The little seven year old lip quivered and he threw his arms around me in the next instant. I wrapped my arms around him, and hugged him tight.
“Daddy! Did you get Ben to calm down?” Tim yelled down the hall.
I nodded and released the boy a little. “Hey. I think Tim, Tabi, and Masin brought something back for you.”
Turning shyly to face them, Ben’s face lit up when he saw the hot cocoa in Tim’s other hand. He turned back to me and smiled. “They brought me hot cocoa?”
I leaned in close. “They’re going to be your brother and sister, and they just want to be your friend.” Leaning back, I pointed him off. “Go ahead. I know you’re dying for the drink.”
Happily, Ben trotted off to stand with Tim, Tabi, and Masin. I watched as he took the cup of cocoa and smiled at Masin’s mother and Ogilvy.
She walked over to me and crossed her arms. “Good job. He’s so calm now.”
“He’ll have another episode,” I answered. “I expect it when we get him back to St. Chris’. He’ll lose his shit when we’re in there. We just can’t leave him alone.”
She shook her head. “Good call. I have to take Masin back as well. I wish I didn’t.”
“What’s he in there for?”
“Radiation treatment. He has a large benign tumor on his spine. It’s been shrinking, but I can only afford three treatments a week for him. They want five, and say that it will work faster, and that’s ideal since the overall treatment is slowing down his growth.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Schedule the five. It’s all taken care of now.”
“What?”
I held my hand out. “Lincoln Foster.”
Her mouth dropped open. “The billionaire investor?”
“Am I worth a billion now?” I scratched my head. “Maybe. It comes and goes. I make sure it flows out to charities and worthy groups.”
“You’re serious about the treatments?” She glanced back at her son. “His father and I have been…”
“Very serious about it.” I grinned. “No more taking doubles, okay? He’ll have everything he needs.”
She started crying, and covered her face with her hands.
“What the hell have you done now, Linc?” Wren asked, walking over.
“I paid her son’s medical bills?”
“Oh, happy tears.” Wren grinned. “Good. Where’s Ben? We need to get him back to—”
“No.” I cut her off. “We can take him back, but we’re going to take him tonight. This morning. Whatever. He’s not going to spend another minute in there without us.”
“He’s not ready,” Wren said.
“He is,” I said. “He was acting out because we kept him locked up.”
“Oh,” Ellie said.
“Shit,” Wren said.
“Then we’ll just get that gotcha party together sooner,” Ellie said.
I shrugged. “We screwed up with him. But we’ll fix it.”
The cops had all walked away, heading back for their cruisers. The sergeant was all that was left, and he adjusted his glasses and flipped open the notebook. “You’ll take him back to St. Chris and get this all straightened out?”
“Yes, sir. They need to see that we have him,” Wren said. “Then we’ll take him home.”
“Excellent. I hope that—”
Bastian gasped, “Paige?!”
Paige
“Ma’am, this is really quite a bad injury,” the nurse said for the ninth time. “Are you sure you fell?”
I laughed, ignoring the pain in my ribs. “Since I was the one on the ground covered in blood, yes, I’m pretty sure I fell.” I wanted to reach for the cut, but I managed to stop myself. “How many stitches?”
“Ten,” the nurse repeated. “And you should have that cold pack on your nose and cheek. It helps the bruising.”
Carefully, I laid the ice back on the huge bruise I could feel blossoming. “It was just such a stupid thing to do, trying to go down the stairs with arms full of clothes. I wasn’t a hundred percent on the stairs. I didn’t know I’d dropped a washcloth and the next thing you know...” I gestured at myself.
One cut on my forehead, from the brick corner. A laceration that went across my nose and down my cheek from where I’d hit the edge of the stair. Two bruised ribs from where I had landed on the laundry basket wrong, and one twisted ankle that just needed some rest.
When, I didn’t know. I had things booked all week and there was no way I could stay home with my feet up. That was just insane. I had to be at work and I had to keep helping these kids find places to stay. There were five more folders on my desk at the end of the day, and being here wasn’t putting me in a good mood.
I hissed at the contact of something on my hair line.
“Just some topical numbing cream,” the nurse said. “We’ll have this stitched up. I’m tempted to tell the doctor to keep you overnight for observation.”
I gasped, “No! God, no! You can’t. I have too much to do in the morning.”
She grunted, “Mrs. Domingues. How many hours of sleep have you had?”
“Today? Or all week?”
Inhaling sharply, she schooled herself. “All week, ma’am, if you can remember.”
Thinking for a moment, I let her examine my head a bit more. I finally decided on a number. “Twenty. I think.”
“Twenty hours? All week?”
“Most of it on Sunday and Monday night,” I answered. “I really don’t need a lot of sleep to function. I’m pretty good at handling things and catching up later.”
“Lost sleep is gone, Mrs. Domingues. You can’t make up sleep. That’s a falsehood. Your body will make you sleep longer to recover from your deprivation.” The nurse let out a sigh.
An aide walked in, and she glanced at the computer, and then did a double take. I watched her as she walked over to the urine sample.
“Nurse, did you check this already?”
“Hmm. Ran the test…” the nurse answered, absently. “Mrs. Domingues said she has no cause for concern.”
“It’s positive.”
My heart stopped in my chest.
“Is it?” The nurse stopped what she was doing and walked over to the station. “It is indeed positive.”
I tried to breathe. “I just finished my period like two days ago!”
“There are occasions when a woman can have her period throughout an entire pregnancy, but it’s rare,” the nurse said. She tapped something in to the computer and looked at the test. “Let’s get a blood test, and an ultrasound tech in here and see what’s going on. This could be a false positive.”
Oh, God in Heaven, please let it be a false positive. Please. I couldn’t be pregnant. Not again. Where had I fucked it up this time? I’d been good with my birth control, I stocked every nook and cranny in the house with a spermicidal lube, and if I had time, I also used the diaphragm. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t be pregnant.
Alain would make me terminate.