Mail Order Stepbrother (12 page)

“I think we need to talk.”

Melanie started to tell the lie she’d been practicing as she packed, but she could see in her mother’s face that it wasn’t necessary. She let her mother draw her over to the low lounge that stood in a corner of the room.

“Lisa saw you and Burt together on the beach. She was all excited, came running into the dining room to ask her mother if the two of you could get married.”

Melanie closed her eyes for a second. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”

“I kind of thought so.”

Her mother held her hand as Melanie told the story, starting with the dating site, skimming over a few of the details but ending with their conversation in the kitchen the night before. When Melanie was done, her mother wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

“It probably didn’t help that you and I have different last names. He never would have known even if he had bothered to meet me before last night.”

“Yeah, well…”

Melanie sighed. “The hardest thing is… I understand why he did what he did. I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me later. We’ve been together for a month, not counting the time we spent talking over email and text messages. Surely he could have told me in that time.”

“I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Melanie reached up and rubbed the tears from her cheeks. “I don’t suppose any of this is going to make things easier between him and Burton.”

“I don’t know. Burton was very quiet when he sent Alyssa to find Burt.”

“Maybe we should…”

“Yeah.”

Melanie followed her mother downstairs. They could hear voices before they even reached the sitting room. Burton and Nash were facing off on the veranda, Alyssa between them in a role Melanie got the impression she’s played quite often.

“Are you trying to ruin us?” Burton demanded. “Are you trying to drag the family name through the mud?”

“Is that what you’re worried about? Or are you worried about your own reputation?”

“My reputation reflects on all of us, Burt. Do you really think the production company that Robert runs for me would exist if not for my reputation? Do you think Merchand would do as well with you at the helm if not for my reputation? Do you think any of us would have what we do if not for my reputation?”

“Yeah, you’re the god who built everything. It’s not like we could ever forget. You wouldn’t let us.”

“I built this so that my children would have a better life than I had when I was a child. And I will not let you screw it up.”

“Daddy,” Alyssa said as Nash turned away, dragging his fingers through his hair as he walked toward the back of the veranda. “No one is trying to create a scandal.”

Burton snorted, his mouth opening to say something, but then he caught sight of Melanie and her mother standing in the doorway and stopped. His eyes softened when they fell on his wife’s face, but narrowed again when he looked at Melanie.

“He says you didn’t know.”

Nash spun, marching back across the veranda and placing himself between Burton and Melanie.

“She has nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, I think she had quite a bit to do with it,” Burton said. “She is, after all, the source of the problem.”

“Your problem is with me. She didn’t know who I was.”

“But she knows now. This needs to be contained, and she needs to understand that.”

Melanie watched the tension sing in the muscles across Nash’s back. She could see him biting his tongue, fighting not to say things that he couldn’t take back. It hurt to watch him. She wanted to go to him, to soothe away some of the pain he was in. But she didn’t move, she didn’t go to him. She just stood there in the doorway holding her mother’s hand.

“This is not a business problem that can simply be swept under the rug. This is my life, my problem,” Nash said. “It’s really none of your business.”

“She’s your sister, Burt.”

Nash shook his head even as the color drained from Alyssa’s face. Melanie looked at her mother, the reality of what Burton had just said sinking in. She had been so focused on the fact that Nash lied to her that she hadn’t fully considered the legal aspects of their relationship.

“She’s not—“

“I’m married to her mother. She is your stepsister.” Burton touched his son’s shoulder, but Nash quickly shook him off. “Can’t you see how the press would run with that knowledge?” He spread his hands as he suggested several potential headlines, “’Collins Son Involved with Stepsister’, ‘All in the family in the Collins Family’. The press would have a field day with all this.”

Nash shook his head, but he didn’t argue. There really was no argument.

Melanie’s cellphone began to ring as they all stood there in silence. It was on vibrate, but it was her habit to check it no matter what was happening around her. It could be a patient. And as it turned out, it was.

“Tess?”

“Dr. Spence, something’s wrong. Something’s horribly wrong. Eli—“

“Slow down, Tess,” Melanie said, turning away from the scene unfolding in front of her and stepped back into the house. “Tell me his symptoms.”

“Fever. He’s been running a fever since like two in the morning. And now he won’t stop crying.”

“Check his incision. Is it red? Is there anything coming out of it?”

Melanie could hear Tess moving close to the baby, could hear his tortured cries. She instinctively knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Babies don’t cry like that when there’s nothing wrong.

“I don’t know,” Tess finally said. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything.”

“Listen to me, Tess,” Melanie said as calmly as she could. “Take Eli to the hospital. Go straight up to the pediatric floor. I’ll call and arrange to have Dr. Jonas meet you there, okay?”

“Dr. Jonas?”

“It’s okay. I’m on my way, I’ll be there by this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” Tess sighed, the relief in her voice overwhelming.

Melanie turned and found everyone staring at her. She held up the cellphone as though it explained everything. “I have to go. A patient needs me.”

She didn’t wait for their response. She rushed toward the stairs, but their voices followed her.

“You’re a doctor?” -Nash.

“She’s a pediatric cardiac surgeon.” -Her mother.

“You see. You don’t know anything about each other. How could you possibly imagine you could build a relationship on lies?” -Burton.

Chapter 8

Melanie stared at the x-rays, her eyes expertly seeking out the source of the infection. Tanya was standing at her elbow, explaining the tests Dr. Jonas had ordered and what he had done since Eli was brought into the hospital, which wasn’t much. Dr. Jonas was a good doctor, but he was overly cautious.

“I’m going to go talk to Tess.”

Tanya touched her arm lightly. “She’s a wreck, Melanie.”

She just nodded as she headed down the hall. Tess was in one of the patient rooms, crying as she leaned over the railing of the oversized crib that held her son and all the tubes and wires that were monitoring his condition. Eli was sleeping, the medication Dr. Jonas ordered for him doing its job.

“Tess?”

She immediately straightened, but paused to wipe the tears from her face before she faced her. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said as she approached Melanie, her hands outstretched. “I was so afraid…”

“I know.” Melanie hugged her lightly, rubbing her arm in an awkward attempt to offer consolation. When Tess pulled back, she took a deep breath before she began to speak. “It appears that Eli has developed some sort of infection. We can’t see anything on the x-rays, so I want to do an MRI.”

“And when you find it?”

“We might have to operate again, to clear away the infected tissue.”

Tess pressed her hand to her mouth to cover a gasp. Melanie touched her arm again.

“That’s worst case scenario. I really won’t know until we see the MRI.”

“And the MRI will show—“

“It’ll show the doctor anything that might be causing the problem,” Jack said as he stepped through the door behind Melanie.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Melanie said, gesturing to Tanya where she stood just outside the door. “We can call security.”

“No,” Tess said. “I called him.”

Melanie tilted her head slightly, a debate going on inside her head. But it really wasn’t her place to dictate to a patient’s mother who she could and could not lean on in a time of stress. And Jack was the child’s father.

“If you cause any problems with Eli’s care—“

Jack held up his hands. “I come in peace, Dr. Spence.”

Still she hesitated, but then she nodded and moved around him.

“Someone will be here soon to take Eli to radiology.”

***

The MRI showed a pocket of fluid behind Eli’s tiny heart. Melanie rushed him up to surgery, draining the pocket and searching for any other signs of infection. It happened sometimes. It was an invasion to open up a child’s chest and move around inside of it, even with sterile equipment. A quarter of Melanie’s patients experienced some kind of infection within a few days of surgery. It didn’t usually happen quite like this, but she had a feeling that Eli was going to be quite unique in everything he did.

She took her time stitching him up and made sure his vital signs were strong before she left him with the NICU nurses and went to find Tess. She was in the surgical waiting room, just like before. But this time, Jack was holding her hand and whispering words of support in her ear.

“The surgery went well,” Melanie said. “We drained the pocket of infection and started him on some pretty serious antibiotics. With any luck, he will be feeling much better in the morning. However, we’ll need to keep him here for a week, maybe longer, just to make sure we got it all.”

Tess nodded, taking Melanie’s hand in her own. “Thank you.”

Melanie was halfway up the hall toward the NICU when Jack grabbed her arm. Melanie pulled away as she faced him, her eyes moving to the security guard who was leaning casually against the nurse’s desk.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jack hissed. “I just…”

“What do you want?”

“I know you think I’m a terrible father. And, maybe I am. But I just…when she kicked me out, I thought it didn’t matter. I never wanted a family, anyway. I never expected to miss them, especially Eli.”

“He’s a sweet baby.”

“He is. I never let myself see it before because I didn’t want to be the father of a broken kid, you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

He shook his head. “No, someone like you wouldn’t understand. To you, it’s all black and white. But the real world isn’t like that. In the real world, there’s color in everything and sometimes it complicates things.”

Melanie crossed her arms over her chest as she studied him. “So now you’ve changed your mind?”

“Now I want to know if my kid is going to live.”

She bit her lip as she glanced behind her at the door to the NICU.

“He’s strong,” she said softly. “If he responds to the antibiotics, he’ll be fine.”

“If not?”

Melanie saw the fear in Jack’s eyes and softened the anger she still harbored toward him. She touched his arm just like she had done his wife’s earlier in the day.

“He will.”

***

Melanie stayed by Eli’s isolette most of the night, constantly monitoring the machines that reported his temperature, his blood pressure, and his heart rate. He slept the whole night, the medications they used during the surgery taking longer than they should have to wear off. It wasn’t unusual, but it worried Melanie coupled with the fact that his temperature only dropped a few degrees as the night progressed.

Melanie drifted to sleep sitting up in a plastic chair, an iPad resting in her lap. A nurse touched her shoulder and smiled.

“He’s trying to get your attention.”

Melanie looked over the edge of the isolette and found Eli smiling up at her, his little fists waving in the air like it was a normal day and he’d just woken from a long nap. She ran her hand over his little face and laughed.

“Good morning, little man.”

She would probably have bruises on the back of her neck from the hug Tess gave her, but it was worth it to see her hold the baby once they moved him back to his regular room. Jack didn’t say anything, but everything he could have said was on his face when he lifted Eli from his mother’s arms.

They were finally becoming a family.

Melanie drove home and walked blindly into her apartment, not sure what time it was and not sure she really cared. She dropped her luggage on the living room floor and crossed the bedroom, her only thought being the soft mattress waiting for her there. She almost ignored the knock on her door, convinced it was her neighbor coming to complain about something or another. But that polite side of her that could rarely tell a salesman no wouldn’t let her ignore it.

“Do you stay out all night often?”

Melanie stared at Nash. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk. I’ve been parked across the street most of the night. Do you realize that it’s after noon? Where have you been?”

“The hospital,” she said, gesturing at the scrubs she was still wearing. “I had a patient who…wait, you were parked across the street and you didn’t help me carry all this luggage up here?”

A bit of a sheepish expression filled Nash’s face. “I kind of fell asleep.”

Melanie shook her head. “Some gentleman you are.”

She stepped back and gestured for him to come inside, too tired to remember they weren’t supposed to be together anymore. She missed a step and nearly fell over. He was instantly there, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her into the bedroom.

“You’ve got to take better care of yourself,” he said. “Hasn’t anybody ever told you that?”

“No time,” she whispered as she drifted off to sleep.

***

Melanie didn’t open her eyes right away. She was too comfortable, wrapped in the cocoon of her down comforter, the scent of something delicious drifting to her from the kitchen. She wanted to lie there for a while, to pretend that this entire weekend simply hadn’t happened. But the closer her consciousness came to full awareness, the more reality insisted on being acknowledged.