but we keep trying.” She lifted Joey to her shoulder and rubbed her back.
“Any news on her family?”
“No,” Scarlet answered. “Are you here about Joey or did something else bring you up?”
“I came to get Jessie and she said you asked her to watch Nikki.”
“Shoot.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “I lost track of time.”
“Erica Cole asked me to tell you she’s here.”
Scarlet stood.
“I’ll take over,” the nurse offered.
“Thank you.” She handed Joey into the other nurse’s care. “I changed one wet diaper. She’s taken next to nothing from the bottle.” Scarlet removed a disposable gown, balled it up, and pushed it into a waste bin.
“I have a couple in crisis,” Scarlet shared quietly as she exited the room. “Erica Cole is a member of a group I formed for moms of NICU graduates. There are about fifty of them who are willing to come in with their children to talk to new parents who are having difficulty adjusting to the NICU and bonding with their babies.” She looked up at him. “It gives new parents whose infants are struggling to survive a little hope. Sometimes it makes all the difference.”
“Yes it does,” he said from experience. Because Scarlet had given him that little hope that’d made all the difference with Jessie. She was a truly extraordinary woman.
He stood at the desk and watched her through the glass of a small private room as she spoke with a couple. Although he couldn’t hear her words, her small smile conveyed understanding and compassion, her gentle touch conveyed support and caring. The couple watched her as she spoke, trust evident in their eyes. The woman started to cry and Scarlet took her into her arms and hugged her while the man turned his head as if trying to hide his emotions.
“Our Scarlet is something special,” Linda said, coming to stand beside him. With such a big unit, did she have nothing better to do than hover?
“Yes she is,” Lewis said, not taking his eyes off of Scarlet as she handed the woman a box of tissues and led her out of the room.
“She deserves a good man who will appreciate all she has to offer and treat her right.”
Linda’s tone implied a better man than him.
“No argument there.”
But after eighteen years of riding the manic-depressive, passive-aggressive maternal roller coaster of emotions, Lewis had used up his lifetime supply of energy earmarked for understanding, appeasing, and striving to meet the ever-changing expectations of women. He preferred the ups of flirty banter, new acquaintances, and satisfying sex to the downs of compromise, arguments, and frustrating disappointments inherent in long term relationships.
After a childhood spent catering to the whims of a mentally ill mother, Lewis would not regress to allowing another woman any degree of control over his life. Ever.
He was his own man. He did what he wanted when he wanted and didn’t have to get approval from or justify his actions to anyone. At least that’d been his pre-Jessie modus operandi.
Now the waters of his life had gotten unrecognizably muddy.
He couldn’t bring various women home night after night, not with an impressionable young daughter watching his every move. Most unsettling, with four days of freedom ahead, was the fact he seemed to have lost the anticipatory thrill of the chase, catch, and release. Random, meaningless hookups with generic, unmemorable women no longer appealed to him. But neither did monogamy or marriage. So where did that leave him?
Lewis left the NICU without another word to Linda, entered the lounge to get his backpack, and told Jessie to meet him in his office when she was done. He needed time to think.
It’d taken a near successful suicide attempt for his mother to get his father to lift his head out of his prestigious surgical practice long enough to acknowledge the toxic level of dysfunction in their family. With renewed attention, love and support from her husband and some long-overdue treatment his mom’s condition had stabilized.
Unfortunately for Lewis, the damage to his ability to form lasting, trusting, positive relationships with women was done.
Instead of waiting for the elevator, he took the stairs down, needing to burn off some energy.
Supportive evidence of his lack of interpersonal finesse: The past nine months of torture with Jessie.
Although things were finally turning around thanks to Scarlet, his daughter’s friend and confidante, a woman who deserved more than a man like him, a woman whose appeal extended beyond good looks. A woman he could not have, who made him want with an intensity he’d never before experienced.
A problem not easily solved.
He exited the stairwell.
One thing was for certain, having her in his condo, with the two of them alone and hot for each other, would only complicate matters. After their kiss, he no longer trusted himself, despite his promise of perfect gentlemanly behavior, which meant he needed to figure out a way to get her help in designing Jessie’s new room without her actually stepping foot into his condo.
ON THURSDAY MORNING Scarlet fought the urge to fling her arms out to the side and twirl. She tamped down the desire to skip through the halls of the hospital shouting, “I did it!” A manager needed to maintain some degree of decorum. But nothing could wipe the grin from her face as she walked toward the employee changing rooms to wash up and change into a pair of hospital scrubs—her standard work attire.
After months of ups and downs riding the ‘I want a baby’ ‘I don’t have time for a baby’ teeter-totter, compounded by hours spent obsessing over her finances, living situation, and work schedule, Scarlet had done it. She’d taken action, the first step. True, frequent sex until she got pregnant would have been significantly more enjoyable than page after page of paperwork, but hopefully her early morning meeting with Joey’s social worker would lead to the same outcome. Motherhood.
Granted her chances of becoming a foster parent and later adopting Joey would be better if she were part of a married couple, but Joey needed a mom and Scarlet wanted a daughter, and if she didn’t try she’d have no chance at all.
Scarlet reached up to push on the door to the changing area at the same time someone from inside must have yanked it open because her hands met air. Forward momentum sent her stumbling into a hard male chest.
How embarrassing. She’d been so preoccupied she’d tried to enter the men’s changing area.
Wait a minute. She glanced at the sign on the door: Women Only.
Whew.
“I’m sorry,” a male voice said. She looked up to see a man she now recognized as Dr. Alex Rodriguez. “I shouldn’t have...” he mumbled, releasing her without looking at her. “I didn’t plan to... Damn it.” He hurried off.
Scarlet
