Not Quite Mine (Not Quite series) (23 page)

Now that Dean knew about Savannah, Katie found a much more comfortable pace in life. She gave up pretending to stay in the hotel altogether and moved most of her things into Monica’s small apartment.

“Are you sure it’s OK that we’re still here?” Katie asked Monica a few nights after Dean found out her secret.

Dressed in scrubs, Monica shrugged Katie’s concerns away. “When I was in nursing school, Jessie took care of everything for me. Yeah, I worked on the side to help, but the money I brought in didn’t amount to a whole lot. She never complained and, from what
I could tell, never had a need to. You’re like a sister to me, Katie, and I wouldn’t want you to have to go through any of this alone. You and Savannah are welcome here for as long as you need to be.”

“It makes all the difference in the world to have someone who understands what’s going on.”

“How is Dean taking it?”

“Good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“He’s anxious, I think. You know, like you and I were in the beginning. He asks if I’ve heard from Patrick every day.”

“Have you…heard from Patrick?”

Katie shook her head. “I’d have told you if he’d called. What if we never find the mother, Mo? What if we do find her and she wants Savannah back?”

“Stop! Seriously, Katie, you’re going to talk yourself crazy with the ‘what ifs.’ Savannah is nearly two months old and you’ve not heard one word from a biological mother wanting an update. Instead of vacillating between thoughts of
What if you find the mother
and
What if she wants her back
, you might want to think about how you’re going to tell Jack, Jessie, and your dad that you have a baby.”

Her skin itched to tell her family about Savannah. The dozens and dozens of pictures she’d taken of her sat in a memory card just waiting to be shared. “How I tell them anything will depend on what I find out about the mother.”

“And if you never find out about the mother?”

“Then I’ll just tell them all the truth. It’s not like I can keep it a secret forever.”

Monica gripped her hands together. “Why not tell them now? Seems Dean took the information well. My guess is your dad and brother might do the same.”

Katie laughed. “You don’t know my dad. He’s as subtle as a Saint Bernard in a china shop. He’d bulldoze his way into hospitals,
into medical records…into people’s lives to get what he wants. If I told him about Savannah, we’d probably find the mother sooner, but I might lose everything in the process. The last thing I want is a media circus or a police investigation of any kind. Savannah is going to grow up knowing I wanted her from the beginning. If her biological mother had some kind of secret or need to keep Savannah away from her, the last thing I want to do is blow that up in the woman’s face. She left Savannah to me for a reason and I aim to find out what that reason is…quietly. My dad isn’t quiet!”

“What about Jack?”

“Jack would take it better. But he’d want the answers just as much as my dad.”

“If he found out, would he keep things quiet?”

Katie rubbed her hands over her face. “I think so. For a while. But the more people that know, the harder it becomes to keep the secret.”

Monica turned away and cast her eyes to the floor.

The hair on Katie’s arms stood up. “Do you think Jack suspects something?”

“I think Jessie is suspicious. I’ve managed to keep my sister from knowing what’s going on this long but, now that they are back from the honeymoon, she wants me to come and visit. I’ve put her off, Katie, but the longer I do that, the more Jessie is going to wonder.”

Just when Katie thought she could relax a little, concerns and drama piled up. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

“I hope so. Jessie and I are close. It would be hard to keep this inside me if she was here and I don’t think she’d keep the information from Jack. I couldn’t ask her to.”

Katie placed a hand on top of Monica’s. “I know this isn’t the easiest secret to keep. I won’t blame you if something slips out. Just promise me you’ll let me know if it does, so I can work on damage control before word spreads.”

Monica lent her a smile. “I will. Now I’ve got to go. We’ve been shorthanded in the ER with a stupid summer flu going around.”

Savannah slept while Katie finished getting ready for work. She sent a quick text to Patrick and told him she needed an update today.

He had to know something by now…

Monica slid onto the worn-out sofa in the break room and ignored her heart rate that she felt reverberating all the way to her toes. She’d hit the ER running. A five-car pileup on the interstate with two full traumas and one full arrest met her before she could manage half a cup of coffee. The emergency room overflowed with patients sick with the flu, the typical accidents that resulted in broken bones and a need for stitches, and the elderly with every medical issue under the sun. But all of those could wait. The traumas pumped her blood and forced her to think fast.

She loved it.

The adrenaline, the pace. Everything about it.

The petty shit choking up the ER tended to piss her off when the serious crap went down. It didn’t help that the department was short staffed and she had to do the work of two nurses and hope to hell no one fell through the cracks.

She helped stabilize one patient and get him to surgery within that golden hour and then was able to comfort a grieving family when they learned their loved one didn’t make it.

In truth, that part sucked. But she had been told when she took the job that, in order to work the ER, she needed to get in and make a difference by helping or get the hell out of the way.

She chose to make a difference.

The alarm of the radio went off announcing another ambulance call. Although she wasn’t the lead nurse on the radio, she
forced herself up and out of the break room to find out what was coming in.

Mark, a fellow nurse, sat in the radio room talking to the paramedics in the field. Monica squeezed in the door to look over his shoulder.

“Another car accident?” she whispered to herself.

The medic on the line spoke quickly, rattling off vital signs. The mic on the radio room worked one way at a time. Mark multitasked by writing down what the medic told him and talking to Monica at the same time. “It’s another trauma. Female, late twenties, rollover in a convertible. Head trauma. Five minutes out.”

Monica froze.

Working without emotion was fine, until you knew the patient.

“Go tell Dr. Eddy we have another one coming in,” Mark said.

Monica nodded and left the room. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and sent a quick text to Katie.

Are you OK?

She paused hoping Katie replied.

It’s not Katie. Lots of people drive convertibles in California.

“We have another one,” Monica told Dr. Eddy. She turned to Alice who manned the phones. “Call a code trauma and call Neuro.”

Alice already had the phone to her ear.

As the code was being called, Monica’s phone signaled a text.

Katie.

I’m good. What’s up?

Relief swelled Monica’s chest.

Nothing…just checking in.

Hours later when Monica was finishing some paperwork, Dr. Eddy plopped down beside her. “What a bitch of a day.”

“You can say that again. The only thing that didn’t come through that door was an MI,” she said with a curt laugh. A heart attack victim was the last thing this day needed.

Dr. Eddy, or Walt, as most of them referred to him, had worked the ER for eight years. He was a good-looking man with short brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. He was known to date many women, but hadn’t yet settled down. No wonder, he was always working and when the ER didn’t call him in, he volunteered his time with Borderless Doctors. “I’m still on for three more hours. Don’t jinx me.”

Monica laughed. “Sorry.”

He rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke. “Listen, I wondered if you’d be interested in signing up with BNs.”

“BNs? What’s that?”

“Borderless Nurses. The same program for Borderless Doctors only for nurses. We can always use the help. You’re young, smart, energetic. It helps that you don’t have a family or kids.”

Monica sat back and considered his words. “I might be interested.”

“I work with the disaster team. We go in after nature screws up an area, stay for a week or two at a time, and pull out.”

“How would that work here? I know the doctors’ group gives you the time off, but I’m not sure the hospital feels the same about the nurses.”

“Are you kidding me? The hospital loves the publicity. Besides, there’s a clause in the nurses’ union contract mandating that the hospital allows you two weeks off on a moment’s notice for emergencies you volunteer to help with. They won’t fire you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Monica didn’t know about the contract. In fact, she often tried to ignore the fact that she even belonged to a union. Sadly, she didn’t have a choice if she wanted to work where she did.

“I don’t know.”

“I have to be honest. The hours are hard, you don’t sleep, and they don’t pay.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Sanity. There’s something about helping the truly helpless that energizes me to come in here every day. The hours are crazy insane when you’re out there. You see shit you’ll wish you hadn’t, but when it’s all over, you’re damn happy you helped. Not everyone can be a part of a relief effort outside of giving money. Doctors and nurses…search and rescue…we have skills that money can’t buy.”

Walt put in a good pitch.

Hell, helping people was what she did.

“What do I need to do?”

Walt let his grin spread. “I have some paperwork in my locker and there’s a training session in Florida this weekend. They pay for the flight, hotel, and food. All you have to do is show up.”

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” she told him.

“You’re off. I already checked.”

Monica crossed her arms over her chest. “You checked?”

He nodded. “I like working with nurses I trust. Out there, trust is everything. So, yeah, I checked.”

The training was more than a weekend, it was a full week. But it only took a couple of swaps on the schedule to give her the time off she needed.

That night when Monica was eating dinner and talking with Katie, she knew she’d made the right decision.

“I’ll be gone a week. Which is perfect. Jessie won’t think I’m snubbing her and the chances of me having a moment to even talk to her are slim. You’ll have the place to yourself.”

“What brought this on?” Katie asked.

“I don’t know. It was a crazy day at work. Lots of accidents. When one of the doctors suggested I sign up, I thought,
What the hell?
There will probably be a day that I can’t do this. I might as well do it now.”

“Sounds like you’ll be going into war zones. Earthquakes, tornados, floods…I don’t know how you handle the things you see locally, let alone something on a disaster scale.”

Monica shrugged and forked in another bite. “Who knows if I can cut it,” she said around her food. “I won’t know until I try. Besides, you’ve paid my rent for the whole year so why not?”

They had argued about the rent thing but, in the end, Katie won.

It was as if something bigger than Monica was leading her in the direction of helping others.

“I’ll support you any way I can.”

“Just water the plants,” Monica said laughing. “Oh, and I was thinking today…maybe it’s time you bought a bigger car to drive. Convertibles aren’t the safest cars to be driving out there, especially with kids in the passenger seat.”

Nothing like a little bit of manipulation to make things right in her world.

Dr. Eddy had taught her that earlier.

“I’m buying a car and I don’t have a clue where to start.”

Dean shook his head and stared at Katie across his desk. “A car?”

“Yeah. I’ve driven plenty. But I realized that I’ve never bought one before. Yeah, my dad picked out the little black number I drove around in high school…but…”

She didn’t have to continue that story. She’d ditched it in a waterless aqueduct while showing off to her friends before her eighteenth birthday. After that, Gaylord paid a driver most of the time. Then she started renting cars. Convertibles, sport cars…anything flashy to get noticed.