Another Man's Child

Marcus cherished her that night, loved her in ways he never had before, and when he finally entered her, bringing them both to a climax that seemed to go on and on, Lisa gave him more than her body and heart. She gave him her soul all over again. At least for one more night.

And later, when he lay sleeping beside her, she gave him her tears. Because for everything she’d given him that night, she’d lost just as much. She couldn’t fool herself any longer. Marcus wasn’t going to come around. Sara was breathing on her own. It was time for Lisa to find her daughter a home.

MARCUS DIDN’T EVEN STOP at the viewing-room window the next afternoon on his way home from work. He proceeded right to the door, and then on to a set of scrubs as soon as Regina answered his knock. He had business to attend to.

“Hello, Sara,” he said, settling himself beside the warming bed on the stool he’d used the night before. “My name’s Marcus.”

A nurse he’d never seen before walked by, and Marcus leaned down a little closer to the crib. “I’m married to your mama.”

The baby was awake, but she appeared to be studying a scratch on the side of the bed opposite Marcus. He fought the urge to turn her little face toward him. He wasn’t going to touch her. Only the medical professionals and her parents were supposed to be touching her. He was neither.

“Here’s the thing. I love your mama very much. And pretty soon, as soon as you get to know her, you’re going to love her, too. And she loves both of us. So you and me, we’re going to have to share her.”

He paused, giving her time to digest his words. One of her inch-long feet kicked in the air.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that I’m okay with that now, sharing her with you, I mean. I’m sorry it took me so long to come around. But it’ll work out fine, you’ll see. I have an office at home, and I can always work in there on the nights you need her to help you with homework, or if she’s teaching you to sew or something. And then she can get a sitter some nights and go out with me, too.”

It wasn’t ideal. But it could work.

“But, uh—” Marcus looked around him before leaning in just a bit closer “—unless you’re sick or something, I get her nights.”

The baby didn’t cry. Marcus decided that was a good sign. “Okay. Now that that’s done, I’ll go get someone over here to change that diaper for you.” He looked around for Regina.

Marcus backed up while Regina moved the cellophane covering Lisa’s baby and slipped a dry diaper beneath her. She plopped the old diaper on a scale, wrote something on the baby’s chart and came back with a doll-size pacifier in her hand which she attempted to place in Sara’s mouth. The baby spit it out, and Regina put it back in, all the while watching a bottle of milky solution drip into the baby’s catheter.

“Should she have that thing if she doesn’t want it?” Marcus asked. He’d read that pacifiers were bad for babies’ teeth.

“Before she can nurse, she has to learn how to suck,” Regina said, patiently forcing the pacifier back into the baby’s mouth. Sara spit it back out.

Marcus grinned. The baby was as stubborn as her mother. “Maybe it’d be better to try her again later,” he suggested.

Regina shook her head. “We give it to her only when she’s eating so she’ll learn to associate sucking with the full feeling in her stomach.”

Marcus looked at the baby’s apple-size stomach. “She’s eating?”

“Yep.” Regina nodded toward the bottle she was watching. “She’s taking about an eighth of a cup every four hours. We’re just about ready to try her on breast milk.”

Thinking of the night before, Marcus had a sudden urge to go home and make love to Lisa again.

“My wife will be glad to hear that,” he said, instead.

“She was. We called her about an hour ago. She’s going to bring in the first four ounces in the morning and hold Sara while we feed her.”

Marcus felt a pang as he thought about being there to watch Lisa feed her baby for the first time, but he knew better than to torment himself—

or Lisa. So he settled for watching the nurse continue to offer the baby the pacifier, until Sara finally gave in and accepted the unfamiliar object in her mouth. She sucked for about a minute and then fell asleep.

“I’m a little concerned about her temperature,” Regina said, feeling the baby’s face with the back of her hand. “She’s getting feverish.”

Marcus’s stomach tightened. “Is that normal?”

Regina frowned and called out to another nurse. “See if Dr. Cunningham’s still in the building, Susan.” She kept looking from the baby to the dials on one of the machines beside the warming bed. “Her temperature’s climbed a full degree in an hour. And no, that’s not normal,” she said to Marcus.

They were the last words anybody said to him during the next fifteen minutes as a full team of medical personnel went to work on Lisa’s baby. Marcus watched from the viewing-room window, just as he had for all those weeks. And when the team finally came away from the baby’s bed, Sara was once again hooked up to the respirator.

They were right back where they’d started.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN