LITMIR.BIZ

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to identify the signs he’d missed. But he’d been busy at work, taking everything Victoria had told him at face value.

      Never suspecting, until far too late, that she’d become addicted to the painkillers the orthopedic surgeon had initially prescribed.

      He shook off the past and forced himself to focus on the present. Just because he was deeply attracted to Cassie, it didn’t mean he had any intention of acting on it. She was young, full of life and could do better than a broken man like him. He didn’t plan to ever have a family of his own. He didn’t deserve a second chance.

      Forcing himself to turn away, he went over to a different computer, far away from the one Cassie had been using, to enter the medication orders. When he’d finished, he sat down to scroll through his other patients’ charts.

      It took him a few minutes to realize he was stalling. Ridiculous to think about waiting around here until the end of Cassie’s shift. Just because he was on call, it didn’t mean he shouldn’t take advantage of the downtime to get some rest.

      But before he could leave, his pager went off, announcing a pending crash C-section.

      Rest would have to wait. “We need an emergency warmer down in the OR,” he said.

      “I’m ready,” Diane said, hurrying toward him with the equipment. He knew that Cassie was already tied up with Emma and Barton, so he wasn’t surprised that Diana was the nurse up for the next admission.

      He strode purposefully toward the door, managing to resist the urge to glance back once more at Cassie.

      She and Emma would be fine.

      A few minutes later he entered the OR, where a laboring mother was lying on the table, her eyes full of fear. “Save my baby,” she pleaded as the anesthesiologist tried to cover her mouth and nose with an oxygen mask. “Save my baby!”

      “She has a prolapsed umbilical cord,” Dr. Eden Graves informed him. “We need to move fast.”

      “Understood,” he agreed. “I’m ready as soon as you are.”

      Leaving Diane to prepare their equipment, he walked over to look at the fetal monitoring strip. There were several steep decelerations present, indicating severe fetal bradycardia. He noted that the sharp drop in the fetal pulse coincided with highest portion of the uterine contractions. Classic sign of a prolapsed umbilical cord.

      “Tip her uterus so that the pressure isn’t on her cervix,” he instructed.

      “I did, but you’re right, we could use more blankets to prop beneath her bottom.”

      A couple of nurses came over to assist and soon the patient was ready. The anesthesiologist gave Eden the high sign and she quickly began the procedure.

      The baby was removed from the uterus within five minutes, and the minute the cord was cut he quickly took the infant over to the warmer. The baby boy wasn’t too limp and quickly pinked up as they worked on him.

      When the baby let out a wail, there was a collective sigh of relief from everyone in the room.

      “Let me know what the cord blood gases show,” he said to the circulating nurse in the room. “Page me with the results.”

      “Okay.”

      He finished his assessment with Diane’s help and then deemed the infant stable enough for transport up to the neonatal nursery. Even though the baby boy looked fine for the moment, he intended to watch the infant for a few hours upstairs.

      It was a good feeling to save a baby’s life. Even though deep down he knew that no matter how many he saved, he’d always mourn the one that mattered most.

      The son he’d lost.

      Cassie was thankful Emma didn’t show any more signs of seizures and the EEG tech seemed to think the test looked relatively normal. Of course, they needed the neurologist to read the test to know for sure, but she decided to remain optimistic.

      Barton’s parents were here, holding their son, so she decided this was a good time to take a quick break.

      “Sally, would you mind keeping an eye on Emma for a few minutes? I’d like to run down to the cafeteria to grab something to eat.”

      “Sure, that’s fine. But we’re expecting that new baby to arrive within the next thirty minutes so make it quick, okay?”

      “I will.” She’d perfected the art of eating fast, to minimize disrupting patient care.

      Leaving the unit, she took the stairs down to the cafeteria level. The grill line was too long, so she went over to the salad bar to make herself a quick grilled-chicken salad and fill a large cup with ice water. The hardest thing about working second shift was the inability to fall asleep once she got home, and the last thing she needed was the added impact of caffeine zipping through her system.

      She sat down at a small table near the back of the cafeteria and quickly dug into her salad. A few nurses greeted her, but none of them lingered. Obviously the whole hospital was busy, not just her neonatal unit.

      She kept an eye on her watch as she ate, knowing she needed to return to the unit before Dr. Ryan brought over his latest patient.

      With any luck he’d be busy with the new admission for a while, giving her some badly needed breathing space. She really didn’t understand what her problem was around him. There were plenty of other single guys around. James Green, one of the ER doctors, had asked her out just last month.

      Too bad she hadn’t felt one iota of interest in him. She’d politely declined James’s offer, refusing to feel bad at the dejected expression in his eyes.

      Her divorce had only been final for a little over a year. Six months ago she’d moved to Cedar Bluff to start afresh. It was too soon to enter the dating scene.

      So why was she always so keenly aware of Dr. Ryan Murphy?

      No clue. She shook her head, scraping the bottom of her salad bowl to get the last bit, before wiping her mouth with a napkin and rising to her feet.

      Ten minutes. Not bad, she mused as she headed back toward the elevators. Walking up three flights of stairs seemed daunting after she’d practically inhaled her meal, so she took an elevator up.

      She got off the elevator on the third floor and headed down the east hallway toward the neonatal unit.

      Cassie frowned when she saw an older woman, probably in her midsixties, leaning heavily on a cane near the doorway. It looked as if the woman was trying to peer through the small window to see inside the unit.

      “Good evening. Can I help you with something?” Cassie asked.

      The woman started badly, spinning around so quickly she almost lost her balance. Cassie darted forward to slide a supportive arm around the woman’s waist.

      “Easy there, I don’t want you to fall,” Cassie said. “Is there something you need? Are you waiting to go in to visit?”

      “Oh, no. I’m not waiting to visit. I … um …” The woman seemed flustered and avoided her gaze. “I was visiting a friend and thought I’d come over to peek at the babies. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break any rules.”

      Since the woman obviously felt bad, Cassie decided she wouldn’t push it. “That’s okay, but you can’t go in there unless you’re related to one of the babies. It’s a locked unit to protect them from being taken.”

      “Oh, of course. I—I’m sorry. I have to go.” The woman took a step and leaned on her cane, making her way back toward the elevators. Cassie waited a moment, watching her.

      It wasn’t until she was back at Emma’s bedside that she realized the woman might have being trying to catch a glimpse of Emma. Surely the news of their safe-haven baby had already spread throughout the small town of Cedar Bluff.

      She wished she’d asked the woman for her name. Had she been peeking into

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