Wanted: Parents for a Baby!

This poor baby might not make it to her first birthday, all because her mother hadn’t sought help for her addiction.

Anger was useless, so he did his best to breathe it away, keeping an eye on his patient instead. The medication worked and, thankfully, Emma’s jerky movements stopped.

“I’m going to order the phenobarb to be given every six hours,” he told Cassie. “And an EEG, too.”

Cassie looked as upset as he felt, obviously already growing attached to their safe-haven baby. The same way he was. That moment in the elevator, when Cassie had mentioned the baby didn’t have anyone to care about her, had tugged at his heart.

In the three years since losing Victoria and his son, he’d been able to keep a certain emotional distance from his tiny patients. Easy enough to do, as most of the time the babies got better and went home with their parents and families.

But knowing Emma was alone in the world made him feel differently towards her. He knew he was becoming emotionally involved with their safe-haven baby. And not just because she was sick enough to require his focused attention.

Because almost from the first moment he’d seen her, the little girl had found a way to break through the barriers surrounding what Shana had described as his stone-cold heart.

“Oh, Emma,” Cassie murmured, stroking the baby’s cheek. “You’ve got to fight this, sweetpea. We’re going to help you fight this.”

His heart squeezed at the tears shimmering in Cassie’s eyes. From the first day she’d started working here—had it just been a few months ago?—he’d noticed her creamy skin, heart-shaped face, bright brown eyes and long dark hair that she always drew back in a ponytail at work, not to mention her curvy figure, mostly hidden beneath her baggy scrubs. What man wouldn’t?

Look, but don’t touch. That was his motto. Especially since the Shana debacle.

Yet for some reason, seeing Cassie cooing over the babies, especially Emma, hit him right in the center of his solar plexus.

He was irresistibly drawn to her. Had been from the moment they’d begun to work together. Resisting her was becoming more and more difficult. Maybe because she was the complete opposite in every way from Victoria. He’d never told anyone his deepest fear, that Victoria wouldn’t have made a very good mother. Not the way Cassie would. She clearly loved her tiny patients.

Victoria had loved being a doctor’s wife. Had loved entertaining guests and spending his money. He wasn’t sure how she’d managed to keep herself busy every day, working out at the gym and then lunching with her friends.

When she’d blown out her Achilles tendon after a spin class, he’d supported her through surgery, impressed at how determined she’d been to get back to her normal routine. Even after she discovered she was pregnant, she didn’t cut back on her exercise regimen. In fact, he suspected she’d doubled it in an effort to avoid gaining too much weight.

He’d gone back through his memories of that time often, trying to identify the signs he’d missed. But he’d been busy at work, taking everything Victoria had told him at face value.

Never suspecting, until far too late, that she’d become addicted to the painkillers the orthopedic surgeon had initially prescribed.

He shook off the past and forced himself to focus on the present. Just because he was deeply attracted to Cassie, it didn’t mean he had any intention of acting on it. She was young, full of life and could do better than a broken man like him. He didn’t plan to ever have a family of his own. He didn’t deserve a second chance.

Forcing himself to turn away, he went over to a different computer, far away from the one Cassie had been using, to enter the medication orders. When he’d finished, he sat down to scroll through his other patients’ charts.

It took him a few minutes to realize he was stalling. Ridiculous to think about waiting around here until the end of Cassie’s shift. Just because he was on call, it didn’t mean he shouldn’t take advantage of the downtime to get some rest.

But before he could leave, his pager went off, announcing a pending crash C-section.

Rest would have to wait. “We need an emergency warmer down in the OR,” he said.

“I’m ready,” Diane said, hurrying toward him with the equipment. He knew that Cassie was already tied up with Emma and Barton, so he wasn’t surprised that Diana was the nurse up for the next admission.

He strode purposefully toward the door, managing to resist the urge to glance back once more at Cassie.

She and Emma would be fine.

A few minutes later he entered the OR, where a laboring mother was lying on the table, her eyes full of fear. “Save my baby,” she pleaded as the anesthesiologist tried to cover her mouth and nose with an oxygen mask. “Save my baby!”

“She has a prolapsed umbilical cord,” Dr. Eden Graves informed him. “We need to move fast.”

“Understood,” he agreed. “I’m ready as soon as you are.”

Leaving Diane to prepare their equipment, he walked over to look at the fetal monitoring strip. There were several steep decelerations present, indicating severe fetal bradycardia. He noted that the sharp drop in the fetal pulse coincided with highest portion of the uterine contractions. Classic sign of a prolapsed umbilical cord.

“Tip her uterus so that the pressure isn’t on her cervix,” he instructed.

“I did, but you’re right, we could use more blankets to prop beneath her bottom.”

A couple of nurses came over to assist and soon the patient was ready. The anesthesiologist gave Eden the high sign and she quickly began the procedure.

The baby was removed from the uterus within five minutes, and the minute the cord was cut he quickly took the infant over to the warmer. The baby boy wasn’t too limp and quickly pinked up as they worked on him.

When the baby let out a wail, there was a collective sigh of relief from everyone in the room.

“Let me know what the cord blood gases show,” he said to the circulating nurse in the room. “Page me with the results.”

“Okay.”

He finished his assessment with Diane’s help and then deemed the infant stable enough for transport up to the neonatal nursery. Even though the baby boy looked fine for the moment, he intended to watch the infant for a few hours upstairs.

It was a good feeling to save a baby’s life. Even though deep down he knew that no matter how many he saved, he’d always mourn the one that mattered most.

The son he’d lost.

Cassie was thankful Emma didn’t show any more signs of seizures and the EEG tech seemed to think the test looked relatively normal. Of course, they needed the neurologist to read the test to know for sure, but she decided to remain optimistic.

Barton’s parents were here, holding their son, so she decided this was a good time to take a quick break.

“Sally, would you mind keeping an eye on Emma for a few minutes? I’d like to run down to the cafeteria to grab something to eat.”

“Sure, that’s fine. But we’re expecting that new baby to arrive within the next thirty minutes so make it quick, okay?”

“I will.” She’d perfected the art of eating fast, to minimize disrupting patient care.

Leaving the unit, she took the stairs down to the cafeteria level. The grill line was too long, so she went over to the salad bar to make herself a quick grilled-chicken salad and fill a large cup with ice water. The hardest thing about working second shift was the inability to fall asleep once she got home, and the last thing she needed was the added impact of caffeine zipping through her system.

She sat down at a small table near the back of the cafeteria and quickly dug into her salad. A few nurses greeted her, but none of them lingered. Obviously the whole hospital was busy, not just her neonatal unit.

She kept an eye on her watch as she ate, knowing she needed to return to the unit before Dr. Ryan brought over his latest patient.

With any luck he’d be busy with the new admission for a while, giving her some badly needed breathing space. She really didn’t understand what her problem was around him. There were plenty of other single guys around. James Green, one of the ER doctors, had asked her out just last month.

Too bad she hadn’t felt one iota of interest in him. She’d politely declined James’s offer, refusing to feel bad at the dejected expression in his eyes.

Her divorce had only been final for a little over a year. Six months ago she’d moved to Cedar Bluff to start afresh. It was too soon to enter the dating scene.

So why was she always so keenly aware of Dr. Ryan Murphy?