A Surgeon's Christmas Baby, page 3
Ben needed to stay here. They had to fix this.
“I’m not giving up. They’ve given me till Christmas. That’s why I need your help. I need you to help me convince the board that I’ve changed my ways. I need them to think I’ve become the most meek and obedient doctor on the ward.”
Izzy looked at the man in front of her, the sincerity in his face was more than she could take. Meek? Obedient? Ben didn’t even know what those words meant. Laughter began to bubble out of her, the kind of laughter that shook your belly and took the breath out of your lungs. She tried to take a deep breath, but thoughts of Ben sitting in front of the board, his hands resting meekly in his lap, was just too much. The whole situation was anything but funny. Ben was right, he did need help.
The hysterical laughter dried up. No, what he needed was a miracle. A Christmas miracle? Was it even possible? Every year she took part in granting a child’s wish. Maybe this year, it was Ben that needed his miracle wish granted most of all.
Or maybe they both needed a Christmas miracle. Because they had to find a way to keep Ben in Boston. Not just for the hospital, but for their unborn baby’s sake. She needed him here with them, no matter what she had to do to make that happen.
She was suddenly all in on this plan. She didn’t have a choice.
* * *
Ben leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms and waited as the only hope he had to save his life, as he knew it, finally stopped laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her words coming between taking a couple of deep breaths.
“I’m glad you find this all entertaining,” he said. He didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“I know it’s not funny.” Her voice sounded serious now. “I just don’t understand why you’d think I’m the one to help. Wouldn’t Javier be the best one to help you with the board?”
“He’s already tried. I suspect that’s the only reason they gave me this last chance.” Not that he really had one. Izzy was right. No one was going to believe he’d made a one-eighty transformation in less than a month.
“Okay,” Izzy said, taking another deep breath before straightening in her chair. “So Javier is out. But why me? I want to help, but I’m sure you know someone that has more experience dealing with the board than I do.”
“But that’s just it. They never have a problem with you. They love you. Everybody loves you. You’re perfect. You are the one who can show me what I need to do to make these guys think I’ve really changed.” Ben wished there was someone else that could help him. He’d let Izzy into his life for just a few hours and they’d connected in a way he hadn’t with anyone since Cara. He’d even opened up to her about losing Cara, and he hadn’t done that with anyone else. Now if she agreed, they’d be spending more time together. He was playing a dangerous game, but the hospital board’s threat gave him no choice.
“Think you’ve changed? So you don’t want me to help you actually make any changes. You just want me to find a way to fool the board into thinking you’ve changed. Is that what you’re saying?” The look she gave him left no doubt that she wasn’t happy with him.
“I’m not asking for a miracle. I just want to keep my job.” Why did everyone think he needed to change? All he needed was to get out of the situation he was in right now.
“And what happens next time you get in trouble? Because if you’re not serious about changing, it will happen again.” She stood and his heart sank down to his toes. She was going to refuse to help him.
“Look, Ben, what you need is a complete makeover, but what you’re asking for is just an image change. It won’t be enough. If I help you, you have to commit to more than that. I need you to trust me and I need you to at least be open to trying to make some real changes. I’ll come up with a plan and you’ll have to agree to it or we’ll just be wasting our time.”
Ben stood. Asking for help didn’t come easy for him. But if it meant continuing his work here, he’d have to make the sacrifice.
“I’m always open to making changes, if I agree they’re needed,” he said before holding his hand out to her. “So we have a deal?”
“Not quite yet,” she said. “I need you to do something else for me. With all the time I’m going to be devoting to your project, I won’t have enough time to work on granting the wishes of one of the children on the ward, so you’re going to have to help me.”
“You mean granting a child’s last wish? You know I don’t believe in that. It’s like telling the kid it’s all over.”
“It’s a Christmas wish, Ben. It doesn’t mean we’re giving up on them. It just means we want them to experience the joy of having their wish come true. Yes, sometimes that might be the last wish they’re granted. But that just makes it more important.” It was the plea in those deep brown eyes of hers that did him in.
“Okay, I’ll help. But, if I’m going to, I want to pick who we help.” He didn’t know why that was so important to him, but it was.
“Okay, then. We have a deal,” she said, then took his hand.
The moment her soft skin touched his, he knew he had made a mistake. A big mistake. As his body reacted with exploding fireworks, he pulled his hand back. He’d been so consumed with the need to keep his job that he’d totally tuned out the number one rule he had when Izzy was around. No touching and no thinking about touching. His mind just didn’t work right when she was around.
And now, until Christmas, he was going to be around her all the time. What could he have been thinking?
* * *
“What was I thinking?” Izzy murmured to herself as she rushed out of the doctors’ lounge, clasping her still-tingling hand to her chest. Didn’t she have enough to worry about with a baby on the way? And now she’d agreed to “fix” Ben while she fought against all those feelings she’d had the night they’d been together.
“Are you okay?” Leigh asked, as she quickly moved out of Izzy’s way. The older charge nurse was one of Izzy’s favorites. While sometimes the younger nurses got caught up in their duties, Leigh understood that it was just as important to listen to their young patients and their parents’ concerns. Her gray hair and bright blue eyes quickly drew in a shy child and she was the best at giving hugs to crying toddlers. Izzy might not be a toddler, but right then she could have used a hug.
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Izzy said, quickly dropping her hand to her side as the lounge door opened and Ben followed her out into the hallway.
“Text me when you want to get together to discuss...uh...that new case,” Ben said before nodding his head to her and Leigh and hurrying away.
Leigh’s eyes narrowed as they darted back and forth between her and Ben. Izzy didn’t have to look over at the nurses’ station to know that everyone there had also witnessed their interactions.
When Leigh’s mouth twisted into a smile and she winked at Izzy, she knew she was in trouble.
It seemed they’d done it now. Rumors would fill the halls the moment she left the ward. Of course, those rumors would only be a minor blip in the gossip mill when the news of her pregnancy and the baby’s father came out.
It looked like Boston Beacon’s children’s ward would be full of surprises this Christmas and not all of them would be concerning the staff’s Secret Santa exchange.
CHAPTER THREE
IZZY SEALED THE last envelope and let out a sigh. Sending Christmas cards had been one of her family’s few Korean Christmas traditions and it was still one of her favorite things to do each December. She spent months searching for the perfect card for each person on her list and started addressing them as soon as Thanksgiving was over. There was just something about putting up her Christmas tree on Thanksgiving weekend and preparing Christmas cards that awakened her holiday spirit.
She looked across her office to where her tree, all six and a half feet of it, stood next to the fire she’d set as soon as she’d gotten home. After the day she’d had with Ben asking her for help while she was still coming to terms with her pregnancy, she needed the peace and quiet she always found in this room. While the rest of her apartment was dressed in her favorite colors of pink, blue and purple decorations, she’d gone with traditional red ornaments and gold ribbon for the tree here. It was large for the size of the room, but that only made it more grand-looking as far as she was concerned.
Growing up in a home where decorations were kept to a minimum, she’d adopted the motto of more is always better. Each year since college, she had expanded her decorations. Her parents would be horrified by the number of Christmas elves she owned alone and the gingerbread decorations in her kitchen would send them running right back to their modern, and distinctly cold, California two-story. Fortunately, she didn’t have to worry about that happening. Her parents were more likely to dance naked in a field of wildflowers than to make a trip to the East Coast to see their only daughter.
Her phone rang beside her and she groaned. Speaking of her parents, it was Monday night. Also known as the weekly night of awkward conversations with her parents. How had things gotten this way between them? Oh, wait, it had always been this way. She covered her flat abdomen with her hands. It would not be this way with her own child. She’d make sure that they knew they came first in her life and that they could always talk to her about everything.
“I got the results from Janie’s MRI,” Ben said the moment she answered.
It was so like him not to even bother with a simple hello. Well, she’d agreed to help him change so she might as well start now.
“Good evening to you too, Ben.”
“Oh, yeah...good evening...like I said, I’ve got the results—”
“What am I doing? I’m so glad you asked. I’m just having a nice quiet night at home enjoying watching the lights on my Christmas tree. What about you?” While there was more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice, he was so caught up in his own world that she wasn’t sure if he would even notice. She found herself wondering exactly what it was that the man did when he wasn’t at work. Did he spend his evenings with a good book? Did he watch a favorite show? There was so much of Ben’s life that was a mystery to her.
Shouldn’t she know these things about the man that was going to have such an important place in her baby’s life?
“Right now I’m trying to tell you about the MRI results for a patient you requested a consult for.” He paused a moment before his voice became one of concern. “Are you okay?”
She started to bang her head onto her desk. The man really didn’t have any idea how to interact with people. Had he always been this way? Or had the last three years of shutting himself off from the world done this to him?
Instead of banging her head against it, she laid her head down on the cold, mahogany desktop and closed her eyes. She was too tired for this.
“I’m fine. I just thought it was a good time to point out how normal people carry on conversations, but I guess we can let that wait for later.”
There was another pause before he replied. “No, I think you’re right. We don’t have a lot of time to change the board’s mind.”
We? So this had become a team project now. She liked that. It would be a good opportunity to see how well they could work together since that was what the two of them would be doing for the next twenty years. Only Ben had no idea exactly how long they were going to be in this team together.
She opened her eyes and looked at the calendar on her desk where she had circled the day she was scheduled for her twelve-week ultrasound. No matter what happened, she had to tell him once she’d made that visit and was assured everything was going as it should.
“Are you still there?” Ben asked, more concern in his voice now.
“I’m here. I’m just trying to decide where to begin. I need to know if it’s really your intention to alienate people, or if you don’t know that you’re doing it.”
“I don’t alienate people. People call me from all around the world asking advice on cases and I always answer their questions to the best of my ability.” Ben’s voice had taken on a defensive tone that told her she’d hit a nerve. Was this one of the things the board had accused him of?
“So I’m going to take that to mean that you don’t know that you’re doing it,” Lizzy said, then continued when Ben started to interrupt her. “It’s okay. My parents are the same way. I think it’s common in people who are so focused on their work that they don’t notice their interactions with others. I was like that, too, when I was young. You just have to learn how to look outside the box you’ve built around yourself. There are other people in the world that you need to interact with. Some of them you’ll enjoy more than others, but you have to learn to acknowledge all of them.”
“Did you just read that from some book? Because that sounds like something from one of those self-help books,” Ben said. Izzy was surprised to hear the teasing in his voice.
“No, I didn’t read it. I lived it. When I left home and went to college I found out there was a whole new world where people actually talked to each other and enjoyed it.”
“I’m not an ogre,” Ben muttered. Was that pain she heard in his voice?
“I know that. I’ve seen you with the kids at the hospital. You’re amazing with them and they all love you.”
Ben cleared his throat on the other end of the phone. She’d embarrassed him. She heard some shuffling around and Izzy imagined him straightening his lab coat as he once again donned his uptight doctor persona.
“Which brings me back to why I called. Janie’s MRI results came back and there were no other masses found. I’m going to talk to her parents tomorrow between my surgery cases about plans for the surgery. I thought you might want to be there since they seem more comfortable with you.”
“I’d like that. And maybe we could get together after work and discuss my plan for your board ordered makeover.”
They agreed on a time to meet with Janie’s parents the next day and after much grumbling from Ben about his time being limited, they had decided on a quick meeting at the local coffee shop after his final surgical case.
They’d just hung up when Izzy’s phone rang again and she unexpectedly hoped it was Ben calling back. She’d enjoyed talking to him more than she would have guessed. Ben was a good person, he just lived in his own world too much. She needed to find a way to get him to step out of that place and interact with others more.
It was time that he expanded his world to include other people, because in a few months it was going to include not only a baby, but also Izzy. Because no matter what happened in the next few weeks, the two of them would be tied together by the little one they had made. Not that she could tell Ben that. Not yet. She didn’t think Ben would be upset about the baby. Of course it was unexpected, but she’d seen how he interacted with their patients. He loved children. He’d love his own child even more.
So though it might be a shock at first, everything inside her told her that Ben would quickly embrace the idea of being a father. She’d decided that afternoon to wait until she had an ultrasound to confirm that everything was good with the baby before telling Ben. With the loss of his wife and his unborn child, Ben had suffered enough. It was better to wait than to have him disappointed if something was to go wrong in the first trimester which was the most crucial time of a pregnancy.
She glanced at her phone and saw her mother’s number displayed.
Raising her head, she gripped her phone in her hand and prepared to hear all about her parent’s latest business deal. At least she didn’t have to worry about lying to her parents. It wasn’t like they’d be asking about how her own life was going. And for once, that was a good thing. “Hello, Mother.”
* * *
Ben walked through the hospital making a point to at least nod to each person he passed. If Izzy wanted him to acknowledge all these people, he would do it.
He thought of the new nurse Javier had tried to introduce him to and how he’d rushed past them. He needed to apologize for that. Not that he’d meant to be rude, he’d been in a hurry. If it had been him instead of Javi, he would have assumed that Javi had something more pressing at the time, but he didn’t think Izzy would see it that way.
“Good morning,” he said to the resident he’d seen after his meeting with Javier. The young man gave him a wary glance before hurrying off down the hall. Maybe he should ask Izzy to talk to him. It wouldn’t do for the kid to start alienating his coworkers this early in his career.
“Good morning, everyone,” Ben said as he came up to the pediatric ward’s nursing station before starting his rounds. A little boy had been flown in the night before from a hospital two states away and Ben was anxious to see him. According to the cardiac surgeon Ben had spoken with, the boy had a cardiac mass that had been deemed inoperable by several surgeons at his local hospital and the pediatrician wanted a second opinion. After Ben had reviewed the MRI, he could see why the other surgeons had refused to operate. The size of the tumor and its location at the interventricular septum would be a challenge. Even with his own experience, Ben wasn’t sure if it would be possible for him to operate. But before he could meet the new patient, he and Izzy were scheduled to meet with Janie’s parents.
He could hear the little girl crying before he opened the door. Crying children in a hospital were very common, but the sight of Izzy sitting in a chair holding the preschooler in her lap while a young lab phlebotomist held the child’s arm surprised him. “Where are her parents?”
“I sent them to get some coffee. They’ll be back in just a moment. They needed a break before we discussed the surgery,” Izzy said, then grunted when Janie tried to twist in her arms to get away from the stick of the needle that she knew was coming.
