With the morning light came stiffness, a tingling foot, and the return of the gnawing fear in her gut. She’d hoped Gabe would have come out of his fever, but it hadn’t dropped. Nurses had checked on him throughout the night, but his temperature had only gone higher.
Beside her, Jarrett turned onto his back, simultaneously relieving the pressure on her leg and edging her off the mattress. She tumbled to the floor, her feet still tangled in the sheets. Only the fact that her pillow and blanket had preceded her at some point during the night saved her from bodily harm. Her pride was not so fortunate.
The light flipped on in the room.
“Oh! Are you okay?”
The concerned voice came from an attractive man wearing a white lab coat. Just her luck the nurse would choose that moment to walk into the room. She covered her face. She had a new least-favorite way to meet people.
Jarrett’s head appeared over the side of the mattress. “Why are you sleeping on the floor?”
She struggled to move with her feet pinned above her, the needles in one expanding to the entire foot. “I’m not sleeping. This is a new yoga position. It’s called downward dope.”
“If I’m not mistaken, she fell off the bed.” The nurse extended a hand. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but I can’t get up. My feet are stuck.”
The nurse wasn’t laughing, but she could tell he wanted to. She’d bet money when he got to the break room, the entire hospital would hear about her downward dope position.
Working together, Jarrett and the nurse released her feet from the sheets, and the nurse pulled her up. She limped to the chair with one foot on fire.
“I’m Dr. Campbell,” the man said to Rylie, frowning down at her sock-covered foot. “You were limping. Did you sprain your ankle?”
Not a nurse—a doctor. What would come next? A bolt of lightning?
“It’s fine,” she said, vainly trying to smooth her tangled hair. “Just laid on it wrong. My foot went to sleep.”
With a nod that didn’t quite cover his smirk, the doctor turned to Gabe, who’d slept soundly through the commotion. But his lack of responsiveness couldn’t be a good sign.
“Did you get the lab results back, Dan?” Jarrett had snapped his prosthesis in place and moved beside the doctor. “Do we know what kind of infection we’re fighting?”
“It’s definitely an intestinal infection with gram negative bacteria, like we expected. But the lab results showed gram positive as well. We’ve already adjusted the IV antibiotics, so we just have to wait.” He took a stethoscope out of a sealed bag and put the ear tips in his ears, moving the bell end around on Gabe’s chest and belly. “We’ll keep him under light sedation to reduce the pain, so he’s going to be mostly sleeping until we get this thing under control.”
“But you will, right?” Rylie said. “You’ll be able to stop the infection?”
“I normally don’t say anything is a certainty.” Dan dropped the stethoscope into a bin marked unsterile. “But I’ll guarantee you I won’t rest until we get this little guy up and running around again.”
“Thanks, Dan,” said Jarrett. “I trust you.”
When he was gone, Rylie sank back into the chair, wishing she could recapture that security she’d felt in Jarrett’s arms.
He made quick work of folding the bed into a couch and sat on it, bending forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I need to tell you something.”
“I feel like I got called into the principal’s office.”
“As if you would have any idea what that felt like. I’ll wager you never got in trouble at school.”
“No, but Carlie did, and some of the teachers couldn’t tell us apart. Mom thought it was fun and dressed us in identical clothes, all the way up until fifth grade, when I flat refused.”
“The two of you didn’t get along?”
“We fought all the time, but we’ve always been best friends. I talked to her about everything.” Everything except her feelings for Jarrett.
He sat up and pushed his fingers through his hair, his well-muscled chest rippling under his t-shirt. “We’ve never talked about children… not really.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t imagine where this conversation was going.
“Do you… uh…” One hand scratched the side of his head. “Do you want to have children? Or maybe I should say, how important is it for you to have children of your own?”
She was completely lost. Was he talking about Gabe? About visitation rights?
“I guess I’d say it’s really important. I mean… I love children, but I didn’t know how much I could love a child until I had Gabe.”
“Yes, but you didn’t give birth to him. Do you want to have kids someday?”
Was he trying to make a point about her age?
“I’m not in a hurry. I know I still have time, even though I’m thirty-three. Why? Did Carlie tell you I was complaining because I was never going to have a baby? Because I was only blowing off steam.”
“So you don’t want to have a baby?”
“Eventually, yes. But not right now.”
He threw his hands in the air. “I give up. There’s no way to do this but to come right out and ask you.”
“Go ahead and ask, because I don’t know what you want.”
His chest expanded in a deep breath. “I know Gracie said something to you about the damage from my chemotherapy. I didn’t mention it before, but I don’t know if I can ever father a child. So adopting Gabe… that’s the fulfillment of my dream.”
