9781631052347OnCallKenyan (17 page)

“I
think we should go out today. Get the second date out of the way.”

Her
eyes shone with excitement. You’d think she was getting an early Christmas
present. AJ was pleased by her enthusiasm. However, as much as he wanted her,
he wasn’t inhuman. The girl was dead on her feet and he doubted she would be
able to stay awake for more than a few minutes.

“You
need to sleep. We can have our date tomorrow.” She stuck out her lower lip. AJ
had to take her up on her offer. He leaned down and sucked it into his mouth.
“Don’t be sad, you’re breaking my heart. Go sleep and I’ll wake you up and take
you home.”

Katherine
nodded and left without saying a word.

“How
cute.”

AJ
groaned as Rose’s voice filled the still air. “I’m afraid to ask what?”

“You
and your little girlfriend,” she spat out scornfully. “I bet you’ll be asking
her to marry you next.”

“If
she’ll have me.”

“What?”

It was
obvious that Rose was shocked by his response. Hell, he was surprised by it.
But AJ couldn’t imagine growing old and gray with anyone else. When he pictured
his children—something he had never done—he hoped their eyes were as kind as
Katherine’s. He also wished they would be as gentle and sweet as their mother,
even if that meant having all girls. He could live with a house full of
miniature Katherine’s.

“Hey!”
Rose snapped her fingers in front of his face, snapping him out of his dream
haze. “What happened to the eternal bachelor, the ‘doctor love them and leave
them’, one girl every night.”

“I
don’t want that anymore. I want a relationship and if that leads to marriage, a
home and kids, I want that too.”

“Why
couldn’t you want that when you were with me?”

“All
fifteen minutes of our no strings attached, sexual relationship?” AJ winced
when he realized how that sounded. He had just said Rose was just good for sex.
But she had been the one to approach him with that offer. He didn’t make any
promises to her. “Rose, please understand—I love Katherine.”

“And
you couldn’t love me?”

AJ
tripped over his words. His tongue froze in his mouth. What was he supposed to
say? Any negative answer would make it seem like Rose was unlovable, but he
wasn’t one to dangle false hope before the eyes of someone who did nothing but
hope.

“I
waited for you to be finished with all those whores you were sleeping with. I
know we have something special. That’s why I’m going to wait for this little
thing with Katherine to blow over. You’ll soon realize who the right girl for
you is.”

Rose had
begun to walk away, but AJ needed to make sure that he had made himself clear.
“I’m going to ask her to marry me.” He saw Rose’s lower lip tremble. “Katherine
Henry is the only woman I have fallen in love with. The only one I’ve said the
words “I love you” to. She’s the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.
Katherine is the mother of my children and my wife, and that is what I believe.
She is my future, Rose, you were my past.”

Chapter Fifteen

Usually
when you wake up in the morning, you assume you’d be doing the same mundane
thing you did the previous day. As a doctor Katherine knew she had six hours of
clinic hours on top of shadowing her attending Lyle. She had to check on the
post-op patients and do consultations for other doctors. Ending up on
blood-bank duty was nothing out of the ordinary for interns.

In fact
she could only count one intern who hadn’t been on this floor yet. AJ, but that
was because he was a surgical superstar and all the department heads were
trying to lure him to their department. He didn’t have time to do something as
important as draw blood from a donor, run screen tests, and picking up donors
off the floor who had passed out from the loss of blood. What she did saved
lives, not at the time, but in the future.

“All right,
Lacey.” Katherine pulled the curtain back in place and prepared to take the
history of her donor. “Do you have any allergies or chronic illnesses?”

“Not
that I know about.” The girl looked like a teenager, but her chart said she was
twenty-four. Katherine was twenty-three but her hours at the hospital had made
her look forty. She didn’t have that much time to make herself look pretty.
Katherine was glad she had already won AJ’s affections, otherwise she wouldn’t
be able to keep up with the nurses trying to get his attention.

“Date
of last period?”

“Two
weeks ago, why?”

“It’s
just procedural questions.” Katherine’s mind wondered for a bit. When was the
last time she’d had her period? “What’s the date today?”

“The
tenth of May,” the girl said confused. “Do you need the year too?” When
Katherine didn’t respond, the girl’s voice hitched with panic. “Are you all
right? Are you sure you are a doctor? You seem—your blank expression worries
me.”

“No.”
Katherine cleared the cloud of nerves in the throat. “Everything is fine. I’ll
just draw that blood.”

Katherine
delivered Lacey’s and her own blood samples to Rose, the charge nurse for the
day. She was so deeply in her own little dazed world that anything the redhead
nurse had said didn’t sink in. How was she going to deal with this? She ran
into the first on-call room she saw. She sat in the darkness and thought about
her latest mess and how she was going to get out of it.
A mess,
that’s what her parents would call it. She had given up her
home so that she could continue working at the hospital. And now if she was
pregnant—Pregnant—what the hell?

What
exactly was the procedure of telling your boyfriend, whom you cheated on, who
was also your roommate with benefits, that you were carrying his baby.
His baby. AJ’s baby.
What if it wasn’t?
She expected him to ask that question. Heck, she was asking herself Lyle had
worn a condom, hadn’t he? She paced around the dark room, cold sweats making
their way down her spine. She had messed up. If it wasn’t AJ’s baby, how the hell
was she going to tell him? Was she going to tell him? Katherine wasn’t ready
for a baby, with their schedules she didn’t think AJ or Lyle would be either.
Oh, dear God, she needed to make a decision. But first she would get the
results, do a scan, talk to the potential fathers and figure out if she was
going to keep the baby. Baby—scientifically, depending on how old it was, it
was just a fetus.
Keep telling yourself
that.

Katherine
nearly jumped out of her skin when the door opened. Rose held it ajar and held
her charts out to her. “Lacey and Katy Perry are both clean. But ‘Katy Perry’
is pregnant.” Rose’s mocking tone told Katherine that she knew something. Sure
Katy Perry wasn’t the most inconspicuous name she could come up with, but Lacey
was singing one of her songs at the time and she didn’t think.

“So,
Katy Perry?” Rose’s tone suggested she wanted to know more about the story. Ha!
Fat chance.

“I
think she’s a runaway teenager.” She hoped the nonchalant tone in her voice
would get Rose to back off. “I have to see my patient now, excuse me.”

Katherine
grabbed the charts and as soon as she walked around the corner and was out of
Rose’s line of sight, she frantically flipped through ‘Katy Perry’s’
test results. She was pregnant. Now all
that was left to do was figure out who the baby’s daddy was. Katherine ordered
a portable scan, pretending it was for a patient. She wasn’t an obgyn but she
figured she had enough skills to read the age of a fetus from a scan. She sat
on a gurney in the abandoned operating room and held the joystick to her belly.

When
nothing registered on the screen she drew in a breath of relief. Maybe the lab
had got the samples mixed up. Her relief was short lived when she realized the
scan was still off. Cautious of the maternal instinct that apparently existed
in every single woman, she turned it on once the scan was ready, she held it to
her stomach again, and there it was. The fetus looked at least four weeks old.

Her
heart somersaulted from joy. She didn’t think she could have handled carrying
Lyle’s baby. Explaining to AJ would have been a disaster.

But
what said this wouldn’t be? AJ grew up in a loving family, she was sure
Rosalinda and Adrian Senior would be overjoyed about their first grandchild.
But her parents definitely wouldn’t be. She still didn’t know what her father
held against Senior. Anyway, first she needed to figure out what AJ thought of
having a baby this early in life.

Katherine
ordered AJ’s favorite takeout when she got home. She thought a fully loaded
carnivore’s pizza would soften the blow. She sat agitated as the hour ticked
by. At first she had come up with a couple of excuses as to why she should
delay telling AJ. She hoped he would come in and talk about how difficult his
day was, or he had some major surgery he had to prepare for. But when AJ
finally came home, he didn’t look tired or stressed out.

“How
was your day?”

“It was
the best. I took out a spleen, cast a broken leg and took out a beer bottle
from a frat boy’s ear.” he laughed. “University wasn’t that dangerous when I
was there.”

“I
guess they were doing something stupid.” She swallowed back the lump in her
throat.
Tell him now,
her conscience
urged. “AJ, have you thought about having kids with this career?”

“I
never thought about it,” he mused. “Our hours are crazy. But if you did get
pregnant, I expect you’d take a year off to take care of the baby.”

“What!”
she scoffed.

“I’m
not trying to be a cave man or anything. But a baby needs parental attention.
My mother stayed home with us, when Dad went to work.”

“No
offense to Rosalinda, your mother is a wonderful person, but she didn’t have a
career. I do, and taking a year off from Cardiology would set me back,” she
protested.

“I’m
sure you’ll feel differently when you get pregnant, which is not anytime soon.”

Katherine
nodded in silent surprise. She was pregnant now and the thought of sacrificing
her career for her child hadn’t occurred to her until now. Maybe she didn’t
have that maternal instinct. Katherine retreated to the cover of her room. She
needed to think about her options. Maybe if AJ’s answer had been different she
would be sure about keeping the baby. But sitting next to AJ trying to figure
out if she should do away with their love child wasn’t helping her.

* * *
*

“AJ.”
Katherine had made an appointment for the clinic late that night. It was a
wonder an abortion clinic worked so late. She guessed they had to fit in the
busy women who didn’t have time to go in the morning. Or maybe they knew what
they were doing was wrong, and could only see that in the light of day. But she
wasn’t going to get an abortion—she was just going to be briefed about the
procedure. “Can I borrow your car? I need to run an errand before I go to
work.”

“Something
you need help with?” AJ walked toward her, Katherine wanted to turn away, run
from the room. She couldn’t bare his touch right now. But she couldn’t command
her body to move as she accepted AJ’s kiss.

“No,
I’ll be fine.” She forced a weary smile.

“It’s
in the bowl. I’ll see you at work.”

“Sure.”
Katherine knew her mind must be clouded if she didn’t react to AJ’s chiseled
features.

“I love
you.”

“I
know.” She smiled and ran out the door before her eyes betrayed her. Before she
dropped down on her knees and begged the man she loved to forgive her for even
thinking about getting rid of their baby.

Once
Katherine was belted into the car and pulling into the road, she didn’t know
exactly where she was headed. After seeing AJ that morning she knew she
couldn’t go through with the abortion.

Instead
she drove in the opposite direction of the clinic. Maybe she should go to
Rosalinda and Adrian Senior’s town house. Rosalinda would know what to do.
Maybe if she volunteered to take care of the baby, she wouldn’t have to give up
her career. She could have both her family with AJ and her passion for healing
people.
That’s what I’ll do.
She made
up her mind and made the first turn she saw.

It was
too late when she realized it was a one way. The truck was barreling toward her
too fast. She stiffened in shock. Her mind shouting for her to flee, but her
body had become a solid form incapable of moving. A second is all it took, and
the decision for life was out of her hands.

* * *
*

“What
have we got?” AJ met the ambulance at the emergency bay.

“Head
trauma and possible internal injuries, no broken bones or anything we can see
externally,” the paramedic barked out without a breath.

AJ
grabbed the foot of the gurney and pulled it through the emergency room doors.
“Do we have an ID? What the hell happened?”

“Range
Rover versus a meat truck. Meat truck won, but the Range Rover didn’t take such
a bad beating.” The paramedic said.

“Those
cars are resilient. I own one.” AJ put in. “All right, let’s take a look at
this guy.”

“Girl,
blonde beauty, I think her license said Katherine Henry.”

The sound
of her name was a halt. Panic ripped through him, his heart racing, skipping
and skipping. AJ took a look at her, his gaze skimmed over her. She didn’t look
broken, but this lifeless body, with blood staining her perfect blonde hair was
his Katherine. He stumbled back as a knot formed in his chest. The sight of her
pale form knocked the wind out of him. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he
felt helpless in this situation.

“
Adrian
!”

AJ
whipped his head up and met his mentor’s gaze. “She’s going to be fine.” He saw
him mouth.

“Where
is the portable scan? Let’s check for any internal damages. We need to figure
out where this blood is coming from.”

“Blood?”
The copper scent attacked his nostrils. He could almost taste it in his mouth.
That only fueled his panic. What if there were massive internal damages and
they were too late? His throat closed at the very thought. “We need to get her
into the emergency room”

“I
understand this is emotional for you, and a great shock, so I’m going to excuse
that rash decision. We can’t just cut into her; we need to find the…source.”

“What?”
The tone in his mentor’s voice told AJ they had found something.

“AJ,
I’m sorry but Katherine lost the baby.”

“Baby,
what baby?” AJ was convinced he was the sole sane person in the room. “She’s
bleeding internally, we need to help her.”

“There
are no internal injuries AJ. She’s bleeding vaginally. I’m sorry, AJ,” he said.
“Let’s get Doctor Henry an MRI, figure out what’s going on in her head.”

“Listen
to me.” The desperation in AJ’s voice echoed through the Emergency Room. “She
wasn’t pregnant, she would have told me. We need to figure out what’s wrong
with her.”

“Calm
down, I’ll take care of her.”

AJ
later sat in Katherine’s room. He couldn’t shake the cold shiver which kept
running through him since he’d watched the doctors and nurse roll Katherine
away from him. Having her in front of him still didn’t feel real. His heart was
finally beating at a normal pace, but he was sure this dark cloud wouldn’t lift
until she opened her eyes.

He
choked out a laugh. She had come out of the wreck with just a bang on the head;
enough to knock her unconscious, but not serious enough to cause any lasting
damage. But when she woke up she would have a massive headache. She had
literally been hit by a truck and she would feel the effect in every inch of
her body.

AJ
dreaded having to tell her about the baby. He was such an idiot. He should have
realized Katherine had been fishing for answers the previous night. Obviously
she hadn’t heard what she had expected. He could imagine her shock when he
suggested, no demanded, she give up a year of her life for their baby.
Katherine definitely disagreed with that plan, so where was she going that
morning? A horrible dread filled his heart, but AJ shook it off. She would
never do that.