And it scared Jonas to see her that way. She’d always reacted to him in the past, no matter what the situation. Granted, her reactions hadn’t necessarily been favorable most of the time, but at least she had responded in some way. Right now he’d welcome one of those angry outbursts of hers that had always driven him crazy before. If she shoved him frantically away from herself, or if she shouted out that she hated his guts, at least he’d know she was feeling
something,
that he still had a chance to make her see reason.
But for her to simply stand limp and quiet in his arms, for her to look pale and weak and utterly defeated... It was as if she’d given up completely on any future she might have with him and Juliana without even offering it a chance. Worse than that, it was as if she’d given up on herself. He’d never seen Zoey like this before. And he didn’t like it at all.
“Zoey?” he asked, pushing her at arm’s length to look at her.
But still she gazed down at the floor, still she said nothing, still she seemed not to realize that he was even there.
So Jonas tried again. “Zoey, I told you I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Silence was his only answer.
“Aren’t you going to tell me you love me, too?”
Still no response.
“Come on, say something. Tell me what you’re feeling.”
He curled his finger under her chin and tilted her head back in an effort to force her to look at him. But her eyelids remained lowered, her lips pressed together in a tight line, and she steadfastly refused to acknowledge him.
So he tried a different tack. “You know, the least you could do is knee me in the groin again. At least then I’d know where I stand.”
He thought he detected a slight smile, and jumped on it. “On second thought, though, I probably wouldn’t be standing at all. But at least you’d make a point. Among other things.”
“Jonas, don’t do this.”
Her voice sounded as hollow as she looked, but he tried to pretend he didn’t notice. “Don’t do what?” he asked.
“Don’t try to cheer me up. It’s not going to work.”
When she finally lifted her face to look at him, he didn’t like what he saw. Her eyes were wet again, red-rimmed and puffy, and he could tell she was fighting back the tears hard.
“I don’t love you,” she said softly, nearly choking on the assurance. “I don’t. You’re just wasting your time with me. It’s over, Jonas. I promised you—I promised
Juliana
—two weeks, and now I’ve fulfilled my obligation. From here on out, you’re on your own.”
“But what about...?”
His voice trailed off before he could complete the question. There was still so much he wanted to tell Zoey, and still so much he needed to know about her. If only he knew what to say to her, if only he could convince her that she was so very wrong about so many things. About herself and the two of them. About her past and their future.
And there was Juliana. How could she possibly turn her back on the baby?
“What about Juliana?” he asked, knowing the question was a completely calculated, and probably vain, last-ditch effort to sway her thinking on the matter. “What’s she going to do without you?”
Zoey’s expression became absolutely pained at his roughly uttered inquiry. “Jules will be just fine without me,” she said quietly. “In fact, she’ll probably be better off. I’m a scared, unhappy, confused woman who can’t even deal with something that happened to her half a lifetime ago. All in all, not exactly a great role model you’d want to expose her to.”
“But don’t you see, Zoey?” he asked, squeezing her shoulders hard. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
She shook her head slowly. “That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s been for a long, long time. That’s the way it’s always going to be.”
“But—”
She lifted a hand to his mouth, stanching the objection before he could utter it. “Just because you want things to be different doesn’t make them so. I know you doctors have egos the size of Montana sometimes, but there are some wounds even a doctor of your talent and skill can’t heal.”
He lifted her hand away from his lips, studied the beautifully manicured fingers carefully, then kissed her fingertips one by one. Zoey’s eyelids fluttered down again, and her own lips parted on an almost imperceptible sigh. He saw the pulse in her throat jump erratically, watched as two bright spots of color darkened her cheeks. There was no way she would ever make Jonas believe she didn’t care for him. Not in a million years.
“Maybe not,” he finally whispered. “Not completely, anyway. But I could do a hell of a lot more than just put a little Band-Aid on it, like you have. If you’ll just let me try.”
She shook her head, but didn’t open her eyes. “It’s no use,” she told him.
He dipped his head to kiss her, the only way he could think to respond, but before his mouth could connect with hers, Juliana cried out from her prone position on the bed. It wasn’t a demanding cry, but it was enough to make Zoey pull away.
“Juliana needs you,” she told Jonas, stepping backward until the bedroom wall prevented her from retreating any farther.
He turned to look at the baby, then back to Zoey. “She also needs you,” he said softly. “And I need you, too.”
Zoey lifted one shoulder in a shrug that tore at Jonas’s heart, because it was so obviously unfelt. “You’ll be fine without me. You both will.”
He moved to the side of the bed and picked up the baby, settling her easily against one shoulder. He patted her back and cradled her tiny head in his hand, and found some small degree of satisfaction in the fact that he was at least able to comfort
one
of the two most important females in his life.
“You keep telling me that, Zoey,” he said as he turned to face her. “But you couldn’t be more wrong. We won’t be fine without you. Neither one of us will be. And no matter what you say or think, you won’t be fine without us. Yet you won’t even give us a chance.”
She bit her lip as she studied the two of them, and Jonas couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to reconsider her decision. Then she shook her head and lifted a hand to her mouth as if trying to keep the words she really wanted to utter in check.
“There was never a chance to begin with,” she said through her fingers. “I’ve only been kidding myself if I ever thought there was.”
“Zoey, please...”
“Go home, Jonas,” she said resolutely. “You and Juliana go home.”
“Come home with us.”
“I am home.”
He offered her one more long, speculative look, then passed through the door without comment. He made it halfway down the hall before turning back around. “Are you so sure about that?” he asked softly.
She narrowed her eyes at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
“There’s more to a home than comfortable surroundings,” he told her. “When I first came into your apartment, it really did seem like a home because it was so casual and such a clear reflection of you. I even went so far as to think it was more of a home than my place was. But now I’m beginning to wonder. Because there’s something missing here, after all.”
“What’s that?”
“Love,” he said simply. “It had been missing from my home until you and Juliana arrived, but that’s no longer the case. But here... I can’t find it anywhere here.”
“Well, like you said, Jonas, my apartment is a reflection of myself.”
He emitted a soft sound of disbelief. “Yeah, right. I guess it’s important that one of us believes that.”
And with that, he turned again and made his way back to the kitchen to collect the things he had brought with him. The things he’d been so certain would make Zoey see the light and bring her around to his way of thinking.
What a laugh, he thought. Somewhere along the line he’d forgotten what a pain in the neck Zoey Holland could be. She never did anything the way she was supposed to.
Z
oey had been sleeping soundly and dreaming about an elementary-school-age boy racing to meet the ice-cream truck when a ringing telephone abruptly intruded into her dream. She fought fitfully against consciousness for some moments without acknowledging the relentless sound and continued to chase after her son, because she wanted desperately for him to turn around—just once, so that she could see what he looked like at that age. In spite of her struggles, however, she did finally awaken. Then she lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling for a moment before reaching for the telephone.
“Hello,” she said automatically into the receiver.
“Zoey, it’s Jeannette down at Seton.”
Zoey sighed and ran a hand through her bangs and was surprised to find them wringing wet. Her pajamas, too, clung to her in sticky patches, and she kicked the covers into a heap at the foot of the bed.
“No, Jeannette, I will not come in and cover your shift for you again,” she said. “For Pete’s sake, your sister can’t be back in town already. It’s only been a few weeks since we switched our shifts back.”
“No, I’m not calling about anything like that,” her co-worker muttered dryly. “Do you think I’d call you at 2:00 a.m. about a schedule change?”
Oh, yeah, Zoey thought, her brain still a little muddled. It was the middle of the night, wasn’t it? “So what’s the problem?” she asked.
Jeannette hesitated a minute, then spoke softly into the phone, as if she were fearful of being overheard. “I’m really sorry to wake you up, but I thought you’d think this was important. Dr. Tate didn’t want me to call you when I offered to, but I was sure you’d want to know.”
“Know what?”
“I was down in ER about an hour ago talking to Cooper when he came in with his little girl.”
Zoey shook her head, certain she must be hearing things. “Cooper has a little girl? Since when?”
“No, not Cooper. Dr. Tate. He brought his little girl into emergency about an hour ago.”
Zoey jackknifed up in bed and swung her feet over the side. “Juliana?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Has she been hurt?”
“I’m not sure what the whole story is, but apparently she was having convulsions due to a high fever. She was unconscious when they got here.”
“What?”
“I told Dr. Tate I’d call you and let you know, but he told me not to. What’s up with you two, anyway? For a while there, you guys were getting along great. But for the past few weeks, the tension has been deep enough to wade through. Just like old times, huh?”
Zoey’s head was spinning, and she scarcely heard what Jeannette said. “What’s Juliana’s status now?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. Like I said, I just happened to be down in ER when they came in, and things have been so hectic up here since then—full moon tonight, you know—I haven’t had a chance to find out. I just now had a moment where I could call you.”
“Thanks, Jeannette, I’ll be right in.”
She was just about to drop the phone receiver back into its cradle when she heard Jeannette’s voice cry out from the other line, “Hey, Zoey.”
She pressed the phone back against her ear. “Yeah?”
“You didn’t find out about this from me. I don’t want Tate coming down on me the way he does you.”
A twinge of something Zoey didn’t want to identify twisted through her. She had thought Jonas would avoid her after the way they had parted three weeks ago. Instead, he’d seemed to go out of his way to find her and give her a hard time, on everything from a coffee stain on her scrubs to whether the floors in the nursery were sterile enough.
“No problem,” she told Jeannette, shaking her head at the irony of the assurance. Problems were all she seemed to have lately where Jonas was concerned.
Zoey was fully dressed almost as soon as the phone receiver had settled back into place. Without even bothering to check her sleep-scattered braid, she snatched her car keys from their place by the door, stuffed her wallet into her blue jeans pocket and thrust a red hooded sweatshirt over her white T-shirt. She scarcely recalled the drive to the hospital. She only knew that what seemed like a few moments after Jeannette’s call, she was rushing through the emergency-room doors, searching frantically for some sign of Jonas.
One of the new residents whose name she didn’t know directed her back to an examining room. There she found Jonas sitting slumped over in a chair, his head cradled in his hands, his fingers clenched in his hair as if he’d been trying to pull it out by the roots. An empty polystyrene cup, nibbled down to nearly nothing, sat among its snowlike remnants on the chair beside him. His khaki trousers were wrinkled, and the tail of his white oxford shirt spilled half out of the waistband. He wore no socks, and she noted vaguely that not only did his shoes not match, but that they were both intended for the left foot.
He looked like a father who was scared to death for the safety of his child. He looked like she must have looked herself when she’d haunted the pediatric wing of another hospital so many years ago.
“Jonas,” she called out quietly.
His head snapped up immediately, his face white and tight with anxiety, his eyes red-rimmed.
“Zoey,” he said, whispering her name as if he couldn’t believe she was there.
“I came as soon as I heard.”
“And just how did you hear?”
“Hey, you know Seton General,” she told him with a soft smile. “You can’t keep a secret here.”
He nodded, but said nothing.
She moved slowly across the room, brushed the tattered bits of coffee cup from the chair beside him into her palm, deposited them into a wastebin and sat down beside him. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she took his hand in hers and threaded their fingers together.
“How’s Juliana?” she asked.
He looked down at the hands she had clasped together and squeezed her fingers hard. “I don’t know. They’re running some tests now. They think it’s an infection, but they’re not sure. Until they find out, they’ve put her in isolation, just in case. They won’t let me see her, Zoey. It’s driving me crazy. I mean, who do they think they are? For God’s sake, I
am
a doctor, after all.”
She cupped her other hand over the one she held. “You’re also her father,” she said softly.
He expelled a long breath, leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. After a moment, he said, “Yeah, I suppose I am.”
Zoey leaned back, too, rested her head against the cinder-block wall and stared at the ceiling with Jonas. It would probably be a while before they heard anything. There was nothing either of them could do but wait. For a long time, neither spoke or moved, they both just continued to hold hands and count the pinholes in the plasterboard overhead. Finally, Jonas stirred, lifting Zoey’s hand to his mouth as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, turning to look at her. “It suddenly doesn’t seem quite so scary as it did before.”
She nodded, but said nothing, not sure she could trust her voice. She wished she could say the same thing. But the fact of the matter was, Zoey was terrified. Ever since passing through the doors to the ER, she’d been nearly overcome with memories. She recalled all too vividly her fear and anxiety about her son’s illness, remembered all too well how it had felt to cradle Eddie’s limp, lifeless body in her arms when she’d carried him into another emergency ward, another lifetime ago. As worried as she was for Juliana, Zoey couldn’t help but feel relieved that she hadn’t seen the little baby convulsive and unconscious. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to handle it.
“It must be costing you a lot,” Jonas said, as if he’d been able to read her mind, “sitting here like this. Waiting to hear the verdict on a sick child.”
Zoey nodded silently again.
“It’s the feeling of helplessness that’s worst of all, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice lowered now, almost as if he were talking to himself. “The realization that your child—a completely helpless human being—is in terrible, terrible danger, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to save her. Nothing.”
He turned to look at her, but his expression indicated he was seeing something else entirely. “You like to think that you’re the only one who can take care of her properly, then you have to turn her over to strangers, and hope and pray that they know what they’re doing. I just feel so...helpless. I want to make sure she stays safe and happy for the rest of her life, and that nothing ever holds her back. And it’s just now occurring to me how little control I have over her future. Being Juliana’s father is going to drive me nuts, I just know it is.”
“Now you know what it feels like to be a parent,” Zoey told him with a soft smile.
He shook his head slowly, seemingly overwhelmed by all that awaited him in the years to come. Then he refocused his gaze and studied Zoey levelly. “I’m sorry to put you through something like this again,” he told her. “I can only think you’re doing it because you care about Juliana. And maybe...maybe because you care about me.”
She stared straight ahead, trying to focus her mind on one matter at a time. “Let’s just get through this, Jonas, okay? Let’s just worry about Juliana for now.”
He tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling again and sighed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “When this is over, when we know for sure that Juliana is going to be just fine, then we can talk about us.”
“I hope we get to have that conversation,” she said quietly. “God, I hope you’re right about Juliana being just fine.”
“I am,” he said with absolute certainty. “She will be. She has to be.” He tilted his head so that it was settled securely against Zoey’s and squeezed her hand hard again. “She just has to.”
It was nearly dawn before Juliana’s doctor came in to speak to them. Zoey’s heart nearly stopped beating when she noted the expression on his face. Dr. Haggarty, the hospital’s leading pediatrician, wasn’t smiling. She tried to remind herself that he was a dull, humorless man who never smiled, anyway, but the realization did little to alleviate her worry.
She and Jonas had spent hours in the examining room, just holding hands in silence and dozing off occasionally, only to awaken from dreams to a real-life nightmare. Now, as one, they stood to greet the doctor, and Zoey couldn’t quite quell the anxiety that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Jonas reached over to take her hand again, clutching her fingers almost convulsively as if he, too, was expecting the news to be bad. What must have only been seconds seemed like hours while they waited for Dr. Haggarty to speak.
“That’s one sick little baby you have there, Jonas,” the other man said.
All the air left Zoey’s lungs in a harsh
whoosh.
“But she’s going to be fine.”
Her legs buckled beneath her, and she fell back in an untidy slump into her chair. She dropped her head into her hands, thanked all the gods she could name and was finally able to breathe again.
She only heard half of what Dr. Haggarty and Jonas said after that. Something about a virus that was going around, a new strain of something or other to which infants and the elderly were especially susceptible, a bug that caused symptoms that were more scary than serious. They’d put Juliana on antibiotics and now had her fever under control, but they wanted to keep her another twenty-four hours for observation, just to be sure. In the meantime, Dr. Haggarty suggested, why didn’t Jonas go home and try to get some sleep? Zoey, too, for that matter.
“God, who could sleep after a night like this?” Jonas muttered when the other man had left.
Instead, he and Zoey went to pediatric intensive care and watched Juliana sleep. She lay on her stomach with her head to the side, her bow-shaped lips slighted partly, her back rising and falling almost imperceptibly as she breathed. She looked like a perfectly healthy, perfectly contented little baby. And suddenly, for some reason, Zoey felt happier than she ever had in her life.
For a long time, the two of them just stood by Juliana’s crib, feeling thankful and hopeful and very, very relieved. Then Jonas yawned, a big, long, from-the-soul yawn, and Zoey laughed softly.
“You really should go home and get some sleep,” she told him.
“I can’t sleep. I’m too exhausted.”
She smiled. “Then at least have a shower and a cup of decent coffee. And change your clothes. Those shoes can’t be comfortable.”
Jonas looked down and was surprised to see that he was wearing one sneaker and one loafer, and that only the left one seemed to be on the right foot. In more ways than one. Upon further inspection, he realized that not only was the left shoe on the right foot, but it was also on the
right
foot, and that was part of the problem. And somehow, in his fatigue-flustered mind, that all made perfect sense.
“Let me drive you home,” Zoey told him. “You’re in no shape to manage the trip yourself.”
He nodded, but he was reluctant to leave Juliana’s side and made no move to depart.
“She’ll be okay, Jonas,” Zoey told him. “Dr. Haggarty said she can come home tomorrow morning.”
“I know.”
“She can manage just fine without you for a couple of hours.” She smiled as she added, “The nurses at this hospital are wonderful. Especially the ones who take care of the babies. Trust me.”
He finally tore his gaze away from Juliana and met Zoey’s levelly. “I know,” he agreed quietly.
“Now come on,” she said.
She flushed most becomingly, and Jonas couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was the one responsible for putting the color back into Zoey’s cheeks.
She stopped by the nurses’ station in the maternity ward long enough to ask her friend, Jeannette, if she could work a little late, just long enough for her to chauffeur Jonas home and shower and change. Jeannette waved her off with the assurance that she should take her time, that she owed Zoey a big favor, anyway, and the couple finally left.
Jonas dozed nearly all the way home. Zoey pulled into his driveway and let the car idle for a moment, waiting for him to wake up, say goodbye, thank her for the ride home and get out. But when he did none of those things, only sighed in his sleep and snuggled deeper into the bucket seat, she sighed, too, switched off the ignition and unfastened her safety belt.