Assignment: Baby

Hunter tossed his briefcase on his desk, slid into the cushy leather chair and rubbed his neck. The freeway drive back to Mercy Hospital had been bumper to bumper, and Sophie had wailed most of the way. This time music hadn’t calmed her down. He felt the tension right…there. Ah.

Thankfully Sophie had slept for the last part of the drive, but how long would she tolerate being cooped up in her car seat on a daily basis? And when he was finally able to contact Jade, how would he explain his three-hour round-trip commute? She would not approve.

If there’d been any way to avoid taking on his niece, he would have suggested it. But Jade would never have considered leaving her baby with their mother, and Hunter would never expect her to. He ground his teeth, wishing Jade had at least one girlfriend she trusted as much as him.

For now his medical assistant, Maria, a short, plump woman with a gentle spirit, a contagious smile and a penchant for babies, had Sophie at her workstation while he prepared for his jam-packed afternoon clinic. He’d never be able to thank her enough. She bounced the baby on her knee until Hunter heard his niece’s hearty belly laugh. It should have made him smile.

He bored a hole into the dark mahogany wood with his stare while he rubbed his temples and tried not to think about Mandy.

The commute had zapped his energy, too. Instinctively he reached for his earphones and plugged them in. He’d listen to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries for a quick boost of energy.

Three months ago he’d taken Jade to music therapy for her depression. It hadn’t helped her one iota, but through music he’d gotten in touch with his deepest feelings and, though shocking at first, had discovered his true gifts as a doctor.

The music therapy instructor had said he was a wounded healer, intuitive and caring. Yeah, he’d thought, with a wry smile, next he’d be reading his horoscope. Truth was, with the help of carefully chosen music, he’d noticed he could change Sophie’s moods as much as his own. And if he could calm a baby down with music, wouldn’t daily music and relaxation be beneficial for the heart study patients, too? He wondered if it might have helped his father.

Already Mandy’s project mattered to him. He wanted to be useful, not a distraction for her. Maybe if she could put the past aside and see how sincere he was in wanting to help, they could pull this project off. But if their being thrown together felt one- tenth as hard for her as it did for him, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

Maria tapped on his door and, with Sophie contentedly resting on her hip, handed him his first afternoon appointment chart. She should be getting double salary for helping out, but after today he’d be out of the clinic until the Mending Hearts Club study was over, and she’d be working for Dr. Jimenez.

Fifteen minutes later, Hunter palpated his patient’s left lower quadrant and determined that he no longer had tenderness from his diverticulitis flare-up. Last week the same patient had been doubled over in pain and begging to be hospitalized. A forty- eight-hour clear liquid diet and two different antibiotics had helped his condition miraculously in one short week.

He glanced at the patient’s wife. She’d accompanied her husband last week for the visit, but Hunter had been totally preoccupied with his sick patient. He squinted, and looked at her again.

“Are you aware your thyroid is enlarged?” Why hadn’t he noticed that slight asymmetry before?

Her hand flew to her neck, as if to check for herself.

“You can get dressed now,” Hunter said to the man. “But take every single pill until they’re gone, in order not to have rebound diverticulitis or to develop a drug-resistant strain of infection.”

The patient nodded.

Hunter washed his hands. “Let me take a look,” he said, turning to the wife.

Using his fingertips, he lightly palpated the area overlying her larynx and found a small but firm nodule. “Does this hurt?”

She shook her head, but alarm registered in her stare.

“Swallow?”

She complied. The nodule was fixed to the right lobe of the thyroid.

He felt for nearby enlarged lymph nodes, but didn’t find any. A good sign. “Have you been feeling any different?”

“No.”

“I’m going to order some lab work today, and a thyroid scan as soon as possible.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“You have a small mass on your thyroid. It could be nothing, but it’s best to check it out. I’ll be out of the clinic for the next few weeks, but my colleague, Dr. Jimenez, will follow up on the lab results. If anything shows up on the scan, I’ll be in touch ASAP, and we’ll go from there.”

He ordered the lab tests and thyroid scan via the portable laptop computer in the exam room. He should instruct Maria to add the extra patient visit to his schedule, in order to charge for it, but the numbers game had never mattered to him. As long as Mrs. Peters got the medical attention she needed he’d be satisfied.

Hunter glanced at his watch. He was already a half hour behind schedule and he had only just started his clinic. It would be a long afternoon.

He rushed back into his office to find Sophie sound asleep in her portable bed. She looked so vulnerable, and she deserved better than this, but his sister had insisted he was the only person she trusted with her baby. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why.

Maria appeared at his door, handing him another chart. Starting tomorrow, to make life easier for Sophie, he might have to find somewhere closer to Serena Vista to stay. Maybe one of those extended-stay hotels during the week, and then he could go home on the weekends. Didn’t nine-month-old babies need to crawl and explore, not sit in a car half the day? If it was just him making the commute, he could handle it, but guilt over his sorely lacking parenting skills had him promising he wouldn’t let little Sophie suffer another day.

* * *

The next morning Amanda lifted her gaze from the EKG she’d been analyzing at her desk. She quickly scribbled NSR by the patient’s name on the list. Normal sinus rhythm.

Hunter appeared in the office doorway thirty minutes late. Again. Sophie gnawed on his chin as he held her in his arms. “I have an idea,” he said.

“You’re late,” Amanda replied with a no-nonsense glance.

He briskly entered the room and unloaded Sophie’s belongings onto his desk. “Sorry. Traffic’s a nightmare.”

She felt a guilty twinge about being annoyed, but refused to let on.

“Sophie’s been a grump all morning, too,” he said.

Mandy bristled at his underhanded comment on her mood, but again didn’t react.

The sturdy baby sucked on two fingers and looked innocently up at him. “You’ve been grumpy, haven’t you, kid?” He crossed his eyes and made a muffled elephant sound with his lips, which got a giggle out of her. She swatted at his mouth with her slippery fingers. He repeated the goofy process several more times, nibbling her fingertips in between, until she latched onto his chin again and gummed him up something fierce. “I don’t have a clue why she likes this, but I’ve discovered she does, and if it keeps her from crying, my chin is hers.”

Amanda fought off a pang of regret for giving him such a hard time. Being a stand-in father had to be a shock for him. But from the looks of things it was becoming second nature, whether he realized it or not.

“You said you had an idea?” she asked.

He plopped Sophie down into her playpen and wiped the drool off his face and jacket. “Music therapy.”

“Music what?”

“You know—soothing music to help our patients release stress.”

Our patients? He’d definitely come on board with her project. “You mean like with meditation?”

“Exactly. We could assign them ten to fifteen minutes of quiet music meditation every morning. It might help bring down their blood pressure.”

She thought for a moment. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Great,” he said, practically straightening his collar and preening. “I’ll put together a list of composers and burn twenty CDs.”

“Sounds good.”

Sophie glanced up from her playpen and squealed a hello, obviously glad to see Mandy.