How would Trina and Jonathan react if they knew the daughter that should have been theirs was just yards away? Singing the same praise song?
When the service ended, he caught Leah watching the Brooksides with a combination of interest, pain, and sweetness.
She wore high heels that buckled around her ankles. Her jean dress had a wide skirt and a belt made out of floral fabric that knotted at her waist. The charm dangling from the necklace he’d given her rested just below the hollow at the base of her throat. Her hair shone gold under the lights.
He swallowed against a groundswell of tenderness. The swell was so strong, it was a physical force. So strong, it stole his words.
“Are you going to tell them who you are?” he managed to ask.
“Not today.”
“Someday?”
“I don’t know. In my mind, I frequently run through the costs and benefits of telling them. I still haven’t reached a conclusion.” She gathered her purse. “Ready?”
They moved toward the exit.
“Do you have a favorite restaurant around here?” she asked.
“Yeah, but it’s casual. It’s this little authentic Mexican place.”
“Let’s go.”
“Look at what you’re wearing. That dress and you deserve a nicer restaurant.”
“And yet, this dress and I want enchiladas.”
They ate enchiladas from stools at the restaurant’s long bar. Blue paint and framed Latin music records from the ’70s and ’80s plastered the walls.
They bantered, teased, laughed. Sebastian concentrated on memorizing her characteristics. He wanted to be able to replay them so they could keep him company when she left.
They’d almost finished their meal when his phone pager beeped.
“No,” he moaned.
Her face held amused sympathy. “I knew from the start that you were on call this weekend.”
He’d planned to take her to the arts district after this. More than anything, he wanted the chance to walk through museums with her.
He read the information on his phone. “They need a consult on an infant who’s being airlifted to the hospital.”
“Sounds like it’s time for you to save small humans.” She looked around and signaled their server. “Check, please.”
“Will you come with me to the hospital?”
“We took your car this morning. It’s only logical for me to go where you go.”
I want to go where you go for the rest of my life.
He shoved the thought away before it could put down roots.
For the second time, Leah had been granted exclusive access to Sebastian’s office.
She went straight to the long, vertical corkboard full of photos and notes. The day she’d finagled Dylan into touring this place, she hadn’t had time to study all the items on the board. Now, very satisfactorily, she did. Once she finished her survey, she made herself comfortable in a leather chair and checked the app on her phone that tracked Dylan’s location. He was at home with Tess and Rudy.
Good Dylan. She placed a call to him and proceeded to pry conversation out of him with a chisel. After a few minutes she took pity on the boy and asked him to put Tess on. Not only was Tess much more agreeable to talk to, she could be trusted to give Leah an unvarnished update on Dylan. Dylan had been cranky when Tess had woken him this morning, but after eating half a box of cereal out of a mixing bowl, he’d gotten himself together, and they’d made it to church before returning to Leah’s house.
“Rudy!” Tess stopped mid-sentence to call out. “Put that down. That’s breakable.”
“What does he have?” Leah asked.
“An expensive-looking calculator.”
Blimey. She’d continued to carry her old graphing calculator around in her purse. She kept the new one that Sebastian had given her on a shelf at home to use on special occasions.
Tess released a resigned sigh. “I’d best go take it away from him. Enjoy your time in Atlanta.”
Leah opened the most challenging math app she’d been able to find and worked problems until the door swung inward, admitting Sebastian. He still wore his church clothes—a beautifully tailored white shirt, gray herringbone patterned tie, navy suit pants.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I am. What’s the status of the baby who was airlifted in?”
“Stable.” In the hallway, he opened the door to the stairwell for her. “Mind if we stop in the PICU on our way out?”
“Not at all.”
She followed him into a room where a toddler boy slept. He had tawny skin and silky black hair. Dressed in Superman pajamas, he clasped a faded stuffed dog.
She watched Sebastian do what she’d seen him do before, assess the monitors and then carefully straighten the tubes running from the child.
A male nurse with a kind face and balding head slipped inside. “Good afternoon, Dr. Grant.”
“Good afternoon.” Sebastian introduced him to Leah, then asked, “Kidney function?”
“I’m still seeing a negative fluid balance.”
“Good. H and H?”
“Steady.”
Sebastian and Leah left the room.
“Can we look in on Isabella?” she asked.
“If you’d like.”
“I would.”
He led her to the room she remembered. Almost everything remained eerily unchanged. Isabella looked the same, with the ventilator sealed to her mouth. Eight weeks had gone by since Leah’s last visit, and only a few things had altered: today Isabella’s blanket was lavender, and her mom wasn’t present. Megan must have just stepped out because her Bible rested open on her chair.
“I thought sepsis might take her down,” Sebastian said. “But it didn’t.”
“Pull through,” Leah said to the baby, entreaty in her voice.
“She’s a fighter.”
“Then fight,” she said to Isabella.
Silently, she prayed over the tiny girl.
How would she have dealt with this had it been Dylan lying here with a machine breathing for him? How could she have kept it together if Dylan’s life had been the one hanging by the thinnest piece of thread, a thread that God could extend or cut?
All life hung by a thin piece of thread.
Her life included. She knew this.
It’s just that inside this room, Isabella’s thread seemed excruciatingly fragile.
Leah transferred her focus to Sebastian and found him watching her with a look both soft and somber.
“C’mon.” He extended a hand.
She took it.
Sebastian drove Leah to a museum that contained many fine works of art and one particularly private and dim corridor between galleries. When he came to a halt in the corridor, she glanced at him. Immediately, she read what he was thinking in his unrepentant expression.
“Sebastian. You’re a well-respected surgeon in this city. You cannot be found making out in museum hallways.”
“Can’t I?”
“No.”
He stepped toward her, his hands curving around to support the back of her head. “As far as I know, making out in hallways isn’t against museum policy.”
“How familiar are you with this museum’s policies?”