“Already?”
“Yes. I want you and the baby living with me. I want to make us a real family.”
I turn then and look at the ceiling above my bed, blinking away emotion. My throat burns as I try to fight back tears, so instead of saying anything, I just nod.
It doesn’t feel scary to commit because his renovations still aren’t finished. We’re still talking about hypotheticals that might happen in the future, right?Chapter Twenty-SevenNatalie“Are you going to find out the gender?” the phlebotomist asks as she presses a cotton ball into the crook of my elbow then covers it with a Band-Aid.
“Oh…I hadn’t thought about it.”
What a lie. Last night, while I was out picking up dinner for Connor and me, I wandered into the hardware store next to the restaurant and stood in front of the paint swatches, plucking up a sky blue and a pale pink and staring down at them with misty eyes. “Do you need any help picking out paint?” a man asked. Hurriedly, I stuffed the samples back into their respective holders and bolted like I was doing something wrong.
I didn’t tell Connor about it.
The phlebotomist whips off her gloves and drops them into the trash can nearby. The metal lid bangs against the wall with a loud ting. “I only ask because you should tell your doctor you don’t want to know before they give you the test results. With my youngest, my doc just told me over the phone without even asking!”
I smile and thank her for the advice before heading back out into the hall. It’s early morning, before my surgeries. We’ve already rounded and I have a few minutes to kill before I need to be in the operating room. Back in the BICU, I walk toward the nurses’ station and stop on a dime when I see two residents enthusiastically tending to the coffee setup. One of them is refilling the sweetener packets and the other is wiping crumbs off the counter. I laugh under my breath and keep it moving, spotting Lois at her usual post.
She’s sipping coffee as she sees me approach.
“Have to say, my coffee has never tasted quite as good as it does now that I know those residents are keeping the station clean.”
I laugh. “I think you have Connor to thank for that.”
“Do I?”
Something in the way she asks the question makes me blush.
She tilts her head, studying me. “So you two finally…”
I rear back. “Finally what?”
She has her answer then, and Lois unveils the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. It transforms her. She looks lovely with a twinkle in her eye. Twenty years younger, easily.
“Oh, nothing,” she says with a little shake of her shoulders. “I’ll keep my mouth shut, though you should know there are already whispers.” She looks around and then leans in to whisper conspiratorially. “Don’t say I told you, but the nurses had a pool going to see how long you two were going to dance around each other.” My jaw drops and she holds up her free hand in defense. “Now, now, it’s nothing nasty. Sometimes we have long shifts. We need something to take our mind off things—not to mention it was pretty obvious. We’ve seen what you two were too blind or too stupid to notice for quite a while.”
“Lois!”
“I, for one, think it’s great,” she says with a shrug before lifting her coffee cup to her mouth.
I hear a familiar voice down the hall and glance over in time to see Connor exit a patient’s room with some medical students on his heels. They hurry to keep up with him, eyes wide, heads swiveled in his direction. He could tell them to jump and they wouldn’t just ask how high, they’d ask in which direction, how softly they should land, and should they jump off one foot or two?
I press my lips together to keep from smiling. I haven’t seen him since yesterday evening. Noah had a late flight out to New York for his visit at Columbia, and he wanted to get dinner with Connor and the guys beforehand. By the time Connor got back, I was already asleep in the guest house. I woke up when he slid into bed beside me, wrapping his arm around my waist and tugging me against him until my back hit his chest.
This morning, Connor had to be at the hospital extra early for a meeting with the plastics department, so we didn’t eat breakfast and walk to work together like usual. I stood in line by myself at Boston Beans and Gina gave me a free cup of tea (it hasn’t been made clear, but I’m pretty sure she feels so bad about the “Fertile Goddess” incident that I probably get free coffee and tea for life)—and sure it hasn’t been all that long since I last saw Connor, but I guess everyone was right when they said absence makes the heart grow fonder because I swear to God he has never looked better. Handsome in his all-American way. Professional and clean-shaven and broad-shouldered. He belongs in a Ralph Lauren ad. I wish I’d known him back in college. I wish I could have seen him on the football field. I can’t imagine what he was like then—no doubt just as cocky as he is now.