

Only Lisa kept him sane. Lisa and her need of him. Marcus refused to let her see his fear or hear the worry in his voice. He reassured her over and over, knowing how desperately she needed the words of encouragement. He would pull her through this with his strength alone if he had to. He wasn’t going to lose her. Not now. Not like this.

Lisa gave a sharp cry and Marcus’s heart missed a beat. He glanced at Debbie, looking for reassurance, but Debbie’s face was a study of intense concentration as she worked between Lisa’s legs.

And suddenly Marcus knew a new fear, an unfamiliar fear, as he considered the life his wife was trying so desperately to save. Not her own. But the life inside her. For the first time he noticed the mirror set back behind the doctor. And as he glanced up, he saw a flash of a tiny head, a swatch of hair, and then the full head, as Lisa started to push the baby from her body.

Her fingers were clutching his so tightly he lost circulation, but he continued to hold her, to soothe her, his eyes glued to the mirror behind the doctor.

There were the shoulders. And with one last groan from Lisa, the tiniest body he’d ever seen emerged into the brightly lit room. Marcus’s gaze flew to Debbie’s face. Waiting.

“She’s alive.”

He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath until he heard the words. She’s alive. His gaze darted from the too-tiny body to his wife’s face, and then, medical personnel be damned, he gathered Lisa into his arms, holding her against him.

LISA HAD BARELY a glance at her daughter before Debbie snipped the cord and they whisked the little body away. She didn’t even get a chance to see if the baby had all her fingers and toes, seeing only that she had a full head of dark hair, this child she’d waited so long to have, yet had way too soon.

She buried her head against Marcus, no longer able to hold back the sobs that tore through her. She was a doctor. A children’s doctor. She knew.

The baby couldn’t have weighed more than two pounds. And she hadn’t cried, indicating that her lungs weren’t fully developed—if at all. Her chances of surviving were slim.