you insist.”
“I do.”
“Okay. I was on my way home from Mercy House when an old bum stopped me to help deliver a baby, but we got the mother to the hospital first, and since the baby weighed only two pounds she had to go to intensive care, and the mother asked me to go with the baby and I did, only while I was gone she told everyone I was the baby’s father before she lapsed into a coma. Any questions?”
His mother’s eyes were wide with stunned surprise. “About a million. Why don’t you start at the top and go more slowly.”
He grinned and repeated the story with as many of the details as he knew, stopping often to answer her questions. At the end of his tale, he met her sad, concerned gaze and wished he hadn’t shared quite so much.
“This woman really doesn’t have anyone we can notify?”
“Not as far as I know. It’s the only reason I can think of why she would say I’m the father.”
“That poor woman. And that poor little baby. Thank goodness you were there for them. Is there any chance the mother will recover?”
“The doctor didn’t think so. I’m not Beth’s father but I can’t stand thinking of someone so tiny being all alone in the world. Frankly, I’m not sure what to do.”
“Why, you do the right thing! And don’t be telling your mother that you don’t know what that is,” she declared. “I raised you better than that.”
Mick rose and wished her good-night. On the way back to his room he considered her words. This time I really don’t know what the right thing is. I need Your guidance, Lord. What is it that You want me to do?
He got ready for bed and lay down, but sleep wouldn’t come. Each time he closed his eyes he saw Caitlin’s face. He saw her eyes wide with relief when he’d followed Eddy into her room, and he saw them filled with fear for her baby. Such beautiful eyes, closed perhaps forever, yet repeated in miniature, along with her fearsome scowl, in her daughter’s tiny face.
He barely knew the woman, but he kept hearing her voice. “Stay with Beth. Watch over her for me.” It was the last thing Caitlin had said to him.
Had she sensed that she was dying? Had she been asking him for something more? Was that why she told them he was the father? So her baby girl wouldn’t be left alone?
Mick threw back the quilt and sat up on the side of his bed. The light from a full moon cast a glow into the room. Rising, he crossed to the window. Nikki watched him from her spot at the foot of the bed, but she didn’t bother to get up.
Pulling the curtains aside, he looked out the second-story window of his home and stared at the shadows of the trees in the park behind his property. It was deserted now, but during the day it would be filled with neighborhood children playing on the swings and slides. On nearby benches, smiling young mothers would follow their play with watchful eyes.
Yet across that park and the railroad yards beyond it, there existed a world those happy children would only know in passing or see on TV. It was a world of intense poverty, where children played in filthy streets and lived in crowded, run-down apartments if they were lucky enough to have a home at all, and where mothers seldom smiled because they worried about where the next meal would come from.
Caitlin came from those streets. If she lived, she’d go back there and take little Beth with her. But if Caitlin died, where would her child go? Into foster care until she was old enough to run away and end up like her mother? Or would she be one of the lucky ones playing in a park like this?
He let the curtain fall back into place. None of the children in the park would ever be his. Facing that fact was more painful tonight than it had ever been. Perhaps because, for a moment, when Beth had grasped his finger and gazed up at him, he had known what it felt like to be a father.
He raked his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t responsible for Caitlin or her child, yet somehow the two of them had captured a piece of his heart. He felt connected to them. It wasn’t right that they were alone. They needed someone to care about them. They needed him. Before he could change his mind, he crossed the room to the closet where he pulled on a gray wool cable-knit sweater, a pair of jeans and his sneakers, then he headed out the door.
A fine mist fell as he drove down the dark streets. The swish-swish of his wiper blades was almost mesmerizing. Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Wondering if he was being a fool, he hurried out of the rain and through the emergency room doors.
At the NICU he showed his wristband, and a nurse answered his questions. Beth was doing as well as could be expected. She invited him in, but he declined. He needed to see Caitlin.
When he entered the ICU and reached her room, he hesitated at the door. What did he hope to accomplish here? Maybe nothing. He pulled a chair up beside her bed. Reaching through the rail, he took hold of her hand.
“Caitlin, it’s Mick,” he said softly, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. Glancing at the array of machines and blinking lights around her, he sighed. He didn’t know if she could hear him. But if she could, he wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone. He began to talk about her baby.
“We’re calling her Beth for now. She weighs only two pounds. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but she really is a cute, little thing. She looks like you, I think—except kind of scrawny. She has brown hair with a touch of red,” he added and smiled. “I don’t suppose you’re part Irish, are you?”
His words died away in the dimness of the room, and only the sound of the ventilator continued. One breath. One breath.
What should he say? What would a young mother clinging to life want to know about her child? What would he want to know if it were him? His grip on her hand tightened.
“Your baby is doing fine. The nurses are great. They really seem to care about her. One of them called her a fighter. I guess that means she’s going to take after you.”
He studied the small hand he held in his large one. Her fingers were long and delicate, but some of her nails were short and ragged. Did she chew them? He knew so little about her, yet she had entrusted him with her baby.
“Girl, do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me? I don’t know why you told them I was the baby’s father, unless you thought you weren’t going to make it. But I’m not her father, although—well, although I wish I were. She needs her mother—she needs you. You’ve got to hold on.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He bowed his head and sought comfort for himself and for her in the words he knew so well. “Our Father, Who art in heaven…”
Lost in a strange darkness, Caitlin searched for a way out. She had to find her baby. She didn’t want her daughter to know the terrible, gut-wrenching fear of being left alone—of wondering what she had done that was so bad her own mother would leave her. That was the one promise Caitlin meant to keep. No, she wouldn’t leave her baby—not ever.
Pain came again, deep inside her chest. She cried out, but no sound formed in her mouth. Perhaps it was her heart breaking because she missed her baby so. She tried to move her arms but she couldn’t. Something or someone held her eyes closed.
A faint voice called her name, and Caitlin struggled
