Brought Together by Baby

And for a moment, a grudging admiration snaked past his concern. She was loyal, he gave her that. “I can give you what information you need if you are willing to come to my office,” he said. “Can you bring Gracie by after this?”

Again a heartbeat of hesitation. “I can give you half an hour,” she said.

Eli wondered what Rachel was going to do with Gracie after that. One thing was for sure. In spite of her insistence that she could take care of Gracie, he knew he would have to keep a close eye on the little girl. He wasn’t going to let her care suffer for the sake of this Rachel woman’s pride.

“I’ll see you there in about twenty minutes.”

She nodded, then swept past him, leaving in her wake a vague scent of peaches and almonds. But as she walked away, he wasn’t surprised to see her pull out her Palm Pilot and then her cell phone.

He blew out a sigh as he caught sight of the clock in the outpatient department. Three o’clock. He had hoped to get some work done on his house today. He guessed that would have to wait.

He waved to the outpatient nurse as he strode out of the hospital. In minutes he was on his motorcycle and headed toward his office. As he rode he remembered Rachel’s comment on his mode of transportation. Someday, he hoped to get a decent car. But for now the motorcycle was efficient and cheap. He didn’t understand her reaction, but he wouldn’t dwell on it.

Half an hour later Rachel sat across from his desk, a pen in one hand, notebook in the other. This woman was all business. “So what kind of care am I looking at for Gracie?”

“I have this basic information on Gracie’s condition,” he said, slipping a sheaf of papers across the table toward her. “Gracie has what is technically known as hemiplegia. In other words, her cerebral palsy affects one side of her body, her left arm and left leg.” He explained the various people involved in her care—the physical therapist, the occupational therapist, and how often she had to see each.

“She has been fighting an ear infection so she is on antibiotics.” Eli picked up his pen and fiddled with it, avoiding Rachel’s gaze. In spite of her insistence in the hospital, he could tell Rachel wasn’t comfortable taking care of Gracie. If that was the case, how would she take this next bit of information?

“I get the feeling there’s something else, Doctor,” Rachel said with a note of impatience.

Of course she would be impatient. Probably had an urgent phone call to return. May as well lay it on the line.

“Gracie is afflicted with seizures from time to time. They have been coming more often and we are monitoring that carefully. So that means you need to keep track of them, as well. If she has too many and any severe ones, we will have to adjust her medication. Unfortunately, since she is fighting an infection, she’s more susceptible to them right now.”

Rachel glanced at the paper, then at Gracie, asleep in her stroller. He was surprised to see fear flash across Rachel’s face. The woman was not as “in charge” as she liked to project.

“How do I know she’s having a seizure and how bad are they?”

“They can vary. You need to look for tremors in her arms, flutters of her eyelids. If you have any major concerns, bring her in. I’m at the hospital three days a week, but I can come in at a moment’s notice if it is serious enough. And if I can give you some advice…” Eli waited, realizing that Rachel would not appreciate what he had to say. But his first concern was for Gracie. Rachel needed to know what was at stake with this child.

“I’ve been taking care of Gracie since she was a newborn. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating, that while she looks good from a physical standpoint, she is still considered medically fragile. If we can keep her healthy for the next few years, then I know she can turn the corner. If not, we are looking at far more serious medical problems.”

Rachel made a quick note, but Eli could see a faint tremble in her hand.

“What kind of medical problems are you talking about?”

“Fluid build-up in her brain that would necessitate a shunt. And with shunts come further infections and more problems.” Okay, maybe he was laying it on a little thick, but she needed to know. The more information she had, the better decisions she could make.

And if he were to be perfectly honest, he was trying to goad her into reacting. Into being more than a cool, self-contained woman who saw Gracie as a duty. He wanted to know that she cared. That Gracie, who he had to admit was special to him, was going to be in good hands.

He handed her a card. “This is the hospital emergency number, my home number and my pager number. If you need me, call.”

Rachel drew in a long, slow breath, as if absorbing the information with it. She slipped the paper in her briefcase and the card in her purse. “Okay. I’ll see how this goes, then,” she said, standing. Then, to his surprise, she reached across the desk to shake his hand. “Thanks for your time, Dr. Cavanaugh. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”

He took her hand, surprised at how cool it felt.

Just like the rest of her, he thought.

She slipped her briefcase over her shoulder and Eli strode around the desk to open the door for her. But this time, as she passed him, she glanced up at him.

Their gazes met and held, and for a moment Eli felt it again. That tug, the age-old signal of two people attracted to one another in spite of circumstances.

He didn’t know where it came from. She certainly had not encouraged it and he certainly wasn’t looking. He was building up his practice, working on his house, paying off his loan, keeping his life ordered and on target.

He almost laughed as he watched her leave, putting down that flicker of awareness to the basic reality of his life. Though he casually dated, he knew he could not devote himself to a full-fledged relationship. And not with someone like Rachel Noble. Besides, he was devoted to his work.

Too devoted, according to his last serious girlfriend. She had other issues, he had found out, but she chose to make his job the main reason for the split. He found out afterward that her family had discouraged her from dating him mainly because they did not know what his background was. They did not know his biological parents, did not know what possibly sinister secrets lay in his genetics.

With a light laugh at the melancholy drift of his thoughts, he grabbed his helmet, left the office and headed for home.

The phone was ringing when he entered the house and a glance at call display made him smile.

“Hey, Mom, how are you?” he asked, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he bent over to pick up a shirt he had left lying on the floor. He knew his mother couldn’t see the state of his house, yet he felt guilty.

“I’m just fine. Where were you all morning?” Peggy asked. “I tried a couple of times.”

It wasn’t hard to hear the expectant tone in her voice, which made Eli feel even more guilty.

“Ben and I had a Sunday morning football game and I got called to the hospital.” He threw the shirt on a pile of laundry to be brought to the cleaners and slipped the DVDs he’d been watching the other night back in their cases.

“Ben was there, too?” He recognized the mixed message in her disappointed tone. It was as if she was saying that Eli’s defection from church was difficult but not unexpected. That Ben, the apple of their eye, was heading down the same path seemed harder to take. Ben’s reasons to stay away from church made perfect sense to Eli. Losing his beloved wife Olivia to cancer had pushed Ben away from God.

“It was his idea.” As soon as he spoke the words, he felt like a heel. He was an adult. He didn’t need to play these silly “he did it, too” games that he and Ben had grown up with.

It was just that his relationship with his adoptive parents always held undertones of his not fitting in. It hadn’t helped that he had come to them as a child of six, after being orphaned by a car accident that took his only living relatives away from him. Ben, their other son, also adopted, had come as a newborn baby with no extra baggage. No mother, no father, no family that he knew of. The Cavanaughs had been able to start with a clean slate with Ben, whereas with Eli there was always a measure of friction. He had wanted to know about his parents but the Cavanaughs could tell him nothing.

Or would tell him nothing. Last year he had found a box of photos in the attic when he and Ben had helped their parents clean up. He had never seen them before: they were of him and his natural parents. Peggy and Tyrone had had them since he was young. When confronted with them, Peggy had said that the pictures had always made him very upset, so they put them away, then forgot about them. It seemed plausible; however, since then their relationship had become more awkward.

“You said you got called to the hospital,” Peggy was saying. “I hope it wasn’t anything too serious.”

Eli thought of Rachel and Gracie and rubbed his forehead with his finger. “Not with my patient. She fell, but she’s okay. How are you and Dad doing?”

“Good. But I was hoping we could come up sometime and help you and Ben finish the house.”

“That’s okay, Mom. I don’t want you and dad to trouble yourselves. It’s too far to travel from Florida to Richmond just to pound a few nails.”

His mother’s moment of silence created another twinge of guilt. “I see. Well, we will be up Labor Day. I hope we can see you then.”

“Of course.”

Peggy asked a few more general questions as the conversation drifted into the final goodbye.

Eli punched the button to end the call and tossed the phone aside. Then he sat and leaned his head back against the soft leather of the couch as he looked around the house. Much as he did not want to admit it to his parents—or his brother Ben, for that matter—he’d been wondering more and more if buying this house wasn’t a colossal mistake. All his life he had wanted a place of his own. A place that he could build up himself. It wasn’t something he could easily explain to Peggy and Tyrone, much less to himself. Not even Ben understood why a confirmed bachelor wanted to tie himself down to a mortgage when he was still single.

But then, Ben did not have the memories of family that Eli had. And it was those vivid memories of a previous life that he clung to in the traumatic first year after witnessing his parents’ lives snuffed out in front of him. He had loved his parents and it was that love that had caused some misunderstandings with Peggy and Tyrone Cavanaugh when he first went to live with them. It was as if they did not quite know what to do with a child who came with other memories.

So they never talked about his parents. Never mentioned them.